To not accept that there is 'period poverty' in the UK.....?

[rosetree7]

Fully expecting to be told I am BU, but I genuinely do not get this 'period poverty' malarkey.

Some reports say periods cost £42-45 a month (£500 a year.) Never in my life have I - or anyone else I know - spent £42-45 a MONTH on their period. Not even a tenth of that actually.

Some of the things they (supposedly) spend money on are tampons and STs (obviously...) You can get a pack of sanitary towels for less than a pound. Less than 50p in some shops!

And also mooncups.

Although mooncups cost £16 to £22, most mooncups will last 10 years, so you'd only buy 3 or 4 in your lifetime!!! And they also spend on pain relief - but paracetamol and ibuprofen are 16 to 26p a packet from Wilkos. And plenty of other shops sell them for a similar price!

Oh and apparently, they have to keep spending money on new underwear every month. What a load of shit.. I have bought 18 pairs of underpants in 5 years, (at a cost of around £25 for the entire 5 years!) 5 pairs of them are dark coloured - and I wear them for my periods. Never in my life have I bought new underpants for every new period.

So what is this all about? And how on earth are they coming up with such a ludicrous figure as £42-45 a month?! I mean, some girls are apparently using toilet roll as they 'can't afford' sanitary towels? In most cases, toilet roll is more expensive than sanitary towels FGS!

@Neshoma because they spend all their money on booze ,fags,tattoos ,branded clothes and sky tv(and obviously feeding their goat).There! Feel better now?

Rebel. :o

A couple of years ago I was at a Guide camp and annoyingly not every stall in the toilets had sanitary bins (the following year there were signs on the doors showing whether there was or not at least). Rather than bring their wrapped sanitary item out and find a bin, girls were stuffing them into nooks and crannies around the pipes, I’m sure at least some of the blocked toilets were due to them trying to flush them.

Teenage girls are embarrassed by these things. So are many adult women. It’s sll very well saying they shouldn’t be. But the fact is that many are.

As for how come people have no money how about Univeral Credit where people get no money for weeks on end. Or if an absent father decides he can’t be arsed paying child support this month. Or there’s an unexpected and unavoidable large bill like repairing a car that’s essential for work and you can’t get any credit.

Try having just a teeny weeny bit of imagination, hmm?

@neshoma. I don’t know about you but I don’t take my tampons out at the sinks of a public loo and wash them out

I assume you would have been happy at 14 washing out a moon cup in the girls toilets at school? Bullshit

@neshoma 68,000 homless women in the UK and you’re saying we should teach girls to budget!? If they have no home, they get no benefits, they’ll struggle to find jobs. How can you really say the things you’re saying? You can’t truly believe period poverty isn’t a real issue?

Did you not hear about the school girls in Leeds who were taping toilet roll to socks because their families couldn’t afford period products? It’s not the children’s fault, you can’t teach the kids to budget family money, you have NO idea what their home lives are like, I don’t believe anyone should be denied sanitary products. Throwing money at the problem is exactly what will fix it, get products in schools/doctor surgeries/walk in centres and provide access.

@2up2manydown I've taken DD to the docs many times & get the same every time "she's young, her periods will settle down in time" she's now 16 & started her periods at 9 - they've always been horrendous I had to fight to have a sanitary disposal bin installed in the girls toilet of her primary school so that she didn't have to use the staff toilets during her periods.

Neshoma = OP sock puppeting

The same way people change their tampons and pads - or is that too embarrassing/inconvient too

I don’t know how you change a tampon but I don’t need to rinse them in a sink.

Try having just a teeny weeny bit of imagination, hmm?

I think some of the not very intelligent can't see beyond their own personal experiences. It's a real worry, and not just where period poverty is concerned. That's not aimed at anyone in particular, just an observation.

It's extremely naive to think everyone can afford them. Some people can't even afford a roof over the heads so period essentials are probably low on their list of priorities.

I think it's probably unusual for someone to spend £40 or whatever the original figure is that someone spends. When I did look at those articles originally there were people claiming loss of time from work which clearly shouldn't be part of those figures though.

The fact is though, while the vast majority don't spend anyone near that amount, some will. I spend substantial amounts, I bleed extremely heavily and while I was once a massive advocate for the moon up it no longer works for me anymore, I suspect my vagina is a strange shape to starts with but I do actually overflow mooncups in short amounts of time and it makes more mess than alternatives. I use two large boxes of tampax super plus, then swap to a cheaper brand or lower absorbency after the first 3 days (when I will have used two large boxes), I also have to use a moisture of nighttime pads and reusable pads. Even with that I throw out underwear almost every month and complete bedding sets occasionally.

