Rakhi 20
Menstruation is a biological function that affects roughly half the world's population for approximately three decades of their lives. Yet it is treated as something to be hidden, whispered about, and managed in silence. Period products are wrapped in black bags at pharmacies. Advertisements use blue liquid to avoid showing what a period actually looks like. Until 2018, sanitary pads in India were taxed at 12 percent under GST, the same rate applied to luxury goods, while condoms were tax-free. This blog asks a simple, uncomfortable question: if men experienced periods, would any of this be true?
Picture this.
Every month, for roughly thirty years, half the population experiences a biological cycle that involves bleeding, cramping, hormonal shifts, mood changes, and a recurring need for hygiene products. This biological event is normal. It is healthy. It is, in fact, a sign that the reproductive system is functioning as it should.
Now ask yourself: if this happened to men instead of women, would we still wrap the products in black plastic bags at the pharmacy? Would advertisements still use blue liquid to avoid showing what the discharge actually looks like? Would the products have been taxed as luxury items? Would anyone still refer to menstrual health as a "private matter" that polite society does not discuss?
These are not rhetorical questions designed to provoke. They are serious questions about how deeply gender shapes the way we treat health.
The Luxury Tax That Was Not Applied to Condoms
When India introduced the Goods and Services Tax in July 2017, sanitary pads were taxed at 12 percent, the same rate as luxury items.
Condoms, by comparison, were tax-free.
Let that sit for a moment. A product that manages a biological function occurring monthly in roughly half the population was classified alongside non essential, discretionary purchases. A product used during sexual activity, was classified as essential and exempted from tax entirely.
Lawmaker Sushmita Dev launched a petition to demand a reduction or total removal of taxes on pads, citing that about 70 percent of women in India could not afford them. The online petition gained more than 400,000 signatures.
Items like sindoor and bindi had been exempted from the tax system, but sanitary napkins had not. Cosmetic and cultural items used primarily by women were exempt. A hygiene product used only by women was not. The message embedded in that decision, even if unintentional, was clear. Periods are optional. Or at the very least, they are less essential than a bindi.
The GST on sanitary pads was finally removed in July 2018, following public outcry and sustained campaigning. Progress was made. But the fact that it took a year of protests to establish that a menstrual product is a health essential, not a luxury, tells you a great deal about how menstruation is valued in public policy.
The Blue Liquid Problem
For decades, the standard way to advertise a period product in India and globally was to demonstrate its absorbency using blue liquid. A sanitary pad would be shown absorbing a thin, clean, vivid blue stream, nothing resembling blood, nothing resembling a period, nothing that would make the viewer uncomfortable.
The reason is obvious. Showing what periods actually look like would make people uncomfortable. Would embarrass the brand. Would be considered inappropriate for general audiences.
Now ask: is a wound shown in a bandage advertisement with blue fluid? Is a stomach medicine advertised by showing a cartoon stomach and a cheerful animation rather than the actual discomfort of indigestion? Are cold and flu advertisements careful to avoid showing anything as graphic as a runny nose?
No. Health products for conditions that affect everyone are shown honestly. Throat lozenges show sore throats. Eye drops show red eyes. Wound care shows bandaged injuries.
But menstrual blood is in a different category. It is too private. Too female. Too much.
The blue liquid in period advertisements is not just a creative choice. It is a statement about whose discomfort matters. The viewer who might be uncomfortable seeing period blood is more important than the person who actually has to manage it every month for thirty years.
The Black Bag at the Pharmacy
Walk into almost any pharmacy in India and buy a packet of sanitary pads. There is a very good chance that they will be handed to you wrapped in newspaper or placed in a black opaque bag, sometimes both, before being handed over.
No other health product receives this treatment. Cough syrup does not come in a black bag. Blood pressure medication is not wrapped in newspaper. Antiseptic cream is not concealed before being handed to the customer.
The black bag says something without using any words. It says that what is inside is something to be hidden. That the purchase is something to be ashamed of. That the person buying it should not be seen buying it.
Menstruation is the only common health condition for which the purchase of its management products is treated as an act requiring concealment.
