Oh, you know some asshole is thinking it.
A school in New York is having problems because their absolute “no bag” policy is a bit anti-female, surprise surprise. As any woman reading this is immediately thinking, the problem with not letting students carry even small bags to school is that female students have a very real need to carry pads and tampons. The danger of bleeding through your pants is statistically much higher than the danger that you’re going to turn out to be a school shooter, but that fact didn’t give the assholes who passed this policy pause.
Realizing that it’s a bit problematic to leave female students bleeding from between their legs with no way to plug it up, the school has tried to compensate by allowing students who are currently on their period to bring small bags to school during their period, but no other time. Anyone who was ever a teenage girl and remembers the high percentages of creepy men—many who work in schools—who enjoy humiliating you by prying into your privacy can see the immediate problems with this policy.
The girl was called out of class by a security guard during a school sweep last week to make sure no kids had backpacks or other banned bags.
Samantha Martin had a small purse with her that day.
That’s why the security guard, ex-Monticello cop Mike Bunce, asked her The Question.
She says he told her she couldn’t have a purse unless she had her period. Then he asked, “Do you have your period?”
Samantha was mortified.
She says she thought, “Oh, my God. Get away from me.” But instead of answering, she just walked back into class.
At home, she cried, and told her mother what happened.
Of course, even if the rule was followed to the letter and security guards were miraculously discreet instead of getting a rise out of making teenage girls feel uncomfortable about their socially awkward fact of being members of the second sex—a fact teenage girls are just adjusting to, mind you—carrying the purse to class would broadcast loud and clear to other students that you were having your period. And we all remember, I’m sure, how teenagers are generally a classy set about each others’ sex-and-body mortifications. I guess they could make the mandatory humiliations a little more fair by walking around demanding randomly of teenage boys that they describe their unbidden boners.
Luckily, the students are standing up for the right of teenagers everywhere to have a little privacy about their awkwardly and newly sexual bodies.
The small Sullivan County school has been in an uproar for the last week. Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.
After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now “part of the problem.”
Good for them. If kids these days are like that, I feel a surge of optimism about the fate of the Republic. God, high school was hard enough having to put up with other kids, but seriously, the insane adults on paranoid power trips that seem to rule every high school made it a living hell.
I seriously can’t imagine kids in my 80s high school having so much solidarity that they would carry tampon box purses–high praise for creativity and courage, there. Those kids rock.
Not a problem we have here in the UK yet. But then, the incidence of stabbings and shootings here is somewhat lower, rendering such a policy unnecessary.
Actually, the NYC news crews are probably just making the folks there even madder and more entrenched in their mentality, which IMO, means if they’re made to look like fools that’s what they deserve.
Sullivan county is upstate New York and they can’t stand City People. (Setting aside for the moment that calling them ‘City People’ is assuming that the only city worth calling a city is NYC but…) Anything north of Westchester…well, maybe Orange now…is rural.
“Part of the problem”? “Part of the problem”?!!?? Is there any more cartoon villainish Authority Figure About To Get the Smackdown cliche Wordon could have used?
There’s got to be a small section of girls in that school willing to bleed all over the furniture if the administrators are interested in seeing what a problem really looks like. If he wants to escalate the situation rather than be reasonable, then these girls should bring it on.
I just have these visions of those poor girls whose cycles are so irregular that they couldn’t plan for when their periods came. I knew plenty of people who had their periods for a month at a time as their hormones and bodies got used to the cycle. You know they’re getting yelled at for carrying bags more often. Like it’s not already bad enough that you feel awkward because your body is changing, but now you’re bleeding and cramping and maybe moody and now some jerk is asking you to justify that.
I love that everyone is banding together about this.
Damn, what a crappy thing to do to some teenage girls. Glad they are banding together against it.
The Million Pad March
What’s additionally rough is that a lot of girls’ clothing won’t have the multiple pockets that boys’ clothing comes standard with.
But the policy is not only sexist, it’s out and out paranoid and degrading for everyone.
Uh, also? If the students can’t carry bags, how do they get their homework to and from school?
Do the kids even do homework these days?
I taught ninth grade in a rough school where there just wasn’t enough money for the students to have individual books - each class just has a single set only used while in class. But they still had other things they needed to transport back and forth, like:
notebooks. you know, to take notes in, and to write journals in.
folders. to keep track of assignments that *could* be taken home.
pens and pencils, sometimes art supplies.
food and snacks. Discipline problem waiting to happen? Yes. The other option? NO LUNCH.
pads and tampons, as previously noted.
Sure, they brought stupid shit to school with them (one kid had fuzzy red handcuffs one day). Yes, they also brought things that could endanger themselves and other students. Requiring them to forgo all the necessary school supplies, though? Is dumb. Not the way to handle it.
Yeah, it strikes me as mainly an excuse to nose around and investigate the students to humiliate them. It reminds me of a classic moment in my high school history, when parents started to get sick of our draconian dress code and protested. Naturally, in sexism-ville, the most upsetting policy was the mandatory clean-shaven look for boys. Parents rightly didn’t like seeing their boys sent out of class to shave because they got a little stubbly from blowing off the razor to sleep in an extra few minutes on occasion. They cried sexism (against that more than against the 8 million extra regulations against girls, including amount of boob curve that could poke out of a V-neck, which was none), and the principal, in order to make it more “fair”, offered to create a rule mandating that girls shave their legs. Someone said, “I’m guessing you’d be the one to rub their legs to make sure they did it?” and that was the end of that suggestion.
I guess we need to send Diva Cups to all the girls at this high school, because then they won’t have to carry anything. I like mine for the convenience, but jesus. (Of course they’d probably outlaw those because there’s more potential to mess up the bathrooms.)
I also think it’s awesome that the kids are rising up. My high school would have done that (a number of years ago that still freaks me out), but we were known to be the freaks and geeks school.
Sadly, I don’t think anything will do any good until some parents start taking their daughters’ side. They start talking about a sexual harassment suit, the school will back down and allow at least small purses for all women all the time.
Caroline, I could barely work a tampon in high school. I can only imagine trying to figure out a Diva cup. But maybe girls are more aware these days.
Good for them! (The protesting high-school girl’s, I mean. Not the schools.) God, I wish more kids would band together like this and stand up to the petty fascists running most schools. I know it’s a cliche to think of school administrator’s that way, and your perception may tend to be colored by how intensely you feel and react to things as a teenager, but on the whole, most of the people I remember being in positions of authority at school were wholly awful, awful people. They seemed to be driven by misery, and worshipped the appearance of normalcy like a fetish. It was the same attitude I encountered at church, and, generally, everywhere in the South. I almost think the sole purpose of idiotic rules like this is simply to make people conform to them. They really don’t care if it makes anyone safer (clearly it doesn’t). Targeting girls is just icing on the cake for them.
1. A “bleed-in”? If they have the guts, they should wear white pants on that day, or days. In fact, perhaps they could all wear fake blood, and really spatter their groins rather dramatically. That way some boys could also wear them in support, and nobody would know which girl was actually on her period, and which one was engaging in political action.
