GEO: Tackling period poverty, period stigma ...more boundary pushing

Captainkirk they can't leave them in the toilets, they wouldn't be there when someone needed them, they would be used to flood the toilets. That is the reality of life in a secondary school! Students who have used the container have hung back at the end or asked to speak to me outside, no one is collecting them in front of other young people. We have them for the staff now too - it's very reassuring to know they are just there, no need to walk along a corridor carrying one etc. Not really to do with poverty more just basic dignity.

The problem as with many similar problems (food poverty etc) is that whilst there are specific cases of severe deprivation eg sanctioned benefits unfairly, most cases of insufficient funds are due to poor choices and budgeting, from first hand knowledge it seems to be people running up debts for non essentials when times were better. The large tv, latest smartphone and designer dog breed are a cliche but often true, I help at a food bank and homeless project, they have better phones than me. Sanpro suitable for most women can cost as little as 50p a month for value ranges, around £2 a month buys you standard supermarket own brand. There's a small minority of women who need extra exorbitant and to change very frequently due to medical issues in which case it's reasonable for drs to prescribe

I don't doubt that period poverty does exist.

Nor do I doubt that there is a lot of ignorance around periods & a reluctance amongst some adults to discuss the finer details.

Neither are problems that need virtue signalling lobby groups thrown at them.

Female Teachers, health workers & other responsible adults offer support. Appropriate and discreet support.

Those who think period poverty doesn't exist are naive. The cheapest tampons in Tesco are 95p for 24 and cheap nasty pads which will bunch up are 23p for 10. It can all add up for a family with more than one woman or girl having periods.

I was talking to a young woman in a hostel the other day. First she had to take a benefit advance but then will have to wait 5 weeks for her next universal credit payment which should be £251 but will be reduced by 10% as a consequence of taking an advance. She still has to pay a service charge to the hostel not covered by housing benefit, and this month had to buy some basic bedding and utensils no longer provided to homeless people by the council leaving her with 35p a day till her next payment.

Luckily she has accessed a project which has provided her with food, sanpro, toiletries, cleaning products and a bus pass for the month.

I don't see tackling period poverty as eroding boundaries, certainly in Scotland the language has been around women and girls and I like seeing sanitary products in toilets free for people to use.

We also talk about fuel poverty so it is not the only type of poverty to be given a name.

I do agree with needing to tackle poverty as the root cause but I don't see that issue being solved anytime soon.

We have free sanitary products available in school. There are posters up. I don't usually talk about it but they are in a container and sometimes boys ask what it is, and I tell them. Girls sometimes come to get the products and I speak matter of factly to them, I don't want them to feel embarrassed. I'm saying all this to see if this is in way viewed as "boundary breaking" as I felt not being ashamed of periods, that it's just a part of being female, was a good thing. Certainly no need to have in depth discussions but a kind of, you're female, you're likely to have periods, if so here are some products to use if you run out, was all good?

Would it not be better to have them in the female toilets, rather than a where everyone can see the girls taking them?
Surely you see that having them in the open that girl has no privacy to when she is on her period in regards to the rest of the class.

Slightly at a tangent, I’m puzzled by the concept of period poverty.
Commercially produced sanpro is a relatively modern thing. My mother and her contemporaries couldn’t have afforded to buy such things even if they’d existed. They simply used layers of rags, which they washed out in cold water in a poss tub, beating them with a dolly peg, then dried and reused every month.
Given our new environmental awareness, perhaps we should be encouraging more of this, rather than bewailing the price of Tampax?
Surely even the most poverty struck girl can get hold of some cotton rags, or recycle old t shirts from a charity shop or whatever? It suggests a lack of resourcefulness to require society to supply them for you.
And before I get flamed as an unsympathetic rich bitch, I’ve lived in a slum tenement with no bathroom, on £1 a day for food for four people, when I was young!

of course an actual solution would be to provide free basic sanitary protection, but that's not going to happen

I work in a public building which does just that. Free tampons and sanitary towels are available in each cubicle of the ladies toilets, kept topped up by cleaners, no need to ask.

If schools/government are serious about ensuring any girl who is struggling, or just caught short, can access sanitary provision they would do the same and make the girls toilets strictly single sex.

Problem solved. Next.

Incidently did I imagine it or did this start out as an argument over VAT on sanitary products which has since been highjacked by 'virtue-signallers-r-us'? I was always more annoyed about VAT on bog roll myself, especially given how much more women use than men.

On the face of it, it's an easy fix isn't it? Farm the work out to lobby groups, chuck taxpayers' money at it. Crow about its success on Twitter. Done.

This is exactly it. This is a problem solved by throwing money at it, so there is sanpro available in schools (much like condoms were at uni - I'd just go down and grab a couple of handfuls every once in a while). It's low-effort activism, which feels a bit dangerous, but yes, also pushes boundaries.

of course an actual solution would be to provide free basic sanitary protection, but that's not going to happen.

