GEO: Tackling period poverty, period stigma ...more boundary pushing

[Candidpeel]

The government equality office is tweeting about its Period Poverty Taskforce, whose 'stigma' workstream has just launched twitter.com/GEOgovuk/status/1171372416372740102

I am deeply suspicious of the good faith of the current fashionable focus on "period poverty" because

1. It always seems to be promoted by organisations like GEO, Girlguiding, Rights Info etc... that are at the forefront of erasing the idea that girls and women exist as a sex.

1. It tends to go along with the use of "gender neutral" language for this most sexed of activities i.e. 'menstruators', 'everyone who needs period products etc....'

1. It is a non issue. Sanpro is cheap. No one in the UK is tipped into poverty by the cost of sanpro. No one who can afford to eat etc... can not afford a few quid a month for sanpro. Yes there is poverty, but 'period poverty' is not a specific kind of poverty.

1. Now this stigma thing.....

yes stigma around menstruation should be removed. Girls should not be ashamed or frightened of menstruation.

But the taboo about talking about menstruation is also linked to privacy.

It is not appropriate for adults to talk to young people about sex and about intimate aspects of their body, and not talking about periods as a general topic of conversation is part of this.

These organisations promoting the idea that people of either 'gender' can menstruate, and that you can't tell what sex anyone is anyway, and that male people should be allowed in girls toilets....... it all breaks down barriers

And now they will be arguing that teachers, youth workers and peer leaders 'of both genders' talk to girls about their periods?? And if those girls feel uncomfortable about it are they just exhibiting the taboo and stigma that GEO wants to break down?? And if girls can be told to get over their old fashioned discomfort about talking about periods with adult men, shouldn't they also get over their old fashioned discomfort about discussing other sensitive sexual topics

..... you see where this is going?

We have free sanitary products available in school. There are posters up. I don't usually talk about it but they are in a container and sometimes boys ask what it is, and I tell them. Girls sometimes come to get the products and I speak matter of factly to them, I don't want them to feel embarrassed. I'm saying all this to see if this is in way viewed as "boundary breaking" as I felt not being ashamed of periods, that it's just a part of being female, was a good thing. Certainly no need to have in depth discussions but a kind of, you're female, you're likely to have periods, if so here are some products to use if you run out, was all good?

Would it not be better to have them in the female toilets, rather than a where everyone can see the girls taking them?
Surely you see that having them in the open that girl has no privacy to when she is on her period in regards to the rest of the class.

Those who think period poverty doesn't exist are naive. The cheapest tampons in Tesco are 95p for 24 and cheap nasty pads which will bunch up are 23p for 10. It can all add up for a family with more than one woman or girl having periods.

I was talking to a young woman in a hostel the other day. First she had to take a benefit advance but then will have to wait 5 weeks for her next universal credit payment which should be £251 but will be reduced by 10% as a consequence of taking an advance. She still has to pay a service charge to the hostel not covered by housing benefit, and this month had to buy some basic bedding and utensils no longer provided to homeless people by the council leaving her with 35p a day till her next payment.

Luckily she has accessed a project which has provided her with food, sanpro, toiletries, cleaning products and a bus pass for the month.

I don't see tackling period poverty as eroding boundaries, certainly in Scotland the language has been around women and girls and I like seeing sanitary products in toilets free for people to use.

We also talk about fuel poverty so it is not the only type of poverty to be given a name.

I do agree with needing to tackle poverty as the root cause but I don't see that issue being solved anytime soon.

I don't doubt that period poverty does exist.

Nor do I doubt that there is a lot of ignorance around periods & a reluctance amongst some adults to discuss the finer details.

Neither are problems that need virtue signalling lobby groups thrown at them.

Female Teachers, health workers & other responsible adults offer support. Appropriate and discreet support.