2. The administration could have bought a bunch of tampons and pads, making sure they buy an array of brands and styles. That way any girl who needed to could go to the nurse’s office between classes. Nobody would know, and . But of course, that’s “socialism,” or the government paying for private needs, and would make way too much sense. That leads me to …
3. The administration is made up of fucking idiots. The students are being way more mature than the adult who are technically “in charge.” He says she’s part of the problem, but he IS the problem. Pinhead.
emjaybee, I was also in high school in the (early) ’80s- no WAY! Heck, OB tampons used the fact that they were (at the time) so revolutionary small that they wouldn’t be noticed in school as a commercial…
fwiw, it’s _not_ NYC.
What kind of mass murderer is going to be dissuaded from shooting up his high school by the fact that bags are forbidden?
But maybe girls are more aware these days.
That’s a good point– for young women who are just starting to have their periods and aren’t even sure how they, personally, are going to cope with a massively anti-female and anti-feminist society, requirements that force them to become secret agents just to get through the day without big embarassments are just that much extra work on top of being accused of being a homicidal maniac just because you want to carry a bag. The no bags rule is just collective punishment– it sucks for everybody, but unlike the boys, women are expected not to gripe about all the personal-appearance-acrobatics it takes to deal with it.
Yeah, no way this is a NYC school. You’d have a riot on your hands. Bags are very important to New Yorkers, since we usually don’t have cars to stash stuff in. People are already up in arms about the cell-phone ban in the NYC schools.
Schools are absolutely insane nowadays. I think the crackdown’s been going on for a while, but between Columbine and 9/11, school administrators have lost their damn minds.
I mean, I can’t even believe that a kid in my high school was allowed to bring in an AK-47 as part of a presentation for our Comparative Goverments class on Lebanon. But he cleared it with the administration, followed reasonable security precautions, made sure nobody actually saw it until the presentation, kept it locked up all day, etc.
But all it takes sometimes is one incident to set officials on edge. My younger brother graduated high school in 1988. Graduation ceremonies had been pretty loosey-goosey up until then; kids brought in bubbles, and decorated their mortarboards, wandered around a bit, and what have you. Then my brother and his friends snuck in a blow-up doll to graduation and blew it up during the calling of the names. It got a big laugh from the audience (even my grandmother), but the administration was *pissed.* By the time my youngest brother graduated, 3 years later, they’d decided that the ceremony had to be run like a military unit, with complete obedience and no displays of individuality.
So they took 350 kids, stuck them on bleachers facing the setting sun, and forbade them from wearing sunglasses (and no bubbles, balloons, beach balls, confetti or noisemakers, either). My brother, who was right in the middle of the crowd, said fuck it and put his on. The whole ceremony, teachers and administrators were pointing at him and signaling for him to take them off, and when he went up for his diploma, the vice principal and principal both threatened him.
And this was all before Columbine. It’s got to be much worse now.
…in fact, since idiocy like that wouldn’t last 5 seconds in a NYC school (we had metal detectors installed back in 1980 in any case). and that this in fact the middle of nowhere, I smell the distinct odor of wingnuttery. Just scratch the surface…
Caroline, I could barely work a tampon in high school. I can only imagine trying to figure out a Diva cup. But maybe girls are more aware these days.
Seconded, plus let’s talk bathroom resources. I went to a money-soaked public high school that still had to count bathrooms with no access and the toilets ripped out as “operational” to be anywhere near in code, not that the minimum health code requirements were anywhere near adaquate. Add the rules about when you can and can’t be in the halls making the 5 minutes to get between classes with the mandatory locker stop because you can’t bring bags to class (maybe you can take more than one class worth of books around with you, but my overachieving friends in AP classes were using college textbooks, I had a friend actually injure her back because of the textbook load) your most likely bathroom stop, and you have the makings of a savage hygiene problem. Nothing like a building full of hurried, messy, awkward girls sloshing tiny cups of their own blood around the limited bathroom space to bring joy to both the users of the bathroom and custodial staff alike.
Diva cups would be a wonderful solution, but we’ll have to restructure both our social attitudes towards menstruation and our educational system to make it work, so maybe in the short term we can just give them their damn purses back.
Good for them! (The protesting high-school girl’s, I mean. Not the schools.) God, I wish more kids would band together like this and stand up to the petty fascists running most schools. I know it’s a cliche to think of school administrator’s that way, and your perception may tend to be colored by how intensely you feel and react to things as a teenager, but on the whole, most of the people I remember being in positions of authority at school were wholly awful, awful people. They seemed to be driven by misery, and worshipped the appearance of normalcy like a fetish. It was the same attitude I encountered at church, and, generally, everywhere in the South. I almost think the sole purpose of idiotic rules like this is simply to make people conform to them. They really don’t care if it makes anyone safer (clearly it doesn’t). Targeting girls is just icing on the cake for them.
What kind of gun would fit into a tampon box, for that matter? Hell, any gun the size of a tampon could also be hidden in the same place those go. Expect strip searches next.
This rule has nothing to do with actually protecting anybody. It’s about putting on the appearance of having taken action to protect schools. I’ve known kids at high schools that required them to tuck in all items of clothing (even jackets) on the theory that you wouldn’t be able to tuck a shirt and a gun into the same pair of pants; or the school that locked all of the bathrooms because somebody might smoke or do drugs in them.
It’s the same sort of reasoning behind Lisa Simpson’s magic rock that keeps away bears, only it barely even rises to that level of logic.
Tri-Valley Central School where this stupid policy is in place is over 100 miles from New York City.
Please! NYC schools may be many things but they aren’t this retarded.
Reading the original article carefully, the “no bags” policy means that you can’t carry around bags in the hallway. So you carry your books from home to school in a bag, put the bag in your locker, and then carry your books around with you from locker to class.
A stupid policy, but not stunningly so, and with no reason that purses couldn’t be excepted. What the heck is wrong with people? Somehow, 90% of us who made it out of high school managed to get a perfectly decent education while still carrying our backpacks from class to class.
Corrected the NYC issue. I forgot—silly me—that paranoia about urban violence is inversely proportional to how urban the school is. The idea that they’re going to stop someone who comes into the school guns blazing with a no-bags policy is ridiculous. I do believe that a security guard wagging his finger at you about your bag while you machine gun your classmates is an ineffective deterrent.
Yep, this is the worst sort of panicky, symbolistic, useless response to media-fanned perceived “problems” that will only make real problems worse.
Some principals deserve to be eaten by were-hyenas or demon snakes, or turned into rats by little renegade Wiccans with charms in their invisible purses.
(For the record–IMHO Principal Flutie did not deserve the hyena-teens).
If you have enough patience to wade through the comments (which start off reminding me of a town hall meeting), you start to find out about some of the local gossip behind this story– namely, Bunce the security guard was known for being in trouble as a cop in Monticello, one of his high school classmates remembers him as a bully growing up (comment 119), and a high school student chimes in to complain that the high school was “in lockdown” (comment 111) because the media was all over the school (and presumably to prevent the students from talking to the press).
Schools should have the paraphernalia available free, if not in the restrooms, in a nurses office or somewhere else.
