Periods are still bloody hard

Metro ran a comment piece on its website about period poverty and the role the government can play in helping end this monthly nightmare, particularly for disadvantaged teenage girls.  It was written by the founders of the excellent Red Box Project, a UK-wide scheme to provide sanitary products in schools. Inevitably, when the story was posted to the newspaper's Facebook page, plenty of people felt the need to say there is no such thing as period poverty, largely because you can buy pads and tampons for a quid at Poundland and every young person has a mobile phone - the usual asinine responses to a complex issue...  

Tragically, one of the commentators on the newspaper's Facebook page said she had to use toilet paper as sanitary protection when she was growing up and therefore couldn't see why poor teenagers today couldn't do the same thing. Race-to-the-bottom comments like this are frustratingly common, where people boast of their suffering and see no reason to prevent others from suffering, even if such suffering could easily cause infection and even if there are solutions to prevent the suffering from continuing.

It is indeed true that sanitary products are available for £1 at Poundland but there are households where every pound spent has to be carefully considered. If there is an alternative to sanitary protection, such as loo paper filched from schools or public toilets or even socks, a poor family may forego buying £1 boxes of pads and tampons for the girls and women and spend that pound on food instead. If you are donating to your local food bank, please consider adding pads or tampons to the pile of tinned food and pot noodles.

And if you have the awful misfortune to be menstruating and homeless, your options for a hygienic and comfortable period are even more limited.

It is not an issue that many people like to discuss but if the hideous realities of periods for the poor are not confronted, girls and women will continue to suffer here in the UK and other developed countries, just as surely as they suffer in cultures where menstruation is seen as unclean and periods mean monthly banishment and disenfranchisement of girls and women as they miss out on educational and employment opportunities. 

Plan UK introduced the period emoji (see at the top of this page) to encourage more open discussion about menstruation - obviously an emoji won't solve everything but it's a start. The mere fact that plenty of ignorant people responded to the simple drop of blood with revulsion illustrated why it's needed in the first place.

Every discussion about period poverty inevitably results in someone, usually well-meaning but privileged, demanding we all use moon-cups. The moon-cup is a great idea - it is an eco-friendly, reusable means of dealing with periods. However, it is still out of reach for many people with a starting price of £21.99. And it needs to be used in hygienic conditions - this is not always possible for poor people and it can be especially impractical for the homeless. We are not yet at a place where girls and women are frequently seen rinsing out their moon-cups in public bathrooms and school toilets - and there are plenty of grotesque public and school conveniences out there where it is not hygienic to rinse a moon-cup properly. And some girls and women just don't like them or have trouble using them - this is not a character defect, it's just the way it is.

Likewise, reusable fabric sanitary pads are a great, eco-friendly idea but they are not practical for anyone who struggles to access good laundry facilities.

So we need to talk about solutions to ensure everyone has a hygienic and comfortable period. After all, periods are the one biological fact of life that affects every girl and woman. We won't all experience pregnancy or childbirth or miscarriage or endometriosis or gynaecological cancer but menstruation cannot be avoided if you have ovaries and a uterus. 

Menstruation is the one biological event that has an impact on our lives across the entire time we are fertile. It comes with emotional challenges and joys as well as physical challenges.

The first period can be a time of excitement for those who can't wait to grow up, it can be terrifying or confusing for those who experience menarche at an early age, it can be a relief when it finally happens to a late bloomer or it can be seen as an inconvenience, something that needs to be dealt with, its impact on everyday life minimised. Indeed, it was only last month that mass outrage erupted when the UK Faculty of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare of the Royal Collage of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists released guidelines stating that there is no need to have the pretend period you get when you take the sugar pills in your contraceptive pill packet. Cue masses of furious women thinking about the money they have spent on sanitary protection over the years, the holidays ruined, the sexual encounters messed up, the time lost from work or school with cramps, the excuses they had to make for not going swimming and so on, all of which could have been avoided if myths about needing to take the sugar pills hadn't been peddled by everyone from their mothers to their doctors.

As we get older, our periods continue to govern our lives - there is the relief when a period arrives after an unwanted pregnancy scare, the sadness of a period arriving when one is hoping to be pregnant, the realisation when a period arrives in March that one will probably not have a baby that year, the sheer joy when a period doesn't come and a pregnancy, either planned or a happy surprise, is happening, and the relief or sadness when one is perimenopausal and the period years are coming to an end. 

