MENSTRUAL HYGIENE DAY - need some support out there

[Iootraw1]

My DD Told me it was covered in her secondary school today and that they had been called ‘Vagina Havers’ and termed ‘People who menstruate’.
I have just sent he Head Teacher a forthright email pointing out just what I think of dehumanising my daughter a d other girls by referring to them as mere body parts.

Daughter not happy with me and for some reason husband doesn’t support me either. No longer going to pub with me as planned.

I lost it and knew I had to send that email to make a stand against this insane anti-woman/girl environment we currently find ourselves in.

I just am so upset that it’s now reached our local school and we as parents are supposed to just sit back and take this?

Need some supportive words everyone - I know I needed to send that email and don’t regret it but my family are not my allies 😩

@MrsTerryPratchett

I just thought of a thing. Someone I work with refers to women+ as shorthand for women plus people who are transmen or non-binary but female sex. It adds rather than degrades.

What do people think?

Yes it’s better. I suggested it would be better to refer to as ‘female’ if the words women and girls are deemed too sensitive to mention, because IMO it is not biologically possible to change sex so even trans-men are still female and this distinction is important to maintain when discussing anatomy, medical matters and indeed reproductive organs and functions. Or say girls and trans-boys , god anything but refusing to say girls which seems to me to feel like erasure.

Well done. You are 100% right to do this. Good for you. I can’t stand being reduced to my vagina, it makes me feel like a piece of meat, like that’s the only bit of me that people (men) are interested in. I AM A WOMAN.

@Helleofabore

It may be that your daughter doesn't want to have attention drawn to her rather than that she doesn't agree with you.

I would have done the same thing OP. The incongruence of insisting that people can 'ignore' their biological reality while insisting that woman are reduced to their biological parts and functions is too hard to support.

Good luck.

Yeah I know, and I’ve often defected previously from contacting school in a bid not to have her feel embarrassed. However she protested in school a few weeks ago with other girls over matter over regarding girls uniform so I feel it’s right to set an example of standing up for women’s rights. Because sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.

i would too take issue with the 'hygiene' day aspect. i'll admit i've been outof the mn bubble for while - so i dont understand the beef - if someone would kindly explain ?

Well done OP
I am raging on your behalf.
Is the head a man, sorry I mean, a testicle haver?

Sorry I see you already replied that the head is not a testicle-haver but is indeed a vagina-haver. I wonder how she can bear to refer to her pupils like this, for shame.

@StellaAndCrow

And with all the sexual assault by boys on girls that we know occurs at school, do they really want to be referencing and emphasising girls' vaginas?

Yep. Boys sending ‘dick pics’ to unsuspecting girls seems to be a thing these days. It was easier being a girl at school in the 1980’s. Never had to cope with this sort of nasty behaviour. Worse thing was a boy daring another to ping a girl’s bra strap before running off. Seems like child’s play in comparison. My DD and her friends have boys commenting on their body parts, staring and following and harassing. I don’t think the nasty online stuff is helping - women are more objectified than ever.

Menstrual Hygiene Day". What a horrible title. It implies "unclean". There is no need for this in schools - at all. It is just a way to embarrass and humiliate self conscious teen girls. Can't we leave them with a shred of dignity? What's next "bowel movement hygiene day" or ejaculation hygiene day?

Totally agree toomanytrees

Is the school mixed OP? I think that's really awful for girls to be othered in this way in front of boys. I'd have been utterly mortified as a teen. (Still appalling if it is single sex girls school).

Well done OP. I wouldn't let it rest.

Well done op

U did the right thing. Your dd will thank you one day

It’s a mixed school don’t think the boys had to attend though

@lootraw1 well done!

Action Aid are championing this. To be fair just a nasty sounding title it’s more about raising awareness for girls who don’t have access to sanitary products etc I believe.
It’s the wording they used that bothers me.

@StellaAndCrow

And with all the sexual assault by boys on girls that we know occurs at school, do they really want to be referencing and emphasising girls' vaginas?

Exactly this. This is horrifying.

@Iootraw1 I sincerely hope that with women like you challenging schools now by the time my DD is in secondary school she won’t have to deal with this kind of misogynistic, dehumanising, degrading language.

It was easier being a girl at school in the 1980’s. Never had to cope with this sort of nasty behaviour. Worse thing was a boy daring another to ping a girl’s bra strap before running off. Seems like child’s play in comparison.
My DD and her friends have boys commenting on their body parts, staring and following and harassing.

@Iootraw1
Sorry, don't mean to derail but I was groped and sexually assaulted by boys in the 80's. They would follow girls in a little group and feel them up, intimately.

Oh, and well done you on challenging!

@334bu

Ask your husband how he would feel if his daughter was told her father was an ejaculator?

Or a wanker

@ChampagneCommunist
To be fair, women can be wankers too...

Well done you for challenging. Big up! (As we used to say in the olden days)

[quote Merchymor]@ChampagneCommunist
To be fair, women can be wankers too...[/quote]
Equality is wonderful!

If you go to the campaign web site you will see that they talk about women and girls needing protection.

They should have downloaded the infographics which make it clear it is about women and girls.

This is first world self engrossed vanity politics erasing the very real dangers to women and girls living in conflict and poverty.

Tell them to get overthemselves and have a bit of humility.

It makes the school sound like they are having a sort of dick waving competition as to who can get in the most woke words in one sentence.

Tell them to get back to basics.

menstrualhygieneday.org/ has infographics.

Does the school have a local period poverty group they could support (through local food bank) - although I have seen some UK based period poverty groups use stupid language like people who have periods.

Maybe they need to arrange basic biology lessons.

But well done OP. And no doubt in years to come your daughter and husband will be boasting about how you were the first one to stand up against what will in time be seen to be these absurd fashion.

No girl or woman should ever be called a 'vagina haver’ or a ‘person who menstruates’ - it's reductive and just utterly disrespectful. Your DD is a young woman and well done you for protecting her unique human femaleness.
It sounds like the school has been Stonewalled - fight that.
and for you OP - for your DD. And strength to both of you.

You were very brave to step forward.

This "vagina havers" business enrages me. Why that body part? Being female means having an entire reproductive system that includes other parts, notably a uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Why not refer to girls and women as "ova makers"? Or "fallopian tube havers"?

Vaginas are what MEN reduce us to. It makes me livid to hear that schools are doing this to girls. Absolutely livid.

Action Aid are supporting this? They should know better. I’m all in favour of supporting girls and women in developing countries, who face even worse treatment than here. But why the dehumanising language? Reducing women to only the body part used by men makes it very clear we are objects for use. And the emphasis on hygiene, as if menstruation is dirty?

I was going to comment on the hygiene aspect of this. I would object to there being a day which is so titled, as previous posters have suggested, it suggests that menstruation is unclean and girls and young women have to be taught how to be clean, whilst menstruating - which, let’s be honest, girls and young women work out themselves or with the help of their mothers in a very short time! If it is about girls and women not having access to products, then what is wrong like period equality or something.