P.S. The anti-spam “text” required to enter comments is illegible.
used to work in an inner city school, had the shirts-tucked rule as well as the rule that backpacks stayed in lockers during the day. we didn’t have metal detectors, and we did have gangs, so i don’t think the fear was 100% unwarranted, even if the ’security’ measures didn’t actually do shit. but the girls could certainly carry their purses. sometimes there was debate on whether the small backpack purses fit under the backpack rule, but normal, smallish purses were perfectly fine. this is unnecessary.
then again, there was the boy who fit a small knife into his pocket, so the whole thing isn’t any sort of solution.
Schools should have the paraphernalia available free, if not in the restrooms, in a nurses office or somewhere else.
P.S. The anti-spam “text” required to enter comments is illegible.
Holy frack. I’m remembering my early teen years, in a tiny tiny school a block from my house (to which I was allowed to run home during recess and at lunch) and the menstruation-related embarassments I nonetheless had, and I’m just cringing at the thought of not being allowed to carry one’s pads and tampons in privacy. It took me quite a while for my cycle to settle down enough that I could carry a day’s worth of hygiene items in my jeans pockets–and by that time I was mostly over the terror that someone would notice. But those first few years….
I am so glad the kids aren’t standing for this, and it’s *wonderful* that some of the boys are helping out, too. It seems like an unusual thing, that kids would band together like this–although I can almost see a few kids at my sister’s school doing that (although maybe not on this issue). She knows all the cool (read: interesting, neat, rebellious, gay, otherwise-not-sheep) kids….
Ooh, I got moderated! *feels special*
I blame it all on the appearance of “zero tolerance.” The whole rash of zero tolerance policies years back did a wonderful thing for school administrators - it completely eliminated the need for critical thought or judgment! Instead of having to do the mental heavy lifting required to actually evaluate a situation, consider individual circumstances and justify responses, you could just point to the Zero Tolerance and be as Draconian as you wanted.
Is it any surprise that we would get to this point? And that some pervy rent-a-cop (who got kicked off the local police force) would use this as an excuse to harass and humiliate girls? Sadly no.
And I do feel for those girls. At that age, periods were often completely unpredictable as to both timing and flow. It was best to be ready for anything at all times. Even at my all-girl high school, it was horribly embarrassing to be caught unawares. When boys were around it was far, far worse. And full-grown creepy cops asking about it? *shudder*
Right, thank you chibi. It may aid the school administrators to know and control what kids may wear or carry. The administrators can make it harder to sneak something in. But ultimately, a kid who really, truly wants to do something violent will find a way.
The article said that backpacks were banned from the hallways in one paragraph. However, the girl got busted in class for carrying a purse during a general bag sweep organized by the teachers.
So, this policy is being enforced much more broadly than a “no backpacks in halls” rule.
an off-topic comment to the third post by christina:
characterizing the entire area north of westchester, an area that includes Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse as rural is exactly why many upstate New Yorkers hate New York City. No, we don’t refer to new york city as “City People.” That’s just silly. We actually are much more progressive/liberal than the stereotype. We are well-represented by Louise Slaughter and other Democrats.
Thanks for your ignorance; please consult a map and/or atlas the next time.
If this is overly humorless, it’s merely because I hear this shit all the time.
High school principals have always been petty tyrants. They worry far less about education than they do control. I set a record at my high school - I was suspended on the very first day. There was a mixup in my schedule and I dared try to discuss it with the principal rather than just say “yes, sir, no sir.”
It’s sad that the most pertinent bit of education you end up getting in high school is to learn that the adult world is full of officious assholes who react out of paranoia and ambition rather than reason.
I doubt it. I learned to use a tampon by reading a special Sassy how-to article. But now that Sassy’s gone, who’s teaching these girls how to use tampons? Teh Interwebs? Prolly.
Seriously, I started using OB simply because they’re small enough that you don’t need a bag. That, and I just ditched high school whenever I felt like the authorities were out of line. Ultimately, I tested out and left early.
A big part of school is the social aspect of learning to conform and to submit to authority. So this anti-bag rule is not very surprising, really. Sad.
First off WOW! good for the students. I was so motified by my period that I wouldn’t even buy my pads or tampons at the local store, since many kids from my JHS and HS worked there. . . my mother would have to do it for me.
So what does the dresscode say about cargo pants - which big honking pockets — though I acutally like the students response better.
My response when I read this was “So they will get to advertise when they have there period, sort of like the intact hymen rings . . . or like the plastic bright turquois boxes to keep your tampons in that were advertised as “discreet”
I can see a “tampon under glass/clear plastic” necklace with a little sign “break in case of emergency or attending XXXX school” selling
oh btw “the plastic bright turquois boxes to keep your tampons in that were advertised as “discreet.”
the box was for OB tampons . . . I couldn’t believe how they would do that, totally kill why teens like them, but I had to deal with it as they kept getting unwrapped in my backpack.
I didn’t carry a purse in either JHS Or HS just a back pack.
I think everyone would feel safest if the girls had to carry their feminine hygiene products in a clear Ziploc bag of uniform size. Works so nicely for air travel, no?
While it is excellent, I would not take this as a sign of a children’s crusade against authoritarianism… I know when I was in high school, we would have gladly done anything like this just to upset authority in general. Perhaps with no reason. I’m sure there are some kids who do it in solidarity, but I’m also sure a lot of it is just to be part of the people doing it, and many just because they think it is hillarious.
In a few year a lot of the kids who wore pads on their clothes yesterday will be praying the police open fire on protesters (with no mollycoddling rubber bullets), and voting republican.
While it is excellent, I would not take this as a sign of a children’s crusade against authoritarianism… I know when I was in high school, we would have gladly done anything like this just to upset authority in general. Perhaps with no reason. I’m sure there are some kids who do it in solidarity, but I’m also sure a lot of it is just to be part of the people doing it, and many just because they think it is hillarious.
In a few year a lot of the kids who wore pads on their clothes yesterday will be praying the police open fire on protesters (with no mollycoddling rubber bullets), and voting republican.
What about those kids with allergies who need to carry around an epi-pen. Are they just expected to die if they have an allergy attack?
This policy would have gotten me killed, had it been at my high school! I’m from rural Missouri, where the folks are not all that accepting of differences. I am intersexed (which means in this case that I was declared a boy at birth [thankfully, no “corrective” surgery happened], and at age 12 when I had my first period / started developing breasts, I was ordered by family and the school administration to not let anyone know! There’s more to that struggle, but not pertinent here). So. You think learning to deal with your period is hard, try doing so by having to find a way to change your tampon in the boys’ restroom without anyone finding out. In such a rural area, anyone different - even for medical reasons - is “queer” or a “geek” and would have the snot beaten out of them. So no way to sneak the tampons around? I would have quite literally been KILLED. Beaten about the head and shoulders until dead. I had my share of beatings for both being a geek and queer already. This would have put me in the “hunt-the-pansy-down-when-no-one-is-around-after-school-or-at-night” category.