On the face of it, it's an easy fix isn't it? Farm the work out to lobby groups, chuck taxpayers' money at it. Crow about its success on Twitter. Done.

Whereas the GEO announced an investigation over a year ago into why young girls are identifying as boys in such large numbers and seeking medical and surgical intervention.

And have done precisely nothing about it since.

Must be in the Too Difficult pile.

Here are details of the Period Poverty Taskforce:

www.gov.uk/government/news/period-poverty-taskforce-meets-for-the-first-time

Taskforce chaired by Minister for Women & Equalities, Plan International UK and Procter & Gamble

Breaking poverty up into all manner of “sub-poverties” mask the problem that the country has a masive problem with increasing poverty full stop.

In the same way that it is/would have been useful to have a word for those people who can get pregnant, have periods, do the lions share of unpaid domestic work etc., one word that captures what links all these people, it is useful to have a word that captures what all the people who suffer various kinds of poverties have in common. They are poor.

“Period poverty” as a term allows organisation and individuals to virtue signal without making any changes to causes of poverty.

And on the subject of privacy, surely J. Yaniv has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, that males should stay a very long way away from anything to do with sanpro and periods.

This is a really interesting perspective, thank you. I was sexually abused in my teens by a man, and have only quite recently worked out that one of the ways he groomed me was by encouraging me to talk about my periods with him. It was a definite way of breaking down my boundaries. I find the distinction between shame and privacy a really helpful one.

3. It is a non issue. Sanpro is cheap. No one in the UK is tipped into poverty by the cost of sanpro. No one who can afford to eat etc... can not afford a few quid a month for sanpro. Yes there is poverty, but 'period poverty' is not a specific kind of poverty.

I would go through 10 - 15 pads / tampons in 24 hours for 5 days then a couple of relatively lighter days, period poverty exists.

But you are spoton with the lowering boundaries.

We have free sanitary products available in school. There are posters up. I don't usually talk about it but they are in a container and sometimes boys ask what it is, and I tell them. Girls sometimes come to get the products and I speak matter of factly to them, I don't want them to feel embarrassed. I'm saying all this to see if this is in way viewed as "boundary breaking" as I felt not being ashamed of periods, that it's just a part of being female, was a good thing. Certainly no need to have in depth discussions but a kind of, you're female, you're likely to have periods, if so here are some products to use if you run out, was all good?

There are hundreds of thousands of households in the UK - working families, not just those on benefits - that use food banks. No one buys deodorant before food.

''70% of families using food banks had dependent children''
speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SPERI-Brief-32-Family-hunger-in-times-of-austerity.pdf

''The results indicate that severe levels of poverty are present in contemporary Britain. Evidence of repeat food bank use demonstrates that distributing emergency food is not a long-term solution to the problem of food poverty.”''
www.biomedcentral.com/about/press-centre/science-press-releases/21-11-17

I agree with the main point of this thread. Its all aimed at breaking down girls boundaries and expectation to any right to privacy, not actually removing any 'taboos' or obstacles.
There is a problem with boys period shaming girls, which is one reason why mixed sex toilets don't work.

There is a terrible problem with poverty in the UK, it affects girls (and boys) who don't have an income, and it includes things like not being able to wash, to clean their teeth, wash their hair, launder their clothes or eat.

'sanpro only costs 25p' isn't actually very helpful. If you don't live near enough to Tesco to walk there and buy it, then its of no use to you. Think of the reality of being 11 or 12 years old and having to walk to Tesco to buy sanpro when you do not have any money at all.

The same girl will have problems getting hold of underwear, deodorant, shampoo

Not necessarily. Everyone in the house would use shampoo and deodorant so the onus wouldn't be on a young girl to specifically ask for it to be bought just for her.

Let not forget that certain people with a period fetish will love Young girls openly talking about this stuff in front of everyone.

Now who has been trying to promote period poverty, I wonder.

So now we know.

Period poverty is being used to push boundaries.

If a young girl has no means of buying products, surely It is likely to be a lack of education (or awareness) of menstrual issues rather than a lack of cash.

A young girl may not have her own money to buy sanpro and not be in a position where she can ask for it to be bought for her. She may feel the same discomfort and embarrassment discussing periods at home than she would anywhere else.

The same girl will have problems getting hold of underwear, deodorant, shampoo. It's more likely to be a poverty and or communication problem than specifically period poverty.

I do think 'period poverty' is been used as an excuse to push boundaries.

I never speak to anyone about female issues especially regarding periods. Honestly I don't feel that there is period poverty is this country even for those who are in low income. Tesco pads/ tampons are 25p. Even on low income 25p isn't a lot. I feel that it's a much wider issue at hand. Tampons/ pads should be free to girls and women 10-25 and should be handed at school and education centres. Should always be an option