I found it interesting to read the article on BBC news about Indian Women getting rid of the shame of periods They are having large gatherings where they can talk about their periods, where they can share their issues that come with periods, and also have charts in their homes with their menstrual cycle on. This is totally amazing. But does it happen here?
I was thinking that growing up I was told very little about periods and was definitely not allowed to talk about them in the home. They happened. They were known as the curse. They were something women had to endure. I was thinking I never knew what my mother’s or my sister’s menstrual cycles were. I am presuming they both had periods??? And with my daughter it was only her pushing the whole thing with her apps on her phone, her wanting to keep things open and talk, and also because she wasn’t having an easy time with hers. I wonder if she had not had her pains and major mood swings if her menstrual cycle would not have been talked about. Like I say it was only her pushing the subject not me.
I’ve noticed too that I am having more issues with my typing writing “menstrual cycle” than I did when I was writing about “abortion“, though that wasn’t easy either.
Why is there such shame about it? Why until recently have period products, which every woman for a large part of her life needs, seen as luxury items? Only recently has the VAT been taken from the price of these. And it is only Scotland who have finally said that period products should be provided free to those who need them. About time!!!
EU law required members to tax tampons and sanitary towels at 5% since 2001, treating period products as non-essential.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51629880
Did you know that in the rest of the UK one can get condoms and other birth control items for free but only in Scotland can you get period products for free? Now I have worked with young people a lot but I will still say that having sex is a choice, having a period is not. It is not possible to abstain from a period without medical intervention!
I felt that 2020 was the time of perfect vision but I think that we still haven’t seen all there is to see. I believe that the whole topic of Periods coming out into the open is a continuation of finding perfect vision, perfect clarity, and openness and a freedom to see things as they truly are – not just the political situations in our world, not just the economics of our world, but the day to day issues of our world, with women’s bodies being one of those. Please feel free to put in the comments box your own things you would like to see coming out into the open and being seeing and talked about freely and clearly
Perhaps until we can be open, honest and fair 2020’s revealing of Perfect Vision will continue for much longer than it has been.
A quick aside – I find it wonderful that it is a man, Sunil Jaglan, in India who has been helping woman to gather to talk about woman’s health issues, and that the Tayside ‘period dignity officer’ is Jason Grant. As women’s health comes more and more to the fore I think it is great that men are involved too. This cannot be a women only affair.
Aspirational Adventures 