The problem as with many similar problems (food poverty etc) is that whilst there are specific cases of severe deprivation eg sanctioned benefits unfairly, most cases of insufficient funds are due to poor choices and budgeting, from first hand knowledge it seems to be people running up debts for non essentials when times were better. The large tv, latest smartphone and designer dog breed are a cliche but often true, I help at a food bank and homeless project, they have better phones than me. Sanpro suitable for most women can cost as little as 50p a month for value ranges, around £2 a month buys you standard supermarket own brand. There's a small minority of women who need extra exorbitant and to change very frequently due to medical issues in which case it's reasonable for drs to prescribe

Captainkirk they can't leave them in the toilets, they wouldn't be there when someone needed them, they would be used to flood the toilets. That is the reality of life in a secondary school! Students who have used the container have hung back at the end or asked to speak to me outside, no one is collecting them in front of other young people. We have them for the staff now too - it's very reassuring to know they are just there, no need to walk along a corridor carrying one etc. Not really to do with poverty more just basic dignity.

I was talking to a young woman in a hostel the other day. First she had to take a benefit advance but then will have to wait 5 weeks for her next universal credit payment which should be £251 but will be reduced by 10% as a consequence of taking an advance.

that's what I mean....this is poverty

Luckily she has accessed a project which has provided her with food, sanpro, toiletries, cleaning products and a bus pass for the month

Wouldn't it be better (and more efficient, and more dignified) just to give her the money so she could buy the things she needs, rather than be given things chosen by others ..... I mean we don't talk about "cleaning products" poverty....

To whose benefit is it that "poverty" gets broken down into these different areas?

I was recently at St James Park, the football stadium in newcastle. In the women’s toilets, they had a sign up about period poverty and free sanpro was there. Also present: a sign on the door saying any males found in the female toilets would have their season tickets revoked/be banned. 👏

To whose benefit is it that "poverty" gets broken down into these different areas?

It can be useful in terms of informing policy.

Fuel poverty for example can be a useful measure as it allows both government and energy companies to plan and to create methods of tackling it such as grants for insulation, winter fuel allowances or ways to help people who have got into debt with their supplier.

'Housing' poverty if such a term existed could also serve a useful purpose.

I'm not sure period poverty really falls into this category though. Women who can't afford sanitary protection quite likely can't afford other basic products either and the issues around girls are not necessarily about poverty as such.

It is just sad that some young girls won't have access to sanpro due to the various reasons of poverty.
I would hope there are many women working in schools who are all too aware of this and would naturally help a girl with her predicament.

Toilet rolls are free to use, use a liberal amount if necessary.
I daresay many already do.

It can be bewildering at a young age.

On the face of it, it's an easy fix isn't it? Farm the work out to lobby groups, chuck taxpayers' money at it. Crow about its success on Twitter. Done.

Yep. The neoliberal answer to everything. Outsource whatever it is without due diligence. Outsourcing is vulnerable to agenda infiltration (as well as disinterested profit). You don't care. You got your Twitter likes and everyone thinks you've done well.

(And I agree: here, the infiltration is by those with an interest in boundary dissolution.)

Yes indeed Lang, the virtual signalling is deafening.
I would imagine many women help out the girls if they needed it.
Helping out quietly and without the fanfare.

This is why some dude (who probably has never heard it being discussed) thinks he has thought of a clever idea.

That Bloody Good Period lot are involved in the "taskforce".

www.bloodygoodperiod.com/

From their home page on the website:

"Menstrual supplies are not cheap, but for anyone with a period, they are, of course, an absolute necessity".

Their FAQ section doesn't mention women and girls.

But Men get a mention. They get to keep their word. Female children and women who are not menstruating do not get to be called girls or women though. They are non-menstruators.

What about Men/Non-Menstruators

We also collect other essential items such as toiletries, deodorants, toothbrushes and nappies which are, of course, available for free to anyone who comes to our drop-ins

So women and girls cannot be named and are instead divided up into menstruators and non-menstruators.

And men are men.

Such an inadvertently brilliant example of the erasure of women and the simultaneous unthinking acknowledgement that 'men' always get to keep their own word. No mangled language for them. Because they're men.

Great little snapshot of the patriarchy in action there.

We don’t expect school children to provide their own toilet paper so sanpro should be free in the girls loos. Not sure why we need a task force for an obvious solution.