Periods are a big deal and it can be hard to explain this to anyone who has never had a period. Menstruation is something that simultaneously demands that those experiencing it can have privacy and good sanitation - and that those experiencing it can talk about it without being howled down, accused of being hysterical (a word which has its origins in our wombs being the source of ungovernable emotions), or told to simply toughen up because we are no longer in the Tudor era of rags and the belief that periods were a punishment from God because of Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden is no longer widely held in the UK.   

In 2016, 19-year-old Ryan Williams, a self-proclaimed "meninist", embarrassed himself by posting on social media that tampons were a luxury, that taxes on sanitary products should not be abolished and that "if you can't control your bladder then that's not the taxpayers' problem" - when people aren't even aware that period blood and urine orginate from different places and out of different orifices, we really do need to talk. It's not just men who need educating either. I remember telling a female friend at university - we were both 20 at the time - that you don't need to remove a tampon in order to do a wee and this was a revelation for her.  

So, instead of being revulsed by a period emoji or rushing to be the first to say that period poverty is not real, how about being constructive instead? How about we discuss ideas to ensure that hygienic, comfortable periods are a right, not a privilege? How about we make sure it is widely known that skipping periods while on the pill is not harmful? How about every pupil who receives sex education at school knows how periods work so we don't have another generation of people thinking we simply piss out our periods at will? How about we don't rest until this basic dignity and comfort is afforded to every girl and woman on the planet? 

If we fail to do this, we really are no better than those who punish menstruation through banishment. Hiding menstruation away is misogyny. 

A rant about pants

A friend of mine asked me for my thoughts on a new invention. Special underpants, with a multi-layer gusset, that can be worn instead of a pad or tampon during menstruation, to be precise. They're called Thinx.

Clearly I am the go-to girl if you’re not sure what to think about periods. Obviously.

Anything that advances the lives of women, makes menstruation more comfortable, and helps women to study, live and work on an equal footing with men, unencumbered by the monthly annoyance that is getting your period gets my full support. Anything that helps stop periods being taboo, anything that stops girls and women from being shut away, out of sight, out of mind, rendered unproductive for a week or so each month has got to be a good thing. Obviously.

So I read up on these special period pants. I’d probably give them a go if I spotted them in Boots, I thought to myself. And then I started mentally placing a few qualifiers on my desire to try them out. I wouldn’t dare try them while wearing tight trousers, I thought to myself. What about with light-coloured summer dresses? Out of the question! They’d be a handy back-up plan while using a tampon, I told myself. And I’d consider them for the annoying times at each end of a period – when your period is due and you’re not sure when the Red Sea will start flowing, and at the pitiful end when you’re not entirely sure if the crimson tide has ebbed for the month. A nice substitute for a panty liner!

It is easy for me from my place of privilege, where I can see two shops where I can buy feminine hygiene products from my desk, to view these pants as a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. With my bathroom cupboard a veritable treasure trove of products of varying degrees of absorbency, I have the luxury of tailoring my sanitary protection needs to suit my lifestyle, my wardrobe and my flow. For girls and women who aren’t as fortunate as to live in a developed country, these pants could be their only hope for a hygienic period each month.

And then another friend mentioned the rinsing. Oh good Lord, the rinsing, the rinsing, the goddamn rinsing. Ideally, you’d own a few pairs of these pants, but you’d still want to rinse them separately before throwing them in the washing machine. Rinsing and wringing! And to do this, you need access to clean water and decent laundry facilities.

For this product to truly be a success in developing countries, an obvious market for such pants, access to clean water is essential. Nobody wants to rinse their period pants in a dirty river or a stagnant puddle. Nobody wants to queue at a village standpipe for a miserable dribble of water, hiding blood-stained pants under the less embarrassing dirty washing.

Also, they are retailing online at $24 for the thong, up to $34 for the hip-hugger brief - for the affluent woman in the developed world, it makes sense to buy a few pairs. Spending $100 on knickers is nothing compared to a lifetime's pad and tampon expenditure, if you are not poor. It'd be a harder sell for poor women, especially if they cannot simply jump online with a Visa card and order a few pairs with effortless ease.

By all means, donate these pants by the truckload to Oxfam. Be entrepreneurial and sell them to distributors across developing countries - although at present Thinx are only sold online. Do what you can to help girls and women have a happier time each month.

I wish the developers of Thinx well, I really do. From what I can tell, the company is an ethical, female-friendly employer. They employ women in Sri Lanka. The company also supports the AFRIPads charity. This is all good.

