The next time someone complains about how hard startups are, show them this. Until you've walked around with a soccer ball full of goat's blood in your pants, after your wife and mother have abandoned you, you have nothing to complain about.
The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
211–220 of 273 posts
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 whet…
>> ideas like this are incredibly common in not-so-rural places like in the US. I've never heard of this happening in the US at all, never mind being "incredibly common". Evidence?
I had friends at my private, religious high school whose parents forbid them from using tampons for this very reason.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only Abrahamic religion that views sex as only for breeding would be Catholicism (and maybe a few other smaller sects). Judaism, Protestants and Muslims all believe sex is a normal healthy thing.
Catholicism absolutely does not view sex as only for breeding.
You may be reading it wrong. Sex is viewed by the Catholic Church as an act of love between man and wife, that can't be dissociated from breeding. It is not only for breeding, but it must be conducive to breeding.
It is laid out in very expressive form, if a bit long, in the Humanae Vitae Encyclical Letter by Pope Paul VI. If you don't wish to read the whole text, lookup points 12 and 14.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/docume...
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Catholicism absolutely does not view sex as only for breeding.
You may be reading it wrong. Sex is viewed by the Catholic Church as an act of love between man and wife, that can't be dissociated from breeding. It is not only for breeding, but it must be conducive to breeding. It is laid out in very expressive form, if a bit long, in the Humanae Vitae Encyclical Letter by Pope Paul VI. If you don't wish to read the whole text, lookup points 12 and 14. http://www.vatican.va/holy_f…
You may also be reading it wrong. I suggest you look up paragraph 11, which directly contradicts your "must be conducive to breeding" claim:
"It does not, moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their will, it is foreseen to be infertile."
Insofar as your claim "can't be dissociated from breeding" can be constructed as a correct claim, it requires understanding that to mean it cannot generally be actively sought to be dissociated from breeding, but even that is incompletely accurate as (per paragraph 16) "If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained."
(The position laid in Humanae Vitae has often been criticized for being somewhat incoherent, which isn't really all that surprising given its history. See, e.g., [1])
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Commission_on_Birth_...
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#215This is an amazingly inspiring story, I love the entrepreneurial spirit and dedication of Mr Muruganantham. However, there is a bigger story hiding behind this personal triumph. It's clear that people living in impoverished areas are not in a position to buy sanitary products at market rates (being sold at a margin of 4000% or more). But for example many do have access to cheap raw materials. It makes a ton of sense…
The article mentions that commercial napkins sold for 4 rupees despite cotton being 1/4000th the cost, but also says farther down that the locally produced ones sell for an average of 2.5 rupees each. That's a 38% discount: significant, but it doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me. I imagine that if this catches on, the larger manufacturers will likely just cut their margins to compete. On a more general…
It says he initially thought that and later learned that cotton wasn't enough, that they used cellulose from bark.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#216> He believes that big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas he prefers the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," he says. What a profound and inspiring worldview.
Perhaps, but the difference between butterflies and mosquitoes isn't really in damage to the food (virtually zero in both cases)... it's in the fact that butterflies perform a service (pollination) for the flowers. Mosquitoes quite literally live and die by the lightness of their touch; compare the survival rates of human-feeding mosquitoes (not 100%, but not far off) and human-feeding horseflies (0%).
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#217> "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it"
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 whet…
>> ideas like this are incredibly common in not-so-rural places like in the US. I've never heard of this happening in the US at all, never mind being "incredibly common". Evidence?
I don't want to make assumptions about gender on HN, but if you grew up female it was kind of hard to avoid. You can just search for "tampon virgin" and come up with a ton of sites and people that try to reassure girls that using a tampon doesn't mean you lose your virginity.
I also grew up in LA and not in the middle of some super conservative area, but my girlfriends used to freak the hell out when they needed to dip into my stash during emergencies and all they found were tampons. Sex ed until I took the high school edition didn't help much there either. It was only into high school/college that tampons were way more commonly used. Today I still have a mix of tampons and pads in my bathroom for anyone that needs it.
I don't have an explicit "tampon virgin" story to share right now, but here's one I saved from reddit a while ago that made me gag: http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/utzu0/ladie...
There's also some terrible stories in this link shared with me on irc that made me almost have an asthma attack laughing earlier today: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1zinku/sexed_teac...
For the other stuff...idk. I hang out in /r/twoxsex and used to hang out on the VaginaPagina LJ community and read the hell out of Scarleteen among other resources. It's a bit self selecting, but there's a lot of myths that get busted often. One I can think of - I started hormonal birth control really early because I had very heavy+painful periods with iron deficiency anemia (like, passing out in the middle of the street bad) and my parents and I went through a couple different doctors that were all judgmental about a 13-14 year old on the pill. I eventually just went to Planned Parenthood for gynecology needs (amazing people!) and they were all understanding and hush hush because parents of other women would sometimes illegally pester them for more information. So there's the "young teen/woman on birth control must be having sex and not need it for anything else" bullshit right there. Another one: right now I have an IUD, and everyone feels the need to tell me about the one friend of a friend story about a uterine perforation - legitimately a risk, but not like it's an inevitability for everyone using the IUD. There's also the twist on the tampon virginity that involves the menstrual cup. I also like to talk about skipping periods since I used to do it for a few years, and so. many. people. think it's a terrible thing to do. Meanwhile every doctor I had since going to Planned Parenthood thought it was a good thing to do, and this year for the first time in ~14 years since hitting puberty I finally have normal levels of iron without making an effort to supplement it. It's pretty wild. So much of it is so everyday if you spend enough time around frustrated women that I almost forget that these are really big problems.
Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
#219He truly belongs to the breed that Apple's 'Think Different' commercial describes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SswMzUWOiJg
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. - Apple Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different