Real quick round-up

• Are you more creative while menstruating?
• A post on Amplify about the Nepali tradition of chaupadi--isolating women who are on their periods:
  In this superstitious logic, if a menstruating woman touches a tree it will never again bear fruit; if she consumes milk the cow will not give anymore milk; if she reads a book about Saraswati, the goddess of education, she will become angry; if she touches a man, he will be ill.
• Similarly, Jos at Feministing writes about the attitudes and beliefs surrounding menstruation and sexuality while growing up in an Eastern Orthodox Christian church.
  Every sperm, and egg, is sacred. Wasting either, through masturbation, a wet dream, or simply having your period, is a sign of our fallen state, our unclean-ness. Even though a woman’s period is also a sign of her one real purpose: to make babies. So women are baby-making factories, that’s what God made them for, but their ability to fulfill this purpose makes them unclean. So women are inherently unclean, or a failure at being women.
• Jezebel posted a trailer for the new movie Hysteria, about the invention/development of the vibrator. Actually, it's a rom-com that happens to be based around the development of the vibrator. It looks pretty feel-good, so to speak. Don't expect a documentary, people!