By Megan Harth
Menstrual equity is the equal access to menstrual products, and the right to an education about reproductive health. Menstrual equity is about removing the barriers and stigma surrounding menstruation. According to the State of the Period 2023, around 23% of teenagers have struggled to afford period products.[1] 40% of teenagers and 52% of adults have worn period products longer than recommended.[2] 58% of teenagers have asked a friend or classmate for a period product because they did not have one and 18% have asked a stranger.[3] The State of the Period is a summary of facts and statistics surrounding menstruation from the past year. This is commissioned by THINX Inc. and PERIOD Org. Having access to this information allows us as a society to know where we are headed with menstrual equity. Support for advocacy and education on menstruation has gone up highly since 2021. There is a strong desire for menstrual health to be normalized in schools and workplaces, although this is great progress, there is still so much work that needs to be done.
I remember getting my period when I was 12 years old. I got it on my sister’s birthday, and I was so overwhelmed and scared because I did not know what it was. I remember my sister having a bunch of her friends over for her birthday party and locking myself in my bedroom and sobbing all night. I was so angry at God for making me a girl and so upset that this was my new reality; and I would feel pain and bleed for a week each month. It felt unfair and cruel that I had to experience this, but the boys in my class will never have to. I felt powerless and ashamed to be a girl. I was never taught what menstruation was and how to handle it. It caused me so much stress and anxiety that I had to start anxiety medication because every month I would get panic attacks the days leading up to my period starting.
I was the first girl in my group of friends to get my period. I did not have anyone to talk to about it and even if I did, I did not know how to bring it up in conversation. I would plan out strategically when I would change my pad during school. I would hide a pad either in my shoe or bra and go to the bathroom during the lunch period since there would be less people using the bathroom at that time. We only had one women’s bathroom in my middle school. I would wait until there was no one in the bathroom to open my pad because I was afraid someone would know I had my period by the noise of the pad being opened. I now look back and ask myself: what was I really ashamed of? Was it really my period causing me shame, or was it being a girl?
When I was in high school, I remember being a freshman and feeling ashamed to have my period during school. I would reach into my book bag and shove a tampon up my sleeve to go to the bathroom because I did not want anyone to see that I had my period. I did not realize at the time that this was reinforcing the stigma and shame around menstruation. During my sophomore year I was asked by a group of senior girls if I was interested in starting a feminist club at our school that would be a safe space for girls and help to supply free menstrual products. I felt so honored to be asked to be involved in this and reassured that I was not the only one who saw a problem in our school and wanted to create change.
I never understood why menstrual products were so expensive and not available in public school restrooms. It never made sense to me why it was so easy to get free sexual barriers, but not menstrual products. In our club, named “In Her Element”, we started by painting the bathroom stalls with inspirational quotes from inspiring women throughout history. We used bright colors and illustrations to bring light and positivity to the women’s bathrooms. We wrote the quotes in different languages and even drew murals on some of the walls. It only took three months since starting our club to have free dispensers installed in all of the women’s restrooms at our high school. “In Her Element” won a state award for most outstanding student-run extracurricular. I felt so proud of myself to be only 15 years old and making such a monumental change in my small town, one that is still permanent all these years later.
After high school ended, I still had such a fire in me to do social justice and activism work, but I did not know where to start. I knew I wanted to do more work with menstrual equity but there is only so much I could do as one person and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. At the end of my sophomore year of college I overheard a student talking about a Period Project and I found my way into the conversation and asked her more about it. She said that she was a senior about to graduate in a month and was looking for someone to take over her project. I told her about my feminist club in high school and she was overjoyed to allow me to continue and finish what she started. I still felt very discouraged because I did not realize how much harder it was to institutionalize free and accessible menstrual products at a public university than at a public high school. Nonetheless, I persisted, and I told myself if I did it once, I can do it again.
Junior year began, and I was restocking five bathrooms on campus with my own products. The resource pantry on my campus emailed me stating that they heard about my project, and they had a student employee who wanted to help. I met up with him and we instantly connected. We both had the same common goals for the project and same fiery ambition, which is exactly what I was looking for in a potential partner for the project. I was weary at first to share the floor with someone else, but the work that I was doing was so much bigger than myself, and I wanted to use all the resources I could. From then on, we became a team.
