by Carly Rhianna Smith

Carly Rhianna Smith is a journalism student at Langara College currently completing her practicum at The Tyee in Vancouver. 

I became aware of the men’s rights movement in September of 2012, when a friend showed me an upcoming debate called “Has Feminism Gone Too Far?”

Vancouver slam poet Ruth Mason-Paull organized the debate. Feminist speakers as well as men’s rights activist (MRA) speakers were scheduled, and a public event on Facebook was created. Interestingly, the debate was to be held on Commercial Drive at Café Deux Soleil, a neighbourhood eatery haunted by many feminists, as well as others of the political left.

The Facebook event exploded with venomous discourse between the two camps, and the event was cancelled. According to an article on feminist website Jezebel.com dated September 10, “Mason-Paull canceled the debate … after receiving what she said was an overwhelming barrage of comments and threats.” On Mason-Paull’s Facebook page, she said “I come from a middle class belief that people can discuss things and work it out through logic and reasoning. I understand that this is at best delusional when applied to certain members of our society.”

Around the same time, in the same neighbourhood, posters from the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) Vancouver group began appearing, and were soon torn down. The posters said things like “Rape Culture. Men Can Stop Rape. All Men Are Rapists. Had Enough of This Shit Yet?”

 

Journalist Derek Bedry, who soon came under fire from MRAs, reported on this in a story on Open File. They accused him of “creating the news” by tearing down the posters himself. They posted pictures of a man (who didn’t look much like him) and publicly vilified him in comments on the article. Comments were patronizing, saying things like “So how did you become a reporter again Derek? Do you receive a pat on the back from some ladies at work for this? Or do they throw some more bones at you?” All this was too juicy and I did some further research into the MRM.

Tags: feminism, Gender, Gender inequality, guest blogger, Misogyny, sexism, Violence Against Women

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by Caity Goerke

[Content warning: discussion of sexual violence]

A plot device “is an object or character in a story whose only purpose is to advance the plot of the story.” While plot devices are necessary to move the action of a story forward, sometimes writers neglect to realize that there are some experiences that should always be handled with thoughtfulness and care – issues which shouldn’t be tossed around lightly as a simple means of moving from one plot point to another. Earlier in my semester, I read Titus Andronicus for my Shakespeare class and it got me thinking a lot about what it means to use rape as a plot device.

In Titus Adronicus, Titus’ daughter is brutally raped and mutilated. Lavinia’s rape is important to the play for exactly two reasons. Firstly, it allowed Shakespeare to increase the shock, gore, and horror factor of his play. Secondly, it provides motivation for Titus’ later acts of revenge. Lavinia’s rape is not important as a means of providing a platform to discuss sexual violence nor is it important to develop Lavinia as a character herself. In fact, Lavinia actually becomes less of a character after her rape because she becomes reduced to only her body. After reading Titus Andronicus, I started thinking about the ways that this is an all too common theme. Taken, I Saw the Devil, Death Wish, and Django Unchained are just a few examples of films where violence against women is used as a fundamental motivator for the story’s protagonist. Like Titus Andronicus, these films aren’t about the women who have been kidnapped, beaten, abused and raped. Both the women and the violence against them are merely important to move the plot of the story forward.

It is easy to see how using rape as a plot device in this way functions to erase women, as characters, from films and drama. Yet, the use of rape as a plot device also works in other harmful ways. Firstly, it can contribute to the sensationalization of violence against women. Violence against women is sensationalized when it is used to shock, horrify, and/or intrigue the audience. In an article called “The Bigger Picture: What happens when we find ‘The Line’ as viewers?,” movie critic Drew McWeeny speaks to his experience of watching rape being exploited for entertainment in film. He says,

what scares me most about it is that the vast majority of the scenes are directed so poorly that they become, in essence, titillation, and there is something immeasurably sick about including a scene in your film that involves rape just so you can sneak a little nudity into the movie.

