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Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

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Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#31

Post by tomp »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #24
vixen99 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's inconsistent tax rates which are crazy. Isn't toilet tissue 'essential' in the same way? Should that be exempt from sales tax? In many EU countries foodstuffs (difficult to 'make do' in its absence) and pharmaceutical products attract VAT albeit at a reduced rate.

Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I think the concern is more that Women have to pay money for essential hygiene products than Men due to their gender - which can be seen as inequitable. Toilet paper is an essential for both genders.

Well, they don't need to. Maybe pads should be taxed more so that more women would use menstrual caps? Pads seem to be quite environmentally harmful as well, they produce a lot of non-recyclable waste (unlike toilet paper).

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#32

Post by Freestyler_3 »

cerealbad wrote: post #19

Do men in poor countries still shave with a cutthroat razor? Reusable and repairable products take time but give certainty. I hope a happy medium will be reached between Chinese room products and simple skill based ones.

Old fashioned razors are more reusable and repairable than modern razors. Not only reusable during its intended purpose but also after.

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#33

Post by tropdrop »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9
jaabe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My better half uses one, but after the birth of our first child she had to use pads for a while. This was the first time I got to buy them. They are insanely expensive, it’s truly mind blowing that more women aren’t using the cup. I mean, I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s frankly as though women have some sort of “life-tax” attached that we men don’t, with pads being so expensive by comparison. I don’t re…

Notably there are also literally taxes attached to such things. Washington tried to make feminine hygiene products tax-free during this legislative cycle, but it died in committee. Hopefully it'll pass next year, but this is still crazy. https://crosscut.com/2019/02/wa-lawmakers-want-make-tampons-...

For context: many places around the US will separate food, drugs, and medical appliances (considered essential for life) from all other goods, taxing the former at 2% and the latter at something like 8-10% - Chicago, for example [1]. This 2% category often includes candy, soda, Viagra... in 15 states there are no restrictions, as long as it is consumable as food. Goods in the latter category are considered "luxury," so what's mentioned here is the battle against the luxury tax for products that are essential to a female's life.

Chicago, a small handful of cities and ten states have already eliminated this unfair burden on top of the average $18,000 spent on feminine hygiene over a lifetime [2].

But the most tragically comical story I've found about this is what happened in Utah - the all-male panel rejected eliminating the tax, citing that they would need to recoup those tax funds from other sales, and that it was "unfair to tax the whole population for something that only affects half of it." The representative sponsoring the bill keeps trying every year, and every year the all-male committee continues to say No to her...

[1] https://accountingsolutionsltd.com/faqs/sales-tax-rate-chica... [2] https://www.sapling.com/3308/the-amount-youve-probably-spend...

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#34

Post by tropdrop »

drakonka wrote: post #26

Menstrual cups rock. It takes a bit of getting used to to figure out proper insertion/removal/cleaning. It can also take a few attempts to find exactly the right kind of cup for each person since they all vary in length, diameter, material firmness, etc. But once you have those things down it is really so much more convenient and feels so much less wasteful than pads or tampons.

I've heard women with an IUD might have problems wearing them, which is tragic given that IUDs are the safest, most reliable, most effective birth control method (yet another essential life-tax to being female...) Do you know any women personally who both have an IUD and are comfortable using the cup?

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#35

Post by veidr »

drewmol wrote: post #13

If the topic is not your interest but web design is, check out the article for the cool verticle scrolling progress indicator that's displayed horizontally in the floating top menu bar. My mother has been involved in operating and supporting a network of Kenyan orphanages for decades. She's on the board of directors for the US 501c3 that funds them. The woman who founded this organization (a US citizen) adopted sever…

Wow! If you insist on having a floating bar at the top of your web page, this sort of scrolling progress indicator should be mandatory.

(Also, I learned about menstrual cups due to your enticing reference to the progress indicator which tipped the balance in favor of clicking though to the article.)

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#36

Post by tropdrop »

This needs to come to some far villages in Nepal. In many villages, women are banished to small, cold huts at the outskirts of villages to remain - alone, shut in, and forbidden to go outside - until the end of the period.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/03...

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#37

Post by drakonka »

tropdrop wrote: post #34
drakonka wrote: post #26

Menstrual cups rock. It takes a bit of getting used to to figure out proper insertion/removal/cleaning. It can also take a few attempts to find exactly the right kind of cup for each person since they all vary in length, diameter, material firmness, etc. But once you have those things down it is really so much more convenient and feels so much less wasteful than pads or tampons.

I've heard women with an IUD might have problems wearing them, which is tragic given that IUDs are the safest, most reliable, most effective birth control method (yet another essential life-tax to being female...) Do you know any women personally who both have an IUD and are comfortable using the cup?

No, I don't really even know any women who have IUDs, much less any who have IUDs and have tried menstrual cups unfortunately.

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#38

Post by amelius »

veidr wrote: post #35
drewmol wrote: post #13

If the topic is not your interest but web design is, check out the article for the cool verticle scrolling progress indicator that's displayed horizontally in the floating top menu bar. My mother has been involved in operating and supporting a network of Kenyan orphanages for decades. She's on the board of directors for the US 501c3 that funds them. The woman who founded this organization (a US citizen) adopted sever…

Wow! If you insist on having a floating bar at the top of your web page, this sort of scrolling progress indicator should be mandatory. (Also, I learned about menstrual cups due to your enticing reference to the progress indicator which tipped the balance in favor of clicking though to the article.)

I already have a scrollbar indicating the position in the page. Now I have two indicators, which seems a bit much.

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#39

Post by telesilla »

franky47 wrote: post #14

The short film "Period, End of Sentence." [1] won an Oscar this year, depicting Indian women taking control of the production process of pads manufacturing. In a strange sense, while that process helped women gain a bit of control over their bodies and their lives, which is a good thing; and while it probably also helped some girls stay in school, as some girls mentioned feeling ashamed of doing so during their perio…

I also donate to SHE, a Rwandan non-profit that produces and distributes affordable pads using banana fiber from local banana-fiber co-operatives. https://sheinnovates.com/go-3/she-goes-to-zimbabwe/

Re: Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School

#40

Post by tropdrop »

drakonka wrote: post #37
tropdrop wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard women with an IUD might have problems wearing them, which is tragic given that IUDs are the safest, most reliable, most effective birth control method (yet another essential life-tax to being female...) Do you know any women personally who both have an IUD and are comfortable using the cup?

No, I don't really even know any women who have IUDs, much less any who have IUDs and have tried menstrual cups unfortunately.

Well, you know one now! I have a copper IUD and I cannot recommend it enough. My body reacts poorly to hormones, so the pill wasn't an option, but a condom-only based approach to birth control wasn't going to work in a monogamous, multi-year relationship - over a ten year period, 86 in 100 women who only use condoms become pregnant [1]. This probabilistically makes sense, given that 10 years includes hundreds or thousands of chances for intercourse. Do check out the NYT article below - it is terrifying!

We must have saved thousands of dollars on condoms at this point, and intercourse is much more enjoyable for both parties (with no unexpected risk for my career). For some unknown reason (cultural?), while the UID is very popular and obviously the best choice in parts of Europe, there remains some taboo around it in the US... anyway, I wish I could save all this money on disposable products with the cup, but I do not want to risk pulling it out or entangling it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/14/sunday-review...

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