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.
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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 of us (all girls) just gaped at him. All I could think was, do boys stay this stupid? Are the people making all those laws about abortion and the like as ignorant as this about how women’s bodies work?
I was almost old enough to vote and newly political, and this experience helped to strengthen it.
Lucky stiff. I was in my twenties when the monthly tradition of puking and doubling over in paralyzing day-long pain began…..and 30 before I finally put a stop to it with birth control pills.
More on-topic: Let’s not forget that a “bags only for bleeders” policy also stands to humiliate those girls who DON’T begin carrying the Purse of Womanhood until they’re 14, 15, or beyond. Getting your period (relatively) late shouldn’t, obviously, be any more embarrassing than anything else related to menstruation, but the realities of high school generally dictate otherwise.
Kate:
http://www.tamponcrafts.com/gun.html
I was going to make a comment about making blow-darts out of nothing but the detritus of a applicator tampon, but that bit of internets just defies comment.
you don’t need more than, what, a pen and a calculator.
Try solving a complicated physics problem with 3 inches of work space on the page. Trust me, a pencil and a gum-eraser really helps.
I don’t think I stopped using pencils until mid-way through grad school.
Lucky stiff. I was in my twenties when the monthly tradition of puking and doubling over in paralyzing day-long pain began…..and 30 before I finally put a stop to it with birth control pills.
More on-topic: Let’s not forget that a “bags only for bleeders” policy also stands to humiliate those girls who DON’T begin carrying the Purse of Womanhood until they’re 14, 15, or beyond. Getting your period (relatively) late shouldn’t, obviously, be any more embarrassing than anything else related to menstruation, but the realities of high school generally dictate otherwise.
Ms. Kate asks:
Apparently, the tampons aren’t the gun, they are the ammunition.1,300 hits??????
Dammit! Paper beat me to it while I was trying to figure out how to embed the picture!
Curse ye, Paper! May scissors haunt your dreams!
Maybe I should have laid on the sarcasm a little thicker in my comment? I wasn’t seriously suggesting DivaCups as the real answer here.
“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 … is how completely ignorant such thoughts are of what it’s actually like to be a girl or woman.
Although I do not undergo the monthly miracle of ovulation, I think I can manage to stock a restroom with menstrual products. We’re not talking supplying an Everest expedition here. Poll the girls for their favorite brands and types, and always have a two-month supply on hand. Because they can’t bring purses, supply discreet take-home bags to tide them over till they get home.
Come on, tell me what I’m missing here.
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.
Who DOESN’T use pencils in high school? They’re more convenient than pens, especially since in high school you tend to use thin looseleaf paper that most pens will bleed through, making your notes hard to read. Plus, what about math, when all the math teachers I had wouldn’t accept homework or a test written in pen, even if it wasn’t computerized at all? I am genuinely curious, and I ask this honestly wondering, without snark: rachel, why would you think people don’t use pencils in high school? Were they really unpopular in your high school or something?
Hector B: Okay, I’ll bite.
Imagine you have to go to the bathroom every hour to two hours—anywhere from three to six times in an average school day. That’s not going to always happen at lunch or in between classes, especially if you have five minutes in between classes.
This is assuming that they stock the good tampons or pads. If they stock the usual cheap ones you find in public washrooms, you’re looking at doubling your breaks.
If you don’t change frequently, you’ll leak blood everywhere and definitely ruin your underwear. The worst case scenario is leaking through your pants and skirt, and having every other kid in the school publicly taunt you.
Also, you have painful cramps. And rampaging hormones that make you cry hysterically or snap at people for no reason. And you’re a teenager, so you’re still struggling with this whole thing and thinking that everyone is watching you, and everyone is out to get you, and if the boy you like finds out that you’re on the rag your life will be OVER.
A fourth of your school days—one week out of four—are like this.
That’s what you’re missing. On top of that, pads in pad dispensers are expensive! Are you expecting the kids to carry change and have the money to do this every month?
Monticello NY, where this high school is, used to be one of the main centers of the Borscht Belt. But the old Jewish resorts are long gone, the economy has collapsed, the downtown has been WalMarted, and the only “industry” left is the state prison. Attempts have been made over and over since the seventies to put something into the area that actually brings in some money. The latest quick fixes are casino gambling at the racetrack, and converting the old Woodstock site, ten miles away, into a performing arts center. It’s really a damn depressing place, and I say this as an upstate New Yorker whose father was born in the area.
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.
Rachel,
I don’t know what kind of high school you went to…but not having a bag at my high school would have severely impaired the students at my high school. Considering the fact that even the non-AP courses were being taught using college level textbooks which are usually mandatory for each class, going without a decent sized bag is not doable. We also had to take a number of shop and science/tech courses which required the use of pencils…not to mention bubbling numerous scantrons.
Moreover, considering the high school building is 6+ stories high, it would be nearly impossible to stop at your assigned locker more than twice or if you’re lucky…three times a day(morning, lunch, and end of school day) and still make it to the next class within 5 minutes.
who the hell uses pencils in high school? you don’t need more than, what, a pen and a calculator.
People taking any kind of math class. Most teachers wouldn’t accept work done in pen. Not that it would make sense to use pen, anyway. And any kind of calculator that could be any help to you on a physics or calculus test obviously wasn’t allowed either. I guess if your high school didn’t expect you to do anything besides add and subtract, a pen and a calculator might be enough.
Well, the authoritarians on the Right really wants to extend the “can’t be trusted” mindset and policy to everybody.
Oh, that’s not true at all. You can be trusted with your own health care, your own unemployment arrangements, and your own disaster responses.
You can’t be trusted with your own genitals, of course.
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?
I just took the LSATs this morning. On my period. With everything, including tampons and pads, in a clear gallon-sized Ziploc. I was slightly self-conscious, but then, I’ve been bleeding for about half my life. But me at fourteen? Christ. Assholes.
Oh, Elecktrodot! “Can’t smell it?” Don’t get out much, do you?
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.
Fake?
Wuss.
Please tell me that you also use the proper term - as far as I know “women” is still not considered an adjective.
—-
000 nz n
001 fst01177178
003 OCoLC
005 20041024193334.0
008 041024zneanz||babn n ana d
040 OCoLC $b eng $c OCoLC $f fast
150 Women athletes
450 Athletes, Women
450 Female athletes
550 Athletes
688 LC subject usage: 140 (2006)
688 WC subject usage: 1,561 (2006)
750 0 Women athletes $0 (DLC)sh 85147453
—-
The proper term is the 150, at least as far as subject access via a controlled vocabulary goes.
Maybe I should have laid on the sarcasm a little thicker in my comment? I wasn’t seriously suggesting DivaCups as the real answer here.
Sorry. I can usually smell sarcasm, but god, the Diva Cup fans so often have that “new convert” attitude about them, and they run around violently insisting that this is the perfect. solution. for. everyone. My apologies. My relationship to earth mothery stuff is mild, at best. I’m not sexphobic or squeamish (not about messiness, though I am about pain), but no, not a giant fan of love-your-period stuff. In fact, I’m stoked—starting the no-period pill tomorrow. I am all puppy dog optimism that it will work as advertised.
Moreover, considering the high school building is 6+ stories high, it would be nearly impossible to stop at your assigned locker more than twice or if you’re lucky…three times a day(morning, lunch, and end of school day) and still make it to the next class within 5 minutes.
Word. My own locker was in a wing of the school that wasn’t even used for classes, and my high school had a large enough campus that we had several buildings, so forget going ANYWHERE between an art or science class and anything else, unless you did it during lunch, assuming you weren’t me in junior year and actually HAD a lunch instead of seven straight periods of class with forty-five minutes to nap on the floor at the end of the day before heading to extracurricular activities.
I’m not sexphobic or squeamish (not about messiness, though I am about pain), but no, not a giant fan of love-your-period stuff.
Heh. And here the whole reason I love my Diva Cup is because yes, I do hate my period, with the firey passion of a thousand burning suns, and a Diva Cup means I have to think about it less often when it’s there.
May I be so presumptuous as to request a review of the no-period pill after a sufficient trial period? I’m desperately curious but I don’t know anyone that’s done it and my gyno is somewhat cautious. (Honestly, even if it turns out it is in fact all puppies sunshine and no periods, I don’t know if I could go on it, just because I am so paranoid about getting pregnant that the idea of having to wait three months for my regular confirmation of an empty uterus freaks me out. But it’d be good information to have if I ever chill the fuck out).
I second everything about the near impossibility in my high school of being able to go to my locker and THEN to the bathroom between classes. It was one or the other…meaning my day was very well planned out. And this was with a small high school comparatively speaking, but these places are not planned out for such simple things as bathroom breaks. Especially not with 4 minutes between classes.
Oh, and with regards to the Diva Cup, I’m like Isabel–I got it because I hate my period and everything about it, and I barely have to change the diva cup so I really don’t have to think about it. (I originally got it because I went abroad my junior year of college and didn’t want to deal with all of that in a country I didn’t know not speaking my first language…). I’d love to just go without my period…
they have and they are almost always broken into for the money one gan get
Ours was the late 20-something, early 30-something physics teacher. He waited until the seniors graduated then spent the summer stalking/harassing a couple of just-graduated girls–who had generally just had him for their senior year science class–at their places of employment (generally fast food places). Since they were no longer students, the administration refused to do anything about it.
My school did have a no-bags rule but allowed pencil cases (no straps, small). For three out of four years, my locker was in a remote location on campus (a wing not used for classes) and for two of those years, I didn’t have a lunch. I got good at keeping combined notebooks (per school rules we were supposed to have a separate one for each class), at determining which classes I didn’t usually need books for or could share (with assigned seats, you could work out a deal with your neighbor), and carrying very heavy piles of books everywhere. Yes, us girls carried various products in our pencil cases.
Now I’m thinking that the problem would be solved if these girls were provided hormonal birth control that would stop their periods entirely. I’m sure no one would have a problem with that, right?
