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A comment on Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School. Parent comment

Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by franky47 on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @01:55AM (#19725944)
This "life tax" is hardly a surprise when most governments and boards of directors are made of mostly men, who have been taught not to ever speak about these issues (a taboo due to religious or social beliefs).

Now if there's a way to make money, suddenly it becomes an attractive subject for some, but the liberation of women with reusable products (menstrual cup, washable pads and period pants) will always come second to potential wealth increase with single-use solutions, especially for someone who does now experience the "problem" in the first place.

Worse than all that, the people in charge of pushing single-use products genuinely believe they are helping out women, when in reality we see cases of toxic shock syndrome due to chemicals in tampons, and the ecological impact of such single-use products.

My wife has been using reusable solutions for a few years now, the cup and period pants being the most liberating according to her.

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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by DoreenMichele on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @02:10AM (#19726013)
who have been taught not to ever speak about these issues (a taboo due to religious or social beliefs).

More basically, men simply won't know or the importance won't cross their mind, even if they do kind of know.

I do my best to leave informative comments on HN with details men are unlikely to know, such as this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594977

I will add that the high cost of feminine hygiene products is a problem for a lot of poor American women. It isn't covered by Food Stamps. Homeless services have limited quantities of such things. Etc.

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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by bastardchild on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @10:50AM (#19729176)
Admittedly, the majority of women around me sticks to non-reusable solutions not because they don't know, but because they feel more comfortable with things they can just throw away when dirty.

That being said, I'm on the fence about believing this is more than a question of habit vs an actual thing that will bug you. After all, the average US woman seems to be completely thrown about how you can use a tampon without an applicator. In Europe if you ask for them, most people won't even know what you mean and I don't see what their appeal is, but if that is what you grew up with....

(edit) Just to clarify, I also use a cup and it has upsides and downsides, but overall to me it is a net win.

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[dead]
Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by sctb on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @10:40AM (#19729054)
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: I see we've asked you many times not to post like this, and saying that we'd ban you if you did it again, so we have. If you'd like to be unbanned you can email [email protected].

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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by franky47 on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @02:15AM (#19726048)
The issue of advertising and marketing pressure towards a conforming image of what "young males" should be/look/smell like is a similar one to that of females. Not conforming to this image is often seen as a rebellious act, and depicted with shame for not following the holy rule of capitalism. Yet when such products are partly responsible for the destruction of our ecosystem (single-use products, greenhouse gas emissions from aerosol deodorants), it becomes a moral duty to rebel.
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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by ghda on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @03:02AM (#19726235)
We all have our own “life taxes” to pay.

Here’s one: since men are larger and headboard than women, we need more food just to stay alive! A few hundred extra calories a day over a lifetime, the cost must be substantial — almost certainly greater than the cost of tampons.

Life is unfair to all of us, both sexes.

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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by SolaceQuantum on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @08:53AM (#19728066)
Between tampons/pads, bras, thinner/less quality clothing for as much or more $$$, and socially pressured skincare/makeup/hair product, the overall cost I would guess would be equivalent or more than the nutrition for a few hundred calories per day. There are a lot of factors forcing or pressuring women to spend more money or recieve social reprimand, lowered job prospects, etc. (As in the article! Keeping girls in school!)

Men also get pressured in other ways, but very rarely are they directly monetary/consumptive the way women are in my opinion.

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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by dsfyu404ed on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @09:23AM (#19728301)
If you've grown up with the pressure you don't notice it because it's there all the time. It's just normal. It's really easy to say "look how much the other gender caves to societal pressure" because you don't notice it when you do it.
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Re:Menstrual Cups Help Keep Kenyan Girls in School by Moru on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @06:38AM (#19727213)
How much more is a man making in salary compared to a woman doing the same job? In any country? You can't compare the small ammount of less food needed in calories compared to the large difference in salary for a man, the extra food does not warrant the difference.

You as a man can choose not to east as much as you need. You grow a bit less and need less food. A woman can't choose not to leave the house 5 days per month if she want's to keep a job. Yes, we can keep arguing over this but I though we were done with this already 50 years ago. I'm a bit surpriced to see it to be honest. We talked about this in school when I was 12, 30+ years ago. (Sweden)

Last year one county here started with free menstruation protection for 12-23 year olds [0] (swedish...) Apparently Scotland was first in the world 2017 [1]

[0] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/gratis-mensskydd...

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-fir...

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