If men needed sanitary products every month, does anyone genuinely believe those products would come in black bags?
The Vocabulary of Concealment
Notice the language that surrounds menstruation in everyday life. Periods are referred to as "that time of the month," "chums," "aunt flo," "those days." In Hindi, "mahina aaya hai" or "woh din hain" serve the same purpose. Anything but the actual word.
This is not coincidence. It is a linguistic system built to avoid naming the thing directly, because naming it directly would mean acknowledging it in mixed company, and acknowledging it would make people uncomfortable.
Compare this to other health conditions. No one calls a fever "that hot feeling" to avoid saying the word. No one refers to a broken arm as "my left side situation." Health conditions are named because naming them allows them to be discussed, treated, and taken seriously.
The vocabulary of concealment around periods serves a function: it keeps the subject outside the range of normal conversation. And keeping it outside normal conversation means it stays outside normal healthcare, normal workplace policy, normal public infrastructure, and normal human empathy.
What This Costs in Real Terms
This is not purely philosophical. The stigma around menstruation has concrete, measurable costs.
Twenty five percent of girls in India remain absent from school during menstruation. The reasons include lack of products, inadequate school toilet facilities, and the absence of education that would tell a girl her period is manageable. Each absence is a day of education lost. Over years, the cumulative loss is significant.
Women leave jobs, avoid public spaces, and make decisions about where they can and cannot go based on whether clean menstrual hygiene facilities will be available. This is not a private inconvenience. It is a structural limitation on women's participation in public life.
Period pain severe enough to disrupt daily functioning affects a significant proportion of menstruating women. Because pain during menstruation has been normalised as expected and private, many of these women never seek medical care. Conditions like endometriosis go undiagnosed for years. Years of unnecessary suffering that would have been investigated much sooner if the affected population had been male.
The Standard We Apply to Male Health
Consider how differently male health concerns are treated in public conversation.
Erectile dysfunction has its own category of widely advertised medication. Hair loss, which is cosmetic rather than functional, receives enormous research attention and sympathy. Prostate health is discussed openly, tested for routinely, and funded generously in public health campaigns.
None of these receive the concealment treatment applied to menstruation. None of them are considered too private for a pharmacy counter. None of them are taxed as luxuries. None of them result in the user being handed a black bag to avoid public acknowledgment.
The difference is not in the nature of the conditions. It is in who experiences them.
It Is Not Private. It Is Political.
The decision to treat menstruation as private is not a neutral one. It is a choice that reflects whose experiences are considered appropriate for public discussion and whose are not.
When a health function experienced by half the population for thirty years of their lives is considered too personal to be shown in an advertisement, taxed as a luxury, wrapped in black bags, and referred to by euphemism, that is not privacy. That is erasure. It is the systematic removal of a health reality from public view because that health reality belongs to women.
The good news is that this is changing. India scrapped the 12 percent tax on sanitary products following months of campaigning by activists. More brands are showing period blood in red rather than blue. More women are using the word period in public spaces without lowering their voices. More conversations about menstrual health are happening in schools, workplaces, and healthcare settings than a generation ago.
This is progress. Real, hard-wonhard won progress.
But progress does not mean the work is done. Products like menstrual cups, period panties, and intimate washes exist because women's hygiene needs are real and deserve real solutions. Treating them as such, without shame, without black bags, without blue liquid, without whispered euphemisms, is not a radical position. It is simply an accurate one.
Conclusion
The question this blog started with does not have a comfortable answer. If men experienced periods, the products would almost certainly be available at every pharmacy counter without concealment. The tax exemption would not have required a national campaign and 400,000 signatures to secure. The advertisements would not use blue liquid. The pain would be investigated rather than normalised. And no one would refer to the management of a monthly biological function as a private matter.
That is not a statement about men. It is a statement about how gender shapes the value we assign to health experiences. Menstruation is not private. It is common, recurring, and significant. It affects how women move through the world, how they manage their health, how they participate in education and employment, and how they feel about their own bodies. Calling it private has never protected women. It has only made it harder for them to demand what they need. And what they need is not a black bag. It is exactly the same thing as anyone else: to have their health taken seriously.