The sensationalization of rape occurs in Titus in the way that Lavinia’s body, after her rape, is displayed as an object to be gawked at by other characters in the play and, subsequently, by the audience. In addition to the actual visual effects that would have been used to display the violation and mutilation of Lavinia’s body, she is described by both her rapists and her uncle in explicitly graphic ways. Not only does the repeated description of Lavinia’s appearance reduce her to her body, but the fact that she cannot speak because her tongue has been cut out further highlights her importance as a body, not as a character. The exploitation of rape is emphasized by the nature of the rape being used as a plot device. Because Lavinia’s rape is just a plot device, and her experience is never taken up and engaged with in any critical or thoughtful way, she is only important because she is a raped body – her character exists for no other purpose than to be raped. She functions only as a victim of violence and that violence is sensationalized so as to “justify” the equally sensationalized acts of violence committed by Titus in revenge.

Not only does using rape as a plot device contribute to its sensationalization, but it also functions to desensitize the audience to the issue of violence against women. McWeeny explains that “I must see 30 films a year where somebody needs to have ‘something bad’ happen, and the go-to impulse in almost every case is rape.” When rape is reduced to simply “something bad,” the reality that it is a traumatic experience that occurs in pandemic proportions is completely ignored. In Titus Andronicus, Lavinia’s rape is only important because it is a crime against Titus’ family, it’s simply “something bad.” Depicting rape in this way desensitizes us because it erases the experience of the victim and, therefore, ignores the grave reality of rape. We become further desensitized because rape is used in this way in film, television, and literature time and time again. You only have to turn on Law and Order, CSI, or any of a variety of crime dramas to see rape being used as a platform from which to launch the episode’s plot. While these shows occasionally take the time to engage with larger social issues related to violence (Law and Order SVU is perhaps the best example of this), the vast majority of the time the issue of sexual violence isn’t the focus of the episode. Instead, it’s the successes of a talented investigative team that takes the spotlight. Using rape again and again as nothing but a plot device causes us to forget what rape really is: a traumatic and violent event perpetrated against an individual as a result of a variety of intersecting and oppressive factors such as gender, race, sexuality, class, and ability.

Why is it so incredibly dangerous to ignore the reality of rape? Well, for starters, because we know that, in North America, 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetimes. 1 in 4. That’s 25%. And that’s only people who identify as women. How can we sensationalize and desensitize ourselves to the issue of rape when we understand the pervasiveness of it? When we use rape as a plot device and when we neglect to engage with the issue of sexual violence in thoughtful ways what are we saying to our classmates, to the person three rows behind you in the movie theatre, to the dorm-mate sharing the couch with you during your Saturday CSI marathon? What are we saying when these are people for whom rape is a reality, not just something that happens on screens, on stages, and in books? While these questions can’t be easily answered by a simple solution, there are things we can do to speak up. Efforts like Miss Representation’s #NotBuyingIt campaign allows us to bring our voices together to demand more responsible media. Donating our time and/or money to front-line organizations like Women Against Violence Against Women, Battered Women’s Support Services, Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, and UBC’s Sexual Assault Support Centre contributes to the provision of community-level support for victims of violence. Participating in events like the February 14th Women’s Memorial March and the March 23rd Community March Against Racism raises awareness about lived experiences of violence and oppression. Most importantly, we have to remember that using rape as a plot device isn’t just about lazy writing and the exploitation of trauma for “entertainment value.” Using rape as a plot device contributes to a culture where violence, trauma, degradation, and oppression go unquestioned in all forms of media. Moving from this point requires much more than just volunteerism and Twitter activism and, instead, requires a shift in our collective consciousness.