I apologize if this shows up twice, but my comment didn’t appear the first time, and I’m unfamiliar with this system:
This policy would have gotten me killed, had it been at my high school! I’m from rural Missouri, where the folks are not all that accepting of differences. I am intersexed (which means in this case that I was declared a boy at birth [thankfully, no “corrective” surgery happened], and at age 12 when I had my first period / started developing breasts, I was ordered by family and the school administration to not let anyone know! There’s more to that struggle, but not pertinent here). So. You think learning to deal with your period is hard, try doing so by having to find a way to change your tampon in the boys’ restroom without anyone finding out. In such a rural area, anyone different - even for medical reasons - is “queer” or a “geek” and would have the snot beaten out of them. So no way to sneak the tampons around? I would have quite literally been KILLED. Beaten about the head and shoulders until dead. I had my share of beatings for both being a geek and queer already. This would have put me in the “hunt-the-pansy-down-when-no-one-is-around-after-school-or-at-night” category.
Way back in the early 70’s we had a new vice-principal who decided that our little high school was going to have some “law & order” with dress codes, briefcase regulations and such. We just boycotted the junior-senior high for a week until the replaced the vice-principal and started treating us a bit more like adults.
Perhaps a nation-wide boycott for a week would wake these administrations up to their folly.
Good for those kids!
I remember that it was hard enough dealing with my period when I was in high school (honestly, it’s hard enough in university; I finally decided to go on BC this year in the hopes that incapacitating cramps and the need for frequent trips to the washroom wouldn’t be quite so much of a problem during 4-hour long classes mostly populated by guys).
It’s easy to forget when one is an adult that we subject teenagers to all sorts of arbitrary humiliating behaviour that makes an already difficult time in high school worse. It’s always heartening to me—even as a future authority figure—when they fight back. When I was in high school, they instituted washroom passes, which is now standard practice. For girls on their periods, this was quite obviously hell, because you’d get teachers asking you why you had to go to the bathroom so often.
Anyway, the policy didn’t last long. There was one rather plucky boy who asked for a washroom pass from the teacher one too many times. In front of the entire class, she asked him why he needed to go so often.
In front of the entire class, he announced: “I’m going to shit, and piss, and wipe myself off, and then I’m going to wash my hands.”
They scrapped the washroom pass policy a few weeks later.
Forget Tampax. How are you supposed to carry your keys?
Oh, right. If your mother was home instead of at that fancy-pants jobs of hers you wouldn’t need a key.
Silly res.
Count me among those impressed with those kids.
Hey is anyone else getting bandwidth hogging, load slowing, and very annoying audio with the page?
only tangentially related, but this happened in the SUBURBS of the city i used to live in.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/kprc/20070929/lo_kprc/14230029;_ylt=AggmhHXNPcUrhKfE8tCDe3FkM3wV
Well, were I’m from most of the high school principals are former coaches of male sports teams. The system is still set up that way. Since all the other principals are coaches, it’s easiest for a meathead boy’s basketball coach to rise up through the political ranks of the system.
And as you might have experienced, theirs is a demographic not particularly sensitive to gender issues.
Elaine -
A big part of school is the social aspect of learning to conform and to submit to authority.
I would say that that is the primary purpose of most primary schools - to enforce conformity and crush independent thought.
Amanda -
I forgot—silly me—that paranoia about urban violence is inversely proportional to how urban the school is.
Best comment evah.
And, off-topic…Nenya -
Nenya, Vala of Peanut-Butter Cookies
Best handle evah. I love Tolkien fans with a sense of humor.
Actually, Derek, yes. All medications in most “zero-tolerance” schools must be kept locked up with the school nurse. Children are not permitted to carry, any longer, any of their prescription medication OR over-the-counter medication. I’m summarizing a number of stories over the past 10 years or so that my son’s been in school over a wide number of regions, but:
1) Girl suspended for giving classmate a Midol.
2) Girl suspended for giving classmate a Tylenol.
3) Boy hospitalized for asthma attack because school nurse was off campus for lunch and no one else had keys to medicine cabinet.
4) Boy suspended for administering his inhaler to another student in respiratory distress (doctors say this saved the boy’s life by keeping him breathing until paramedics arrived).
5) Girl expelled for giving another student a No-Doz (off campus, at bus stop).
Non-medical stupid:
6) Girl expelled for bringing butterknife to school.
7) Boy suspended for having 1″ long toy gun on keychain.
8) Girl suspended for wearing Army infantryman’s insignia pin (father overseas) for “weapons violation”.
The list is extensive, stupid, devoid of thought or common sense, and winds up teaching our children that until they graduate high school, they can’t be trusted with their own prescriptions, toys, common tableware, or anything else your average 12 year old should be able to manage independently. And somehow, at 18 years old, they’re supposed to be magically responsible enough to get a job and move out/go to college and actually study, or join the military.
Sorry ’bout that, Derek. *Jumps off soapbox*
Ya got me started; it’s a particular sore spot with me. Especially since it’s nobody’s frakking business what meds my child is prescribed.
DTah, you’re definitely right about not all of upstate new york being either conservative or rural. It’s an annoying assumption that a lot of NYCers make that really bugs me too.
Also, WTF? I know there are a real lot of dedicated, devoted high school teachers/admins out there, and I’m sorry you’re getting tarred with such a broad brush. But these particular admins sound like 1st-class morons. Basically, it sounds to me like they implemented a stupid, paranoid policy without thinking it through, tried to make an exception when a problem came up, and now are digging in their heels in defensiveness rather than acknowledge that their policy sucked and they have idiots for enforcers.
Edeyn, I can’t even imagine. I was embarrassed enough about my period without the kind of stuff you’re talking about.
I went to the sort of big inner city school that would have driven this school’s administration to drink. We were allowed backpacks, though we did have to walk in through metal detectors with security guards. I just want to point out that I carried a backpack large enough to hide an arsenal (or, you know, five or six textbooks) and never caused the administration a moment’s trouble. On the other hand, the guy who knifed another student outside my biology class? No backpack at all. Do they honestly think the backpacks are the problem?
The parking lot beatings, the major arson, the drug problems - none of these things had anything to do with backpacks.
On a slightly related note, my old company’s dress code had a line that read, “Underwear should be worn, but not visible.” They mean that your bra straps should be hidden (can you tell the policy was written by old men?). I told my boss the day the policy came out that if anyone ever tried to confirm that I was wearing underwear, I was suing. He agreed that I should.
There is no way that a male guard asking a teenage female if she has her period isn’t sexual harassment. Even if it doesn’t exactly meet the letter of the law, the creep factor would sway public opinion and the school would have to back down.
In her case, I would have held my bloody pad out in front of his face…but I don’t expect women to be as comfortable as I am about it, and either way, it is a privacy issue.
…and the school shooter doesn’t have to bring a bag, just skip school that morning, arrive with a gun after it has started, and shoot the locks. Dumbass policy designed for false sense of security!
The possible solution would be to have personal lockers inside school where girls can store the supply of pads or tampons. Don’t they already have those? If not, it’s hard to imagine how they manage with all the notes and homeworks they have to bring to school anyway. Another solution would be to have a small pouch on your neck for pads and other small things.
I don’t identify with all the bruhaha about how menstruation is so “personal” and “embarrassing”. In my view this embarrassment is a result of social programming, and I don’t see why one needs to make such a big deal out of this issue. Anyhow, somebody (boy or girl) can have plenty other reasons to bring objects like tissues or pills to school and explaining those to the guard might be just as embarrassing, so why concentrate so much on the issue of menstruation?
