How period trackers have changed girl culture • Hacker News Board

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#91

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 6:44 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #85

delecti wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal healthy body function is getting pregnant many times throughout your life. Just because periods are what happens every month to a female body in current society doesn't mean it's normal or healthy. There's reason to think that modern women having so many periods throughout their adult lives is at least partly to blame for higher incidences of various female-specific cancers (breast in particular, but also uter…

Estrogen is carcinogenic. 1. http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/publications/in-vivo/Vol2_Iss10... 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10688862

Estrogen can be administered with other compounds to reduce the chance of cancer from interaction with oxygen radicals:

http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/publications/in-vivo/Vol2_Iss10...

Anyways, there's always something that's going to cause cancer in your body until we determine a way of hardening the cellular death and reproduction systems.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#92

Post by kaylarose » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #44

eveningcoffee wrote: post #8

As the app mentioned is free, I would deduce that they try to turn the data about their users cycle into a monetary value. Is there research how certain periods of the cycle would affect women shopping behaviour (or behaviour in general)? I am asking this to understand how much value is in such information. Perhaps there are other aspects I am overlooking?

I looked at their (Clue's) privacy policy a while ago: basically you have the option of not creating an account, and they claim that everything is stored locally and not sent anywhere in that case. I think it's a German/EU company, so they should have some restrictions on what they do with this data. Maybe someone can take a closer look...

I can't say for the privacy policy, but I used Clue for over a year without an account. Since I forgot to do a final export of the data before resetting my phone (I know, I know...), I subsequently lost all the locally stored data for the past few months. When I contacted Clue, they said their was no way to retrieve it. So my guess is that they are telling the truth re: nothing sent to the cloud unless you explicitly choose to.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#93

Post by dang » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 7:28 PM UTC

mreiland wrote: post #88

yumptonpa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it offended me - I was just pointing out that you weren't being as non-judgemental as you claimed you were.

It's like a fight between SJW's. Who's the least judgemental! Tune in at 11 and find out! lol

Please don't post unsubstantive comments.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#94

Post by dang » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

klausa wrote: post #28

>It's not unlike the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary (...) which is defecation. Yeah! And as we all know, girls are in general, just /gross/. There is no such stigma around shitting. Have you really never heard people joking what happens after they eat Taco Bell or similar foods? People don't talk about particulars of shit they take - but it's not a complete taboo. But seriously - those two are nothi…

> you haven't given it any real thought

Please don't. Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News.

Snark isn't welcome, either.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10614354 and marked it off-topic.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#95

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

klausa wrote: post #28

>It's not unlike the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary (...) which is defecation. Yeah! And as we all know, girls are in general, just /gross/. There is no such stigma around shitting. Have you really never heard people joking what happens after they eat Taco Bell or similar foods? People don't talk about particulars of shit they take - but it's not a complete taboo. But seriously - those two are nothi…

[deleted]

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#96

Post by zeveb » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #82

zeveb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Fixed" and "broken" are defined how the person wants to use his body, not by natural order of things. That's an interesting idea, but one which I have to disagree with. A person who wishes to be an amputee does not have a broken body because he has two arms and two legs, nor is his body fixed by severing one or more of them; rather, he has healthy limbs and a broken brain or mind, which may be fixable with particu…

Interesting discussion. What's the definition of "fixed" and "broken" you're implicitly using in your argument?

> What's the definition of "fixed" and "broken" you're implicitly using in your argument?

Functionally according to its function. One's digestive organs are meant to digest; one's reproductive organs are meant to reproduce. Reproductive organs which can't reproduce are broken: fixing ones which are broken is indeed healthcare, while breaking ones which are fully-functioning is an elective procedure.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#97

Post by arjunnarayan » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 8:47 PM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #71

endymi0n wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, we're talking about a really lucrative segment here... > To marketers, the average Joe’s online data is worth around 10 cents. However, a pregnant woman’s data is worth fifteen times that: $1.50. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/one_womans_attempt_to_hide_h...

"pregnant woman’s data is worth fifteen times" The reason for this is obvious if you've ever budgeted for a new baby in the house.

It's not just the cost of buying baby stuff. It's that people's lives fall into regular patterns. Usually, there are few opportunities to change someone's pattern. Pregnancy is one of the biggest such opportunities. For example, say someone goes to QFC for their weekly groceries - it's hard to convince them to go in the opposite direction to Safeway, even if it's about the same distance. Pregnancy is one of those few times when people's shopping patterns are up for grabs. If you can slip in and get them to go to Target for a few critical baby-things, maybe you can get them going to Target for everything else for the next ten years.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#98

Post by zevyoura » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

pavornyoh wrote: post #62

onion2k wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the app mentioned is free, I would deduce that they try to turn the data about their users cycle into a monetary value. There are good reasons why people might want to make this sort of app beyond selling the data. There's a huge potential for health care service providers - if women don't need prescription drugs or appointments to see their doctor, and any other medical issues are resolved more easily because the…

if women don't need prescription drugs or appointments to see their doctor, and any other medical issues are resolved more easily because there isn't the problem of the drugs interacting with the pill, then that represents a vast saving in the cost of supplying services. This exactly. The app. I use is called the Pink Pad and free. I have been using it since 2011. Since then, I have stop taking the pill. There are no…

Relying on that app may not be the best idea; from the article:

>While the apps also can be used to track ovulation, signaling the days the user is more or less likely to become pregnant, most period tracker apps explicitly warn users not to rely on them to prevent pregnancy. The ovulation tracker and fertility prediction can be helpful for a woman trying to conceive, but it can give a false sense of security to a woman who relies on the app as a form of birth control.

>That’s because even the most vigilant ovulation tracking methods have shockingly high failure rates, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, with up to one in four women becoming pregnant over the course of a year with typical use.

>“Apps are a tool; they’re not actually a birth control method,” said Hannah Ransom of San Diego, a certified fertility awareness educator.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#99

Post by peteretep » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

glossyscr wrote: post #72

peteretep wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is explicitly mentioned in the article.

true, I was too fast but the mention in the article feels more like a side benefit, from what I heard it's one of the core features, here the snippet: "They also can record when you had sex (Clue’s icon for protected sex is a man wearing a tie) or remind you to pack tampons"

There's a much longer snippet further down

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#100

Post by Udo » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 11:49 PM UTC

yumptonpa wrote: post #67

Udo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my personal opinion seeped through a little bit here. If that offended you, so be it.

I never said it offended me - I was just pointing out that you weren't being as non-judgemental as you claimed you were.

So our disagreement boils down to language "gotchas"? Yes, you got me. Although one might argue that labeling something a regression is not a value judgement when things have indeed gone back to how they were in the past - but if bias is what you were looking for you found it. I never tried to hide it either.

Let's talk about something worthwhile instead: do you really believe, as alluded to in your comments, that the natural state is an ideal humans should aspire to, especially in the face of disease and other bodily limitations?