The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary • Hacker News Board

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#141

Post by heartbreak » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 5:49 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #138

yawz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religions (and consequently certain traditions) that have survived until today have an incredible obsession with mensturation. This is just another stick to beat and humiliate women with. It is unbelievable (for a questioning, inquisitive human being) that Bronze Age traditions and beliefs are still revered today.

I'm not aware of an obsession with menstruation in any major variant of Christianity.

I could only think of one verse off the top of my head, but here are several. The Leviticus 15:19-30 reads a lot like what was described in the article. http://www.openbible.info/topics/menstruation

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#142

Post by nsxwolf » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

kiiski wrote: post #140

nsxwolf wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of an obsession with menstruation in any major variant of Christianity.

Maybe not anymore (at least in the west), but the bible does have that stuff in it too. http://www.openbible.info/topics/menstruation

These practices wouldn't have been observed by Christians, except perhaps by early Jewish converts.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#143

Post by nsxwolf » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #138

yawz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religions (and consequently certain traditions) that have survived until today have an incredible obsession with mensturation. This is just another stick to beat and humiliate women with. It is unbelievable (for a questioning, inquisitive human being) that Bronze Age traditions and beliefs are still revered today.

I'm not aware of an obsession with menstruation in any major variant of Christianity.

Apparently there is an old Orthodox liturgical tradition that women abstain from receiving the Eucharist during menstruation, but it doesn't appear to be an official requirement.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#144

Post by lostlogin » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

auctiontheory wrote: post #123

nate_meurer wrote: post #93

I want to hug this guy. Like, really. Buy me a airplane ticket. Arunachalam Muruganantham is a hero. I use that word in its full magnitude. Since I am now an expert on the matter, having read the entire article, I'll speculate on what motivates this man: - Grit. Crazy amounts of grit. The article is full of good quotes, but my favorite is what he said after being abandoned by his mother: "It was a problem for me," he…

There are still many taboos around menstruation in India. Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply - essentially they are considered untouchable. Every religion has elaborate rules to oppress woman. FYI, the Hebrew Bible has all the same stuff. (So I read in The Year of Living Biblically .) It's a question of "how literally does society obey those rules?" Will…

On a school trip 15ish years ago which related to the subject of religion ago we got to a mosque and were then asked if anyone was menstruating. If yes, don't come in. Credit to a male friend of mine, he yelled out that the male next to him was. Its a pity all the males didn't react this way. http://islamqa.info/en/128576

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#145

Post by lostlogin » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

josephschmoe wrote: post #136

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply". I've seen educated folks doing this as well, so, sadly yes. It is true. Most women follow it because their mothers/sisters have been doing it. Since it is so common, people tend to accept these superstitions more easily.

You should also consider the culture these myths create. It forces women to depend on one-another for a significant portion of the time, which, among other things, is a good anti-rape mechanism. Certainly, these are crazy and superstitious, but given the realities of the times they come from, many of them were a net benefit to their rural society (or have minimal impact) - which is how they've survived to this day. W…

I've got to dispute this - India has appalling rates of abuse, rape and mistreatment of women, and I don't believe any systems in place there are helpful. Have you got any citations that might change my opinion?

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#146

Post by apalmer » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 6:00 PM UTC

jt2190 wrote: post #137

apalmer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No REALISTICALLY If as stated in this article in these regions during menstruation: 1) The woman uses dirt, sand, ash and rags which are never sterilized but just reused month after month. 2) 70% of all pregnancy related medical issues can be tied back to this lack of hygene Then its not unreasonable to say that the women are unclean in this period and should not have contact with the village water supply... its actu…

> ... its actually good sense. It's only "good sense" if, and this is a big if, (a) we have a strict scientific understanding of what we mean when we say "unclean" and (b) we know that we have literally no other way of mitigating this "uncleanliness." Just as surgeons learned to sterilize themselves and their equipment once they had a scientific understanding of infection, we now have lots of scientific understanding…

No one knew scientifically for thousands of years why pigs were unclean. Or shellfish, or 80% of the stuff that was considered 'unclean' food according to the first testament. Now a days there is a particular scientific explanation for it...

traditionally it was the pig rolls around in its own feces, and smells bad, and folks seem to get sick from its meat...

the menstruation situation, its bloody, it smells bad, and the women seem to be in pain when they have it... maybe we should not have them handling or washing their clothing and rags in the communal drinking water does not seem like an irrational conclusion.

