Ambiguous Bleeding: Purity and Sacrifice in Bali

Abstract

Menstrual beliefs and practices in Bali defy simple classification. Menstruation may be relegated to dump, as when a woman had to undergo a rite on a street midden when her monthly period coincided with ritual time for a purification ceremony. But menstruation is also viewed as conferring raja status, and women do exhibit agency in this supposedly passive process. Experiences of menstruation, furthermore, may vary according to caste status. (Bali, classifications of pollution, restriction, agency, ambiguity) ********** As many tourists to Bali can confirm from personal experience, menstrual taboos remain in effect there. At entrance to temples, female tourists find that taboos pertain to them, too, a fact they almost invariably experience as an affront to their sex. Visitors stop short with some incredulity at signs in English that forthrightly prohibit entry to menstruating women. Although they have had surprisingly little to say on issue of menstruation, reaction of scholarly observers of Balinese culture has been similar. If mentioned at all, complex of taboos and regulations surrounding it has tended to be viewed as somewhat of a jolting exception to otherwise relatively egalitarian gender relations (Covarrubias 1986). More recently, scholars have treated issue of gender relations in Bali in more depth (Wikan 1990), but remain almost silent on circumstances of menstruating woman. Balinese women, meanwhile, generally adhere to certain menstrual taboos as a regular and accepted part of their lives. In 1998, in a noble house in eastern Bali, I observed a ceremony performed for a woman whose period coincided with a family temple purification marking onset of preparatory sacred work for a major ancestral ritual. Reminding her that she must heed her elders, woman's paternal aunt summoned her to garbage heap outside palace walls. Placed at top of heap, she was sprinkled with holy water in a brief rite performed by her aunt. At first glance, such a practice of sending menstruating woman to garbage heap--expressly, as women envisioned it, because her condition belongs with filth there--seems to resonate with conclusions such as Covarrubias's, that although in Bali the woman is by no means proverbial slave of Oriental countries ... once a month, during menstrual time, a wife's life is not a happy one (Covarrubias 1986:156). There is no more graphic expression of menstruation as pollution than image of woman on garbage. Other evidence, however, complicates any easy assumption that such practice necessarily reflects female oppression. This same woman stepped down from garbage to talk at length about how menstruating woman in Bali is said to become a raja. These positive and negative images of menstruation appear to coexist without contradiction to Balinese actors involved. After introducing complex of menstrual taboos found in Bali, this article clarifies classification of menstrual pollution that emerges from contemporary commentary of variously positioned men and women in eastern part of island. It revolves around cycles paralleling those of life and death and a view of women as both vulnerable and powerful. For example, taboos surrounding a woman's menstruation also open for her certain avenues of agency. But such power is hedged by differences in experience between high- and low-caste women in Bali. While high-caste women are more likely to appeal to raja image, being a woman in a princely household entails not only higher status but also a higher degree of constraint. Similarly, being treated like a raja might restrict as well as empower menstruating woman. Even studies that otherwise take into account many complexities surrounding menstrual taboos and related practices, such as those compiled by Buckley and Gottlieb (1988), still tend to characterize societies as having either positive, negative, or neutral views of menstruation, or as having taboos that either limit or enhance powers of women. …