Bleeding Rage

I have been using reusable menstrual supplies for over twenty years. I began by giving myself an infection. This was at a time when I was feeding two adults on twenty dollars a week. One of the reasons I used to walk home from the UW Campus to Ballard was to increase my chances of finding spare change to add to our food budget. I could no longer stomach spending money on something to be thrown away. There was no Internet to speak of, I had no one to discuss the necessary details with. My first effort was to safety pin a folded washcloth into my underwear. I didn't understand that the safety pins would need to be boiled, not merely "cleaned off", in between changes. I gave myself a painful infection, and that ended up eating money, time, productivity. After that I saved up the money to buy a sampler pack of "mooncloths" from a homesewer in Canada who'd placed an advertisement in one of the tiny homepublished queer women's mags that I always stopped to read when I could find them. I've been copying her design ever since.

When I read this article, I became so angry that it felt like I could not breathe. Yes, I was angry that other low income people are going through this. As Bianca always says, "Take it [the feeling] and put it in the work." But I was most terribly angry at myself.

The article opened up a can of worms inside me... because I suddenly realized, I had never thought about this.

I went through what I went through... and never thought about this.

I've been so thoroughly conditioned that other people's menstruation is not appropriate for me to even think about... that I didn't even think about it.

Even after I learned about Days For Girls six years ago, I never thought about poor people here. I never thought about being poor and menstruating in the crucible nastiness that is public middle school, being poor and menstruating through the rigors and inherent humiliation of most "entry level" jobs.

I am terribly angry with myself for failing to think about what I know.

Put it into the work.

http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a25464/congresswoman-grace-meng-menstrual-equity-bill/