We kept data of all the menstrual products we distributed. We got public funding and grants from the university and community. We proudly installed free permanent dispensers and partnered with the company “Go Aunt Flow” which supplies 100% organic and biodegradable menstrual products and free dispensers. Although these were all amazing accomplishments, it still came with pushbacks. It was daunting to receive attention from the university’s administration, and not only attention, but also respect for the work that we were doing. Some individuals did not fully grasp the importance and dire need of the period project. The pushback first was about funding and finding the right individuals to ask for funding from. It was important to advertise what we were doing and to get involved with other organizations on campus. This way it made our project more widely known, which then caught the attention of the university’s higher administrators.
At this point our project was supplying over 30 restrooms on campus with the plan to have all restrooms be supplied and funded completely from the university. We were discouraged from placing menstrual products in designated restrooms for men out of fear of vandalism and community backlash. There is a higher percentage of menstruators who are men at our campus than surrounding universities. Not only do these men already not get the support and resources that they need, but they are also being told by the university that they cannot have the same access to menstrual products on campus as women can.
I knew when I started my work with menstrual equity that it was not just for cis women. It was for everyone who gets a period. This includes men, non-binary, and transgender people. I find that the conversation around menstruation can become solely a woman’s conversation. Having a cis man as my co-partner has had its advantages and disadvantages; some of the advantages being getting quicker responses from administrators. Most of the higher up administrators at my university are men, and when I would go to speak with them, they would not listen to me in the way I wanted to be heard, or they would not give me the time of day to even listen. When my partner went to speak to them, they immediately made time to listen to what he said and what he said was heard. The disadvantages do outweigh the advantages at times, some being that we do a lot of emailing with professors and administrators; most of the time they only refer to my partner in the email and neglect to address me.
When we are congratulated or praised for the work that we do, oftentimes my partner gets more praise solely because he is a man and doing work that is oftentimes seen as only a woman’s issue. I presented to a group of older ladies downtown from our university about our period project. They wanted to hear about it and potentially help to fund us. After I was done presenting, a woman came up to me and congratulated and thanked me for my work. She started asking me questions about the project and completely ignored my partner next to me. Afterwards he turned to me and said, “It was like I was not even there,” so I turned to him and said, “Welcome to womanhood,” with a smile on my face.
Since I identify as a woman who menstruates, much of my knowledge on menstruation comes from my own personal relationship with my body and my history with menstruating. My project co-partner will never have the same depth of understanding of menstruation as I do, because he identifies as a man who has never menstruated. Feminist standpoint theory, which is a branch of feminist epistemology defined by Sandra Harding, defines how an individual’s gender identity influences how they shape their experiences with the world around them.[4] I first learned about this theory in my feminist theory class, and I immediately made the connection between my co-partner, our period project, and myself, and how it all intersects. I spent so much of my time when we first started working together completely frustrated with him. I was frustrated because I felt he was unworthy of getting praised for what he was doing and that he did not understand the deeper meaning this work meant to me. I realized I was selfish in that way of thinking, because no matter his reasoning, he was still showing up and putting in the same amount of work as I was. He will never understand what it’s like to be a woman or a person who menstruates, but he can still advocate and help to educate others, especially other men who are uneducated on menstruation.
If I were to tell a 15-year-old me the work that I have done and what I have made possible, she would be in absolute disbelief, but she would also be so proud of me. Back then I had a voice but never had the courage to use it. Now I use it every day and each day it gets stronger and louder. I do what I do because I know that it is making a difference in people’s lives, but I also do it to make 15-year-old me proud.
[1] “State of the Period 2023” (Thinx Inc., PERIOD Inc., SKDK, 2023), period.org/uploads/SOTP-2023.pdf.
[2] See note 1 above.
[3] See note 1 above.
[4] Sandra Harding, “Introduction: Standpoint theory as a site of political, philosophic, and scientific debate,” In The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (Routledge, 2004), 1-13.
Bibliography
Harding, S. (2004). Introduction: Standpoint theory as a site of political, philosophic, and scientific debate. In S. Harding (Ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (pp. 1–13). essay, Routledge.
State of the Period 2023, period.org/uploads/SOTP-2023.pdf