It seems pretty rational to me...

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#147

Post by jaldoretta » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

araneae wrote: post #135

jaldoretta wrote: post #92

I'm a female founder in the US with a startup that has to do with menstruation, and I cannot even begin to tell you how uncomfortable people (male and female) get when I talk with them about it. For a man in India (where this topic is exponentially more taboo) to undertake a business like this and persist despite the backlash is so incredibly inspiring. The benefit of his business goes so far beyond simply reducing n…

Very cool! I use cycle for this which only does averaging, which works okay but it's seriously old and clonky. I was wondering why someone hadn't done this already.

Yes...there are plenty of old and clunky apps out there for this =)

We're hoping to change that. I really want this space to become something that men and women, alike, will talk about. Good UI and UX has been missing, and women definitely deserve better.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#148

Post by yawz » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #138

yawz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religions (and consequently certain traditions) that have survived until today have an incredible obsession with mensturation. This is just another stick to beat and humiliate women with. It is unbelievable (for a questioning, inquisitive human being) that Bronze Age traditions and beliefs are still revered today.

I'm not aware of an obsession with menstruation in any major variant of Christianity.

Woman being unclean during menstrual cycle is part of Abrahamic religions. But I guess this comes from the bigger problem of "sex" being wrong unless it constitutes "breeding".

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#149

Post by silencio » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 6:29 PM UTC

jfc wrote: post #110

nate_meurer wrote: post #93

I want to hug this guy. Like, really. Buy me a airplane ticket. Arunachalam Muruganantham is a hero. I use that word in its full magnitude. Since I am now an expert on the matter, having read the entire article, I'll speculate on what motivates this man: - Grit. Crazy amounts of grit. The article is full of good quotes, but my favorite is what he said after being abandoned by his mother: "It was a problem for me," he…

> There are also myths and fears surrounding the use of sanitary pads - that women who use them will go blind, for example, or will never get married. Such myths abound globally, especially in rural environments. Worse myths exist around tampons--that a woman who uses a tampon is no longer a virgin. The implications of this in more rural societies are staggering, as young women can lose marital prospects or even be k…

> Worse myths exist around tampons--that a woman who uses a tampon is no longer a virgin.

Lest someone believe this is a belief held only in rural areas, let it be clear that ideas like this are incredibly common in not-so-rural places like in the US. It's usually accompanied by some equally ridiculous beliefs about what virginity is in the first place (protip: it's about having sex for the first time, not about whether the woman bleeds or how "tight" anything is), hard to find comprehensive and unbiased education, the total lack of knowledge of or misinformation concerning alternatives to pads and tampons (reusables, cups), and straight up shaming and misinformation about birth control usage. The big difference between the poorer and the richer is that honor killings, genital mutilation, and whatnot are far less common for the latter.

I love what this guy did for his wife and other women in the same situation, but there's no shortage of similar problems for women elsewhere and I wonder if there will be something revolutionary on that front too any time soon. I've been considering going to med school and see if I can eventually merge my interest in that and tech at the same time to do something here but that's a long term iffy goal, and surely there are already others interested in the same thing too.

I'm pretty lucky to have had reasonable and educated parents that were willing to tell me (or let me discover) all I wanted to know about these things when I was 10. But it feels like at least once a week if not daily I discover a teen or a preteen or even an adult woman asking basic questions on one of the women-focused communities I spend my time in. I wish I could help them. :(

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#150

Post by erikpukinskis » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 6:42 PM UTC

The optimal technical solution to this problem, for the vast majority of the population, is menstrual cups. They are completely reusable and generally perform better.

To me the long term challenge is the social problem of convincing people that menstrual cups are not gross and are not going to hurt them.

I totally respect this guy for finding an intermediate solution that helps his community though. I don't live in India so I have no idea what the specific cultural challenges are.