Cotton and Flame
Image: Pixabay
My most salient memory of learning about reproductive health is the 'talk' Amma delivered when I was in my early 20s. "When you place cotton near a flame, it will catch on fire," she said. The message? Abstinence.
My daughter's grimace is reflected on my laptop screen, as she reads my research notes for this article. "Why the face?" I ask. "That's gross," she responds in her 10-year-old self-assuredness. I preach, "Reproductive health is about knowing yourself, caring for your 'self' and body, healthy relationships, and safety." I grow uncertain with every uttered word, wondering if I myself really know what reproductive health is. Is reproductive health only about sex and consent? Is it only about ways to avoid abuse, rape, trauma, violence? Where does this understanding come from?
My nebulous understanding of reproductive health is formed from snippets of hushed conversations overheard in the intergenerational spaces of the Thamizh community in the Greater Toronto Area. It is shrouded in mystery and judgement: actually, fear and bias.
I sit back and look out through the window, remembering…
Friday nights at the temple:
"Did you hear Selvi is pregnant again? This will be the fifth child. Can't even feed the first four…" Such comments steeped in casteism disparaging women who bore eight or nine children within a decade were not uncommon. Women deemed ignorant, based on their lack of restraint of human desires, simple in their lack of foresight regarding how they would provide for these children. There was never any discussion of the males' roles in family planning.
Every family gathering since 2012:
"Tell your mom you want a brother." Comments made to my only child, my daughter, reinforcing patriarchal views that define my worth by motherhood alone and even then by the number of children I could bear and their sex. One is not enough, and greater than five is too many. Where is the societal pressure for males to procreate? Why the bewilderment that I am perfectly happy with the child I have?
Recess on the schoolyard: Conspiratorial conversations about periods, flow, cramps, and pads (but never tampons, lest you be slut-shamed). Strategy sessions held under monkey bars on how to best fake being on your period so you could avoid the long Friday night prayers at the temple and stay home and watch South Park instead. Counselling sessions for friends whose periods were late. The bewilderment of hearing of unplanned pregnancies and secret abortions that were not so secret. Reproductive health that was rife with misinformation and hinged on miraculous intercessions achieved through prayer.
I return to the present and shake my head at some myths that still dominate Tamil narratives around reproductive health. For example, partners in "love marriages" like mine have better sex lives than those in arranged marriages who maintain their 'purity' until marriage. I think of friends in their thirties losing their virginity to a stranger with whom they share no intimacy and without an ounce of pleasure.
I am too disconnected from the Tamil diaspora to know what things are like now. Do young folx have a better grasp of reproductive health? Is there an increased knowledge of reproductive systems through medical terms in Tamil and the official languages of the places we reside in? Do we understand reproductive health as health and wellness and not just the absence of illness?
What are the proactive and holistic reproductive health practices that we engage in as a community? What is our commitment to open dialogue, information sharing, and access to culturally relevant practitioners who remove barriers of stigma around sex, sexuality, fertility, and family planning?
I have many unanswered questions. The one answer I have is that my daughter will not be receiving the Cotton and Flame talk.
Additional notes:
The World Health Organization defines Reproductive Health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. Reproductive health implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so."
In interviews with Tamil women from my mother's generation, their interest in reproductive health was always reactive.
In interviews with Tamil women from my generation, our interest in reproductive health is centred on fertility.
