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!

I had an old school friend whose GP would do nothing and she pulled together cash from her low paid job and from her mum to see a specialist privately. Some months she fainted but was told to put up with it by GP!

I am genuinely distraught by hearing how much some women bleed.
Isn't that something doctor should look at and help with? The amount of blood some describe is dangerous, isn't it?

Do you realise that women with conditions like endo take an average of ten years to be diagnosed? If they ever are at all? How difficult it is to get decent GYN treatment without paying to go privately? How many cannot use birth control pills or coils that are often used to treat dysmenhorrea? How many are completely fobbed off by HCPs? Legion, I can tell you. And in some, heavy bleeding has no known cause. It happens.

@LeftRightCentre I didn't. That's why I asked if it isn't something doctor should look at.

But some of us do get it looked at (fibroids causes my issues and dd has been put down to genetics combined with being a teenager) and there is nothing we can do to fix it. I can't use hormonal solutions but thankfully dd can.

I too have fibroids.

I miss treatment criteria by 0.2mm. Or the fact that it’s not affecting my fertility in that I’m not actively TTC

That's horrible

Lots of women have awful periods as many have said. I had unexplained painful and heavy periods for years and despite taking mefanamic and tranexamic acid and paracetamol I would still needed a couple of boxes of branded super plus tampons and 2-3 packs of superplus/long or nighttime pads, supermarket brand to protect my clothes each month.

I didn’t use a hormonal solution because I was ttc. At 43 after bleeding for 8 weeks (which yes cost a fortune in san pro and yes I was anaemic), I decided enough was enough and went on the cerezette (mini pill). This doesn’t work for everyone and the gp recommended the coil but I asked to try the pill first. It’s blooming fantastic. I now have no periods!

OP by all means dispute the figures but you can’t dispute that period poverty exists in the U.K. My sons primary school offers free san pro in the junior toilets and we are not in a ‘poor area’. Clearly they think some girls are affected or they wouldn’t offer it. I don’t doubt lots of women can manage on value products but I am not one of them. Luckily for me I can afford to buy what I need. Because I am ok though, I don’t assume everyone else is too! Some people can’t afford food. They have nothing. No credit card to use, no money down the sofa, no family to borrow from. What happens when those people have 2 or 3 daughters all of whom need san pro as well as you? The money goes on food. They get value products and asked to make them last. They use toilet paper. This is period poverty and should not be happening here in 2018.

@Neshoma I can't argue with you anymore, it's like pissing against the wind. Every time someone says something sensible refuting what you say, you just go off in high dudgeon, complaining about the level of debate being in the gutter as if it wasn't you and your frankly unpleasant opinions putting it down there in the first place.

I take it you interrogated this poor sod about his income and expenditure to make sure that you weren't talking through your hoop about his financial system? No? Then you at least must have marched up to him and demanded information about his dental hygiene and teeth brushing routine to make sure that you were accurate in your denigration of him? Assuming that's how you've been able to make all these presumably accurate assumptions about him, what an obnoxious busybody you are.

*situation, not system

Also, for anyone looking to do donate in this neck of the woods:

eastlothian.foodbank.org.uk/2018/02/20/the-red-box-project-east-lothian-foodbank/

I'll donate and will look on fb to see if there's a local page.

It's absolutely shameful that poor people are being demonised by some with made up claptrap and up own arse mentality

I’ve had a look at the Red Box site, and it doesn’t look as if there isn’t a project local to me, so I shall make sure I put san pro in the donations for the food bank every time.

And I am not even going to bother refuting @Neshoma’s ridiculous post suggesting that, because she saw one family spend £10 in a vending machine, no family could be so poor that there isn’t penny left for buying san pro. I will just stick to pitying her for being so heartless.

Just a point about the red box project that i was advised, as I wanted to donate my single use pads I have left over now I use cloth. They accept open packets of pads/tampons (obviously open box NOT open individual pads etc!) but ask that you donate the outer packet too so they can check dates etc.

@Neshoma is one of those posters who constantly creates bunfights on MN and then complains when others point out the flaws in their arguments. Her judgmental post about the family that spent £10 in a vending machine was completely ludicrous; how does she know they couldn't afford it?

I'd never heard of the Red Box project before this thread; it's really encouraging that projects like this exist, but depressing that they're necessary.

And even if some families haven't budgeted properly, that doesn't change the fact that there are women and girls who are suffering period poverty.

I’m really disappointed with people’s attitudes towards poor people :(

Clearly never has £10 to last the week on food! This was was my first job after
Rent council tax electricity gas etc !

God some people are clueless!

This may not have been calculated well
Original post but there is poverty in the uk! Get real!

