We rarely talk in public about periods,cerita lucah cikgu gay but this is changing with Saturday's first-ever National Period Day.
On this day, people in all 50 states are rallying to highlight an invisible problem — period poverty. Many menstruators (not all people who menstruate are women; transgender men and non-binary people get their periods too) cannot access or afford essential items to manage their periods, like tampons and pads. This is in part because 35 states in the U.S. levy a sales tax on menstrual products, considering them non-essential.
Everyone, whether a menstruator or not, is welcome to join in on the rallies.
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Nadya Okamoto, 21 years old, is leading the clarion call. Okamoto founded PERIOD, a youth-run nonprofit that supplies people with period products, when she was 16 years. She was drawn to the issue when she learned about period poverty while talking with people experiencing homelessness who couldn't afford menstrual products, as Mashable reported in 2018. Okamoto was a homeless teenager herself at the time.
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People took to the streets and microphones on National Period Day, with rallies scheduled to unfold throughout the day.
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But the activism isn't just in person. The hashtag #NationalPeriodDay is trending on Twitter, giving a platform to this problem that has been ignored for far too long.
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This problem isn't restricted to the U.S. and it isn't only about periods. Across Africa, 1 in 10 girls miss school because they don't have access to menstrual products, according to the international human rights organization ActionAid.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley isn't the only politician acknowledging the issue. Male legislators are joining in too.
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Pressley, along with her progressive "Squad," consisting of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, are co-sponsors of the Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2019, a bill meant to tackle the challenges menstruators face when accessing and affording period products.
O'Rourke, Booker, and Castro are not listed as co-sponsors of the bill.
If made into law, states could use federal grant funds to provide students with free menstrual products in school, people who are incarcerated and detained on the federal, state, and local level would have access to a free and non-rationed supply of period products, and Medicaid would pay for menstrual products for Medicaid recipients.
Finally, periods are getting the attention they deserve and the world is hopefully realizing that menstruation is normal.
Topics Social Good