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Originally posted at Left Hook: A Critical Review of Sport and Society 

If had a nickel for every headline this past year that claimed 2012 was the “Year of Women’s Sport” I would be able to buy a hefty bag of candies from Seven Eleven. This has even come from heavy hitters such as NPR, Time, CNN, and The Advocate among others. Many of these proclamations were sparked by the 2012 London Olympics for its various milestones. All countries represented had female and male competitors for the first time; the US even had more female than male athletes in attendance. Women’s boxing made its debut as an Olympic sport. In Canada, we voted national soccer team captain Christine Sinclair as Canada’s Athlete of the Year. Those of you who caught Sinclair’s performance in the recent summer Olympics will not be surprised by this award selection. Her performance was simply mesmerizing. CBCSports.ca soccer writer Ben Rycroft has said, “For Sinclair, it was the best year by the best player Canada has ever produced — on the men or women’s side.”

I have, indeed, swooned over Sinclair’s moves and swooned over Canada’s swooning over this deserving soccer player. I had goose bumps when hearing 17-year-old boxing gold medalist Claressa Shields explain that she was “so mad” when she was told as a little kid that girls couldn’t box. And, I’m not the only one. That story won the best radio documentary of the year at the esteemed Third Coast Festival. The public are rooting for these women. I mean actually rooting – there’s no paternal “ain’t that sweet” sentimentality surrounding these athletes.

I do think the excitement around these stories is a marker in a cultural shift, of sorts, in North America. These female athletes are legitimate athletic role models.

However, this shift (as pleasing as it is to this sporty feminist’s eye) seems to be merely a chip in the facade of a greater and firmly rooted patriarchal foundation. I was thinking about this recently when my news alerts brought me to an article which rightfully pointed out that considering all the recent athletic achievements of women in sport it is pretty appalling to witness the stats associated with its media coverage. A 20 year study (1989-2009) by University of Southern California found that “women’s sports accounted for less than 2% of network news and ESPN’s SportsCenter.” I’ve seen these stats before so I don’t find them shocking any longer. What I am increasingly having a hard time digesting is how ordinary and banal people seem to find these facts. As one commenter under the above mentioned article wrote, “It is simple really. No one wants to watch it.”

It’s become a kind of cognitive dissonance. We can adore and give the highest acclaim to Christine Sinclair and at the same time we understand that it’s perfectly natural that she should never be able to make a living at soccer nor enjoy a supportive viewership year round.

How did we get here? To an era that seems to celebrate women in sport at the same time we expect it to remain second class. Well, I have some theories (with a little help from some wise sports scholars).

Theory 1: We keep putting all our equality eggs in the Olympic basket. 

It’s no secret that I find much about the International Olympic Committee and its reign to be problematic to say the least. But, this does not mean every person involved in every level of Olympic organizing consciously believes that women’s sport should remain a substandard spectacle. It does mean that any progress around gender equality will never be led by the IOC unless it happens to coincide with a presumed increase in profits or a benefit to the Olympic brand.

At the London Olympics opening ceremony IOC president Jacques Rogge said that the participation of at least one female athlete per participating country was “a major boost for gender equality.” As I mentioned above, this is one of the main cited reasons for 2012 being the Year of Women’s Sport. Last summer I asked Kathleen Lahey, a law professor and sport equity expert, about these declarations of equality in the Olympics. She responded, “I have likened that to saying: Oh well then women in Canada must be equal now because we have at least one woman MP sitting in the Canadian parliament from each province and territory. That is a very superficial definition of equality.”

To give further perspective, the first female IOC member was not accepted until 1981. Not exactly trailblazers of women’s inclusion. According to a recent IOC fact sheet, “more than 18.8%” of the current membership include women (4 of which are “honorary” members). Pardon me if I don’t rejoice in the apparent brag-worthy percentage of 18.8679 as marking some sort of dawning age of equality.

The IOC is not a democracy. It does not have internal laws like Canada’s Charter, the U.K.’s Human Rights Act 2010, or other non-discrimination provisions. In the words of acclaimed sport journalist Laura Robinson, the IOC is “powerful men who answer to no one [who] decide whether women can participate.” However, due to the hard work of canoeist Samantha Rippington and her legal team we may yet see some movement in the IOC’s and host country’s human rights accountability in the near future.

