"Period Poverty": its taking the piss, isn't it?

[Candidpeel]

This is from an organisation called Rights Info (whose articles last year on the GRA were "don't believe the myths, relax it all fine...")

twitter.com/rights_info/status/1082313150286974978?s=19

Twee little video on "period poverty"...

I've come to the conclusion (perhaps unfairly) that any organisation that jumps on the 'period poverty' bandwagon is taking the piss. Its a way of ticking the "women's rights" box without actually dealing with womens rights.

I'm not convinced its a thing. I mean if you are too poor to afford a box of own brand tampons that's not a special kind of period poverty its absolute poverty. If girls are not being given enough cash at home to buy sanpro (or their parents aren't keeping stocks at home) that's neglect, and maybe wider emotional abuse.

And who the hell spends £18,000 on sanpro in their lifetime??

OK rant over.

It's part of an overarching plan to appear more reasonable to the general public. If it feels inauthentic it quite possibly is.

If your too poor to buy sanitary protection I would suggest you were poor.

I've recently been in a situation where I had 34.40 per week to live on after a fuck up in benefits. Out of that I had to pay £12.12 per week rent, £10 electric, £15 gas and also food, toilet rolls and san pro.

Most people aren't that short that they are without tampons every single week but a sizable number of disabled, working poor and unemployed are in a situation where an unexpected expense or benefits sanction/fuck-up could leave them with only pennies or less after food and essential bills.

Food banks use on the rise year after year, considering a tin of beans is less 20p in most supermarkets it's not a stretch to believe some people might not have £1 spare for san-pro some months. Unless you also believe food banks are con?

Didn't women used to have a cloth (or a 'rag') that they'd have to wash?

£18k is nearly £40 per period. That's some expensive sanitary products.

Agreed. There’s no such thing as period poverty. If you’re poor, you’re poor in all areas of your life - food, housing, clothes, heating. You solve that by making sure people have money. You don’t solve it by giving them free tampons. The whole thing is massively insulting.

I tend to agree as someone who grew up poor but not grindingly so. The poverty affects your frame of mind though to the point where you don't want to ask for sanpro to be bought for you as you're used to never having enough of anything/parents arguing about money and you just 'make do' with loo roll or whatever, just like when the shampoo runs out you use washing up liquid. it is a symptom of how poverty affects you to the point you don't feel entitled to anything. However I think the cause is a good one - if there had been free sanpro available at school that would have helped me enormously.

You don’t solve the poverty by giving people free tampons, no.

But you do solve the indignity and downright misery of not having enough (or any) sanpro.

You solve the problem of not being able to get through each day - school for children and teenagers, work/whatever for adults - with little or no sanpro.

You tip the scales ever so slightly towards ‘normal’. It doesn’t help with food, or heat, or light, or walls and ceilings so damp they are rotting and mouldy. It doesn’t magic up enough money for more than one set of clothes. It doesn’t do a hell of a lot, really, but it does mean that someone can go about their daily life with just the tiniest bit more dignity.

I have been there. Until I was an adult, with my own money (and by that I mean a student grant - hardly rolling in cash!) I did not ever, for one single period, have enough sanpro. 7 years of monthly misery. 7 years of being terrified I was leaking through the wadded up toilet paper. 7 years of trying to scrimp and save and not ‘waste’ tampons. If I was lucky I had one a day.

And no, my mother wasn’t neglectful. We just didn’t have any money. At all. We were very poor, often with no heating, not enough food, and the electricity key meter running out of reserve again so no light either.

It was truly shit.

And it would have been made infinitely better by me having access to decent sanpro.

I kind of agree. I don't think it's especially helpful to talk about poverty in terms of specific things people can't afford. Eg: fuel poverty, period poverty, food poverty etc.
It allows people to say " who can't afford a bowl of cereal" or "tampons only cost a couple of pounds"
Its not really about affording that cereal or those tampons. It's about affording both of them and then everything else you need.

I agree with @unlimiteddilutingjuice. If you're poor you're poor in all areas of life not just periods however I don't agree with OP's view that everyone can afford San-pro at anytime they or their children might need it because it's simply not true. Sometimes there just isn't £1 left at the end of the week/month, no matter how you budget.