Saying that I think my experience is in the minority.

However, forget the actual cost, for some spending on things like that is difficult, a lot of people have been in situations where They have had to budget to the last pound, so extras like this, however cheap are difficult for some.

I think of children when I went to school and many would be embarrassed to ask parents for stuff, so would go without lunch and because the only place open within distance of the school was a local pharmacy they paid higher prices. Some people are to take into consideration the cost of transport, and yes they could plan better but often people don't. I am sure we have all walked out of a supermarket and forgot something at some point, for most of is it's a small inconvenience but for some it may mean going without.

Mine was period poverty, I was an adult with 2 DC and a DH who worked.

I really can't get my head round the fact that there are people who because they can afford something, everyone else should be able to. It's really weird. Recently someone I know was telling me I should buy an electric car. I told them I had no money to buy an electric car. They argued that it would save me money on petrol. That may well be true but I still can't afford an electric car. It's a really simple concept.

Because there has been a problem with their benefits payments, and they have no money for food, let alone san pro? Because ere is almost no slack in their budget, and then the cooker breaks down, or the kids have a sudden growth spurt and need new shoes, and after you have pinched every penny to buy the new shoes (cheap from the supermarket, or second hand ones from the charity shop, that will fall apart in no time), or the only way you can get a new cooker is from someone like Brighthouse, who will offer it in credit - but that means another weekly expense (plus the horrendous interest rates they charge mean you might pay almost double the actual cost of the cooker if not more) - and you end up with no money left each week, once you have paid for essentials like food and power.

Or you are on a zero hours contract, and one week you get a fraction of your usual hours?

Basically, when your budget is so tight, any unexpected expense can totally derail,it.

Then there are children of addicts or of parents who prioritise their desire for cigarettes and booze over their daughter’s need for sanitary protection - how is she supposed to buy it for herself - parents like this probably aren’t handing out wads of pocket money, after all.

And don’t forget that you may well end up paying over the odds for that food and power - if you are on a Key meter, you are probably on the higher tariffs, and don’t have the option of changing to a cheaper one, and if your local shop is a small convenience store, and you can’t get to a big supermarket because the bus fare is so high, and you have no choice but to pay the higher prices the convenience stores often charge (because they don’t have the room to stock a range of products at the different price points, and they have a captive market so can charge what they want).

Sorry - my last post was in answer to @Neshoma’s question about why people can’t afford san pro.

Left You are easily distraught then.

Nope, just sick of the narrow-minded gits with the empathy of a starving stoat who are also too stupid to think outside their own box.

Yes you abu. In fact to query it at all makes you come off as blinkered and privileged. Not to mention ignorant.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius all the points you made are valid and have been repeated throughout the thread over and over again. However I think you wasted your breath if she's still asking after so many posts,examples and heartbreaking stories "why is there no money?".

I am currently on my period whilst on holiday. The beach we are at has a portacabin for loos. No bins. Even I at my great age am feeling a little embarrassed at having to walk out with a wrapped used towel to stick in a bin. How much worse it would be for a young girl.

Sadly I have to agree, @RebelRogue.

At 14, I was relieved to be able to pee in private - that wasn't a given, since there were no locks on the doors.

Lack of concern for the privacy of teenagers isn't new.

I really can't get my head round the fact that there are people who because they can afford something, everyone else should be able to

So if your kid was thirsty and had no drink, what would you expect his/her friend to do?

I run a Red Box Project in a pretty lovely city where you’d never guess period poverty exists, but it does.

Please support your local Red Box Project, or get in touch with them and set it up in your town/City if it doesn’t already exist. ❤️

@petrolpump28 give them some if they had any to spare?

Yup YABU OP.

example - I grew up in a village quite rurally, one shop.

Went to school in the nearest market town - inflated prices.

Had a stepfather who didnt 'Believe' in requiring sanpro (arse) DM taught me how to roll loo roll so it wouldn't leak.

This was 15ish years ago - said village and market town still have the same number of shops but the same council estates in them, I'd take a guess that there are girls there who can't afford the £5 return bus fare to the nearest town just for some £1 tampons! FFS.

Posters making up the fact that anything to do with a period is embarrassing for a school girl like washing out mooncup

Damm sure i wouldn't be washing out a mooncup in a public toilet so why should i expect a teenager to do it. Do you have any idea how cruel teens can be?