Theory 2: Ending homophobia in sport is seen as unrelated to ending sexism

“The usual way the people are taught to think in amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject.  For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern.  It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.” – Assata Shakur

A happy thing has occurred over the last couple years in men’s professional sport – homophobia against men (lesbian/queer women are largely ignored as all women in professional sport) is slowly becoming unacceptable. A few NFL players have come out in support of gay marriage and Patrick Burke’s You Can Play Project, dedicated to “ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation” has seen much press and support.  

A couple months ago I attended a small workshop on the topic of homophobia in men’s professional sports. There were a few very young women in attendance who made it obvious that their participation was contingent on an extra credit for a first year undergraduate course at the host University. However, as the workshop progressed I could tell that the topic was exciting their interest. The facilitator took us through some examples of instances of homophobia in men’s sports – most notably Blue Jays player Yunel Escobar’s anti-gay slur written on his eye black – as well as acknowledging that derogatory terms used against gay men are often synonymous with slurs that have been used to put down women.

During the discussion period one of the young women offered that rejection of homophobia is much easier to embrace when one knows a gay person. She admitted to saying things like “that’s so gay” before two of her close cousins ‘came out.’ I thought this the perfect opportunity to tease out some of the issues for this young woman who initially seemed entirely bored by the subject. I said to her that surely she has women in her life that she is close with; she’s a woman herself. Homophobia against men is rooted in a devaluation or hatred, even, of what we understand to be feminine traits: sensitive, physically weak, superficial, materialistic etc. So, you’re a “fag” and therefore not a ‘real man’ because you’re behaving like a ‘woman’ which is the ultimate insult for a boy or man. This is entirely related to society’s devaluation of women. She gave me a blank stare. I looked to the facilitator for help and when it didn’t arrive I tried to get him to talk about the significance of Escobar’s defenders who said that the Spanish slur written under his eyes actually translated to “pussy” not “faggot” and therefore was obviously more acceptable. He acknowledged that that was interesting but could not help me break down the significance for the young woman. Too bad Hudson Taylor wasn’t there.

I have thought about that moment a lot and what it says about how we’ve come to understand sexism in contemporary times. It’s important to stop using anti-gay slurs in the fight to end homophobia but if we’re unwilling to talk about why gay men so wholly offend the status quo, especially in a uber masculine environment like men’s professional sport, then we’re at best simply treating the symptoms instead of the cause. The resultant disease is that sexism remains unscrutinized, difficult to challenge, and largely invisible.

Theory 3: The sex binary myth has been replaced by ‘mutant women’ myth

Sport is organized around the celebration of masculinity (i.e. traits we socially prescribe to men). Due to this, female athletes occupy an uncomfortable social space because their very existence confuses traditional notions of femininity and masculinity.  What this means is that the treatment of female athletes is a useful barometer for the status of women in society as a whole.

As elite female athletes continue to push the gender expectations the last several years has seen a pushback against this challenging of the status quo. Only this time around the conversation has changed.

Last summer I interviewed sport scholar Sandy Wells about recent developments in the language around gender in sport and continued debates in sport about sex testing. An important fight in feminism has been pointing out that the sex binary is a myth. To quote the linked article by Melissa McEwan, “Every time one sex has assigned to it a particular trait or behavior or emotion, then the other is assigned its opposite, or merely its absence—and a failure to demonstrate its opposite or absence, as prescribed by one’s own gender, thus results in a deviation of which our gender-obsessed, binary-obsessed, gender role-enforcing patriarchy will not approve.” Fortunately, as mentioned, female athletes by mere existence have busted many of these binaries. This makes me think of people like Kathrine Switzer (first woman to run the Boston Marathon) whose own track coach didn’t believe women had the physiological capability to run a marathon until she proved him wrong one day at practice.