Sorry, I still don't get it. Frequency, unless I am missing something glaring, your weekly income is around £328, when you get work? Your outgoings are £118, which leaves £210 a week for everything else? Or £72 if you had no hours at work?
I can see £72 would be very tight, but I have certainly had less than that left over to pay for everything else, and for a lot longer than four weeks too.
But doesn't not occur to you to buy what you need when you DO have pay to cover you for when you don't? Is that not obvious?
I don't know how often you get no hours at work, but if your 'normal' budget is more than £200 a week after all outgoings except food, I don't know how you can claim to be in poverty at all really

Well it doesn't occur to some people to sell up and satisfy their debts as much as possible when their business starts dropping off and instead they declare bankruptcy and effectively walk on what they owe other businesses so I can easily see why someone on a zero hours contract with unstable income wouldn't ever be in a position to buy stuff in advance.

I did pay for things in advance, actually. That's how I managed to get away with it without having to visit foodbanks but if you think £72 a week, to feed and clothe two children and one adult is do-able, you're insane.

I managed it by paying extra rent/council tax and topping my gas/electric/water up by a fiver extra each week I did have work and buying a few extra cans of food/non perishables.

He went away most school holidays for the entirety of the holidays, sometimes. Summer/Spring was a particularly hard time for me as we had May half term, Easter break and then the summer holidays. One pair of broken school shoes or school trip and we were fucked.

To this day, even though I have more income, and actually the less hours I have the more I can potentially earn through my other jobs, I am still hungover from the times I had £72 a week to feed my kids, buy their clothes and pay my bills.

There's more baked beans in my food cupboard than on the shelves of the local Asda. My bathroom shelf is bursting with sanpro and there's an entire drawer in my freezer full of 'emergency pizzas' because I am terrified of finding myself in that position again.

It's a horrible way of living, one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. By the end of the school holidays were living on baked beans and they never got new uniform until a few weeks after the new year started, no matter how tatty last year's was.

This xmas is the first time they'll be getting a xmas present from me since their father made us homeless because I just couldn't manage on the wages I posted above. It simply wasn't possible no matter how you added the sums up.

When you lived off £72 p/w did you have two teenage girls to feed? Do you have any idea how much teenagers eat or how heartbreaking it is to have say, no, sorry, you can't have £10 to go to the summer fair, every single fucking year?

I was stood behind a Mum that withdrew the £1.17 in her bank account in the post office the other day. I'm guessing it would be good or sanpro for her that week, not both. £1 can be too much for some

I had one teenage boy and two primary children, Frequency.
Look, I am not wanting to get into competitive poverty, really. I was just pointing out that over £200 a week left over does not sound that horrendous to me.
Obviously you are intelligent enough to budget accordingly to cover bad times. Does it not frustrate you that others can't or won't do the same? Do you not think teaching people to budget is more beneficial than yet more free handouts with no lessons learned?
It frustrates me that people like most posters on this thread are so accommodating of people who could really do with s helping hand, and are so keen to shut down a perfectly valid point of view.
I also find it interesting that the few of us questioning period poverty haven roundly shouted down down for making assumptions about others lives, yet some are perfectly happy to make rather wild assumptions about MY life.

Obviously you are intelligent enough to budget accordingly to cover bad times. Does it not frustrate you that others can't or won't do the same? Do you not think teaching people to budget is more beneficial

I don't really think you're qualified to be preaching about budgeting, Cathf, given the circumstances you've relayed, and that's not unkindly meant. It just seems a bit hypocritical.

Cath, my situation I was in for a few months

Income £1200

Rent £675
Food £150
Childcare £200
Phone £50 (contract so I couldn’t get out of it)
Internet £20
Sofa £20
Gas and electric £60
Netflix £7 (no license)

£18 a month left. If my son needed shoes or clothes we were fucked.

You do understand that businesses fail because of lots of factors, Nebularin? None of which have anything to do with budgeting? How silly you sound.

No, it doesn't frustrate me at all. I think expecting everyone to cope as I did is as realistic as me telling them to become a mobile hairdresser or find themselves a contract with a small erotica publishers in their spare time.

Other people are not me. They might not have my support network, my mental and physical and health, my aptitude for hair and writing and, most importantly to me, a mother like mine and children as understanding as mine.

No-one should have to live like I did. Not for any reason. My children didn't ask their father to abandon us but they are the ones who paid the biggest price. I don't give a shit if someone trying to cope on benefits thinks, "fuck it, I can't do it anymore," and drinks their tampon money. People should not have to live like that in the fifth richest country in the world, especially if they have a physical or mental illness preventing them from working or if they have children depending on them.

And I only coped with my budget because I had help from my family. Without them, we would have needed food banks.

Like I said, one pair of broken school shoes, an outgrown school coat or last minute school trip and we were fucked. The money just wasn't there.

I don't understand how you could live it through and still think it is okay.