4.1. Female Sexuality: Potency and Pollution
Women in Maragheh often complain that taking the contraceptive pill causes them a variet y of distresses, most commonly that it causes heart palpitations and
hea rt dist ress. Women also believe tha t it causes spotting between periods or red uced menstrual flow. They complain that the pill causes them to feel weak ( za'if) and 'lacking in blood' (qansiz), to have shaking hands, and to have problems of upset ner ves. And they believe it causes a woman's milk to dry up (and so should be avoided during nursing), t hat it dries up the womb and red uces fertility.
It can be seen t hat the cont raceptive pill is associated with several of the other causes given for heart distress, forming the following semantic links (see Figure 2). Heart distress - contraceptive pill - menstrual blood - pollution: All menst rual blood is rit ually polluting ( najes). The pill is sometimes used during the mont h of fasting (Ramazan) or during the Pilgrimage (Hajj) to prevent menst ruation and pollution, which would spoil the fast or the Pilgrimage. Spotting between periods is a serious side effect of the pill because it causes pollution, ma king prayer ( namaz) or sexual intercourse impossible. Contra ceptive pill - weakness - menstruation: Women complain that the pill makes them feel weak, which in vulga r Galenism is equated with insufficiency of blood. 9 Menstruation also causes weakness. "It is the nat ure of women to be wea k", we we re told, in pa rt because they regula rly lose blood through menst ruation. Childbirth - uterine blood - contraceptive pill - pollution: Abortion and miscarriage, pregnancy and normal delivery are perceived causes of heart distress and are related to the pill because each involves polluting uterine blood. After delivery a woman is rit ually unclean ( najes ); she goes to the bat h for her rit ual washing (ghosl) on the tenth day, b ut is not rit ually pure (nor allowed to have sexual intercourse) until after her ritual bath on the fortieth day. The blood of childbirth (or miscarriage) is one of the ten or twelve categories of nejasat , items which are rit ually polluted or unclean , a set which includes feces, urine, and the sweat of sexual exertion.
Pregnancy - menstrual blood - dirty blood - contraceptive pill: Menstrual blood is believed to be 'dirty blood' ( kasif qan), which prod uces darkness of the skin and aches of the body and which should b.e relieved through scarification or leeching. [Dirty blood is a popularization of the Galenic theory of morbid atrabilious humor, which, when present in the blood, should be expelled through venesection (lbn Sina 1930:503).] The contraceptive pill may cause reduced menst rual flow and thus illness due to dirt y blood. I inquired of one woman whether pregnant women , who have no menstrual bleeding, are ill from dirty blood. "For the first several months of pregnancy the mother often feels very uncomfortable", she pointed out to me. "But after that time the child in the womb grows large enough to begin drinking the blood. For this reason the mot her often feels better during t he later mont hs of pregnancy." Another woman reported that she did cupping wi th bleeding ( hajamat ) d uring the seventh mont h of her pregnancies so t hat the children would not be so dark (qara).
Light-skinned children are more beautiful, and dirty blood leads to darkness of the face. The conceptual model of the baby consuming the dirty blood also seems to be confirmed by the old tradition of bleeding a baby during the first several months after it is born. Tiny cuts were made on the top of the head and on the joints to rid the baby of dirty blood, presumably obtained from the mother's womb. (This t radition is remembered as common in the past, but seldom practiced today.) Thus pregnancy and childbirth, weakness, and the contraceptive pill are linked semantically and in the experience of women to dirty blood and illness and to menstrual blood and pollution.
Contraceptive pill - infertility - old age: Use of the cont raceptive pill is also a threat to fertility and to the normal mothering function of producing milk. The contraceptive pill is used to prevent pregnancy and on occasion to attempt abortion. It is a general threat to fertility, and women believe that one should have her children before she risks taking the pill. The explanatory model of conception is relevant here, for uneducated women have no general notion of the production of ova that combine with the sperm to produce children, and of the pill preventing ovulation. While there is no single clear model, it is generally believed that the sperm lodges in the 'vessel' of the woman and grows to become the foetus. Contraception then may involve some harm to the womb, which ma kes it an inhospitable environment for the sperm to rest. As a threat to vitality and fertility t he contraceptive pill is linked to old age, to menopause (when women lose their fertility and sexual potency), and to the stage of life when one's constitution grows cold and dry. This is the time of life when it is sometimes said women must fear loss of interest of their husbands and even divorce. One young university woman in Tabriz expressed several of these links explicitly: "Women here say it is very bad for a woman to have red uced bleeding during one's menstrual period [due to the cont raceptive pill] because she will get old faster and her face and hands will become like a man's."
'Heart distress' thus has as one important nexus of meaning a complex of stresses common to the experience of Iranian women: she is sexually potent and attractive to men; her potency is dangerous and must be secluded ; but her fertility and attractiveness are regularly disrupted by states of pollution and ultimately threatened by the coming of old age. The complex of female sexuality leads to a typical set of stresses which women experience and articulate as heart distress. But viewed sociologically these patterns of stress are more than a set of typical experiences; they are linked to cent ral cultural and social structures of Iranian society. A brief outline of these structural characteristics will indicate the context for the complex which has been described.
Female sexuality is surrounded by great ambivalence in Iran. Women have almost magical pot ency to attract men, according to Persian folk ideology. Their hair has the power to stimulate and should be veiled to prevent random arousal
[a characteristic described by Fischer as the " 'magical hair' component" (1975 :24)] ; their eyes may evoke male passion and should be averted from the faces of men outside of intimate relationships. On the one hand a woman's potency can attract a husband, arouse in him passionate and jealous love, and earn for her rewards of his devotion, faithfulness and gold. On the other hand this potency is dangerous and must be guarded. No man except a closest relative should enter another man's household when his wife is at home alone. Women who leave the household should be veiled and accompanied by their husband, children, or female relatives. This ambivalence is exemplified in the character of some men said to be 'black-hearted' (qara qalbi). Black-hearted men may keep their wives extremely secluded, suspecting any contact they have with other men, reacting constantly with jealousy (hasud). A civil servant friend of mine was known for being extremely black-hearted. When first married, he would lock his wife into the courtyard and go to the villages for days at a time on business, taking the only key with him. Such excesses are extremely confining for women , but black-heartedness is also a sign to a woman that her husband cares for her passionately, and may be a role played out with great romance.
Female sexuality is also a matter of basic cultural ambivalence in that women produce children -,-- especially sons - for men, but the honor of men can be easily destroyed by the immodesty of women. Men can demonstrate their virility and maintain their blood line only through fertile women. (Proof of virginity before ma rriage and seclusion of a new bride are necessary to insure that offspring are the husband's. As a prayer writer told me, in explaining the use of the name of a person and his mother in divination, "you can never really know who the father is".) And if a man's virility can only be displayed through a fertile woman, his honor can only be protected by modest women. Immodesty in his wife, his daught er, sister, or brother's daughter (in that order) will cause a loss of face (abir, aberuh) and a more long-standing loss of honor (sherafat). Iranian women, especially in a conservative town such as Maragheh, are thus restricted by a relatively severe modesty code. Specifically, a woman should be 'heya ve esmati'. She should be careful not to attract the attention of me n, remaining veiled and circumspect.