When controversy exploded over the gender/sex of South African athlete Castor Semenya, Sandy Wells analyzed reactions on a track and field listserv on which she is a subscriber. She made some interesting observations. She noted that, “people were very knowledgeable about biological myths about the sex binary.” So, unlike more sensationalist headlines concluding that Semenya must be a “man” because she competed so well, these track experts believe that her biology merely gives her an ‘unfair’ advantage over other women (this accusation was thrown on basketball player Brittney Griner more recently – read linked post to see why I believe it’s no coincidence that these two high profile cases were centred around women of colour). This unfair advantage being her “abnormal” testosterone levels. As Sandy Wells points out, this is no less sexist as “the result is that women are still compared against a standard of athleticism that is defined always as being outside of their capacity.”

In other words, the dialogue, in the institution of sport (Wells noted these conversations in the IOC level as well), has changed from blatant refusal to believe that any woman could compete at a high level at all (and therefore must be a man if they actually did) to a proposed desire to ‘protect’ female athletes from abnormal outliers that make the playing field “unfair.” Sandy Wells reiterates why the latter is still problematic by explaining that the demand for anatomically and hormonally equivalence in sport is only demanded in women’s sport because “men who play sports are just exhibiting maleness.” Standing at 7 ft 6 inches, Yao Ming’s hasn’t been barred from basketball in order to level the playing field. He is just using his ‘natural’ characteristics to his advantage as is expected from any male athlete.

Theory 4: Sex segregation in sport cements notion that women are worse than men at sport

Dividing sport based on sex relies on a lot of assumptions on sex differences in performance. It seems like a useful marker because it is believed that men are generally better than women in sport. I can’t think of any other institution where blatant proclamations of women’s inferiority are taken so wholly for granted.

Despite this ingrained sense of female inferiority, progressive sport experts have been questioning the usefulness of sex segregation for years. As early as 1985, Bruce Kidd (former Olympian and current University of Toronto professor) was reported to have said that, “there are little or no physiological reasons to exclude women from participating with men in most sports. Given the same training, time and resources women could learn to play most sports as well as men.” In 1988, after battling for 3 years in court, young Justine Blainey won the right to play in the boy’s Metro Toronto Hockey League. In a Globe and Mail article from 1993, sport journalist Laura Robinson explains that Blainey’s win, unfortunatlely, has not been enough to change attitudes. She ends the article by writing: “1947, Jackie Robinson bravely challenged the colour barrier in sports. Today it would be unthinkable to segregate people by race in sports. Isn’t it time we took the same attitude toward segregation by sex?”

Some of you may be thinking, well, race is different. We know that the fastest man is faster than the fastest woman; the strongest weight lifting man is stronger than the strongest weight lifting woman etc. To begin, these kinds of stats are pulled from a tiny minority of the all ready tiny minority of elite competitors based in a world that does not make it easy for women to live and train solely as an athlete. Additionally, most sex segregated sports have stats that are not so easily comparable. Rules in women’s sports tend to be ‘lighter’ than men’s (e.g. best of 3 sets in women’s tennis vs. best of 5 sets in men’s). Even so, any results we have deemed comparable do not prove that this will be the way things are forever or that these differences are based solely on inherent ‘man genetics’ and not cultural expectations.

Cordelia Fin writes about how sensitive our mind and performance is to the social environment in her illuminating book Delusions of Gender. Through simple manipulations of social context social psychologists are disproving many long held beliefs on gender differences of cognition and at the same time showing the power of ingrained stereotypes. Historically, mental rotation performance – a type of test linked to spatial intelligence – has been the most consistently measured aspect of cognition that invokes male superiority. Higher levels of testosterone in boys and men have been a popular explanation for the results. This 2010 study in Physiological Science journal supported this theory by hypothesizing that female twins from opposite-sex pairs will “show a large and robust male advantage, such as the mental rotation task” due to their prenatal testosterone exposure. So how big exactly is this large and robust male advantage? In her book Fin points out several social cues that adjusted these results. The most staggering involved 3 groups; the first was told that men perform better in this test, “probably for genetic reasons,” the control group was given no information about gender and the last group was told the blatant lie that women perform better in this test. In the first two groups the men outperformed women in the usual way but the last group, the “women are better” group, the women performed just as well as the men.