Go girls at that school for protesting! I was IN High School when Columbine happened (end of my junior year) and I remember some of the insanity that was being touted as ‘helpful’.
My senior year the school briefly considered banning backpacks. I was one of the students who was like “Um..no.” My locker was conveniently placed for once (hell, I was a senior who HAD a locker. Some didn’t, b/c we DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH LOCKERS for students in the school…), as opposed to in the opposite corner of the school from most of my classes, down a hallway that is not convenient except to the bandroom–as one of my friends who was a freshman had her locker placed. Furthermore, we had only 5 minutes between classes–which is NOT enough time for a decent bathroom-break even, let alone to get to a locker in an inconvenient location. This wasn’t a ‘huge’ school either, only 3 stories…but it was crowded. My graduating class was 300 or so, and the total of the school was about 1500.
Fortunately, my administrators scrapped that idea…but it was stupid to even think of in the first place.
Then there’s the idiocy of Zero Tolerance—to which I say if we’re not going to have our administrators actually ‘think’ about things, why not just replace them with a robot or computers? It’s cheaper, and a computer can operate in the binary parameters of Zero Tolerance easily.
As for periods…I was one of these oh-so-lucky girls who had to deal with it at 10 years old, in elementary school. And a body that was changing (nicknamed Dolly Parton in 5th grade..) when I was so not ready for it. Never mind I was also one of the very highly UNpopular kids, so it was all just hell. Even in HS it was still hell, and the nurse wasn’t all that sympathetic.
*sigh*
On “women athletes” and so forth:
I’m sure we’ve had this discussion before, folks. In phrases like “woman athlete,” woman is an attributive noun, like in “chicken soup,” “lieutenant commander,” or “butt sex.” Nothing ungrammatical about it.
On writing utensils:
At my high school, scantrons could be filled out in pen and virtually nobody used pencils outside of art class (hey, another attributive noun!). In middle school they made us use erasable pen for everything, which was fucking idiotic: I’m left-handed and had to work very hard to avoid smearing everything I wrote. Thank god the whole erasable pen fad has passed.
On topic:
Menstruation aside, not letting students carry bags in school is just stupid-mean. The experience is enough like boot camp without being unable to carry personal possessions. Virtually everyone I knew in HS had a big bag with things like breath mints, an i-pod, a crappy genre novel, make-up, a discarded sweater … oh, and school stuff, too.
(Look, ma, I got “butt sex” past the moderation filter!)
Also, not only do some girls start their period late, some don’t start it at all — one of my best friends has a mild case of Turner’s syndrome, which means she doesn’t get her period at all unless she takes birth control pills. And I would imagine that some intersexed girls also might not menstruate, which could also create an embarrassing or even dangerous situation for them if someone starts wondering why they’re not menstruating. It just seems like this policy violates so many rules about medical privacy, I can’t even imagine how it would be legal. (Although I know that in our fucked-up world, kids are viewed as having practically no rights at all, particularly while they’re at school. As the school paper editor, I learned that even public schools are allowed to completely disregard students’ First Amendment rights. Ugh.)
Well, sending in tampons with real blood would probably earn you a visit from Homeland Security these days. I want to make a point, not go to Gitmo for sending biological weapons through the mail. (I exaggerate. I hope. But it’s an age of hyperbole, too.)
Plus I wanted something the men could do, too. …not that any of us are going to do it, I’m sure, and you didn’t get the idea from me if you do.
Alana - the problem is, we have a perfectly good adjective that works in this case. As far as I know, “art”, “butt”, and “chicken” don’t have corresponding adjectives that would work in those specific examples the way that “female” does when talking about professions. So it sounds weird. Which is why, during the rare occasion it comes up, one does not say “man doctor” but “male doctor” instead.
It is wrong in the sense that it places undue emphasis on the “female/woman” aspect of “female doctor” by using the less common phrasing. (The fact that “woman doctor” is used often is irrelevant, it’s the fact that we rarely turn nouns into adjectives unless we need to that makes the phrase stand out.)
It would be different if we did use “man lawyer” - or if the phrase “man teacher” didn’t sound so insanely wrong to our ears. But since we don’t, and since it does, using “woman” and “women” as an adjective always struck me as yet another way that our everyday use of language makes woman the other.
Which is what PiaToR was talking about in the first place.
“The proper term is the 150…Women Athletes”
Yes, and “co-ed” still exclusively means “female student” when used as a noun. That doesn’t actually make right, or logical.
I am actually! I think the girly stuff looks so cute, even though I wouldn’t admit that in public, and I really like the surfer theme - it seems like it could be fairly ungendered. The goth would be ok in small doses. And it makes me really happy that teens are getting more fashion and makeup choices!
May I be so bold as to suggest that this has nothing to do with the embarassment of adolescent girls and their periods and more to do with the fact that: Yes! Teenagers are human beings with things they need to carry and it’s none of your goddamn business.
The period is the center of the arguement because it is the most obvious.
Fair point, Mickle.
But to quibble just a bit: “anal” is a perfectly suitable alternative to “butt” in the phrase “butt sex,” and “pullarian” could theoretically be substituted for “chicken” in “chicken soup.”
If that seems like tendentious hair-splitting, bear with me a moment:
In the case of the sex, the adjective-noun formulation (”anal sex”) is more tone-neutral than the the noun-noun form (”butt sex”); “butt sex” is a form of bathos, deliberately vulgar, and likely to be used humorously or in a derogatory sense.
In the case of the soup, however, we’re used to the double-noun construction (”chicken soup”), and it’s the adjective-noun form (”pullarian soup”) that grates on the ears; if “butt-sex” is bathetic “pullarian soup” is sesquipedalian and would only be used facetiously. In either case, the familiar form is neutral while the novel carries an extra connotation.
The point is that language is habitual and to a large degree arbitrary. We do tend to use “woman/women” as a sex-modifier in social contexts and “female” in clinical or medical ones; and yes, “male” is used indiscriminately to denote sex in both social and clinical contexts.
The extra precision of the terminology on the female side isn’t necessarily sexist, however; it’s just a matter of how the language has evolved. You could of course argue from a socially historical perspective that the woman/female distinction came about either as a result of the sexist assumption that a doctor is a man or as a response to that assumption. Either way, however, the distinction has entered the language and now it’s purely a matter of what sounds right - which is “woman croquet-player” and “male muleteer.”
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.
While the government and the “Save the children”
hysteria plays a critical part, the troubling zero tolerance policies, experience of friends who are/were teachers, and my own high school experiences has made me wonder about the role of education schools. After rereading my previous comment, I realized I should have added my emphasis of concern over the efficacy of educational administration training…though I have also wondered about teacher education, especially after talking about this very topic to several friends who are/were high school teachers. As you’ve mentioned, none of them felt prepared to encounter the zero tolerance mentality post-columbine, much less facilitate the implementation and enforcement of such policies.
While the administrators/politicians bear the vast majority of blame, there’s usually a few teachers that will join in/add to the suffering for various reasons ranging from sucking up to the admins to using their students as pawns in their own perverse powerplays.
In my first year of high school, one language teacher took perverse pleasure in using taunts and other insults to demean his students to the point some broke down in tears. As he was the only one assigned to teach that level and he has been there for 2-3 decades, he was immune from student complaints….even when he attempted to deny one disabled student extra test time that was mandated under city education regulations.
After a few months of his BS…and realizing he had it in for me and most of the class, a few classmates and I decided “to hell with it” and started to start a campaign to “annoy” him into retirement. This ranged from twisting gender pronouns when addressing him, inexplicable bouts of laughter while pointing a finger directly at him, and throwing his taunts back to his face during class (Hey…I was 13.). Though our grades suffered, we were given credit when he did retire a year after our graduation.
One of the things I remembered most was his frequent tauntings to me and other classmates that we’ll never survive our first year of college because it is the “big time” and we were struggling in his class. Interestingly enough, when I made an alum visit to my high school a few years later a scholarship student at a respectable private liberal arts college and attempted to update him on my status, he fled as quickly as he could. My classmates concluded his narrow mind cannot process the great dissonance between his view of me as an irredeemable failure and how I actually turned out.
Also, the principal who succeeded not long after my graduation implemented regulations that we now know as zero tolerance policies…something that does not go well with most teens….especially in a school culture that does not take kindly to authoritarian types who demand unquestioning obedience. Fortunately, most of the veteran teachers agreed with us after a while and worked to eventually force a “regime change”.
Going by the UK press, schools are, slowly, heading the same way as in the US. There have been stabbings. There are the scare stories. There is the tendency to refer to everyone under-18 as “children”, which matches a few definitions in law, but also exaggerates the problem and pushes the debate into the uncanny valley of lexicography.
But some practical elements of this are different. There’s a lot of the whole logistics of being at school which, going by the media depictions, seem very different in our two countries.
And it’s hard for me to avoid the conclusion that these sorts of rules won’t stop another Columbine, and such behaviour by the adults makes them as much a target as a bullying student. It doesn’t have to be this school, or this particular stupid policy.
Note to administrator: I apologize ahead of time for the possible double-posting. Browser crashed just after hitting the submit button.
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.
While the government and the “Save the children”
hysteria plays a critical part, the troubling zero tolerance policies, experience of friends who are/were teachers, and my own high school experiences has made me wonder about the role of education schools. After rereading my previous comment, I realized I should have added my emphasis of concern over the efficacy of educational administration training…though I have also wondered about teacher education, especially after talking about this very topic to several friends who are/were high school teachers. As you’ve mentioned, none of them felt prepared to encounter the zero tolerance mentality post-columbine, much less facilitate the implementation and enforcement of such policies.
While the administrators/politicians bear the vast majority of blame, there’s usually a few teachers that will join in/add to the suffering for various reasons ranging from sucking up to the admins to using their students as pawns in their own perverse powerplays.
