9 out of 10 girls fear period shaming at school

[CAAKE]

But "gender neutral" - mixed sex - toilets in schools are a totally fabulous idea 🙄

https://www.tes.com/news/nine-ten-girls-fear-period-shaming?amp&twitterr_impression=true

"Period "shaming" does not come from women. "
Actually this is not quite true

It is enforced by women but the point of it is around
Ideas about women's bodily functions being disgusting and
They must be "private" from men and
Religion

Also cultural aspects as well I suppose.

Certianly a lot of religions consider menstruating to be "dirty" and women are excluded from certain things while menstruating & also some societies. It's only in what the last 20 years or 30 years that we are more open here? I remember beign shocked on a foreign exchange trip at tampax ads on the telly - we didn't have them here at all - considered too, what, risque or something.

This hardly surprises me. Between mixed toilets and.mixed schools where idiocy is tolerated because boys are less mature and the fact that no one is allowed the toilet in class despite every adult knowing full well what a teenage girl might well need to go , well they don't stand a chance do they...

Wish we I'd more single sex schools

The point is that boys are important
And girls are not, not really

I was thinking the other day about how lots of sports seem to involve spotless white outfits. Martial arts are v popular round here as out of school activities, all have these white getups. Also cricket, tennis, not sure if there are more.
Then they wonder why lots of girls drop out around puberty :/

I went to an all girls school and was always mortified when I got my period. I used to hate unwrapping my sanitary towels and the noise they would make, dread them falling out of my bag and worry that I was going to leak. And that was all when I was only amongst other girls, most of whom were already going through the same thing.

I cannot imagine having to go through all that in a culture of mixed sex toilets/changing rooms.

Swimming is tricky as well.
Takes a while to get the hang of a tampon if you want to even try at that age and by then you've got out of the habit / lost your place on the team or whatever. I suppose. I wasn't on a swimming team but imagine if you miss 1 or more weeks trainign every month you won't last long.

All of this stuff > set up for male comfort and then girls / women can join in, in theory, but in practice it's suboptimal for them and plenty won't.

Applies with work and all sorts of stuff is the basic thing female biology / realities not taken into account and we need to pretend they dont' exist / or get out.

It is enforced by women but the point of it is aroundIdeas about women's bodily functions being disgusting and they must be "private" from men and Religion

It is enforced by women and the tone of the parts of the Bodyform website does not help.

Any grown up woman who is a mother but finds it too difficult to talk to her daughter about periods should take a long, hard look at herself.

It's enforced by women in practice who are subbing in to "protect" men.

Men and boys find it all revolting, nothing to do with them, why should we have to hear about it.

Women do the work for the men in propogating the shame, but it is not the case that men are blase about it and wouldn't mind. Lots of them would and do. they don't want to know.

I don't precisely find it hard to talk to my daughter about it, but by god it's hard to get her to stop squirming enough to listen!

Funny isn't it that women's natural "emissions" are embarrassing, stigmatised etc. when boys and men's natural "emissions" are not even mentioned.....

when boys and men's natural "emissions" are not even mentioned..... or if the are it's all about trying to force women to swallow them.

Well and drawing pics of ejaculating penises all over everything, there is that. And of course porn mande by men for men ie the vast majority of it is all about women worshipping cock and semen. Covering women in come is common in mainstream porn. Totally different I'd say. The opposite of shame, really.

I'm not detracting from any of the very valid arguments that posters are making, just saying it is worth noting who sponsored the survey, and asking if they have any agenda to push at all... A good conspiracy theory would include a plausible motive. What exactly would Bodyform gain from this? How would they shift more products? If anything, period-shame would lead girls to buy less of their product.

I actually had a surprise leak at work today. I'm still surprised by it. Supervising lunchtime detention, I just felt it happen. Dismissed pupils still sitting down, then had to prize cover off chair, put on my long coat and head over to the caretaker's loo to wash and try to salvage my trousers (dark, patterned viscose, luckily). As a grown woman, it was annoying, but not a disaster, as I can move freely around my place of work and use whichever facilities I need. Had I been 13, it would have been a completely different story. I went to such great lengths to prevent anything like this from happening as a teenager. Boys used to comment on passing girls in the corridors at school, saying "Yeh..." as one walked by, referring to whether they thought they could discern the outline of a sanitary pad in the girl's trousers.

I disagree, Aspie . I think girls are terrified of leaks and go all belts and braces when they've got their periods; a tampon and a pad, for instance. It isn't the period per se that is considered shameful, but the thought of others knowing you're bleeding. So I can definitely see how more products are purchased, the more worried young girls are.

Our primary has a separate toilet for girls in Yr5/6. Main toilets are sex segregated already, but we like these pubertal girls to feel comfortable.

Sorry I don't want to turn this into a TAAT but currently there is a thread in aibu where the "Op" is being ripped to shreds over her concern about open plan toilets.

And on that thread there are women stating that there is absolutely no reason why a woman should still have blood on her hands once she leaves the cubicle.

"You should carry wet wipes"
"You should flush the toilet and then rinse the blood off in the toilet basin."

Period shaming in action.

I actually just linked this thread into that one. Unbelievable. As if a 9 year old could deal with a first period in a unisex open plan toilet fully equipped with wipes and god knows what else for a medical condition she didn't know she had yet is prepared without any mess