This does not prove exactly what biology is behind success in the mental rotation performance but it does prove that our social expectations, especially when triggered, appear to greatly affect performance. If our social expectations are strong enough to change actual performance then it’s a safe assumption that dividing all sports by sex (as a way to mark general skill level) will reinforce the societal expectation that women’s sports are lower status.

Anybody remember this poster?

Writers and scholars Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pannano explore the sex segregation issue more deeply in their book Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sport. They do a convincing job of explaining why these assumptions create a near impenetrable cycle, “…the initial assumption that women are inferior to men in sports gets institutionalized not only by the way sports is coercively organized on a sex-segregated principle, including sex segregation in the monetary rewards for playing sports, but also in the way these principles reproduce the initial assumption of women’s inferiority in the first place.” That’s a bit of a mouth full but it explains the catch-22 of “little demand for women’s sports = low monetary investment/low monetary investment confirms women’s sports as low-grade = little demand” reinforced by the assumptions for dividing sexes in the first place.

I do not have room in this piece to discuss the various forms and ramifications of taking away the sex dividing line in sport (e.g religious requirements, maintenance of safe trans/women’s/girl’s only spaces etc). I do not think any feminist minded sport enthusiast is advocating to do away with this division in every circumstance. Women/trans sport spaces will remain important fixtures in our communities as will discussions led by Muslim feminists on Right To Wear campaigns. Conversations on how to change the sport institution to be more fair and equitable have been going on for years and what better time to bring them to the forefront than in the post-Year of Women’s Sports era.

Tags: olympics, professional sports, sex segregation, sex testing, sexism is sport, women's sports

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Our menstrual culture is rooted in shaming of women as dirty and unclean. This is what the feminine hygiene industry plays off of to sell us products, presenting menstruation to us as a problem that needs to be dealt with discreetly. Since the topic of menstruation is so taboo, most information that is available to young women about menstruation is offered by the feminine hygiene industry, whose main objective is to market their products. In order to keep a market for their products they must perpetuate myths that menstruation is embarrassing and should be kept a dirty little secret. So they come up with marketing messages like, “Discreet. Small. Extends and protects. Only you’ll know its a tampon,” or “Small enough to keep out of sight.” These phrases bank on shame and the fear of people knowing we are having our period and reinforce the culture belief that menstruation is a shameful condition. God forbid someone knows you’re on your rag! But its treated like its the unpardonable sin, that you may contaminate those around you if they know you’re bleeding. Even the words “feminine hygiene” invoke the feeling that there is something unclean about the way our bodies function and that we require a product to make us hygienic again.

 

Other advertisements insist that a tampon will give you the freedom to go on living life as normal. We’ve all seen commercials with the sad girl sitting in her room unable to take part in day to day activities, like a pariah. But then she finds out about tampons and soon enough she is riding horses, playing sports and twirling barefoot on the beach! The message in these commercials reinforce social stigma about menstruation and are dangerous because they tell young women that our periods are an irregularity and in order to continue living “normally” a product needs to be used to hide our bleeding. This could not be further from the truth! Menstruation is normal and natural and the tampons those commercials are peddling can have adverse effects on women’s bodies.

