Periods Should Not be Nationalised
Who is responsible for mopping up periods: the state, a charity, a company, family or the person bleeding? Thanks to over 32 million period products being donated to UK schools and youth groups, increasing numbers of young women have imbibed the notion that it is not their responsibility to buy their own sanitaryware.
If you are of a squeamish nature look away now, because the business of periods is messy, not simply because they now dwell at the bloody edge of the battle for the soul of Britain. As one who has been menstruating for 35 years, aside from three pregnancies, I can tell you that periods are frankly revolting, and at times soul-aching. But in spite of this, are they the business of anyone other than the family and person having them?
If you visit any higher education college and many secondaries you will be able to visit the Wellbeing Suite or similar and ask for free sanitary products. Often, they are displayed in pretty wicker baskets with hand drawn signs decorated with smiley faces and flowers, or cheerfully animated drops of blood: Everyone should have a free period / Help yourself and go with the flow / Menstrual hygiene is a human right. Period.
“It’s so good isn’t it. That finally the pink penalty is being addressed,” explained one 17 year-old girl to me.
“The pink penalty?” I asked.
“The financial penalty we girls have to face just because of our gender. Why should we have to pay monthly for something that boys don’t have to?”
And yes, at some level there is something lovely about giving free period things away. Society has certainly advanced since my first period arrived and my grandmother (who ran the village shop) pulled out the large elm drawer beneath the counter and found some intimidating nappy-sized pads that were attached by a belt(!) around the waist.
This conversation in the Wellness Suite happened a few months ago and since then I’ve noticed free period products in local food banks and libraries as well as schools. If you donate to food banks or higher education college shops (whereby those in need can collect basic living kit), you may notice that they specifically do not ask for donations of sanitary products. This is because there is a flourishing corporate scheme whereby Always Ultra and other large firms have a mission to #EndPeriodPoverty.
At surface level this appears an excellent scheme whereby a wealthy corporate gives back to society. Others might see it as a cause-based marketing, created to hook future consumers onto particular products. My concern is more existential. Such schemes foster a general sense that it is for others to take on the business of funding life’s essentials. If modern society is implying to the next generation of young women that they ought not to buy themselves the most basic of hygienic products, is it any wonder there is a general clamour for the state, charities and companies to provide more and more basic services? If it is for others to fund the mopping up of period blood, why shouldn’t someone also provide free nurseries for babies, breakfast clubs and tooth brushing services for school children? Oh. They are.
Within all of this period support, something even gloomier lies. In the many campaigns celebrating the free distribution of period products, and indeed adverts aimed at those who still pay for their own sanitary products, women are pictured either playing sport, dancing, ice-skating or doing other physically impressive activities. And this perhaps is the most disquieting aspect of period politics. Having a period is gross. It hurts; even stuffed with tampons and sanitary towels with wings, there are spillages. Silk skirts are ruined, car seats need cleaning by the good folk at the Hand Car Wash. My mother’s periods were so heavy she developed anaemia which was said to contribute to her skin cancer. I have fainted with blood loss and stared at bloodied knickers at an uncreated fourth child. For all women, every month, a period paints a bold picture: a baby is not being grown.
The idea that what is needed for women to deal with this fecund responsibility is free hygiene products yet again treats the monthly arrival with as much euphemistic nonsense as those lines in Victorian novels whereby females have to ‘take to their beds’ after their ‘monthly visitor’.
Imagine instead an honest discussion about periods being held in the Wellness Suite. Picture emphasis being given to the biological reality of periods: that periods are not merely nuisance blood spillages that get in the way of school, work, fun or sky-diving, but a monthly reminder of a baby not growing in a nutritious womb lining. A visceral reminder of Britain’s declining birth rate.
No bloody way.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
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”For all women, every month, a period paints a bold picture: a baby is not being grown. A visceral reminder of Britain’s declining birth rate.” For crying out loud, Joanna. Are you seriously guilt-tripping girls and women purely for having what is a perfectly normal physiological occurrence which takes place for most of our life times? Are you honestly implying that females from the age of, say, 12yrs old to 55yrs old give this a second thought? Because, unless a woman is trying for a baby and isn’t having much success, most normal women don’t think along these lines at all. Why would we? How low can a woman go to try and shame fellow women like this? The vast majority of us take it in our stride because it’s part and parcel of being a female human being. We don’t make a song and dance out of it, well, perhaps ‘we’ may have used it as an excuse to get out of P.E at school the odd time ( usually when it was cross-country running, as that took place in the cold months ). And as for free period products: if hard up families and girls benefit from getting… Read more »
“And as for free period products: if hard up families and girls benefit from getting these free then that’s totally fine by me. It’s a pittance compared to the amount of money I probably squander on crap I really don’t need throughout the week.”
I don’t know who benefits but let’s assume this is true. It’s your choice to squander money on crap (I do too). My problem with this is that, like most other free stuff it’s funded by everyone whether they like it or not. If you feel able to contribute to poor people’s sanitary products you are free to do so, as are others. But I don’t see why we should all have to. But then I am not a socialist. I give money to charity, have done for a long time, through payroll giving. But I don’t want others to be forced to do so.
