I am PRINTING that atricle out to SAVE!!

I know, I really liked that article, too. That it was written to address certain misconceptions people have about washable pads is really helpful. What do people think women used for thousands of years, anyway?

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Laurel Lemming
Scarleteen Advocate

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Milke, with an L, SSBD, RATS, TMNTP

Namely because as Milke said, there is no danger in that, anymore than there is in washing underpants, or a handkerchief you've cut your finger on (less there, even). And certainly less than having garbage tins all over the place with used disposable pads sitting in them.

Your school/dorm is propagating some truly archaic and misogynistic fallacies there. If you're up to it, I'd call them on it.

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Heather Corinna
Editor and Founder, Scarleteen

I'm not a girl, so I REALLY don't care what a girl does to deal with her period. Neither am I all that aware of the pros and cons associated with the various products available. But one does not have to be an expert on anything to be able to analyze the methods used to promote it. If I were a girl, nothing in this article would make me want to switch.

As much as the writer might not like reading this response, it is intended to be constructive. If washable menstrual pads do offer advantages over other products then she will be doing women in general a service by letting them know what they are.

I think the difference between someone trying to sell something and the writers of this article is that they didn't write it for any sort of benefit. If it conveys a sense of trying to change someone's view on the topic of home made menstrual pads, it's because the author believes that these products could be useful and beneficial to the reader- and two benefits that I can remember off the top of my head are financial benefits, and the lack of risking using products that have been unhealthily bleached in order to maintain a facade of "cleanliness". I don't think it's so much a matter of being in competition with any other menstrual product.

However, mainstream products are marketed VERY hard, and often in such a way as to fool consumers into thinking that commercial menstrual products are better than the alternatives, when they are in no way so -- they aren't "cleaner," they are environmentally hazardous and they are less healthy for women. But when you're working against that commercial push, sometimes to present the alternatives, you've got to work the hard sell.

I felt the article very clearly outlined the pros. The thing is, when it comes to these alternatives, there really ARE no cons. It's tantamount to talking about the pros and cons of say, potato chips and raw vegetables.

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Heather Corinna
Editor and Founder, Scarleteen

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Milke, with an L, SSBD, RATS, TMNTP, MF

What I wonder about mostly though is how you deal with changing them in the middle of the day, say at work or college? That's the one that I'd like to know about.

I'm not really worried about how sanitary it is (my mother still has her original washable diapers from when she was a baby and her first washable pads in the attic cause that's all they had back then- and she's not that old: 47) or what a hassle it is, but in a public restroom I can't really see myself washing out a pad. I'm assuming you can't leave it in your purse till the end of the day without washing it and all.

Personally, since about two years ago I discovered the tampon and have loved it ever since. Pads just remind me all day long that I'm having my pointless period and hating it while with a tampon I can forget about it untill I need to change it. Takes care of the 'odor' problem too (which really is a case of changing your pad in time anyway, you're right about that).

But then I don't get the whole 'feeling like a woman' thing anyway. My mom and others warned me about how having a period makes us feel like women. I'm sorry but I still see it as an uncured imperfection on natures part. There are some animals whose cycle is triggered by intercourse which seems much more sensible to me, every period is another egg down the drain and I'm not overpopulating the planet with more people anyway.

I do agree that it is a shame that we've all been taught to be so disgusted with ourselves and our own bodies. But then somehow I think we're making progress, at least our generation was told we'd start bleeding somewhere along the line and it wouldn't end there, most girls before us still thought they were dying.

Thanx

"1897: Sears, Roebuck, and Co. starts selling mass-produced cloth menstrual pads in their acatalog, but you wash and reuse them. Eww!" (Eww! in italics)

I just wanted to use this example to show why I'm glad this site is around. I'm not really one to take a magazine like Cosmo very seriously, but had I not heard of modern washable pads here and read that they are NOT unsanitary, I might have actually gotten the idea that they were worthy of a big, italic "Eww!" I just hate to think of how many people will now see washable pads and think that they're gross without even giving them a chance or learning about their benefits just because of three little letters.

I've just ordered some washable pads and can't wait to try them out. I realize that it'll be a bit of work rinsing and washing them, but I think it's worth it not to spend 5 days a month with synthetic products in my pants that cost me money and give me grief.

Moreover, the word "cunt" has been misused/used as derogatory the same way the words "prick" "dick" or "fuck" often are, and like them and other words, some colloquial meanings or feelings about them have no bearing on the root or actual meaning of words (etymologically speaking, "cunt" appears likely to be derived from the Germanic root "kunton", female genitalia, whose pre-germanic root simply means concave -- pretty benign and literal stuff, that).

So, I understand what you're saying, but the truth of the matter is that in a culture like ours, there truly are NO terms for genitalia or sex which are both not clinical AND not loaded for someone, and many people have been working to reclaim most of those terms, per the use here.

(FYI, Inga Muscio's "Cunt" is a great read on this matter.)

To use that word discredits females in general. We are not simply 'cunts'. I don't know what crowd you are trying to appeal to, but it definitely does not promote respect of yourself, girls, females, ladies or women. In the age of women making it for themselves I think it is damaging to make these inferences. It is kind of like saying 'All men are dicks and all women are cunts'. YAY.

Other than your use of modern words with an unmodern product, I have no problem. Just try to convince the rest of the world using the same genitalia descriptions....