It's not neglect but it is disgusting that it is happening in the 5th biggest economy in the world.

At least they talked about women & girls in the film, not 'bleeders' or 'menstuators'. Sadly, I now find myself pathetically grateful for that.

Damn. 'Menstruators'. Stupid word, no wonder I can't spell it.

I used toilet paper stuffed in there for years. I never thought much about it. It was part of being poor. I wished for more money for chocolate rather than tampons.

I see your point OP and find this a bit of a trendy bandwagon for people who don’t understand poverty particularly well.
It is neither shocking nor undignified to use loo roll and make the sanitary pad last as long as possible. Simply budgeting rather like watering down milk/hot water bottles and layering to minimise heating costs /basic foods. It’s life, harsh but true and is accepted as such when it jostles amongst the many other issues that poverty brings.
The term period poverty does irritate. Poverty, not period poverty is the issue, this is simply a distraction.

IsItMe explains period poverty from the reason the term came about. Woman's Hour had segments on it well over a year ago, before it became trendy. It was about enabling girls to go to school despite economic difficulties at home impacting the availability of menstrual products for them. There has also been discussion about the need for menstruation products in food banks because of similar reasons.

Wads of toilet paper may not be that concerning to some, but for others with a heavy slow, or a uniform with a skirt in summer etc., its a whole different issue.

However, what I've been watching happen is that it has been jumped on as it's a very easy single issue that people can get behind to show their feminist credentials, often, like with Madigan, when they otherwise have few.

In reality period poverty is a symptom of wider, structural economic issues, yes, but the woman who started this initiative (and, I believe, coined the term) was merely trying to solve a single problem (girls' and women's lives negatively impacted by lack of menstrual products), because she saw a way that she could.

*flow, not show

I agree. If you can’t access £5 a month to buy sanpro, then either you are straight up poor or you are being financially abused. Both of which are issues that feminists have been saying disproportionately affect women for years. And neither of which are nice simple little causes that can be fixed with a cute pink Instagram.

£5 a month ? I would love it if I only spend £5 a month on sanitary protection.

Iam I ake your points but having lived it, with heavy flows and skirts it made life a little awkward but never awkward enough to miss school,I expect other factors are at play in those circumstances.

I use these , two at a time or they are too short as I am very talk. One pack lasts me a day , I use them for the first four days then boyform night again two at a time for the last two days . In total I spend £21.68 that’s without factoring in extra washing and replacing underwear and sheets, or the cost of painkillers.
That’s just for myself I also have daughters.

Sorry

Try again!

Don’t know what has happened to my picture of Tena nighttime pads £4.67 a pack.

Tampons, pads & other menstrual products are currently framed as "feminine" personal hygiene items. I think they should be regarded instead as essential medical products/supplies necessary to meet a dire, scientifically documented medical need of girls & women. As such, they should be provided free to all natal females who need them by state health services like the NHS & covered by medical insurance in the US.

The fact that menstrual products are seen not as essentials, but as extras that girls & women should pay for out of our own pockets is the result of longstanding & entrenched systemic misogyny. To make girls & women pay for menstrual products is a grave injustice for all females, & it places an extra, discriminatory burden on those of us who are poor & even middle-class.

The unfairness towards girls & women is especially extreme today, when boner pills for men are routinely covered by insurance & state health programs in the West, & when in the UK in particular the NHS is paying for convicted male rapists & murderers in prison to get breast implants & other surgeries to placate their gender identity illusions - & for other natal males to get cosmetic laser facial hair removal that females must pay for on their own.

Back in the 1970s, Gloria Steinem observed, "if men could menstruate, all 'sanitary products' would be free - & men would brag about how much they bled & how long, & they'd also complain endlessly about how much it hurt." True then, true today.

@mydcaremarvel do you mind sharing why you use light to medium flow incontinence pads rather than sanitary pads / tampons or reusable stuff?

Incontinence pads are about twice the price of maximum size night time sanitary pads.

I once bought Tena by mistake. I gave them a go as night- time pads , as why not, but found they didn't work terribly well. They didn't absorb as well as sanitary pads.