{"id":4899,"date":"2014-04-30T21:26:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T02:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4899"},"modified":"2014-04-30T21:26:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T02:26:36","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-april-30-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4899","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for April 30, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Menstruous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early modern people were not casual about menstrual blood. \u00a0Calling menstruation a “sickness,” a “monthly disease or infirmity,” or using the poetic term “the flowers,” they referred to the flow as excrement, a “Monthly flux of Excrementitious and Unprofitable Blood,” an impurity with a loathsome smell. \u00a0They understood the flow to be proof of the inferiority of women’s bodies compared to men’s: men used all their blood, whereas women had a superfluity. \u00a0If her period was blocked, this impure excess would trouble her brain, causing melancholy and even suicide. \u00a0The foulest object that a seventeenth-century person could name was “a menstruous rag.” \u00a0Beyond this disgust over a natural function of the female body, however, lay a fear of its power. \u00a0Menstrual blood was believed to have magical effects, bewitching a lover, serving as an aphrodisiac, assisting in conception; an extreme fear was that intercourse during menstruation would kill the man. \u00a0Here we see a clear example of the no-win position of women in that society: they were inferior and yet dangerous, disgusting and yet powerful, and it was their bodies that chiefly made them so.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts<\/a><\/p>\n

I think there needs to be an all-girl punk band named Menstruous Rag!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Menstruous Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Early modern people were not casual about menstrual blood. \u00a0Calling menstruation a “sickness,” a “monthly disease or infirmity,” or using the poetic term “the flowers,” they referred to the flow as excrement, a “Monthly flux of Excrementitious and Unprofitable Blood,” an impurity with a loathsome smell. \u00a0They understood the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4901,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions\/4901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}