The Menstrual Hut and the Witch's Lair in Two Eastern Indonesian Societies

Menstrual huts are associated with ideas of pollution, misogyny, and intersexual tension in the literature, but in Huaulu, Seram, I found an ambivalently charged but not necessarily negative view of female bodies. In contrast, the Kodi of Sumba do not seclude women during menstruation but do link menstrual contamination to venereal disease, herbalism, and witchcraft. Keeping menstruation secret expresses anxieties about bodily integrity that show a greater separation of male and female worlds than the public-health approach of the menstrual hut. (Menstrual huts, sexual politics, reproduction, witchcraft, pollution) ********** The anthropological literature on gender relations in Pacific Asia has tended to group ideas of menstrual pollution with sexual antagonism and the use of poisons and witchcraft by women against men in Melanesia, while the apparent absence of menstrual taboos, complementary or relatively unmarked gender relations, and harmonious households are connected with Indonesia and Polynesia. Since hiding menstruation from men and playing down its role in public correspond to Euro-American practices, this attitude has come to be seen as a reasonable norm, and an emphasis on menstruation as a deviant expression of intersexual conflict. My field experiences in two Indonesian societies, however, have led me to find this conclusion unsatisfactory. The Huaulu of Scram have extremely stringent menstrual taboos, and as a woman among them, I was required to comply strictly. (1) I spent five to six days each month in a menstrual hut on the edge of the village, refrained from eating big game, and bathed at a special fountain which was forbidden to men. But rather than showing animosity toward men, the other menstruating women indicated a wish to protect them and spare them from harm. Huaulu women were proud of the fact that they controlled a dangerous flow of blood, and they emphasized its creative and empowering aspects. In contrast, the Kodi women of the coastal villages of Sumba, with whom I had lived for three years before coming to Huaulu, kept their menstrual cycles secret, and (in the absence of tampons and toilets) instructed me on surreptitious techniques of doing so even when clothing was washed in mixed company at the river. It was in this society, however, that menstruation found its way into the witch's lair: the appearance of the menstrual flow and its believed relation to fertility, abortion, and venereal disease are all part of an occult realm of natural medicines that only women can control. The term for these medicines, moro, has the literal meaning of the color blue or green, and raw, uncooked, or unprocessed. Moro is also the term used to describe deep saturations of indigo dye on cloth. "Blue medicines" are part of a tradition of herbalism, midwifery, and witchcraft which concerns learning about roots and plants to keep the dyes in cloth from running, and also to control bleeding in women--after childbirth, following a village abortion, or hemorrhage interpreted as caused by violations of taboos on incest or adultery. Men are excluded from the knowledge of when their wives are fertile, are often not told when they are pregnant until fairly late in the pregnancy, and may be tricked into sex acts that are believed to make them infertile and impotent. Female herbalists and midwives (tou tangu moro) compare the menstrual flow to the dyes fermenting in the indigo pot, and certain roots and barks are used both to control the bleeding of colors in textiles and to control the bleeding of women's bodies. Deception concerning bodily fluids and their uses is paramount in Kodi, while in Huaulu every woman's menstrual cycle is public knowledge and even part of a concerted campaign to keep the village clean. These contrasts suggest rethinking some of the familiar anthropological oppositions between ideas of pollution and female purity, sexual antagonism, and sexual co-operation. …