In my first year of high school, one language teacher took perverse pleasure in using taunts and other insults to demean his students to the point some broke down in tears. As he was the only one assigned to teach that level and he has been there for 2-3 decades, he was immune from student complaints….even when he attempted to deny one disabled student extra test time that was mandated under city education regulations.
After a few months of his BS…and realizing he had it in for me and most of the class, a few classmates and I decided “to hell with it” and started to start a campaign to “annoy” him into retirement. This ranged from twisting gender pronouns when addressing him, inexplicable bouts of laughter while pointing a finger directly at him, and throwing his taunts back to his face during class (Hey…I was 13.). Though our grades suffered, we were given credit when he did retire a year after our graduation.
One of the things I remembered most was his frequent tauntings to me and other classmates that we’ll never survive our first year of college because it is the “big time” and we were struggling in his class. Interestingly enough, when I made an alum visit to my high school a few years later a scholarship student at a respectable private liberal arts college and attempted to update him on my status, he fled as quickly as he could. My classmates concluded his narrow mind cannot process the great dissonance between his view of me as an irredeemable failure and how I actually turned out.
Also, the principal who succeeded not long after my graduation implemented regulations that we now know as zero tolerance policies…something that does not go well with most teens….especially in a school culture that does not take kindly to authoritarian types who demand unquestioning obedience. Fortunately, most of the veteran teachers agreed with us after a while and worked to eventually force a “regime change”.
“The proper term is the 150…Women Athletes”
Yes, and “co-ed” still exclusively means “female student” when used as a noun. That doesn’t actually make right, or logical.
Whoops, clarification needed - the 150 is the correct term, the access point, for that authority record. It should be used instead of the 450s, “Athletes, Women” or “Female athletes”. It is a subset of the 550, “Athletes”.
Which are the correct authority records to apply to a particular item are the choice of the cataloguer/indexer. As I have stated, we have chosen to apply “Athletes” instead of “Women athletes” except where the gender of the subject is a specific theme of the article, despite a general rule to try and be specific. Be damned if I’m going to go “Wow, this sportsperson/scientist/soldier sits down to pee” unless the design and logistics of toilet facilities require mentioning 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.”
I don’t think those are comparable. Hard-on is immediately connected to sex, and menstruation is just another bodily secretion at most having to do with theoretical fertility (not with a sexual act, as in previous example ). I personally just don’t share the feeling - I never felt a need to specifically hide the fact I’m having my period, or been “mortified” that I’d leek. (it happened for sure, but it’s usually between your legs and not noticeable anyway - not pleasant, but not SO terrible ) Never felt it’s got anything to do with my sexuality…
Imagine you have to go to the bathroom every hour to two hours—anywhere from three to six times in an average school day. That’s not going to always happen at lunch or in between classes, especially if you have five minutes in between classes.
OK, it’s certainly not a usual situation. If you soak through a pad or a tampon in less than two hours, you have a medical problem and should go to the emergency room.It’s simply too much bleeding, and can be dangerous to your health. Most girls have to change their pads on average every 4 hours.
Also, you have painful cramps. And rampaging hormones that make you cry hysterically or snap at people for no reason. And you’re a teenager, so you’re still struggling with this whole thing and thinking that everyone is watching you, and everyone is out to get you, and if the boy you like finds out that you’re on the rag your life will be OVER.
Sorry, I don’t subscribe to this, especially the “hormones affecting your behavior” part. I don’t think anybody had shown in any serious research that hormones can make you cry hysterically during your menstruation.
A fourth of your school days—one week out of four—are like this.
You’re exaggerating once again…Having a flow neccesiating changing ones pad every hour for a week…You’d be in the hospital before this week ends
I started my period when I was 12, so I got out of one whole year of dealing with that BS in my middle school. Thereafter, I was left dealing with a 3-floor building with one satellite building outside (in which a mandatory class for 7th and 8th graders was taught), and FOUR MINUTES between classes. They kept telling us that someone (probably a man) had tried going to class with a bathroom break included, and that it was TOTALLY possible.
It wasn’t, unless you somehow had a class just down the hall from your other one. Which I usually didn’t. Fortunately in 7th grade I had a rather cool homeroom teacher who would always let me go in emergencies, and I somehow managed in 8th grade.
High school, we had 5 minutes. Usually pad-changing could be done at lunchtime, but we had only 20 minutes to eat (and a 5 minute bell to get back to class while the next group came to the lunch area) and the better part of that 20 minutes was usually spent in line. As long as one didn’t have the latest lunch period, it was generally fairly doable.
But who was saying the thing about male teachers not being skeevs? I could name at least a dozen teachers from my district who were reprimanded or who disappeared/resigned as a result of inappropriate action toward a female student, and several who just made me uncomfortable even without being officially reprimanded. And then there was the 30-something rumored to be “seeing” one of our classmates. Coulda just been a rumor, except that they got married a year or so ago …
There were a few men who worked in my schools who were perfectly nice and normal, but they were kind of a minority. Ick.
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)
Weirdly enough, in my late-’80s high school, in one important aspect the dress code was actually harsher on boys than on girls: Boys’ pants had to be below the knee, which in effect meant no shorts. Girls, on the other hand, could wear shorts that stopped at two inches above the knee.
Oh yeah, this was in one of Florida’s inner city areas, where wearing jeans in August and May in buildings with spotty or non-existent air conditioning just ain’t comfortable.
At the time, I tried to figure out why someone thought this rule made logical sense. No one - including teachers or administrators - had any idea.
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.
Yes. But that’s an important lesson in itself, I think.
Cultural, your self-congratulatory comments about how you don’t mind flashing blood everywhere don’t make any sense. Why on earth is that okay because it’s “not sexual”? I mean, a guy walking around with a boner is embarrassing in your eyes because it’s sexual, but why should we be ashamed of our sexuality?
Gosh, maybe it’s because some things are private.
I’d actually rate “public boners” as less horrific than “giant red stain on your pants”, anyway, because the former isn’t messy and can often be dealt with by sitting down and calming down. I’ve worked service industry jobs and had to clean up leaked menstrual blood. If it was you proudly bleeding all over the seat at a restaurant, I am deeply annoyed.
I’m desperately curious but I don’t know anyone that’s done it and my gyno is somewhat cautious.
My gyno had a nurse already on it and she loved it. So there’s one review. I asked the doctor about the pregnancy thing and he said just watch out for other symptoms, but that since you’re getting more drug, you’re less likely to get pregnant. Which I think, for those of us who are paranoid about it, is a good selling point. I don’t mind peeing on a stick every once in awhile to reassure myself.
Now I’m thinking that the problem would be solved if these girls were provided hormonal birth control that would stop their periods entirely. I’m sure no one would have a problem with that, right?
Because being excited at having an opportunity for myself=demanding that everyone else conform to my behavior.
God, I am sick to death of the paranoia about the no-period pill or BC in general. Not that you were saying that, Megan, but usually there’s someone in every conversation about the pill or the no-period pill that violently insists that the right to use it is somehow one step away from mandating it for everyone. That I get to/want to do this is not in any way, shape or form a demand that anyone else does it. The regular pill has been out 40+ years and so far, they aren’t dumping it in the drinking water yet. I think we can relax the fear slightly that my contraceptive choice does not create a mandate for anyone else. We might even admit that the high levels of hormonal contraceptive use might indicate that it’s a good choice for a lot of women—if you can handle it, are young and want to keep your options open, and in a monogamous relationship and/or wisely want to back up condoms, they’re pretty ideal and chosen not because we’re all brainwashed but because, swear to god, we enjoy having sex without being paranoid about getting pregnant.
There’s something about the pill that really draws out the killjoys, I swear, who figure that everyone needs to bleed/fear pregnancy together as an act of solidarity that resembles nothing if not “misery loves company”. Of course, they’ll claim to love their period, so it simply can’t be that. So it makes it worse—you should suffer something I enjoy. Next: Why lesbians need to have sex with men so we straight girls feel better about ourselves.
Sorry, I don’t subscribe to this, especially the “hormones affecting your behavior” part. I don’t think anybody had shown in any serious research that hormones can make you cry hysterically during your menstruation.
The idea that PMS is “all in your head” is misogynist claptrap designed to create the impression that women are pretty much hysterical all the time. I’ll point out that the Mayo Clinic certainly believes in PMS and that hormones can, in addition to making your boobs grow and your body change, affect smaller changes to your mood and body. Hormones are tricky things, indeed, and yes, they change your mood. Do you accept that small shift in hormones could make a woman bloat or be hornier? Then why not more irritable? I’m irritable if I don’t have my coffee—mood swings that have a hormonal component seem reasonable to me.
It’s nothing to be upset about if you bleed on your clothes? (BTW, when I had leakage as a teenager, due to that rush of imaginary hormones teenagers have, it wasn’t a small spot, but covered my ass.) No. Having a sexuality is embarrassing but having bodily secretions is not? No, and weirdly anti-sex to boot. PMS is all in your head? No. You’re 0 for 3, Cultural. Perhaps you should toss in how women only take the pill to conform to male expectations because we clearly don’t get a personal benefit from having sex how we like it.
You’re exaggerating once again…Having a flow neccesiating changing ones pad every hour for a week…You’d be in the hospital before this week ends
Make that 0 for 4. I had to change my pad once an hour for a few days out of every month from ages 12-15 or so. Hormones are a tricky thing—maybe you should read a book on them or something. You might learn something, like how infinitesimally small amounts affect big changes, which means that a gland that’s even a tiny bit overexcited could make a giant difference. Which is what appears to be happening to adolescents and why they can be such hormonal monsters.
Fishbone,
We had a very similar rule for boys except no shorts at all. We were, at that time, in a school that was almost 100 yrs old in places, the new wing about 40 yrs old but the only thing in there was the gym and one hallway (two stories) of classes. No A/C at all*. Now, I don’t know how many of you have experienced a New York summer but it’s not hell…just pretty close. 90+ degrees with 90+% humidity, sticky and gross. And, in NY, we went to school from Sept. through the middle to end of June, not May like in the warmer states.