 

The problems with the fem “hygiene” industry don’t stop at the perpetuation of harmful attitudes about the period. The products they are peddling are also bad for women’s bodies and bad for Mother Earth. Menstrual products such as the tampon are a health risk for women masquerading as cleanliness. Tampons can cause Toxic Shock Syndrome or TSS. TSS is a serious and sometimes fatal disease, in fact in 1980, 38 women died from TSS caused by tampon use! The symptoms of TSS are a sudden high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, sunburn-like rash, dizziness, muscle aches and fainting or near fainting when standing up. TSS is caused by the staphyloccus bacteria which can grow on synthetic fibres. ALL mainstream tampon manufacturers have at least one type of synthetic fibre in their products! Manufacturers of tampons continue to use highly absorbent fibres such as viscose and rayon even though they know they are linked to TSS!

 

Tampons often contain dioxins because of the bleaching process they undergo. Tampons are bleached white in order to appear sterile, but the dioxins that remain make them anything but clean. Dioxins are toxic chemicals that have been linked to decreased sperm count in men (yes this affects the men too!) and decreased fertility in women, as well as endometriosis. Dioxin is carcinogenic! But the Fem “hygiene” industry insists that the amount of dioxins in tampons are so miniscule that they do not pose any threat to women’s health. But what about compounded exposure to dioxins month after month? Also, dermal contact in the vagina might differ from regular dermal contact as vaginal tissue is highly absorbent. Tampons have also been known to alter the natural bacteria and micro-organisms in the vagina. And vaginal dryness and ulcerations may occur when a tampon is too absorbent for your flow. All of your lovely, perfectly natural and needed secretions are being sopped up by TSS inducing tampons. This does not sounds like a great “hygiene” option to me.

 

If the dangers of tampon use are not enough, mainstream menstrual products are also bad for the earth. Tampons and pads create excessive waste and the plastics in pads and tampon applicators sit in landfills.  It is absolutely true that we need to attend to our periods and that includes having menstrual products, but we need products that are healthy for our bodies and the earth. So we want to discuss some alternative options, reusable ones without toxic chemicals, that are great for you and Mother Earth.

 

Reusable tampon: The Reusable Tampon is used like a regular disposable tampon, but washed and reused. As the rayon in commercial disposable tampons is one of the factors in TSS, cotton tampons (disposable or reusable) are a safer option.

 

 

 

 

Interlabia pad: An Interlabial Pad is basically a tampon worn externally in the labia, rather than internally. These cannot be worn while swimming, but can offer a step between an internal product or a pad for those who don’t want to use an internal product.

 

 

 

 

Sea Sponge: This is a naturally occurring sea sponge that is used in the vagina to absorb the flow, much like a tampon. They are moistened for use, allowing them to be comfortably inserted. They are washed and reused, and can be boiled in a pot of water or submerged in sterilising solution if desired. Not a great option though, if you are vegan.

 

 

Menstrual cup: There are now several brands of Menstrual Cup available around the world. A Menstrual Cup is a soft bell shaped item which is used inside the vagina to collect the flow. They are removed to be emptied, rinsed out and replaced. They can be boiled in a pot of water to be sterilised before and after each period. The one cup can last many years, can be used while swimming or sleeping and does not have the same TSS risks as tampons do. They also have a much greater capacity than tampons and can safely be kept in place for 12 hours.

 

 

 

Cloth pads: These are essentially a washable fabric version of a disposable menstrual pad. Mostly made by small businesses, these come in a huge variety of types. Using fabrics such as bamboo or cotton, they can be very absorbent and some even include a waterproof layer to give the same security as a disposable pad. Colourful fabrics can add to the positive aspect of using these, as can soft fabrics such as velour. Cloth Pads can be reused for many years. After they have been worn, they can be rinsed clean or left to soak and washed in a washing machine with the rest of the laundry. Some women like to use the water on their gardens to make use of the nutrients the blood gives. You can also make your own.

