When a Woman Enters a Temple on Her Period, She's Not Conforming—She's Resisting

For generations, women have been told that they are “impure” while menstruating. That they should stay away from temples, shrines, and sacred rituals. That their natural biological function somehow offends the divine.

But let’s be clear:

When a woman visits a temple during her period, she is not conforming to religion—she is pushing back against it. 

I went to the Thaipusam festival when I was menstruating. To do it, I had to overcome all kinds of religious caveats:

• The Kavadi bearer/self-whipping devotees will flog me.
• Murugan will stab me with his vel.
• I will fail in my exams.
• I will be reborn as a female dog in my next life.

Still, I went. When I went to the temple, I was defying religion. I was rebelling against religious control. Effectively, I was behaving like I don't believe in God and its punitive powers. So is every woman who goes to the temple during periods.

🩸 This Is Not About Cleanliness—It’s About Control And You Rebelled Against The Control

Menstrual taboos in religion are rarely about hygiene or reverence. They are about policing women’s bodies, controlling their access to places, and embedding shame into something entirely natural.

Across many religious traditions—Hinduism included—women are still told:

1. Don’t touch the idol.
2. Don’t enter the temple.
3. Don’t cook, don’t pray, don’t participate.

The reasoning? That menstruation is “unclean” or “spiritually polluting.”

But who decided that?

Not God. Not divinity. Not sacred texts in their full context.

It was centuries of patriarchal interpretation—of religion being written, taught, and enforced by men.

💥 Stepping Into the Temple Is a Radical Act

So when a woman steps into a temple while she’s bleeding, she’s not practicing faith the way patriarchy told her to—she’s confronting it.

It’s a radical act of reclaiming space. Reclaiming divinity. Reclaiming her body.

She’s saying:

• My body is not shameful.
• My faith is not conditional.
• My spirituality doesn’t pause once a month.

This isn’t an act of passive belief. It’s an act of feminist resistance repackaged in spiritual expression. Like how Fair and Lovely was repackaged as Glow and Lovely.

🔥 It’s Not Just Cultural—It’s Personal

So many of us grow up with mothers and grandmothers who are proud of our education and independence, who support our careers and freedoms—but still lower their voices when we have our period, still say “don’t go to the temple today,” still believe the old myths.

That contradiction is where patriarchy hides best—not in loud oppression, but in quiet obedience disguised as tradition.

Even many feminists observe rituals like Karva Chauth, fasting for their husbands while staying out of temples during their period, trying to reconcile faith with freedom. But these aren’t neutral traditions. They carry the weight of deeply gendered expectations.

Let’s be very clear: To abandon patriarchal religious imposition, you had to rewrite religious tenets in a feminist lens. You essentially had to steer your faith away from its purest form. You challenged it. You worked against it. It's important to realize that you've been acting like an atheist when you go to temples during your period.

I do understand that you rely on religion for emotional support. Ergo, you can't take it when I say that feminism and religion don't go hand in hand.

Indeed they don't. You had to change some things within the religion. The religion oppressed you. You saw that it's unfair. So, you did the very things the religion forbids.

I need you to think about it long and hard. 

You understood that religious rules, like all social structures, are not above scrutiny.

Faith may be beautiful, empowering, healing. But faith is also stagnant and sexist. Women had to push back on the stagnation and sexism. 

She redefined religion to include her and fellow women as equals. When she walks into a temple on her period, she is walking into a space that once told her she did not belong.

And she is taking it back not only by being a feminist but also an atheist (though the latter may be imperceptible to her)."

Because, if you believed that you you're committing sacrilege by entering a temple when you're bleeding from your vagina, you wouldn't rebel.

But you rebelled. What is that if not resistance toward religion?

Even if you choose to practice your faith as a feminist, it's important to remember that feminists like Savitribai Phule and Dr Muthulakshmi pushed back on religion to win freedoms and rights for women. If you can study, express your pro-feminist, anti-feminist, and pro-faith opinions, wear the dresses you like, have inheritance rights, can open bank accounts, vote, and go places, it's not because of your religion. It's because religious constituents were reframed to include women as equals.

It'd be more useful if you continue to dismantle religion beyond patriarchal recognition while staying within the faith instead of barking that I'm a pseudo-feminist for being an advocate for atheism within intersectional feminism 

Many feminist women are well-educated and all but still give their maids separate plate and glass. Guess what drives that disrespect and inequality.

Self-proclaimed feminist Priyanka Chopra is a devout Hindu but never speaks against the caste system and for Dalits.

It's just that I'm not in denial that despite all these reforms, religion continues to oppress people. But you are.