No one was allowed to wear shorts. But this was the 80s and miniskirts came back in style so the girls had it made. (Well, except for having to deal the guy who sat all the girls in a circle around his desk so he could look up their skirts among other skeeves, but that’s another story… )The boys were just supposed to sweat to death, I guess.
So, one smartass wore his sister’s plaid miniskirt to school. He called it a battle kilt. The point was made. The dress code was changed–boys could then wear shorts that came to the knee, or thereabouts. Otherwise, the school would have had ‘kilts’ on campus daily.
*Heck, one winter we didn’t have heat when the boiler broke over winter break. Yeah, we had to go to school anyway.
Well, it will certainly help things to have this sort out when the religious right gets about to enforcing all of the clauses in Leviticus. (So, moving on from the “stone the gays” clause to the putting away the women clauses . . . the goats will be next.)
I mean, how else are the janitors going to know that they need wash down the chairs after a menstrating female has sat on them?
It will also help in “putting apart” women for seven days when they are “in the blood.”
**Leviticus 15:19-29
Cultural Catgirl,
I’m really happy for you that your period is no big deal and such a breeze for you. I think that’s just great and glad to know someone’s experience isn’t a total PITA but you know…that’s just not everyone’s experience.
At 16, I started to have the effects of endometriosis, a disease I would be fighting…well, still am. My gyno is talking hysterectomy right now, actually. In 1986 or so, there wasn’t much to be done and my doctor was a moron anyway. But when you don’t have health insurance you can’t be picky. So, my high school experience of my period was doubled over in cramps that muscle relaxers couldn’t alleviate, clotting and bleeding. My period lasted for 4-5 days–so yeah, a quarter of every month’s school days. I also have PMS and weird hormonal changes. Some months, I cry at the drop of a hat–I am a person who almost never cries. Some months, the fun ones when my testosterone level goes through the roof, I’m actually spending a large portion of my time trying not to kill anyone. Other months, I’m depressed. Other months, I’m filled with energy and love for all mankind. For a day or two anyway. I cannot take BC pills for other medical reasons.
I remember two incidents from HS dealing with this issue. First, one girl got her very first period on the day she wore white pants. She was teased and humiliated and this continued for YEARS. She got a very unfortunate nickname from it and never shook it. The second was a more popular girl who didn’t want to announce that she was now having a period by suddenly carrying a purse around and kept her tampon in her legwarmer. (Shut up! It was the 80’s!) It fell out in the middle of the hallway in front of the whole class. She also was teased and never lived it down. EVER. We’re talking small schools here folks. Kids who cried for their mothers in kindergarten heard about it at graduation! Nothing in a small school is ever forgotten and kids can be really, really cruel.
Can we not bash on Hector and other men for not knowing some basics about menstruation? I remember when I was 16 or so finally overcoming my embarrassment and asking a male friend how much semen actually came out when a man ejaculated. I truly had no idea. Why would I? (I later had the opportunity to verify what my friend told me empirically, and am glad to report that he resisted the temptation to lie.)
My periods are very light, have been for years, and I’d forgotten that some women have to change every few hours. And I’m female.
So don’t feel bad, Hector.
Cultural Catgirl: You’re lucky.
As a child and teenager, I had seven-day, irregular, painful, heavy periods. This wasn’t unusual, and it wasn’t even endometriosis, which is far worse. I was fortunate enough that my high school’s policies were not terribly restrictive (grade school, of course, was a nightmare). As an adult, my periods are still bad enough that they can interfere with work and school.
In terms of the emotional/hormonal aspect—you probably don’t care, but I’m generally pretty happy about my life these days, and I’m usually in a good mood. For the two days before my period, though, I regularly break down crying for no reason. Happened last night, in fact.
You know, everyone’s body is different. There are a lot of women for whom periods are just like the Tampex commercials, and a lot of women who relish the opportunity to prance around skyclad in the woods and get in touch with their moon magick. And to each her own. I try not to resent women for whom menstruation is no biggie, even while I envy them. But when they insist that everyone shares the same experience, I get a little, well, raggy.
Exholt, I didn’t mean to imply that there were no skeevy or power-trippy teachers out there. Obviously there are; we’ve all had them. I just don’t think it’s official policy, at least in my school, to train teachers to go on power trips.
I have no idea what they teach in the administration courses, since I have no interest in ever being an administrator. I know that around here, they tend to fast-track very conservative people into administrative positions, and shift them around every few years so that they don’t get too chummy with the teachers or too attached to the particular school culture.
I love it. It’s wonderful to not have to bleed every month–especially since th bleeding you get on the regular pill isn’t actually a period; you just bleed because of the fluctuation in hormones.
One or the other? How about neither? Five minutes barely gave us enough time to get to the next class, especially when teachers kept you later if you started packing up before the bell actually rang. My parents went in for Parents’ Night, where parents followed their kids’ schedules but with 10-15 minutes per class, and when they came home they asked me how I managed to be on time. Whoever decided that five minutes was sufficient wasn’t fighting through 2000 kids in the hallways.
I can’t believe they’re citing back problems as a reason to ban bags–a good backpack will do a much better job of protecting your back than carrying everything in your arms will, even if everything stacks usefully, which I doubt given my years in high school.
Dang, now I feel like my high school provided the height of luxury by giving us 10 minutes between classes. Didn’t feel like it at the time, of course …
Amanda, I didn’t question the fact that hormones can in principal affect your behavior, I”m just unsure that this particular thing called PMS exists because I never saw any credible research proving it. It’s kinda hard to prove scientifically the existence of such an ill defined condition as “irritability”.
How did you manage to imply such things from my response?This way you can easily manage to bring it to 0/N for reasonably large N…
I certainly never thought that “women are hysterical” and was not going to make any claims about the Pill
It’s great that you’ve read physiology books, human biology certainly is fascinating. Just understand that the fact that hormones exist and affect certain things in your body, doesn’t mean that they can be used to explain everything. For that one needs to do some more research.
Sabotabby
What I was trying to say:
If the high school had a valid reason to ban bags in the school,
then to accommodate female students,
(1)they must provide in restrooms,
(2)free of charge,
(3)the types of tampons and pads that they would normally have brought to school with them.
That would take care of
(1) time consuming locker trips
(2) having to search for change/being overcharged for
(3) stuff that no one would use if they had a choice.
And btw, soaking through a pad in less than two hours indicates exessive bleeding which warrants a call to the doctor/emergency room. This is NOT a situation that can be going on for a few days - you’d loose to much blood. Of course you can decide to change a pad without soaking through it even every 5 minutes, but that’s not the issue.
I went on Seasonale last year. The no periods for three months was wonderful, and then when I did get one, it was just a bit of spotting for a day or two. But, I gained 30 pounds in that first three months and then gained another 10 the next three. After that, I didn’t gain any more, but I didn’t lose it either (and this is with regular exercise and more or less healthy eating the entire time). I stuck it out for a year, because I hate my period, but I switched to Yaz a few months ago. Now, I get a period every month, but it’s only 1-2 days and not that bad, plus I’ve been slowly losing the weight.. What I really want, though, is the Mirena IUD. Little to no periods and you don’t have to worry about it for five years, but my insurance doesn’t cover it and that thing is expensive, so it’s a no go for now.
I’m almost thirty, and just now have I gotten to the point where the second through fourth days of my usually seven day period weren’t every-two-hour changes. So, no, I don’t think she’s exaggerating. Lucky you that you don’t have these periods.
Also, I still have a day of cramps so horrible that I can’t focus and it feels like I’m being stabbed. I suck it up and deal because I’m a macho person? But no, you’re being kinda condescending here. This stuff really happens. Hell, I can usually track my period by fights I start on my LJ and my entire family could dissolve if my mother was on her period.
Possibly you might want to consider that you got a bad source of information about this?
hey candid — motrin doesn’t help your cramps?
Cultural Catgirl - “irritability” is not a condition, it’s a symptom, and one that can indicate any number of medical conditions. PMS and depression are just two that I can think of off of the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more. Also, heavier periods are more likely to happen to women who are beginning menses, as well as having irregular periods. Hence, teenagers keeping menstrual aids around, in case the period does unexpectedly start. It takes awhile (and I forgot how long - a year? two years?) for the cycle to regulate. And there are many women who experience heavy periods even when they’re older. There’s a wide range of what’s considered normal, and, generally speaking, a period is going to be heavier at the beginning than at the end. If a women is in her late 20’s and suddenly starts bleeding way heavier than she usually does, that could be a sign of a more serious condition. Although, going to ER for it might be rather dramatic, unless she’s gushing or is accompianied by other serious symptoms, like extremely painful cramping and nausea. For others, heavy bleeding, extreme cramping and nausea is pretty much how every period is, no matter how old they are.
Honestly, on that one bad day (and like I say, it’s usually only one), not really. It might kick things down from the ledge for an hour or two, but yeah, on that one day, what makes me feel better is a warm bed and sleep and cursing the universe.
And to bring that back to a larger point, I don’t think every or even a majority of women have “ooh, look, it’s a collection of black blood clots!” style periods, even in their teens as a majority of their periods. Do I think a non-trivial number do? Yes. Do I think that an even larger, probably majority number have a “bad period” every so often, even if their average period is the “change pads every four hours” sort? Yes, and that’s the critical point. While menstruation is a normal event in a woman’s life, periods are not all the same. I may have patterns, like I have patterns with say, colds. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t have the bad period/cold.
So sure, most women probably don’t have the “Carrie” periods every period all their lives. But most women have probably had a Carrie period, and unless you want to devote energy to predicting your periods instead of playing video games or having a life, you’re just not always going to know when you’re about to come up on a bad one.
OT but linked to an earlier topic: I wouldn’t take the no-period BC pills mostly because BC pills destroy my libido, but that is a totally different topic…a potentially interesting one, though.
“Can we not bash on Hector and other men for not knowing some basics about menstruation? ”
I wasn’t. Mostly I was simply pointing out how so many men seem to be so quick with the not actually helpful suggestions.
