Radio DJ Liz Kershaw on #periodpoverty - "FFS"

[bbcessex]

Liz Kershaw on Twitter

twitter.com/lizkershawdj/status/1219321284405944320?s=21

I am genuinely outraged. "My Grandmother boiled rags".... ergo, how can any women/girls be in 'period poverty now".

For fucks sake. The fact that there really are educated women In privileged positions spouting this crap is almost as fucking sad as the situation itself.

I don't want to sit and listen whilst women in the public eye do more harm than good.

Same for me, elfdragon

My lovely mum would have skipped meals to find extra money, so I used loo paper when I ran out

She didn't drink or smoke and electronics, phones didn't exist then or Sky etc
She never went out to socialise
She was just a disabled widow who didn't have enough money

Hoik - life was awful for so many kids back then (my grandma had it bad but her dad had a real Dickensian childhood and was gassed in WW1)

Sanpro maybe cheap, but speaking about very young teens, it can be absolutely mortifying to ask for them/buy them.

^^This. Not helped by people like Liz saying that talking about periods is 'gross'.

Another point that LK misses here is that she has obviously grown up in a family where san pro was discussed comfortably between the generations. I have no idea if my grandmother used rags or any other method because in my family periods are dirty and must never ever be referred to. My mum did buy pads for me (hidden in a box in a cupboard in the bathroom) but she frequently got annoyed that I needed these replenished more than she expected or that I often flooded and stained my underwear (I had an irregular and very heavy flow). I often supplemented her offerings with wadded up toilet roll or socks and it would have been a godsend for me to have easy and free access to additional resources at school. It's not just about the ability to afford them (my mum certainly could) but the inability to have a discussion about why they are needed.

Also, many kids don;t have money of their own. It's all very well saying that san pro can be bought for 50p or whatever but if you don;t have 50p; if your parents don't give you pocket money, or they do but also monitor what you spend, then you are stuck and no price reduction is going to solve that problem. And yes, some of these kids might have the latest iphone or whatever - the fact that some parents value these purchases more than basic hygiene provision should not be used as a stick to beat the girls who still need san pro, iphone or no iphone.

My dad was an alcoholic and remember my mum borrowing money from her dad to pay the gas bill, etc. My mum always made sure that there was sanpro in the house. However, many young women many have irregular periods and get caught out at school. There was no sanpro vending machines at my school (1990’s). If there was I wouldn’t have been able to afford to use them anyway as I used to get £1.50 dinner money which used to just about cover some food and a drink. My mum died when I was 18. If she had died when I was 13 there would have been no sanpro in the house and I would have had no money to buy any!

If parents don’t provide sanpro then often children are stuck. Children don’t have their own transport so it’s pointless saying they you can get sanpro for 25p in Lidl. The nearest Lidl to me at the time was 4/5 miles away and not on a bus route! I would have had to use my non-existentent money to pay for the bus fare and buy the sanpro. There were no shops near my school and only an expensive corner shop on my council estate. Otherwise I would have had to walk to the nearest supermarket to by sanpro with money (which I didn’t have) in the wind, rain, dark by myself.

I've just replied to her with a link to the Red Box Project. She's an idiot.

However, I do think sometimes people can plead poverty whilst making non cost effective food choices and smoking

Are the people who write these comments particularly hard of thinking? "Non cost-effective food choices and smoking" - so those are the choices that the adult is making, not the young girl/teen who needs pads. You think that an 11 year old with heavy periods should then have to suffer because their parent smokes and buys chicken nuggets instead of broccoli and hummus? Is that how you people think? Society is fucked if these are the majority attitudes.

Anyone who begrudges a child a pack of sanitary pads or tampons is a bit if a dick, really.

YANBU

RunningAway* yes, so cheap as chips that it's only because DS2 qualifies for DLA that I can afford it for DD. I've had to count pennies to afford a hot meal for the DC as recently as last August. DD had to make her sanpro last.

Glad you did that @PhilomenaChristmasPie .

The problem with horrific attitudes like hers is it gives a platform to all the other imbeciles to feel validated.

Honestly - there are some really fortunate, hard of thinking people out there.

Puppy Club rags and fluffy socks? Really? I call bullshit. How do you stop them falling out while you are walking along or moving around.

Every time i read one of these threads im reminded that many many posters on here do not believe in my body my choice!!!

I absolutely believe that sanpro should be free in public facilities, just as loo roll, soap and paper towels are.
I do, however, feel that #periodpoverty is a really bad hash tag. It implies that only poor women should,benefit, and therefore lays it wide open to those comments on her Twitter post.
The contraceptive pill is free to all, and we didn't need a campaign to advertise that. We don't need one for sanpro. We just need to do it!

I read her tweet yesterday. It is without doubt the most ignorant piece of crap I have read in a long time. She is an arse.

Decent sanpro should not be considered a luxury item either. I strongly believe that VAT and tax on it should be abolished. Or am I behind the times and it already has been (doubt it). That would certainly help.

Period poverty is a real thing. Families on or below the breadline have to make very difficult choices.

Anyone who begrudges a child a pack of sanitary pads or tampons is a bit if a dick, really.

This. And they should have a choice of which sanitary protection they use.

Liz Kershaw is turning into the Katie Hopkins of radio. Awful woman. I refuse to listen to her after she made comments about refugees washing up on beaches and spoiling her walks !! So sadly, these comments don't surprise me.
Cant understand what value she thinks these comments make, other than drawing attention to herself as an absolute twat

For those advocating very cheap sanpro, I have tried a lot of them and found them really crap. They absorb very little, they rub badly and some of them stick so firmly to your underwear that they just come apart and will only come off in shreds when you come to change them. Absolutely useless.

I am not well off, but I have very heavy, flooding periods. Decent sanpro isn't optional. I can still flood through it pretty quickly on some days, but cheap stuff does absolutely nothing at all for me.

@helenadove you can call bullshit all you like. They don't fall out and I'm pleased that it's another small way of not adding plastic waste into the environment.

THINK ABOUT IT.

Fine if it works for you. Your body your choice!

I started my periods at 10 and my mum had to go in to speak to my primary school teacher as I needed to change pads often otherwise would leak through my clothes. At 33 one pack of 6-8 pads will get me through two days if I am lucky and my period lasts 5-7 days. I was lucky in that we could afford pads and my dad used to stock up on they brand I used so there were always some in the house. Not everyone has parents with the foresight to do that or the money. There are families where every penny has to be accounted for, when you have to visit a food bank to survive the week, pads are not a priority. In families where parents are mentally ill, depressed, alcoholics kids suffer and period poverty does exist.

I bought my own sanpro with my wages from a Saturday job. I earned £3 for half a day and spent most of it on tampons . I hid them from my Mum as she would have been repulsed by me using tampons as always told me to use loo roll instead. I feel so sad when I think about that.

Kershaw's comments have made me want to donate to a Period Poverty charity. Does anyone know how I do that?

dayswithaY ive donated to Bloody Good Period on the strength of it.