Dtah,
Okay. I’ll be more specific. In the area of upstate New York north of Westchester County where I was born and raised to adulthood we did call City People just that, which is but a stone’s throw away from this school–Orange, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster County area. And it is, or was, rural–I grew up with a dairy farm across the street from my house. I went to a school district with 800 students. There were 69 kids in my graduating class. So, yeah, rural.
I don’t believe I mentioned anything about the political leanings of those people living there. I do believe they might have even had something to do with electing Hillary Clinton as senator. So, not all mentions of the word “rural” are synonymous with “wingnut”.
The resentment of people from the city coming up there was pretty darn real in that area–we were inundated with them every weekend. Busloads coming up to head to Ellenville or Sugarloaf, being rude and demanding and condescending to the “hicks”. When they built the condos in our town in the mid-80s, there was writeup in the local paper (The Times Herald Record, AAMOF, the very one which ran this story and I see their editors still can’t spot a typo if their lives depended on it.) in which one of our new neighbors was quoted as saying, “It’s going to be quite an adjustment for us. I mean, these people hadn’t ever even heard of Jordache jeans until we moved here.”
So, in the area where this is taking place, you can just bet some of that attitude is at work.
And I don’t think I need an atlas to talk about my own hometown.
This story sounds like something that would happen at Degrassi Junior High. Those kids rule!
I knew plenty of people who had their periods for a month at a time as their hormones and bodies got used to the cycle.
While I appreciate the need to make language gender-neutral as much as any other librarian who has looked at a controlled vocabulary and asked WTF it is with “women scientists” or “women athletes”(*), I think you’d be fairly safe gendering that last sentence.
(*)We decided the OCLC could go hang, and we only use gendered terms when the sex of the subject is important to the story.
This is an instance of “security theater.” Nobody’s any safer, but people are made so inconvenienced and miserable by the production that it shows the authorities are trying to do something to protect them.
Just drama.
I am so glad the kids aren’t standing for this, and it’s *wonderful* that some of the boys are helping out, too.
No, it’s not. It’s irritating that all the boys aren’t doing this - perhaps some of the most popular need to be reminded of the (probably false) tale of Danish King Christian X during WWII wearing a Star of David during WWII to encourage the general population. And, come to think of it, perhaps the girls also need to be reminded of the play “Lysistrata”.
I mean, hell, it’s a no brainer even from the perspective of a teenaged boy - if you go around wearing a tampon purse, the ladies will be grateful for the support and you can’t look like much of a fool to your male peers if you stress that you’re defying school authoritarianism.
Ok, this is paranoid. But I’ve got to wonder if this trend of deliberately obtuse annoyance in public schools is perhaps a deliberate incentive for parents who can afford it to move their children away from all this public school harassment into less arbitrarily punitive private schools.
Keep in mind that Republicans are very strongly opposed to public schools, because of big-business bias, because the stupider voters are, the more likely they are to choose “R”, and because they absolutely detest the teachers’s unions.
As an additional bonus the kids whose parents can’t afford the private school fees continue to get pounded on; as everyone knows, anything that makes poorer citizens unhappy gives Republicans a little sadistic thrill.
Maybe they could put a security guard at the bathroom door who collects the used tampons of any girl that enters a bathroom with a purse. He could then sniff the tampons to make sure there is actual period on them…
While I appreciate the need to make language gender-neutral as much as any other librarian who has looked at a controlled vocabulary and asked WTF it is with “women scientists” or “women athletes”(*), I think you’d be fairly safe gendering that last sentence.
Didn’t read comment 45?
Did, but didn’t connect it. Sorry if I offended, Edeyn.
(Actually, in such a case, and assuming the article made a point of mentioning her history, I’d probably use both a “women athletes” and “transgendered” or “intersexed” subject heading - but again, only if it was relevent.)
(Oh, and BTW E. - I thought my high school sucked - I’m humbled by learning just how much worse people had it)
what a revolting policy. and the modification allowing bags only for menstruating girls is equally revolting — why not just hang a neon sign on them? i’m sure the suggestions about going to the nurse’s office are well intended, but [a] a period is not a medical incident, and [b] don’t you think anyone going to the nurse’s office for any reason will be stigmatized, too? i’m sure this policy will assist with that always helpful, taunting inquiry from high school nemeses: “are you on the rag, or what?” now they can be sure.
CybScryb and Sabotabby have put their finger on a key problem: high school administrators tend to want to suck and blow and the same time. They want the students under their carriage to act like adults whilst simultaneously treating them like complete children. They underestimate the impacts on the students created by this sort of stupidity. Amongst other things, it diminishes the students’ belief in the notion that authority can be rational. If the school authorities believe that their purpose was to produce citizens*, they are thus doing themselves as well as their students a disservice. If, however, RachelPhilPa is correct and “the primary purpose of most … schools [is] to enforce conformity and crush independent thought” then the authority bullies have no dissonance problem. Of course, the fact that the innate hypocrisy of their position makes the students less amenable to authority only angers the authority even more: the students are blamed for the results of the administrators’ actions.Wendi:
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld “a federal district court’s summary judgement that Safford Middle School Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, school nurse Peggy Schwallier and administrative assistant Helen Romero did not violate [a] girl’s Fourth Amendment rights on Oct. 8, 2003, when they subjected her to a strip search in an effort to find Ibuprofen [!!!!!] … The girl’s mother filed a federal law suit against the district and Middle School officials because they forced her daughter to strip down to her underwear then move her bra and panties in such a way that her breasts and pubic area were exposed.”
It’s hard to see what’s worse: the voyeuristic perversion or the notion that an over the counter anti-inflammatory is worthy of treating the student like a prisoner in a jail.
Huh. A dumb, short-sighted policy that not only creates problems for girls on their period, but students who are diabetic, or on medication. Zero tolerance is not a reflection of real life. Why nobody pointed this out during the development process is beyond me, and their way of reacting to it is no improvement.
Of course, the fact that a policy disproportionately effects one sex doesn’t make it sexist. On the other hand, indulging in the reckless slander that high schools are filled with leering, perverted men is a good reminder why anyone going into teaching is turning their public reputation over to feckless adolescents, and their mindless, reactive supporters.
These kids make me ashamed of what a brown-noser I was in high school. Good on them for having something on their minds other than getting into the snootiest college possible, which has shit-all to do with the rest of your life.
Well, the authoritarians on the Right really wants to extend the “can’t be trusted” mindset and policy to everybody. They really aren’t interested in you being responsible at 18, only obedient or useful.Well, one good prejudice deserves another, I see. The bag policy is assuredly inane, and not only affects girls on their period, but diabetics and many other students who have to carry certain objects with them. And the “fix” is worse than the idea. Amazingly bad judgment calls all around.
That said, it’s sad to see our correspondent gleefully seize on the slander that high schools are filled with leering, perverted men and that these students are unstainedly pure and honest charges. It’s unthinking hysterics like this that essentially hand over any teacher’s reputation to feckless adolescents who can be sure that any accusation will be slaveringly accepted.