Which is fine, as long as they listen when we explain why they aren’t helpful. Or, better yet, ask questions (or do some research) instead of simply assuming,
Which Hector isn’t really doing.
First post: “I’m going to suggest this even though people have already pointed out why it’s not actually reasonable.” Second post “but, of course I’m assuming this same idiotic school district is going to be overly helpful and offer the widest variety of products available - in every bathroom. Never mind that such a selection takes up several shelves in most grocery stores.”
And yes, I was picking on him for that. Are you trying to argue that he is really listening, and that he keeps offering this helpful suggestion because he’s just that bright and we don’t realize it?
************
“The extra precision of the terminology on the female side isn’t necessarily sexist, however; it’s just a matter of how the language has evolved”
I was never arguing that the choice was deliberately sexist. I completely understand that it came about in part as you are saying it did (we use “woman” more often so “woman” sounded less clinical than “female”.) However, it’s no longer the ’70’s. I don’t know about you, but I know lots of lawyers who happen to be women. I really think we can move onto “female lawyers” at this point. Because no matter what other reasons there are for saying “woman lawyer” the fact that we don’t say “man lawyer” still makes the “woman lawyer” a special case and not just a subset of “lawyer”
And yes, I’m being picky annoying. This and evo-psych wannabes who use “females” when “women” would be more accurate and precise annoy the crap out of me.
oh, and candid, I hear you.
For a few years there I had cramps that no amount of Midol could cure. I finally went to the college health clinic one day when I nearly fainted in the hallway of my dorm - on the way to the bathroom because I thought I was going to throw up. The nurse said that the nausea and fainting was my body’s way of dealing with the extreme pain I was in. She gave me a sample of something that I needed to see my regular doctor to get prescription for.
Between living thousands of miles from my parents - and their health care provider - and then not being insured from almost graduation on, I was never able to get a prescription for those magical little pills. I learned to skip class, inject caffeine constantly, and vary my workouts according to when my period was scheduled to arrive. (Working out in general didn’t help, but I learned that if I worked out harder in the few days leading up to my period, the cramps wouldn’t be so bad. Which actually tended to mess up my sporadic workout routines, because I’d always be hesitant to start working out right after my period in case I couldn’t keep the momentum going for the whole month.)
Amanda: We might even admit that the high levels of hormonal contraceptive use might indicate that it’s a good choice for a lot of women—if you can handle it, are young and want to keep your options open, and in a monogamous relationship and/or wisely want to back up condoms, they’re pretty ideal and chosen not because we’re all brainwashed but because, swear to god, we enjoy having sex without being paranoid about getting pregnant.
Has anyone seen any more information regarding the theory that “no-period” contraception night reduce cancer rates, specifically breast and uterine cancer? I read that theory years ago, but haven’t seen any follow-up.
Actually there’s indications that birth control pills that suppress ovulation help cut down on ovarian cancer. Which is another reason to stick with the little beggers.
And Cultural Catgirl? You can put me as well into the category of women having PMS and knowing exactly what it felt like (I wanted to run around and bite people out of irritability) and soaking-through-the-pad-in-two-hours. First two days of my period–I call them my “pig-sticking days.”
Pardon me for making a “what about the menz” comment (or I guess I can make this a “patriarchy hurts men too” comment) … young women are not the only ones who have uses for menstral products.
When I was about 16 or so, I had some terrible problems with epistaxis. And, well, it’s amazing how much blood even those “light days” pad would hold. So I actually had a supply of menstrual pads in my backpack (with some tissue to hide the pad so it wouldn’t be so obvious what I was using). I would have hated to have had to go to the nurse every time I needed a new pad.
Also, in the what about the menz category — a certain part of the male anatomy at that age has a bit of a mind of its own. It would be awfully embarassing to walk aroun HS without having a notebook or something to carry to, um, hide certain things.
What were these people thinking?
All this makes me feel extremely fortunate about my school days, where the administration was only occasionally insane, and the students quick to retaliate.
But one (probably clueless) question: What about pants pockets? Or are pants with pockets verboten, too?
(Unrelated: This anti-spam feature is slowly surpassing pop-up ads on my annoyance scale. Average attempts necessary to post: 3 from the fast machine, 5+ from the slow.)
Not a pill, but I was on Implanon for three years and would happily recommend it to anyone, particularly anyone who has difficulty taking pills on a daily basis. Getting used to the lack of a period took a little time, but other than that, no problems - It was hassle free and spotting free for all of that time. Way better for me than something like Depo, which turned me into a raging hellbeast for three months.
Also - add me into the nasty period camp. 3-4 times a year, I’ll get a period where the bleeding is enough to have me emptying a mooncup every couple of hours, and the pain knocks me sideways for days at a time. I’ve certainly been nauseous, faint and irritable because of it. I’ve had myself checked out for Endometriosis in order to rule that out as a source of the pain - I’m just unlucky, and really envious of women who don’t have to deal with this. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Inge, about the pants pockets, as someone who is only a few years removed from high school and has a sister who is still in high school, pants with pockets big enough to store tampons and/or pads are not exactly fashionable for the most part these days. Short skirts, shorts, capris, and jeans all generally have small tight pockets, thus rendering tampon storage impossible. I suppose one could wear cargo pants at that time of the month, but that would also advertise the period in progress. Besides, I own a pair or two or cargos, and the outline of a tampon is still clearly visible in the pocket. So, embarrassment would still happen.
Also, Cultural, irritability is definitely a symptom, not a condition. No one is ever diagnosed with “irritability,” in the same way one isn’t diagnosed with “crying fits.” Irritability is a symptom of PMS, just as it is of depression, mania, and a host of other conditions, both mental and physical. Also, you can put me down for both PMS and nasty periods with heavy bleeding, both of which went away when I started on birth control.
Oh, gosh, I remember the periods I had for a few years after puberty, but not with fondness. Cramps, no. Blood everywhere, oh my yes. Underpants. Pants. Sheets. Car seats.
May I point out, also, that changing a pad every two hours does not equal soaking through a pad every two hours? The things do come unstuck from one’s underpants and laminate themselves to one’s pubic hair, making walking or sitting painful, and also can leak off one side while the other’s still pristine, and, besides, teenage girls don’t necessarily know which pads or tampons work best for them yet, and then of course a period is not generally a steady flow - it comes in waves, you might say.
And yeesh, DAS, if you’d said “nosebleed” rather than “epistaxis” I wouldn’t have had to waste twenty perfectly good seconds looking it up.
OT but linked to an earlier topic: I wouldn’t take the no-period BC pills mostly because BC pills destroy my libido, but that is a totally different topic…a potentially interesting one, though.
A dopey question, but did your doctor try you on a low-dose monophasic pill like Mircette or Alesse? I had nothing but problems with triphasic pills like Ortho-Novum 7/7/7, but I’ve been pretty happy with Alesse and it doesn’t seem to have completely torpedoed my sex drive like Ortho-Novum did.
Of course, then my HMO in their infinite wisdom switched me to the “generic version” of Alesse and it doesn’t work as well, but that, too, is a totally different topic.
Wow, cultural catgirl. You just don’t seem to realize how lucky you are. You wrote:
And btw, soaking through a pad in less than two hours indicates exessive bleeding which warrants a call to the doctor/emergency room. This is NOT a situation that can be going on for a few days - you’d loose to much blood.
I’ve got news for you. I had heavy bleeding (soaking through overnight pads in 1-2 hours) for a MONTH AT A TIME when I was in high school. I remember sitting in English class and half an hour after putting on a new pad, I bled all the way through my underwear, jeans, and left a PUDDLE of blood on my chair. I was mortified. I waited two years before I saw a doctor (who immediately prescribed birth control pills). So no, it would not necessitate a trip to the hospital. I was a little anemic, but I certainly wasn’t dying of blood loss (dying of embarrassment- that’s another story). Furthermore, while a trip to the doctor might be advisable, many teenage girls (like myself) are going to be too embarrassed about the whole situation to arrange one.
Face it- teenage girls tend to have irregular and oft-times heavy bleeding. They don’t need to go to the hospital, they just need to go to the damn bathroom!
Cultural,
The blood flow from your periods comes from your uterus, not your heart. The flow of a period is only as long and strong as the blood in the lining of the uterus.
So, yes, women(like me) who are older, can have periods that require them to change a super plus tampon every two hours or so, that lasts an entire week, and not suffer from blood loss. Because the blood was already lost, get it? You really should read up on those books about human physiology you were talking about.
I thankfully, don’t suffer from severe cramps, but my fiance has learned to recognize the symptoms of my period, which include a extreme “bitchiness” where I flip out over little stuff and raise my voice over dirty dishes.
The whole “hormones don’t cause PMS” is about equal to “sugar doesn’t cause hyperactivity in children”. Science may say it isn’t true, but anyone who has children can avow to the reactions of children infused with too much sugar.
I’m not conducting research on PMS, so putting you down wont be a lot of use to proving its existece
. Thing is, while bodily symptoms like water retention, breast tenderness etc are easy to define, verify and hence research, the psycological phenomena like irritability aren’t (btw I meant “condition” as a “state”, it’s probably bad english), and it’s also unclear if they are connected to hormonal changes.
I personally never experienced PMS and in fact I don’t like it when people assume I should have it, as I’m a woman (Like in the token: you are so angry - do you have PMS?) It’s like assuming that during some days of the month I’m less in control of my behavior and less capable of clear reasoning
“I personally never experienced PMS and in fact I don’t like it when people assume I should have it, as I’m a woman”
i agree. i like it so. much. more. when someone who’s not in my body insists that i don’t experience PMS-related irritability because everyone knows PMS-irritability can’t be measured. i mean, it’s not like each woman has her own cyclical set of repeated experiments where she can compare sets of events from month to month to find a pattern.
