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Culture Girls Menstruation Menstruation Stigma Periods

I wish I’d had this illustrated guide to periods as a teenager

sudshr47 December 3, 2018

My first period showed up out of the blue like an unwelcome guest that I was highly unprepared for. I didn’t know what I was looking at, what was normal, what was safe to do, or who to talk to.

Most of all, though, I was mortified by the very idea of having blood coming out of my private parts. Could people tell? What if I bled onto my clothes? This embarrassment prevented me from telling literally anyone — even my own mother — for the first few years of my menstruating life. This meant that I didn’t have proper access to period products and had to make do with pads that I pilfered from my mum’s bathroom in the hope she wouldn’t notice. My teenage years were full of makeshift, creative ways of trying (and often failing) to stem the flow of menstrual blood that I was woefully ill-equipped to manage. Read more…

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Activism Culture Menstruation Watercooler Women S Rights

Nevada eliminates tampon tax in leap forward for menstruation equality

sudshr47 November 10, 2018

This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.

In my feminist utopia, sanitary pads and tampons are provided free of charge by the United States government.

In my current reality, they’re offered at $4 bucks a pack at CVS — and that’s with the savings from my CVS card.

We’re a long way from menstruation equality, which makes Nevada’s recent elimination of the “tampon tax” a critical step forward.

On Tuesday, Nevada voted to do away with their 6.85% sales tax imposed on sanitary pads and tampons. Read more…

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Australia Menstruation Tampon Tampon Tax Women S Rights

It’s finally bloody happening: Australia scraps tampon tax

sudshr47 October 3, 2018

Four months after Australia made a landmark decision to scrap its controversial tampon tax, it’s finally bloody happening.
Following years of public protest, resulting in a proposal by the Australian government, the country’s states and territories h…

Australia Menstruation Periods Tampon Tampon Tax

This country just made a huge move to ditch its controversial tampon tax

sudshr47 June 18, 2018

Australia has just made a landmark decision to scrap its controversial tampon tax.
On Monday, the country’s Senate passed a bill drafted by the Greens party to remove the tax on tampons and feminine hygiene products, previously considered by law to b…

Culture Menstruation Menstruation Stigma Tampons Watercooler

When will tampon users stop shaming pad users?

sudshr47 April 14, 2018

For far too long, people who use menstrual pads have been doubly stigmatized: first for their periods, and second, for their feminine hygiene product of choice.
“Why do you want to wear an adult diaper?” tampon loyalists will ask. They are confident …

Culture Health Lists Menstruation Web Culture

15 words we use for periods that are funny any time of the month

sudshr47 March 28, 2016

Shark Week. Aunt Flo. Period.

All of these words are euphemisms for one thing: menstruation. So why can’t we just use the word menstruation instead of all of this period slang? Well, there’s probably a lot of reasons we’re always looking for other words for period, ranging from everything from social pressures to the idea that the word menstruation is just a little bit hard to say.

An international survey conducted by the health app Clue found that there are more than “5,000 different slang/euphemistic expressions and phrases for periods: from the gentle English ‘Aunt Flo,’ to the dramatic French ‘Les Anglais ont debarqué’ – ‘the English have landed.'” Read more…

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