There may still be a reason to have some hope for America’s future. I am very proud of these children.
Has anybody actually gone to the school’s website? I did. And do you know what I noticed? The “no bag” rule is not only *not* in the school code of conduct and dress code, there is a specific reference in said codes to searches of book bags.
So my question is this: are kids being held to a policy that is not written down and therefore subject to being changed on a daily basis; or is this a hoax. I am inclined towards the former, and I encourage everyone to send email to school officials letting them know this policy is ill-advised and making them look stupid.
That said, it’s sad to see our correspondent gleefully seize on the slander that high schools are filled with leering, perverted men
Since she’s a girl who went to high school, I don’t think she’s taking anyone else’s word for it.
It’s unthinking hysterics like this that essentially hand over any teacher’s reputation to feckless adolescents who can be sure that any accusation will be slaveringly accepted.
God forbid a teacher not be able to sexually harass students without his reputation being attacked by gossipy busybodies. What happened to the good old days when girls felt properly ashamed of themselves when you leered at them?
Damn, I’m sooo glad high school’s far behind me! Back in the early ’90’s, I was one of the main violators of the “no pills” policy. And I shared. Though my school wasn’t nearly as insanely militant about enforcing the rule as some…
The next logical step is for some girl to snap and scream, “Yes, I AM on the rag! And I’m clotting like a motherfucker! Wanna see?!!” Wonder how Pervertoboy the wonderguard would’ve liked that…
Hopefully the uproar will embarrass the relevant authorities into ditching the policy. Though that may be too much to ask for in this day and age.
Petty tyrants.
They’re killing me, Smalls!
Not a problem we have here in the UK yet. But then, the incidence of stabbings and shootings here is somewhat lower, rendering such a policy unnecessary.
I hate to break it to you, Lee, but the UK incidence of knife violence per capita is considerably higher than it is in the US.
This is an artifact of, among other things, the ready availability of inexpensive and powerful guns Stateside.
In US street culture, carrying a knife is a sign of inferiority and weakness, because a knife at a gunfight is laughably ineffectual, and the odds that a fight will become a gunfight are quite high.
Not having a gun implies that the young tough in question can’t afford to buy a gun or isn’t strong enough to take one from someone else.
And in most US jurisdictions, carriage of a concealed weapon, whether a blade or a bullet weapon, is punished by the same statute and to the same degree, so illegally carrying a gun places its holder in no additional degree of legal jeopardy.
—
The no-bag idea is clearly idiotic. But unless I missed it, only skeptonomist has focused in on the real problem of women’s hygeine products on this thread - that they are not provided for free in public bathrooms.
The fact that people are not expected to tote their own rolls of toilet paper with them every time they go out is because men use toilet paper too. Since men don’t need tampons etc., it is a “women’s problem” and even 13-year-old girls are expected to provide their own.
Schools, at the very least, should be required to provide products to sop up menstral blood the same way they are required to provide products to sop up other bodily effluvia.
Y’know, if it wouldn’t be likely to cause some serious legal trouble in this age of paranoia, I’d suggest that we all send a Ziploc bag full of tampons that have been soaked with fake blood once a month, every month until this idiocy stops, together with a nice little note saying that we thought the administrators of the school would like to know when we’re on our periods as well. I’d also suggest sending unused, sealed packages of tampons and pads to the school saying that perhaps they could just keep them in the nurse’s office and not have to worry about bags at all, but I’m afraid it’d only compound the idiocy. God help the poor girl who has to explain to a teacher, administrator or ephebephile security guard who couldn’t hack it as a real cop exactly why she needs to go to the nurse.
Why is it that these kids apparently understand better than the people supposedly responsible for teaching them the lessons of history that those who would sacrifice liberty for a little (false) security deserve neither?
Schools in Britain tend to have well-stocked women’s toilets. Heck, given the commercial interests involved in American high schools, I’m surprised that Tampax hasn’t offered to put coin-operated dispensers in every high school across the land. This doesn’t stop the policy here from being bullshit, of course.
On the other hand, indulging in the reckless slander that high schools are filled with leering, perverted men is a good reminder why anyone going into teaching is turning their public reputation over to feckless adolescents, and their mindless, reactive supporters.
Wow, did someone say that? Because I didn’t see it. I said that every teenage girls encounters some older men that are like this, not all. If you don’t like it, start calling out those men, instead of denying a reality experienced by women. The majority of older men I encountered as a teenager were not leering creeps, but I wouldn’t say that it’s “slander” to say that there’s still plenty of them around.
The no-bag idea is clearly idiotic. But unless I missed it, only skeptonomist has focused in on the real problem of women’s hygeine products on this thread - that they are not provided for free in public bathrooms.
If they provided free menstrual products to young women, that wouldn’t change a damn thing, since I guarantee you that they’d only provide the most unuseable, humiliating sort. No cute little OB tampons, no slender tampons for teenagers, probably no tampons at all. No compact pads. They’d probably still stock the kinds of giant pads that you have to tie to a belt. Even if they condescended to provide the sticky pads, they’d probably be 2 inches thick and basically unuseable for 99% of clothing choices.
I swear to god, I had to stay in the hospital once and I got my period and asked for a tampon from the nurse. She brought back a belt and what appeared to be a diaper. I pointed out that I was born in 1977, which would mean, logically speaking, that I was unaware they still made pads like that, and I certainly didn’t know how to use them. She impatiently explained it to me and then I ended up leaking anyway, because those things are unmanageable. There’s just this real hostility to menstruating women that leaves me with the sense that we can’t expect to be treated with a modicum of respect from anyone with some kind of official power.
and that these students are unstainedly pure and honest charges.
Pssst! Your slip is showing.
Re the story being a hoax: here is a link to the actual news story. Interesting that Officer Obsessed with Your Period was forced out of the police department in 2002 for running a process-serving business on the public dime.
my leering old(er) man was a science teacher who rumor stated had a bit of a cocaine addiction. he was the cafeteria monitor and he spent a large portion of the lunch period at my table, asking about my plans for the evening while complimenting me and telling me how much older i looked in my red lipstick (it was the 90s, y’kno). i should mention he was never my teacher, so he had less reason to talk to me.
i was working as a cocktail waitress at a nightlub/music venue and i was too busy to stop and grab a pad out of my purse in coat check and go to the restroom, so i got a pad from the sweet elderly woman who worked as our restroom attendant, who was at least 80, who had anything anyone could ever need available. i opened the package and unfolded it to discover it was, swear to god/dess, at least a foot long and like 4 inches wide, and made of the itchiest most awful plastic ever. i assume this is the exact sort of thing schools would provide.
Couldn’t young women put the tampons and pads in their pencil cases?
Most menstrual products made today are compact and relatively inconspicuous. I assume that kids these days are still allowed to have pencil cases? Or are pencils, erasers, and all that tactile, hand-held stuff a thing of the past?
If high school students are allowed to carry cellphones (which are far more obnoxious and harassing than sanitary products), then surely the school officials can find a way to resolve this bag problem??
When tampons are outlawed, only outlaws will menstruate.
But if bag smuggling is a serious problem, stock the womens’ rooms with free menstrual products. Problem solved.