So, yes, women(like me) who are older, can have periods that require them to change a super plus tampon every two hours or so, that lasts an entire week, and not suffer from blood loss. Because the blood was already lost, get it? You really should read up on those books about human physiology you were talking about.
Ask your doctor about this, seriously. Thing you describe (if you indeed describe it accurately) is abnormal and should be investigated. Look at this link for example href=”http://www.healthywomen.org/aub/”> There are several causes that can make your bleeding stronger and compromise your health, and it’s not always caused just by thick uterus lining.
Perhaps asinine policies such as this wouldn’t be needed if the conditions that create a Dylan Klebold were mitigated. The outcast ye have with you always, but perhaps fewer would come to school with an arsenal if the adults in charge actually give a damn.
By this I mean that the wrongs done to the outcast should be just as sanctionable as the wrongs done by the outcast. That condition isn’t always met; the harassed child is at best told “just ignore it,” the schoolyard-bullying equivalent of “lie back, relax and enjoy it.” If you “just ignore it”, the harassers just continue.
Bullies easily spot outcasts, perhaps from their lack of self-confidence, and bully them not just because it’s fun for the bully, but because they know that they will face no retribution.
I’ve been there, suffered that, been told to “just ignore it,” got the @#$% T-shirt. And I thank whatever gods there be for the good sense not to bring weapons into my troubles, and for the handful of teachers who actually gave a damn.
Ask your doctor about this, seriously. Thing you describe (if you indeed describe it accurately) is abnormal and should be investigated. Look at this link for example href=”http://www.healthywomen.org/aub/”> There are several causes that can make your bleeding stronger and compromise your health, and it’s not always caused just by thick uterus lining.
I have to weigh in on this. About ten years ago I went to the GYN instead of work one morning b/c I was bleeding heavily (about a pad an hour) and I’d recently read that such bleeding was abnormal. The (female) nurse practitioner flatly told me to quit “overreacting” and sent me on my way.
Every single month since I got my diva cup (which has volume markings on it) last year, I’ve seen that I bleed more than twice as much as the baseline 80 mL that’s considered menorrhagia. I’ve most likely been bleeding that much all along. And according to my docs, I am normal, fertile, non-anemic and healthy. I have a relative who, until menopause brought relief, used newborn-size diapers to contain her flow, and her doctor told her she was just a heavy bleeder.
Bottom line: “normal” is highly individual, and just because an article or a website says something’s not normal doesn’t make it so for a particular person. I’d trust our own knowledge of our bodies over the limited medical wisdom on the topic any day.
And, btw, Amanda, I’m sending envy vibes your way with respect to your no-period pill. If I could, I’d be taking it too.
When I was in highschool a decade ago there was a “no backpacks” rule on the books.
It was only sporadically enforced and it was sold as a classroom space measure rather than a security one. We were packed in pretty tight and teachers didn’t want to be tripping over bags all the time. In terms of carrying books, it wasn’t so bad. (We were on a semester system so we only ever had 4 classes at a time, two before lunch, two after. Most of our notes and writing utensils would be carried to class in massive zippered binders.)
In terms of carrying feminine hygiene supplies, it was rather trickier. I eventually learned to put mine in a pencil case purchased for the purpose.
What was much more difficult was finding time for bathroom breaks. Female students were given some leeway in terms of being late for class, but who wants to be late and then have to explain yourself in front of the whole class? Not me at 14 for sure.
I learned to keep a clean pair of pants in my locker as I frequently bled through before noon.
but, of course I’m assuming this same idiotic school district is going to be overly helpful
You could be right; for example, I don’t see why terrorists would target an upstate New York hs. But, if they’re not going to obviate the need to bring menstrual supplies to school, they’re going to have to let women bring their menstrual supplies to school. And because few women — especially teenagers — can absolutely know, for sure, when their periods will start, the idiotic school district will have to let the women bring their supplies to school every damn day. Which means that the school might as well bite the bullet and go for the metal detectors, bag screeners, bomb sniffing dogs, etc., just like they were a courthouse or an airport or something, because a tampon, with its fuse-like string, could easily be a 1/8th stick of dynamite. At that point, everybody could bring their backpacks to school once more. And peace and tranquility will reign in the valley.
Catgirl, seriously. You’re not in my body or my mind, nor anyone else’s’ here. You don’t seem to realize the sense of entitlement you’re projecting. Do the, “I really do have nasty periods” folks a huge favor, and just.shut.up.
It would be an interesting Halloween if the students took a bladder from a Camelback, filled it with fake blood and strapped it inside their clothing, ran the outlet tube down their arm, and sprayed random seats belonging to administrators and teachers so that they would have that lovely “soaked through” effect.
When the men had to go home and change their pants, I think they would get it!
BTW, I use a Keeper rather than a Diva Cup. When traveling, that thing is a godsend because I didn’t have to whip out tampons during security checks or estimate how many I would need while I was out of the country (and have to figure out where to get them if I guessed wrong).
Fortunately, the conference facility and my hotel had clean water, though.
Good grief, can the school not just do the obvious and make tampons and pads available in the restrooms?
How hard is that?
But really, the idiocy of denying kids the ability to carry around their stuff is ludicrous. Teach people responisbility, don’t give them stupid rules.
Sheesh.
This is one of the stupider zero-tolerance rules I’ve heard, but by no means the worst.
I was almost suspended for bringing in Aleve pills (that the nurse had reccomended, after I threw up and passed out from cramps). I was in eighth grade, my mom had bought the pills, and most of the teachers were fine with it. But it only takes one annoyed person to report you to the office, and then you’re basically screwed. Fortunately, I was an aggressive brown-noser at the time, but it could have been worse.
And I’m definitely seconding (although it’s probably hundreding at this point) the skeevy teachers comment. I went to a Catholic high school, so we were a little looser on the rules, but I personally knew or was friends with six other students who had relations with teachers (two (a guy and a girl) with the same teacher), not to mention several others that were rumored to be going on. I dated a teacher from my senior year of high school into college, and he was literally the only one to be fired for it. One teacher was asked to leave after hitting a student and throwing a student (while she was in her desk) across the room (but sex with a minor was okay), one (the religion teacher) isn’t allowed to be alone in his classroom with a student unless the door is open, one left the school to teach in a middle school, and two are still teaching there, with no punishment.
It’s things like this that basically soured me on school. I’d love to be a teacher, I love kids, I love learning and teaching people things, but I could never deal with the way the administrations treat the students.
I find it interesting (as an Australian, and therefore someone who is only peripherally affected at best by the culture of insanity which is the US these days) that while comparatively few school shootings occur, when they do, the people most likely to be targeted are *other students*. There are very few teachers actually hurt (and when they are, it’s usually because they tried to stop the students from being hurt) and positively no administrators that I’m aware of. Yet the entire security theatre here appears to be aimed not at stopping the students from hurting each other, but rather at preventing the students from hurting the staff.
I sometimes wonder whether anyone anywhere in the US has stopped and asked the students what *they’d* like to try to prevent such things from happening.
The Australian school system when I attended (between 1977 and 1988) wasn’t at a sufficient level of sophistication to require such things as metal detectors, passes, or similar. Heck, the high school I attended didn’t have lockers for the students (big suburban high school, something like 1200 - 1500 students, the lockers would have occupied more blasted space than the classrooms). I learned a lot about what I wanted from a bag during those years - the primary requirements were “big” (to hold all the books, files etc) and “light” (because the stuff itself was heavy enough). In such a bag, an entire box of pads could be concealed quite successfully - which helped when *other* girls had their period unexpectedly and didn’t want to visit the nurse.
As for visiting lockers between classes? The high school I attended had four periods per day (ie four double classes). The first one was bounded on either side by arriving at school and the morning break. The second was bounded by form room (attendance taken, and notices read out) and the lunch break. The third was bounded by lunch and a five minute break, and the fourth by the five minute break and hometime. Even so, with *everyone* in the school moving from one place to another at those times, and certain class areas being “out of bounds” during breaks, it was quite frequent to wind up running late to class. Never mind that Murphy’s law of class placement generally applied as well, meaning the two classes you had which were furthest from each other on a particular day were in third and fourth period, or your class after form was inevitably the one which required you to teleport to arrive on time.
My final three years at school, I had a form room class in the art block. The class which was my form room was in the middle of the block, on a sort of mezzanine floor. It couldn’t be accessed during recess, or at any time prior to a teacher opening the door to the downstairs area *from the inside* of the art block. My form teacher was inevitably the one who was running about 5 minutes late. My teachers for second period were all of them the type who arrived early (or had their form class in the classroom they were going to be using… bastards!). To this day, I walk very quickly indeed, and am able to keep up with people up to a foot taller than I without thinking too hard about things.
As for toilet breaks - our high school had separate toilets for each year. If you went to the nearest one, gods help you. The girls toilet for years 11 and 12 (upper school) was up a flight of stairs, and if you happened to be in an upstairs classroom in the same building, gods forbid that the teacher allow you to go through the inside of the building. No, you had to go outside, down the stairs, around the building, back *up* the stairs to the loo, and then reverse the bloody journey on the way back.
Sorry, I don’t subscribe to this, especially the “hormones affecting your behavior” part. I don’t think anybody had shown in any serious research that hormones can make you cry hysterically during your menstruation.
Okay, it isn’t serious research, but have a bit of anecdotal evidence: I’m on an SSRI type anti-depressant. It completely suppresses my libido, to the point where I haven’t actually managed orgasm since I started the bloody thing. Yet once a month, for the week before my period, I am more prone to feelings of depression and to actually being able to be sexually aroused. If that’s not the hormones, please explain firstly, why it only lasts a bloody week; secondly, why it happens just before my period; and thirdly, why it *only* happens just before my period. All explanations cheerfully accepted.
Good grief, can the school not just do the obvious and make tampons and pads available in the restrooms?
I think we’ve established that there’s a number of reasons why that doesn’t work, from the expense of single-issue tampon vending, to the logistics of keeping the restrooms stocked, to the fact that different individuals have unique needs, to the fact that we’re talking about a school, which means that it’s filled with tiny little vandals who would love nothing better to make a big fucking mess courtesy of the free tampon handouts.
