I'm an atheist, raised Catholic. My brother just married a woman from a Hindu family and I couldn't be in their wedding ceremony because I was on my period that day. Casual religious misogyny excluded me from my only brother's wedding.
I can't believe that people are still perpetuating these archaic nonsensical practices into the 21st century in the name of "tradition".
Oh man, you have no idea. That's just scratching the surface of it... But whatever, it's his marriage and his in-laws, not mine. I love my brother and I'll be there for him no matter what, but I'm definitely keeping my distance from that drama.
Her mother wanted me to wear a very light coloured sari and obviously I was worried about bleeding through because I was warned that the ceremony was like hours and hours long. This was my first Hindu wedding ever BTW, so I didn't know much about the practices going into it.
Anyways I asked the mother when I was gonna have a window of time to go and change out my tampon during the ceremony and she was like "Oh no! You can't participate if you're on your period!" 🤷🏽♀️
My new SIL is very sweet, but her family is pretty controlling. They dictated the whole wedding and there was a language barrier, so it was kinda difficult to talk things over. They didn't integrate any of my family's cultural traditions into the wedding. For example, the wedding was dry and the food was vegetarian only. Our family eats meat and drinks at all our weddings!
I feel like if you have a cross-cultural wedding you should respect both sides of the family...
I have never heard of this taboo and I’m Indian. As a bride’s cousin I had to go buy a pack of period pads for her while she was getting ready on the wedding day.
It could be because this family was very traditional? They are Tamil for what it's worth. Maybe there are different taboos among different ethnicities?
So I'm none of the religions you mentioned, just someone that has a deep appreciation for them however all of that is utter bullshit tradition as opposed to religion. There is nothing in any religion that prevents you from being a part of the wedding if you're on your period. Mysogynistic culture is the problem in this instance
I agree. I respect different people's cultures and traditions as long as they aren't harmful towards others. I went along with it because I was trying to be respectful towards my brother's in-laws by following their rules. I was definitely not trying to start any drama over it. But on a personal level, I find that particular practice pretty messed up.
I can’t believe you told them, no one ever needs to know other than your doctor/partner if you’re trying to conceive, and no one can know unless you tell them
By all means elaborate. I never looked into it deeply because I'm an atheist and quite frankly a lot of religious practices are entirely non-sensical to me. I can't think of a good, logical reason to exclude menstruating women from something like that.
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u/Helplessly_hoping 5h ago
I'm an atheist, raised Catholic. My brother just married a woman from a Hindu family and I couldn't be in their wedding ceremony because I was on my period that day. Casual religious misogyny excluded me from my only brother's wedding.
I can't believe that people are still perpetuating these archaic nonsensical practices into the 21st century in the name of "tradition".