Pseudonymous: The problem with those dispensers is that they’re way more expensive than a standard pack of tampons - about £3 for a 24-pack, compared to £1 for two from the machine which may not be the right brand/absorbancy (going by the prices and products at work and uni - yes please, I’d love to thrust an expensive wad of uncomfortable crap between my legs, thanks!). And then, you’ve got the spare one to deal with - not good if you’re banned from carrying a bag.
Those machines are good if you’ve forgotten your stuff, or have irregular periods, but not as a long-term solution.
I can’t imagine how utterly mortified I’d be if I’d been asked that question. Now, I’m blasé as hell about my periods, but at 14, I was still adjusting both mentally and physically. To be questioned by a non-medical professional, or be forced to carry a little sign saying ‘bleeder here!’ (which is what the purse rule amounts to) is a gross breach of privacy and would have caused me all kinds of stress and upset.
How far will the administration go on this? What if every girl in the school showed up with a purse on the same day, every day, for a month, and when asked if on their period said yes? Are they going to strip check every girl in the school to be sure?
I have to say I am totally mortified at this whole thing. I can’t even imagine how awful that would have been when I was in school.
Not to ask the obvious question, but if no bags are allowed, how do kids carry things like their books, loose leaf, notes, home work, pens, pencils, crayons, drawings, lunch, etc. etc? My daughter carries two bags full of crap to school every day.
Amanda: I too was born in 1977 but my mother was still using the Belt by the time I got my first period. So for the first few periods, until I rebelled, I had to use it too. And may I say, IT SUCKS.
Is anyone else reminded of the movie “Carie”?
Cultural Catgirl said:
Lockers don’t help that much. In high school, I would have had six minutes to run from one side of the school to the other, up three flights of stairs, open the combination lock and retrieve the pad, go to a bathroom and deploy the pad, and then run to my next class. This was in fact impossible, and I usually only used my locker to hold my coat.
My schools — from the middle-income co-ed private to the ritzy all-girls private to the public school in a district that hadn’t raised property taxes in 30 years — all offered feminine supplies in the nurse’s office. They were… well, the equivalent of the industrial-TP most schools stock in restrooms: bulky, cheap, and not all that comfortable, but on the bright side they were as absorbent as all hell. (The monied all-girls school even offered a choice of pad or tampon.)
However, this wasn’t an option girls availed themselves of every time they had to change their pads. This was for the “oh, shit, I think I just started bleeding” realization in the middle of math class. Emergencies, in other words. And no girl ever got flack about suddenly needing to go to the nurse in class (not from teachers, anyway; students are entirely different story), because the look of “I’m screwed” mortification that comes over a teenager’s face in that moment is absolutely unmistakable. No verbal explanation required. I doubt girls would use the nurse’s office every time they needed to change a pad. I doubt the nurse would stand for it — there’s usually just the one-toilet room attached to nurse’s offices, for use in, well, emergencies. Can you imagine the line of girls waiting to change their pads?
Oh, and to pseudonymous in nc in 83 — most women’s washrooms I have been in, in schools or otherwise, do have coin-op dispensers mounted. They simply aren’t kept stocked.
This chronic petty authoritarianism among many K-12 faculty and administrators was one reason why most of my high school classmates swore off the idea of becoming K-12 teachers/admins. As far as they were concerned..K-12 was a bad experience the first time around….why repeat it even if they are on the other side of the desk?
What’s really sad was that my high school years were far more sane than the zero tolerance BS many high school students now have to face…considering various recent cases such as this case and others….glad I am no longer in high school.
Not to be snide, but what are they actually teaching in the teacher/educational administration training programs across the country when we have so many teachers and school admins who implement draconian policies without any critical foresight and thought?
And I should add that a locker does not solve the problem as kids usually have just a couple of minutes between classes. I attended a four story high school and my locker for one year was on the 4th floor. I never bothered using it since I had no classes on the 4th floor. Of course, things were different back in my day as everyone carried Swiss Army pocket knives, not for fighting but because they are so damn useful.
Exholt, I can answer that last question, though we’re probably talking about different countries (I’m in Canada).
A lot of what they’re teaching us in terms of discipline and child development looks nothing like what I hear happens in actual schools. The theme of my Educational Psychology class is “adolescents are fragile.” I have a problem with that approach too, but I guess it’s better than the policy in high schools, where children are being treated like prisoners and processed like products.
From what I’ve seen in my first month of school, the teacher education programs aren’t at fault for draconian policies (quite the opposite), and probably most teachers (who get treated like poorly behaved children by the administrations) aren’t at fault either. It’s hysteria about Kids These Days, used as a cheap ploy by governments to get re-elected and by administrators to stroke their own egos.
This is a classic case of “standing on a brick to kick a duck in the ass.
Really, doesn’t Wordon have anything better to do?
Fucking asshole.
clytemnestra
September 29, 2007 at 11:18 am
~First off WOW! good for the students. I was so motified by my period that I wouldn’t even buy my pads or tampons at the local store, …~
Yes. WOW! Those kids DO rock! And, as someone in another comment said, it does give me hope for the future.
I believe the issue clytemnestra brings up is very important.
I too was mortified at that age. Why should young women be made to feel mortified and shamed by the normal and natural changes of growing up? A pox upon society for creating such shame where none is warranted.
Let’s make our young women proud. Someone pointed out they have to have some sort of container for pens, pencils, etc. So they can get their personal products into the school.
After that, I say sashay boldly down the hall to the restroom and hold your tampons or pads high for everyone to see.
They are a testament to the often difficult metamorphosis a young girl goes through as she becomes the beautiful butterfly of womanhood.
The possible solution would be to have personal lockers inside school where girls can store the supply of pads or tampons. Don’t they already have those? If not, it’s hard to imagine how they manage with all the notes and homeworks they have to bring to school anyway.
Here’s the dialogue that immediately went through my mind:
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom.”
“You just passed the bathroom. Why didn’t you go in?”
“I have to get something out of my locker.”
“What?”
“You know … a thing.”
“If you’re going to have that attitude about it, I think we’d better to the principal’s office so you can explain to him why you have a bathroom pass but didn’t go straight to the bathroom.”
And then the girl gets to stain all of the chairs in the principal’s office while she waits to be allowed to tell him that she has to go to her locker because she has her period and isn’t allowed to carry her tampons with her, so she has to go get them before she can go to the bathroom.
Yeah, that’ll cause a lot fewer problems than letting girls carry purses will.
I too was mortified at that age. Why should young women be made to feel mortified and shamed by the normal and natural changes of growing up? A pox upon society for creating such shame where none is warranted.
Not to turn this into “but what about the MENZ!?!?!” but teenage boys are pretty mortified and shamed by the changes they go through, too. Even kids who were raised as nudists go through a phase of wanting to hide until their body stops doing such weird things without their having any control over it.
I don’t think you’ll be able to completely eliminate the embarrassment of a teenage girl who has her period any better than you’ll be able to completely eliminate the embarrassment of a teenage boy who gets a hard-on in class.
Forget Tampax. How are you supposed to carry your keys?