Meredith: pants with pockets big enough to store tampons and/or pads are not exactly fashionable for the most part these days
Goodness. And I, in my school days, used to pity my mother, because women’s clothing back in the days had no pockets, while I could stuff my wallet, my keys, a large handkerchief, a nailfile and a small box of tampons quite comfortably into my pants pockets, and have the jacket packets free for reading material, food and a Walkman. (Small things like those would have got lost in my schoolbag…)
These days, I can still stuff all that into my pockets (well, the Walkmen has shrunk some), and the school girls have no pockets. Who’d have thought that the 80s would be a privileged time.
Just to add to the flood of anecdote re: periods…
I first got mine when I was *10*, easily a year before any of my schoolmates. Even worse, until I went on the pill* when I was in my 20’s, my cycle ranged from between 25-45 days and I could easily bleed for an entire week.
I literally had no idea when I would get my period, and gods help the girl in Jr. High who bleeds through her pants. Plus, like alot of others, my locker was almost always located in the most inopportune spot for my schedule. I used to think, actually, that was taken into consideration each year, just to fuck with us.
*as a 38-year old, I can no longer take the pill because lo-dose stuff isn’t high enough hormone levels to fully supress ovulation (so i develop cysts like the one that ruptured and landed me in the hospital last xmas) and the doses that are high enough aren’t recommended because of breast cancer fears. -.-; At least my damn cycle is more or less predictable now.
Cultural Catgirl - lucky you. Not all of us have happy fun-time periods, and not all of us have “tiny leaks that are in your pants anyway”
I’ve had PCOS and endometriosis since I was 13. This meant 9 day bleeds, vomiting, fainting, pain that could only be controlled with Tramadol (synthetic morphine) and a small fortune in pads and tampons. At 15 a super-absorbency tampon+night-time pad could be bled through in an hour. At 17, in college, I had a tampon and two pads, stood up to leave class, and was mortified to see a pool of blood on my chair, the carpet and my clothes. I’ve bled through onto car seats, bus seats, people’s couches. I tried wearing jeans with two pairs of shorts underneath, and bled through that. I spent years having to soak various items of clothing in sinks, or buckets of salt water, in view of the whole house. I had to put up with my father ridiculing me for not being “grown up” because I cried from the pain, and that “It happens to all women so you’d better learn to deal with it” I had to deal with teachers harassing me for going to the toilet every hour. I spent my teen years and most of my 20s planning my whole life around my period, especially when I reached 25 and the endo symptoms started a week before I ovulated and lasted until my period was over! Please don’t tell me it’s “no big deal”
Thank God for the Mirena coil, an understanding gyno, and a patient girlfriend who persuaded me that this wasn’t normal, after years of people (like you) telling me to “suck it up” and “It’s part of womanhood blah b lah blah”
On the topic of the no-period pill, I’ve been on it almost two months, and it’s great - except when you bleed anyways, like I’m doing now. Sigh.
Catgirl, I’m glad you’ve had great periods, but a lot of women do not, and the idea that a teenage girl is going to the hospital because she has to change her tampon and pad every time she has a break between classes is laughable. Even if she did go to the hospital, what would they do? Give her more pads and ibuprofen? Yeah, that’s worth talking about her period to complete strangers for. The only real solution to painful, heavy periods is birth control, though unfortunately many parents have issues with their young teenage daughters taking the pill. So schools have to accommodate for the fact that some girls might have to change a pad and/or tampon every hour, irregardless of how “unusual” you think it is or if you think they should go to the hospital. It’s not a life-threatening emergency, and unless the schools start giving out the pill to students (that would be awesome! but not going to happen) then there anything they can do except let the girls do whatever they feel they need to. Free pads and tampons would be nice too, but that’s almost as unlikely as free birth control in school.
This idea that having a heavy period is so abnormal it’ll land you in the hospital is ludicrous. I’ve had endometriosis and fibroids pretty much as long as I’ve had a period. I just recently found an OB/GYN willing to do a hysterectomy (I’m not quite 31) and in order for my insurance to cover it I had to prove that my quality of life was severely impaired. It took a second trimester miscarriage after a placental abruption for them to listen to what she’d been saying for months and I’ve been saying for years. I can have months where I bleed for 3 weeks straight and other than becoming mildly anemic there is nothing else happening. I’ve tried most of teh HBC on the market, and I got to discover over the years that HBC’s just made things worse. Some gave me migraines, some made it impossible for me to digest food and one actually made my period heavier to the point where I bled for 6 weeks. So yes, for some of us a heavy and uncomfortable period is just a part of life.
Maybe the sending-in-tampons thing is begging for a visit from the Department of Homeland Security, but a phone call wouldn’t. A phone call, every day, for three to seven days out of every month. “Hi, I’m getting my period today. I thought you’d want to know. You seem to be interested in that kind of thing.” “Hi, me again. Still getting my period. It’s a long one this month; who knew?” “Hi, still getting my period. On my way to the bathroom, actually. Super Plus.”
From everyone.
Catgirl, your seemingly honest astonishment at being criticized for insistently providing people with (apparently) incorrect and unsolicited advice is totally awesome.
Are you currently a tenured faculty member of an elite mathematics department?
Catgirl -
It’s so funny that this post should have come up today, because, and thus begins the oversharing, I’ve had to get up to change my tampon twice since I started reading this comment thread. You may call that a medical emergency, but I call it a Monday, and I have them every four weeks or so.
I haven’t had any hysterical crying today, but that usually comes two days before and two days after my period (and has been considerably reduced since I started on the Pill). I’ve had some significantly snappish tendencies today, which usually are confined to the day before and the day after my period, so they might be attributable to… other factors.
And so you know, a syndrome is nothing more than a group of symptoms or conditions that occur together with sufficient frequency as to be recognized by medical science. So you can go looking for a study to confirm that PMS exists, or you can look to just about every postpubescent woman on this comment thread and compile our anecdata, and there’s your syndrome.
Or believe that we’re just playing it up so’s we can be all bitchy and no one can call us on it. Whatever.
And dammit, I was going to throw in some unneccessary snark about your Vag Of Steel and how you go around tearing phone books in half with your labia, and then I forgot. It’s a good thing I got so scatterbrained and forgot, because that would have been really bitchy.
Good grief, can the school not just do the obvious and make tampons and pads available in the restrooms?
How hard is that?
Well, lets take a high school with 2000 students. 1000 students are female. At any given time, about a quarter of those young women will have their menses. So, 250 students on any given day. If each needs 3 tampons or pads a day (average) the school would have to supply at least 750 tampons or pads, every day.
Most of the dispensers I’ve seen in bathrooms don’t seem to be big enough to hold more than 40 items. They’re designed for the occasional emergency, not to provide the full requirement for every woman in a given building.
Plus, there are a lot of different pad and tampon styles, and most women feel pretty strongly about having their favorite type available. And women often want different absorbancies on different days. Having to use a “light” tampon on a heavy day can be a disaster, while trying to remove a not-soaked-enough “super” tampon on a light day is a uniquely uncomfortable experience.
The logistics of trying to provide for the menstural needs of an entire high school are quite complex, compared to simply letting students carry whatever supplies they need in a bag.
And while I’m quadruple posting, I had to laugh at your comment, DAS. Not because it’s a funny condition, of course, but because I remember dating a hockey player and wondering why my tampons would always disappear faster than I was using them. It all became clear at hockey practice one evening when a player got an elbow to his nose, and out of my boyfriend’s hockey bag came the familiar pink tube… The guy looked kind of funny skating around with a string hanging out of his nose, but the nosebleed stopped right quickly.
3 months without my period? Sign me UP! Except, oh yeah, I can’t afford that. So I’ll deal with my monthly pain in the va-goo.
Diva Cup/ things of the same sort- great when you’re changing it in a private bathroom. My younger sister is still living at the dorms at her college. We’ve discussed how much of a hassle pads and tampons are and I suggested that she get a diva cup (i’ve had one for about 2 years now and i love it). She pointed out the main problem- I can change/wash mine fairly easily because I can go into the bathroom, close the door and use the sink and the toilet. She can’t in her communal bathroom. Most high schools are the same way- at least mine was.
Best solution, for everyone’s all over health: let everyone involved carry whatever bag/backpack they want to carry until they prove themselves unable to handle that responsiblity. We (the honor students at my highschool) would have had heart attacks and all out rebellion if forbidden our backpacks.
My god there are so many comments that I can’t possibly read them all before bled. I like the idea of the bleed-in where they “really splatter rather dramatcally” their groins.
Also, maybe a few girls will be horribly shy and wear a tampon through the whole school day and and die of TSS.
This post brings back memories. I was lucky to always be very regular with my periods, but I started at 11 (still in elementary school). Except for the years I was on some form of birth control, I could count on my period lasting exactly 8 days every month. Something that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned (and I made it through all the comments before posting *whew*) was clotting. Surely I wasn’t the only person who passed large clots during my period, and those had to go somewhere. A pad can only absorb so much before you have major spillage, which happened to me every single month, despite all my efforts at extra padding.
And my grandmother had the exact same menstrual pattern when she was still “doing that nasty business”, as she puts it.
Are you currently a tenured faculty member of an elite mathematics department?
And who are you? I doubt you’ve seen my nickname before, so what do you mean to say with your post? Are you using math as a symbol of something very highbrow? Would it be OK to speak like I did if I was tenured (in an elite mathematics department 
)? But then and if such thing will happen to me I will probably stop commenting on online blogs, it’s a PhD time procrastination thing 
WOW!!! Now that’s surprising!!!
Nope, I’m merely a lowly PhD student, but you’ve hit a bull eye regarding my field of study, it’s amazing
Anyway, hope to hear from you back before this article disappears from the first page.
