Radical Anthropology goes to the pub!
Tuesday May 13
from 18:00 London time
LIVE talk and discussion on
'Where have all the menstrual huts gone?'
with the Menstrual Hut Coalition, upstairs at The Two Chairmen pub, Dartmouth St, SW1H 9BP
If you can’t get there, you can join on ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak from 6 pm
Where have all the menstrual huts gone? was the question posed by US archaeologist Patricia Galloway in the late 90s. She wondered why there was so much ethnographic evidence for historic and current menstrual observances among SE Native American groups (eg Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw), and yet archaeology scarcely identified ‘menstrual seclusion’ sites. Menstrual taboos, she realised, often associated with matriliny and matrilocality rather than patriarchal societies. She said: ‘Because Western societies practice the hiding of menstruation…the topic itself is treated with reticence by females, discomfited derision by males, and with pollution anxieties ...by both’.
Members of the Menstrual Hut Coalition will be leading open discussion about the past, present and future of menstrual huts, drawing on recent experience in London to reclaim women’s time/space at Dark Moon. We can learn from Indigenous cosmologies of how these space/times can move whole communities between worlds and usher ‘World Renewal’. People of all genders welcome, as we are thinking about gender interactive celebrations.
Tues Mar 25, 6:30pm
(London UTC)