Thanks for being a sound person,
Lynn
(btw, the UID is only a joke. Sarcasm demands in response to that article...)

quote:

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Originally posted by lmt:
I am not all about P.C. and I am not easily offended, but, cunt? "it’s a bit different from the odor that your cunt has at other times" I know, sticks and stones, but, this word makes me visualize a filthy, bitter man (probably rotting in prison) who has sick issues regarding women. It certainly doesn't inspire me to run out and buy any product supported by this article. I am sure the author is intelligent and extremely capable of using a word less abrasive. It's like the difference between making love and getting fucked! Even the word pussy would be better.

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quote:

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To use that word discredits females in general. We are not simply 'cunts'.

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I'm confused by your response. In the article, Emira Mears never uses "cunt" to refer to women or girls - she simply uses it as a term for the vulva.

And I don't see how a word with a "c" can "discredit" women when a word with a "v" doesn't. Having female genitals is not shameful or dirty, whatever you call them.

quote:

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It is kind of like saying 'All men are dicks and all women are cunts'. YAY.

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Well, no, it's not. Any more than your use of the word "vagina" is kind of like saying "all women are vaginas".

Some women find it empowering and positive to reclaim a word like "cunt" which has been used against women in the past, but which has an etymology which is neutral and/or positive - it derives from the same root as "queen" and terms of respect for ancient goddesses (it's not a modern term at all).

"Vagina", on the other hand, derives from the Latin for "sheath" - something to put sharp bladed weapons into. If we're looking at connotations, that definitely doesn't strike me as positive or woman-friendly!

Check out http://www.scarleteen.com/forum/Forum8/HTML/000441.html for a longer discussion of this whole issue, and http://members.lycos.co.uk/mathunt/dissertation.html . for a guide to the etymology.

[This message has been edited by logic_grrl (edited 01-08-2004).]

i applaud the use of 'cunt' in this article.. if nothing else, it *does* highlight the silliness of having one word okay and another causing such extreme reactions when both are talking about the same body part.

to me, it strikes me much more as displaying the idea that there is something dirty or wrong with the female reproductive system if it can only be considered pleasantly if the words referring to it are chosen carefully.

-and also that that there are always some that cannot separate a reference to a body part and an attack on a woman as a person.

no person was referred to in the use of the word cunt, no attack was made... but the very use of a non-clinical term for a section of the female genitals, the lack of "careful -fragile" handling, inspires negative feeling regarding women as whole creatures.

There are numerous feminist works out and about, many from very credible and celebrated authors, which do just that. (And no, Emira in that piece did not call any woman a cunt at any time -- that it was read that way speaks volumes, and not about the author).

Again, I'm just going to reiterate: everyone is likely to have different words they like most used for their anatomy, and sometimes, some they don't like used at all (personally, I don't like "vagina" especially since etymology aside, most people don't even use it correctly, they use that medical term for the vaginal canal to mean the vulva; I do like cunt, but I don't like pussy so much, etc. and yet, I read plenty using a million types of words and it's no big whoop, I can still value the work all the same).

But what was just said by Rumpus above is pretty apt, in my book: if any of those words are so loaded we can't see through them and accept the simple fact that language varies widely and that context always needs be taken into account with language, the problem isn't with the words themselves, it's with the approach to them.

And when that's the case, it should be easily realized by us as readers if it occurs -- we see we're bringing our own meaning to things, our own perspectives color our interpretation, we accept that, knowing it's impossible to see anything 100% outside of our own lens, and there are no absolutes, and we move on. Putting that subjective response on an author simply is neither accurate nor sensible. Were I to say "this author used this word I don't like which connotes X, Y or Z to me, therefore, it's lousy writing," I'd end up with Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Henry Miller, Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, and Shakespeare in the lousy writer pile, which would be pretty questionable, to say the least.

quote:

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There are numerous feminist works out and about, many from very credible and celebrated authors, which do just that.

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Such as Germaine Greer's essay "Lady, Love Your Cunt", which was first published more than 30 years ago (anyone who's interested can find it in her collection "The Madwoman's Underclothes").

Or, if you want a more recent example, the "Reclaiming Cunt" speech in Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues".

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Milke, with an L, Mrs BD to you, RATS, TMNTP, MF, CWCD, WAOTA

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Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result!

This is a big step for me considering that I have been a tampon/disposable pad user for ages. I always wanted to try them, but never worked up the nerve to do so.

1) They don't make that crinkly sound of unwrapping or even handling disposables. That sound travels through doors, and it's embarrassing at a boyfriend's house or a public restroom!

2) If you think washing out your own blood in the sink is gross, think about the disposable pads and tampons of billions of women piling up in landfills and washing up on beaches, still saturated with it.

3) They just FEEL better on my sensitive skin down there! Yeah, they're a little thicker, but it's just plushy cotton cloth. The surface that's touching you is like underwear. I don't feel like I'm wearing a special hygenic bandage because I'm ILL.

4) Facing the blood (and I get a little queasy with blood) in the sink, or while soaking or washing them, puts the period out in the open (for me, not for the world). And you know, anything you face makes it less scary and disgusting. You realize the time you bleed really IS a natural process that's not a disaster or shameful.

visit the gladrags.com site, they have some good reasons to switch too.

I actually read that most "white" things in the West are tinted blue to create a certain "clean" effect, but that in Africa a slightly red tint is more likely to signify cleanliness!

See David Bodanis' "The Secret Family" for detail