AVG,
Anecdotal evidence doesn’t say anything about how widespread the syndrom is, and doesn’t prove that it’s really caused by change of hormonal balance at the time of menstruation. in fact I’ve read some research excerpt that says that only 5 percent of women in their study group experienced the psychological symptoms of PMS consistently and at the same time in their cycle. Also the fact that you still continue to experience those symptoms (though diminished), while on the pill probably contradicts the assumption that they are caused by hormonal changes accompanying real menstruation, because somebody taking the pill has very different hormonal balance at the time of their “menstruation”.
Anyway, I’m sorry if my lack of belief in PMS offends you. I don’t see why it should.
I didn’t understand the “cutting phone books with my labia” thing. My belief is that for the majority of women menstruation isn’t interferring significantly with their daily lives, and if it does there probably is a health problem explaining this that can or can not tbe treatable. For example if you bleed through a pad in an hour for a few days you may have hormonal imbalances, fibroids or polyps and it’s a good idea to check it out. It’s not normal, usual, common, or healthy thing, and you shouldn’t just put up with this. I guess I also exaggerated when I sad that you sould go to an emergency room if you have to change a pad every hour, but you certainly have to check it if it persists and it is abnormal.
Lastly, I dunno if you question this, but there certainly are cases of women ending in an emergency room with an uncontrollable menstrual bleeding. It’s extreme, but it also happens.
… consistently, despite bounteous evidence to the contrary. I give up.
catgirl,
you
1) speak with a fairly Olympian tone about something you’d like to be taken abstractly.
2) recieve responses from a large number of rather intelligent people who point out that their experiences don’t fit your abstraction.
3) define their experiences out of your abstraction by labeling them as abnormal (’go see a doctor’ or some such).
4) continue to assert your statements with a large general scope
5) act injured that anyone saw your general statements as a personal attack on their specific experience. why would anyone ever be offended by simple abstract reasoning in a noble quest for a good definition?
6) fail to understand that your general statements aren’t really backed up by much, except the need for a nice abstraction (it’s always aweome when things don’t exist!).
Having endured a great deal of math lounge banter (I’m a math grad student about to finish, who thankfully gets to do the bulk of his work outside the department), your performance here perfectly matches a pattern I observe there. The higher the rank of the speaker, the more the bullshit flows.
What’s truly awesome is how these folks translate that attitude directly into their teaching, especially at the lowly peasant level of intro calculus. I seem to keep winning teaching awards due to the bar being so godamn low in the field when it comes to interpersonal interaction with folks not entirely on your own damn wavelength.
In sum: you do not have nearly enough data in front of you, nor a good enough or indeed any explanatory model, to be dismissing the experiences of other people.
catgirl,
for a glorious example of #5 in my rant above, see your comment #210.
1)My first abstraction is “I haven’t seen the proof that PMS psychological symptoms are caused by premenstrual hormonal changes”. The comments on this site don’t prove this abstraction to be wrong, they just list anecdotal accounts of personal experiences, which I never claimed to be nonexistent. They do nothing whatsoever to prove that the symptoms in question are caused by physiological changes in ones body.
i knew your conjecture about my status wasn’t meant as compliment 
BTW what’s your area of research?
2)My other abstraction is “Most women don’t have to change a pad every hour for a few days. Such a situation if persistent is usually indicative of some underlying medical problem”. It’s easy to check this claim - google “exessive menstrual bleeding” and read the definition and the follow up. This claim is similar to saying “most people aren’t clinically depressed” - and a bunch of intelligent people on some site coming out and saying “but I usually don’t want to get out of bed on most days” doesn’t refute this claim.
3)I’m not insulted, I’m amused
4)BTW, personally I always thought the existence of PMS claims to be antifeminist, as I explained in one of my previous posts.
5)why would anyone ever be offended by simple abstract reasoning in a noble quest for a good definition? Why, indeed? I don’t understand your sarcasm.
6)Oh, so you’re just pissed off with your profs
7) This site is so damn slow I have to type my responses in notepad!
6) in my defense, I’m actually almost ecstatically happy with “my profs”: my advisor, my co-advisor in the CS department, and two teaching faculty who trained me to teach the undergrads are all wonderful human beings. The rest of the lot are less than ideal, but thankfully they have no effect on my career arc and thus can function merely as cautionary examples.
My area of research is “computational topology.” In theory, this involves trying to make educated guesses at various homological features of unknown
(generally high-dimensional) spaces from a rough point sample. The
immediate applications are to image cleanup and compression. The more pie-in-the-sky applications (but the ones that bring in big grant money) are to a variety of biological problems, in which the data is so fuzzy that more geometric data analysis techniques aren’t really all that helpful; the hope is that more holistic descriptors from topology (like number of clumps, local dimension, periodicity or not) might help make sense from chaos.
Inevitably, the work involves talking to a lot of CS and Bio people and attempting to explain some math to them. It’s perhaps this that makes me generally a bit shirty with the attitudes of most pure math folks towards communication: they may well have fancy definitions memorized, but if they can’t communicate the basics of an idea to a smart but not technically informed person, they aren’t really worth shit in the greater scheme.
5) good lord, I hope you’re kidding in your response. The difference between reasoning abstractly about Stieffel-Whitney classes and shit that affects real people should be apparent; one comes with a great deal more accountability attached.
Have you gotten to the point yet where you walk into a crowd of people and start trying to define who should be allowed to vote, working only from first principles? That kind of shit blends in well at your better faculty lunches.
As for the rest, whatever. I really don’t think the studies you read, or indeed the terms you use, are well-defined enough to use in order to dismiss “anecdotal experiences.” Perhaps the symptoms that some people feel monthly and describe quite articulately are caused by the phases of the moon. And perhaps they may have done as much research into the topic as you have.
Nonetheless, peace. Good luck with your program.
it’s amazing
No, it’s not. It’s obvious in the way you refuse to abandon your a priori conclusions in the face of empiric contradiction.
It’s a nearly universal trait of mathematicians that once they prove something on paper, they almost always ignore the myriad ways in which the real world proves them wrong.
Here, you’re doing it now. You’ve previously concluded that there’s no way normal menstruation could be so heavy, therefore any woman who menstruates so heavily must be abnormal, despite a weight of medical opinions to the contrary. You’ve already assumed it; therefore, nothing so profane as real-world observation could possibly change your mind.
It’s the gulf between mathematicians and scientists. It’s the reason so many of you are creationists.
What you said, and this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with mathematics or mathematical proof.
Your attempt to delegitimize my claims by pointing to some strange analogy with the gap between mathematicians and other scientists is childish at best.
mathpants:
Your area of research sounds very interesting. Personally I’m now actively interested in pure math (algebraic geometry and representation theory to be specific) but I have a kink for all biology related stuff. I don’t know too much about the ways they apply mathematics to biology, and it’s always really interesting to hear something about it.
Regarding your point about explaining stuff to non-mathematicians - actually some consider your ability to explain stuff to an amateur a test of how good you understand it yourself. However you can only explain it up to some point, and then maybe some people are just not interested in explaining, despite being able to.
Good luck to you too. It’s probably about time I stop derailing the thread (btw on the topic I think that the ban on backpacks is pretty stupid simply because you can easily hide a weapon beneath your clothes):-)
catgirl,
to derail well further:
I did alg geometry in an earlier life and still use a few of the tools now. If you haven’t already, I strongly urge you to read “Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry” by Miles Reid. Despite its title, it’s actually a pretty damn good explanation of what’s actually going on behind all the weird abstract nonsense. He wrote it after getting frustrated with, in his words, “students who did two semesters of Hartshorne and couldn’t draw a fucking curve.” I’m also a huge fan of anything Sturmfels writes on the subject (for some downright weird applications of algebraic geometry to phylogenetics, check out the book written by Bernd Sturmfels and Lior Pachter).
Chet,
I’d watch with the “nearly universal trait” up there. There are a good deal of us who understand a bit more of what we are doing and what we are NOT doing when we attempt to model some weak reflection of some semblance of “the real world.” Sometimes the results are pretty awesome. Often they’re crap. Unfortunately, tenure committees don’t always make that distinction.
To the rest of the thread; I humbly apologize for this epsiode of NerdFight and will shut up immediately.
Ha. And it’s a situation where if you go to an OB/GYN about it, they’ll either use it as a excuse to do some testing and get some money from your insurance before declaring you “normal” and “over-reacting,” or they’ll simply tell you to stop “over-reacting” and diagnosing your ills via the Internet.
I’m not even sure how active this thread is at this point . . .
Catgirl: here’s the thing. When it’s recommended that you call the doctor if you’re using more than 1 pad an hour, what’s inherent in that recommendation is that you overflowing a pad an hour is UNUSUAL for your body. Because if it’s unusual, it’s an indication of something, quite possibly a early miscarriage (which you want checked out because if it’s incomplete you may want to/need to have a D&C).
When it’s exactly how it occurs every four weeks, doctors shrug and tell you you’re a heavy bleeder. A doctor may recommend HBC, but it doesn’t always work as advertised for heavy bleeders. As long as you’re not presenting with other symptoms of blood loss (dizziness, headache, etc) they will assign it to the realm of “normal.”
Catgirl: You’re kidding, right? Heavy bleeding for six out of ten day periods during my teenage years, down to heavy bleeding for two out of five now that I’m older.
BEEN to doctors, had tests run: I’m totally normal, I just am a heavy bleeder. They happen. These people exist!
If I were you, I’d talk to your doctor and get educated on the fact that heavy bleeders exist and it won’t actually kill you. Because uh. You’re not bleeding out a vein here. The fact that you think you can die from this is really amazing to me. Please educate yourself before arguing further, instead of advising everyone who has it that they’re medical abnormalities. Some will be, and you’re right that it can be a warning sign to check out that something MIGHT be wrong (as it can overlap symptom with other problems), but it is not a guarantee of a problem — some people (many, to judge by personal experience, but that’s not statistically sound!) are just like this.
Please educate yourself before talking further.