Surely even the most poverty struck girl can get hold of some cotton rags, or recycle old t shirts from a charity shop or whatever? It suggests a lack of resourcefulness to require society to supply them for you.

Um. I think that might be the least empathetic thing I've seen on the internet. And I've been on Twitter.

Is that what you do when you have your period? Or is it just poor teenagers you're expecting to bleed into ripped up rags?

Is that what you do when you have your period? Or is it just poor teenagers you're expecting to bleed into ripped up rags?

Did you read the full post, it's pretty clear the poster has been in that situation.

Right, yes. Feminists against free sanpro! Feminists against talking openly about our bodies without shame!

The cognitive dissonance here is alarming.

Right, yes. Feminists against free sanpro! Feminists against talking openly about our bodies without shame!

Not one person on this thread is against either of these.

I'm not sure I think there is really an agenda in this. There are individual weirdos of course but I don't think that is where this is coming from.

I do think the privacy question is real, but I see it as reflecting a kind of shallow thinking that's become quite common. Many people really seem to imagine that ideas like privacy are somehow mainly about shame. So when they see people feeling shame, they tend to think they can fix it by simply forgetting about privacy, or in instances where there really is a problem, if they see something is private they think the underlying issue is shame and miss the real cause.

I also think that there is a tendency to see the embarrassment of teens around bodily functions as more significant than it really is in many cases. It's often something that people grow out of as they mature, it's completely developmentally normal.

None of this is to say that shame is never a problem, but the judgement of people who think like that isn't very helpful in seeing if it is.

I also agree with the idea that some mentioned that there is a significant virtue signalling element to many of these campaigns. Period poverty in general is something that could have been fairly easily addressed through existing channels by simply treating sanitary products like other necessities in programs for those in need, I don't really see any real advantage to most targeted organisations or campaigns. Make sure food banks, for example, carry such products, if that has been a gap in the past.

Also - when I was a student, sanitary products were available in the school for girls who needed them. It only needed a quiet word to the school secretary and many girls did this on occasion when caught short and some more often. Perhaps that isn't universal but I wonder about the idea that this is some newly acknowledged need.

Oh, I also think considering reusable products is a good idea, from an environmental POV, for everyone. And no doubt for some from a cost perspective though you need access to running water, and the initial cost is higher.

You can get ready made reusable sanitary napkins, and there are some good patterns to make them on the internet as well, which might be more satisfactory than just rags ripped up.

It only needed a quiet word to the school secretary and many girls did this on occasion when caught short

It seems that is generally what happens. There is quiet, unacknowledged support for girls.

A silent female grapevine that is all but invisible to men

And I think there is an interesting connection to this question of shame. I know people think it would be better to not need to talk to anyone, even another woman, because girls are embarrassed. But it's usually through conversations like this that you get over your embarrassment about menstruation. Many girls are embarrassed to buy their products too, at first, but they get over it pretty soon when they need to do it.

Now, being embarrassed by poverty itself is a little more difficult but talking about menstruation won't stop that.

Commercially produced sanpro is a relatively modern thing. My mother and her contemporaries couldn’t have afforded to buy such things even if they’d existed

How old you are is one of my business but commercial sanitary products have been around since the 1920s. I still vividly remember finding a box of my mother's Tampax when I was about 8 (around 1967) and wondering what it was.

I wasn't aware of any of my friends using rags (and we did talk about "who had started/ what do you use?"). I think the concept of using rags has well and truly gone out of memory. I agree with the poster who said your post was one of the least empathetic thing I've seen on the internet.

There seems to be significant regional differences in when people stopped using reusable products.

I think it's something worth mentioning. It's easy to get blinkered about things that we need, because most or no one remembers a time when we got along without them. People forget that you can, or sometimes that there were quite good solutions to do it.

I had a conversation with someone once whose clothes dryer had broken who couldn't afford to replace it right away. An American, she's always used one and she wasn't allowed an outdoor line. I suggested she might put up a line in her basement, and a clothes horse. She just hadn't thought of it because in her experience she had never seen that, though once I said it of course it seemed totally logical.

I know people think it would be better to not need to talk to anyone, even another woman

Not even another woman.
I have never heard anybody say that