Periods come, often uninvited at unforgiving moments of our daily lives. This is something women learn at an early age, and school is often one of those environments where we face the first experiences with our ever-changing bodies, until we get comfortable and secure about it all.
A 16-year-old female teenager is one of many young women who knows how it feels. “My school requires us to keep our cameras on during the entire class. If we need to use the restroom we are supposed to privately message our teacher and ask to leave,” she wrote in a lengthy post on Reddit where she shared a story of her teacher refusing to let her out to the bathroom because her period started.
After the author complained about the teacher, she was told she was not the only one to complain about his behavior. And since it may be the last drop in the bucket for his job at school, the author started wondering whether her complaint was really the right thing to do.
Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio (not the actual photo)
Dealing with your first menstruation at school age is often stressful enough. But society has made it very clear that the notion of the biological form of bleeding is something that possesses a level and degree of shame.
First, it’s the period stains which many young women are conditioned to believe are the most embarrassing things that can ever happen to them. Think of the countless teen magazines where such “humiliating” period stories are dissected down to every detail, making readers shiver from how relatable it all appears.
Then, it’s the abundance of euphemisms and often very unflattering terms to refer to menstruation, like Aunt Flo, riding the crimson wave, the rag, the curse, on the blob, etc. But aren’t these terms giving us a way to talk about things that are considered cultural taboos? And if so, then what has such a fundamentally normal and human thing like menstruation done to our society to be regarded as one of the taboos?
But to really respect women, we have to embrace menstruation as a natural process which cannot be controlled, which we have not chosen, but have to live with peacefully. Breaking the silence around women’s hygiene needs is more relevant than ever, and it surely starts from a very early age. It’s then that support from fellow male class friends, dads, and brothers plays a crucial role in not adding to the harmful stigma which has been alive for way too long.
And this is what people had to comment on this whole situation