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Forty years ago, women saw the Pill as a way for to gain crucial control over their family planning and attain the time and energy for life pursuits beyond labor, delivery, and child care.  According to USA Today, the FDA approved the first birth control pill to stop women’s periods indefinitely in 2007. If this sounds strange or scary to you, you may be interested to know that about half the women in the studies dropped out due to irregular and unscheduled bleeding and spotting that could last for four to five days, for the first year, that replaced their scheduled menstruation.  It’s like our bodies are trying to tell us something…. what.. could.. it.. be??  There are other pills on the market too that are designed to shorten monthly periods to three days or less or down to only four times per year.  Sarah Haskins has a great piece on birth control being sold as period control.

 

According to the Canadian Women’s Health Network, the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research stated simply that “menstruation is not a disease… [F]urther research on the potential health risks and long-term safety of cycle-stopping contraception is still needed,” particularly addressing the “impacts on adolescent development, since young women and girls are a target audience for cycle-stopping contraceptives… These contraceptives do not only reduce or eliminate menstrual bleeding, [they] also suppress the complex hormonal interplay of the menstrual cycle. The impacts of this cycle on women’s health are not completely understood.”  The Society noted that “it is also important that research address the social, psychological and cultural implications of menstrual suppression, as well as the biomedical effects.” They remain concerned that pharmaceutical campaigns used to market cycle-stopping contraception depict the menstrual cycle as abnormal, undesirable, unnecessary and even unhealthy. Messages telling us that processes associated with women’s bodies are “defective or need to be medically controlled can lead to negative body image, especially in young women.”  This is reminiscent of the fact that fat hatred, and other oppressions resulting in extreme eating disorders, can also lead to period suppression.  In these cases, it’s a pretty strong sign from the body that things are not ok.

 

Medical sociologists and feminists have questioned the need for a pill like this for most women who don’t bleed or suffer intensely during their periods, pointing out that it’s a normal life event, not a medical condition! Why medicate a normal life event if we’re not sure of the long-term effects?  [Please note: This is absolutely NOT meant as a critique of hormones used in FTM transitions that result in period cessation.]  Hormones in birth control pills can cause deadly side effects like blood clots and stroke.  No doubt, the pill has been a huge life-saver for many women who have so much to manage and not having to deal with a hemorrhaging, painful period on top of it all is useful.  AND… ultimately, it’s entirely likely that women wouldn’t have such rough time if we weren’t dealing with stress, environmental toxins, chemically-altered and non-nutritious “food,” psychological and physical trauma, and other things that we manage daily.  Our bodies tell us a lot of things that we aren’t able to respond to generously.

 

It’s interesting to note that our culture doesn’t tend to associate the end of periods with a lack of femininity in women.  Yet, a vasectomy seems to threaten masculinity so much that men don’t tend to opt for this low-risk, hormone-free, highly effective method of birth control.  It seems normal and acceptable that women’s bodies be put at risk to disrupt the cycle that produces life, to even out any moods that are inconvenient, and to tackle pain and discomfort that could be eased through other less destructive or preventative methods.  It has become so normal to control, manage, and regulate bodies for acceptable femininity that even the most harmful and unnecessary products or procedures are everywhere.

 

It’s hard not to recognize the economic possibilities of convincing 52% of the population that something their bodies do every month needs to be “fixed” with continuous pharmaceutical intervention.  And we thought disposable menstrual products were lucrative…!  We are told that menstruation is not medically necessary, that women shouldn’t have to suffer nausea, bloating, cramps, headaches, and depression.  But I can’t help but wonder where the studies and funding and education are that teach people how to reduce these symptoms through non-processed/toxic food, rest, heat, massage, and other forms of practical, ongoing care routines.  There’s very little money to be made and control to be gained from people knowing how to take care of themselves and each other.

 

“I believe that women regaining confidence through the explicit demonstration of their cycle and its powers in life could move from many conflicts within themselves into a female-defined world.  This would create a marvelous crack in the armor of patriarchy, and might help us all to break through to a world where being female will be a delight and a powerful lever of change.” – Asphodel P. Long (feminist theologian)

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