Why do you need your keys in class? The article clearly states they have lockers.
pencil cases? are you serious? who the hell uses pencil cases? for that matter, who the hell uses pencils in high school? you’re in high school. you don’t need more than, what, a pen and a calculator.
i never used a bag in high school and i never really understood why people got annoyed when our school banned them. you have a folder or two, a notebook, switch books when you walk near your near your locker, and deal. on the other hand, they didn’t ban purses and we had 7 minutes between class.
Schools in Britain tend to have well-stocked women’s toilets.
Huh. Which ones? When I went to school in Britain (at a state school in north London), our girls’ bathrooms didn’t even have toilet paper.
Cultural Catgirl says:
Well, yes, sure, it would be very good to have less social pressure on girls saying they should be embarassed by their periods. On the other hand, just about anyone is going to be embarassed if they realize they have been walking down the street or hallway with bloody smears on the back of their skirt or shorts–it’s as embarassing as if you’ve publicly shat or pissed on yourself. (Even if, in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be more embarassing than that.) So allowing someone to carry sufficient supplies to prevent an incident like that is the minimum common decency we should give other humans.
Definitely the bag rule is is going to be a problem for more than just girls on their period, which makes it even stupider. (And pointing that out when reporting on this story or arguing with the school administration would be a very good idea.) But at the very least, it’s going to affect half the school population. Therefore, not a tiny issue, and stupid policy.
(RachelPhilPa, thank you–I’m glad my choice of baked-goods deity title is being enjoyed.
)
Also, ye gods, mnemosyne, that is exactly how that conversation would go. Urgh.
Rachel asks who uses pencils in high school… I guess Rachel never had teachers that gave out those computerized tests that require a #2 pencil. And I also guess Rachel didn’t take art.
‘it’s as embarassing as if you’ve publicly shat or pissed on yourself. (Even if, in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be more embarassing than that.)’
well, i definitely think its generally not looked at as more embarrassing, since you cant control menstrual blood the way you can the other 2, theres really no way other people can smell it [unlike the other 2] and its tied in to sex stuff so maybe its a bit…sexier? haha hopefully you get what i mean.
I gotta say, if a school administrator asked my pre-teen daughter if she was menstruating, he’d be hit with a lewd conduct charge so fast it’d make his head spin. Welcome to Megan’s List, asshole.
It’s already terrible enough that toilets (or bathrooms as Americans call them) are you terribly open in the US, that you have no privacy what so ever. I mean, the idea alone that people in can just peek over the door makes me cringe, and the locks that don’t lock. I had that sooo often in the US.
Let alone not being able to bring tampons to school. The people in charge there might be educated, but they didn’t get an understanding of human behaviour. I’m one of these people always having had an irregular period, I would be damned.
The story fits in the same category about this woman (here in Holland I think it was) who wasn’t allowed to breastfeed her just born child during an exam-day that took like 7 hours. Imagine this woman’s breasts after the day.
It also reminds me of a horror story I once heard about a girl who went on a school trip on the first day of her period. The trip took like 6 hours, without a break. Even with her grasping courage and asking teachers to have a break, they didn’t do it and so she bleeded on the bus-furniture, which someone fantastically suggesting, is what the girls in that school should do on the furniture of the guy who came up with this ludicrous idea.
I’m not sure my comment got posted, so I do it again with the risk that it might now appear twice:
It’s already terrible enough that toilets (or bathrooms as Americans call them) are you terribly open in the US, that you have no privacy what so ever. I mean, the idea alone that people in can just peek over the door makes me cringe, and the locks that don’t lock. I had that sooo often in the US.
Let alone not being able to bring tampons to school. The people in charge there might be educated, but they didn’t get an understanding of human behaviour. I’m one of these people always having had an irregular period, I would be damned.
The story fits in the same category about this woman (here in Holland I think it was) who wasn’t allowed to breastfeed her just born child during an exam-day that took like 7 hours. Imagine this woman’s breasts after the day.
It also reminds me of a horror story I once heard about a girl who went on a school trip on the first day of her period. The trip took like 6 hours, without a break. Even with her grasping courage and asking teachers to have a break, they didn’t do it and so she bleeded on the bus-furniture, which someone fantastically suggesting, is what the girls in that school should do on the furniture of the guy who came up with this ludicrous idea.
Amen, mnem. I mean, the one thing that it does well to understand is everything unpleasant about periods when you’re an adult is like doubled for teenagers. Their cramps are worse. They bleed more. Sometimes when I was a teenager I went through god only knows how many pads a day and it would last like 7 days. It was horrible. I went on the pill as it was beginning to be milder in my late teens, but when I took a 2 year break from the pill as an adult, I was blown away at how adult menstruation (at that magical fertility peak that you hear so much about) was a walk in the park compared to my teenage years. I don’t blame girls for being uptight—you’re in non-stop danger of bleeding all over the place.
Ya got me started; it’s a particular sore spot with me. Especially since it’s nobody’s frakking business what meds my child is prescribed.
Try having lactose intolerant children carry lactase. Oh the fun. Then they try to lecture me about it and don’t get far. I don’t give a shit about rules that defy well documented evidence of safety, classification of food as drug, etc. My kid ain’t going to get sick at school or left out of ice cream time!
“Its a drug”
No, stupid IT IS AN ENZYME! Like FOOD!
“What would happen if another kid ate it?”
They could digest milk!
AND it is EXTREMELY WELL DOCUMENTED that chugging an ENTIRE BOTTLE of lactase has never hurt the x,000 people who have done so!
The stupid. It burns.
I haven’t been questioned about my kids having it handy since one of them doubled-over and projectile vomited all over his classroom after an “ice cream making science experiment”.
Science experiment, indeed.
YMMV, elektrodot, but that it is “tied into sex stuff” makes it more embarassing for a lot of girls, particularly since they are just getting used to the sexuality of their bodies anyway. I don’t know if other people think it’s worse or not–I just know that I worried constantly about the very real possibility of leaks at that age, was intensely mortified the time I was stopped by a (very kind and concerned) male classmate to alert me to such a situation. I can laugh about it now, but I still cringe a bit.
–and now I’m going to shut up and go away. I’m really not obsessed with menstruation, I swear.
Lack of sleep makes me talk a lot, and Pandagon is addictive, is all.
*munches on cookies*
Is it possible to build a toy gun out of tampax and those awful applicators?
PiaToR
“(*)We decided the OCLC could go hang, and we only use gendered terms when the sex of the subject is important to the story.”
Please tell me that you also use the proper term - as far as I know “women” is still not considered an adjective.
Kiernan,
“Ok, this is paranoid. But I’ve got to wonder if this trend of deliberately obtuse annoyance in public schools is perhaps a deliberate incentive for parents who can afford it to move their children away from all this public school harassment into less arbitrarily punitive private schools.”
Have you been talking to my dad? That’s been his theory for years.
*********
“But if bag smuggling is a serious problem, stock the womens’ rooms with free menstrual products. Problem solved.”
What strikes me most about comments like this and the “are you on your period?” question - aside from the creepiness and sadistic use of authority in the latter - is how completely ignorant such thoughts are of what it’s actually like to be a girl or woman.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with one particular boy in high school regarding how long periods lasted. He thought they only lasted a couple of hours. The three