But it is important to think about the practicalities too. Access to clean water is essential for communities across the world to flourish, to be productive, to succeed, for good sanitation to finally prevail. It’s not as simple as imposing pants on impoverished girls and women - the period issue is part of a much bigger picture. Make a regular donation to Water Aid. Call on your government to dedicate some of its foreign aid budget to clean water projects. Call on corporations to consider access to water as a CSR project. Clean water projects benefit everyone and have positive knock-on effects for local economies.

And, besides, girls and women in the developing word deserve better than to merely have underwear or pads thrown at them.

Period dramas...

I'd never heard of Ella Whelan before last week and I am quite sure she doesn't much care about my existence either. But, Christ on a cracker, has she missed the point of Plan UK's #JustATampon campaign.

Or, what is probably more likely, is that she understands Plan UK's campaign perfectly well but she fancied being the voice of contrived contrarian lefty-bashing feminism that The Spectator clearly needs among its bloggers.

She unleashed a bucket of faux ignorance on the world last week in her piece about the West being obsessed with the contents of the knickers of developing countries. In particular, she called out Plan UK's campaign to help women and girls in developing countries become more educated about menstrual health and to help these women and girls access sanitary products.

Ella seems to object to Plan UK's assertion that "stigma and embarrassment attached to women's periods contributes to gender inequality worldwide". Except that it does, Ella. But instead of acknowledging that women and girls around the world suffer enormously because of a lack of menstrual care, she insists that the campaign will only serve to perpetuate the perception of African countries as being dirty, unhygienic and unaware of periods. Except that many women and girls in many African countries do experience their periods in horrible conditions that would make the average western woman recoil in horror.

Why pretend this isn't happening?

Probably because it is easier and more clickbait-friendly for Ella to use her soapbox to bash popular targets of the right as Jenny Eclair and Jon Snow. Why is she afraid to acknowledge that having your period in horrific conditions, often with the added stigma of cultural taboos and myths about menstruation, means that you might miss days of school and not complete your education, or you might not be able to go to work, or care for your family properly? These are real issues and helping girls and women have less horrific periods is part of the solution.

Ella is partly right to say that the problem for women in developing countries is not a lack of education about periods but that there isn't a branch of Boots on every corner. Of course, it'd be nice for women in Africa's deprived regions to have the same easy access to pads, tampons and Mooncups that we enjoy here in Britain. But getting many African countries to that point will take time. Some parts of Africa are already there. It is a big and diverse continent.

This is why the countries in which Plan UK works are called "developing countries". It is short-sighted and defeatist to slag off an entire campaign because it seems easier to sit back and wait for capitalism to happen. Plan UK does great work to help women and girls in particular to be part of the solutions to poverty, such as ensuring they have access to healthcare and education and do not disappear from the world in forced marriages.

The #JustATampon campaign just one component of the wide-ranging work Plan UK does. Sure, it's  a gimmick to have people take selfies with tampons and I frequently scoff at such campaigns because I am unsure how many selfies actually convert into donations (See also, the ice bucket challenge and no make-up selfies). But if the campaign leads to more people choosing to support Plan UK, a secular charity with no ulterior motivation to convert anyone to or from religion, that's a good thing.

Plan UK cannot solve the world's problems alone but, in particular with their programmes involving access to education and eliminating child marriage, they are doing something. Access to clean drinking water and access to reliable energy are other challenges which need to be addressed so that developing countries can attain Ella's Boots-on-ever-corner menstrual utopia.

And lack of menstrual care is not just a problem for girls and women in developing countries.

Given the lazy approach Ella took to her piece in The Spectator, I wonder if she could be bothered to acknowledge that it is an issue for homeless women in Britain and in other supposedly civilised countries. The Homeless Period campaign explains this more eloquently and powerfully than I can. Click here to find out about this great campaign.

And, as outlined in this rather upsetting piece in the Guardian, lack of access to menstrual products is an issue in some US prisons. Just don't read the comments at the end unless you really enjoy reading the work of dullard mansplainers who have never had a period in their life advocating a system where women in prison as deserve to spend days caked in their own menstrual blood.

Having a period that is as comfortable as it can possibly be is something most of us take for granted. Is Ella having to wad her own underwear with toilet paper scavenged from a public toilet like a homeless woman every month? Is she banished away from her community until her period is over because menstruation is seen as a taboo? Has lack of access to pads and tampons impacted on her ability to get an education or work for a living? Is she imprisoned and forced to ration her maxi-pads?

These things are still happening to girls and women in 2015. Anyone who is taking steps to ensure these things don't happen should be congratulated. They do not deserve the petty vitriol of an arrogant columnist.