My views are extremist and not widely held, so I am destined to be frustrated.
I have to say that I found the article interesting, until it took what I thought was a very peculiar emphasis shift to ‘uncreated children’ and birth rates. Whilst I have no problem whatsoever with sanitary products being made available for some poor girl or lady caught without, I do wonder why they don’t have one on their person in readiness. Every girl I ever dated said that they knew a day or so in advance what was coming. Periods are a fact of life. Women know they need sanitary products. If I was a woman (who knows, I might decide to be tomorrow!) then sanitary products would be very high up on my list of life’s essentials. But then, that’s not just me saying that from a man’s sexist perspective, because *every* woman I know has agreed with this as they’ve always got some in. I do not believe it should be down the the State, the taxpayer or charities to provide these for women. How many women claiming that they can’t afford them also smoke, get their hair done, get their nails done, go out on the town every weekend, have Sky tv, have regular upgraded mobile phones,… Read more »
I am normally a fan of Joanna Gray’s articles but I have to ask the point of this one.
The only thought that I had was that Joanna was trying to say that girls should take responsibility for the purchase of their sanitary products and thereby their periods and not rely on the state… but I am not sure, she was.
“I have fainted with blood loss and stared at bloodied knickers at an uncreated fourth child. For all women, every month, a period paints a bold picture: a baby is not being grown.”
I think Joanna is projecting her own feelings and emotions around her periods onto others, particularly young girls, and she needs to acknowledge she’s doing this because it’s unfair. If she’s previously experienced a miscarriage or failed to conceive then periods will have negative connotations, this is understandable. But at least have the self-awareness to recognise this and don’t transfer your negative emotions around this topic onto others. It comes across as shaming or guilt-tripping, which is uncalled for.
Yeah, I have always found it funny that the feminist idea posits that:
1.) On the one hand, women are totally equal and in fact better than men and totally capable of performing all tasks just as well and in fact better.
2.) Whilst at the same time women are entitled to special treatment because of their biological needs, so for example companies should allow them to take time off if they are troubled by their periods.
So women are equal except they need special privileges.
(By the way, my wife of 34 years never made a fuss about her periods and no, I never found them revolting.)
I remember Gordon Brown leaving it to the Dim Prawn to announce the removal of VAT from feminine sanitary products. It was an area that GB could admit ignorance – which generally went for the rest of his budget measures, that were framed by pressure groups – but not admitted.
So what if these products are exempt from VAT or given freely? I don’t have an issue (no pun intended) and in a sense it’s a sign of a caring society. (Something that those of us “on the right” might struggle with).
The girl saying periods are a ‘pink penalty’ and moaning that it doesn’t happen to men. I’m really glad that I don’t have to shave every day! Perhaps that’s the ‘blue penalty’. Anyway, yes, it was always the case, and it still should be, that menstruating women always keep a couple of tampons or pads in their bags. Not hard. Agree that tampons shouldn’t be given out routinely. Agree that periods can be messy. I speak as one who got up from a seat in an expensive restaurant once and to my horror noticed that I…had left something there. I never went back! But, really, for 99% of women, they’re not a monthly reminder of a baby not being created, unless they’re trying to conceive.
I would not be in the least bit surprised if many of the girls/women using “free” sanitary products are only too happy to spend a small fortune on shampoo/conditioner, cosmetics, “beauty” products and in some cases, nail bars.
I’m now in my mid-60s, but I recall at Sec school in the 70s, the school office had a small supply of sanitary towels for a girl whose period started unexpectedly (it does happen when you’re young). But the next day, you were expected to have provided for yourself.
Back then, we ALL carried a tampon in our bags as a matter of course. And if you didn’t have one or needed a replacement, a friend would supply one.
This is just infantilising. If 16 yr old girls aren’t mature enough to supply their own sanitary products, they certainly aren’t mature enough to vote.
Hmmm. I’ve never quite understood the backlash against this. Comparing periods to shaving isn’t valid as shaving is a choice and isn’t painful. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that we shouldn’t expect one half of the population to pay to manage physical discomfort on a monthly basis. It’s one of the very few library of female complaints, demands and expectations that doesn’t actually seem narcissistic – like stumbling across a needle in the biggest haystack ever made. I believe there is justification for spending public money on easing the financial burden of having to manage pain; if the state is to have a purpose then it’s to exchange money for services and to help ease genuine suffering of its citizens in a fair and even-handed manner. Of course, that same logic applies to male suicide, male early death, male disposability, male healthcare funding etc etc. But because the disparities are clear, it doesn’t make this one not a disparity.
“The financial penalty we girls have to face just because of our gender. Why should we have to pay monthly for something that boys don’t have to?”
When we go to war again, come back to me and say that again, little lady. Then, I and 99% of other men I know will not allow women and children to go first.