artwork by Erin Gorden

You stand in front of the class in your tan corduroys, clutching your report. As you begin reading, cramps stab your belly and something wet runs down your leg. You freeze, scared moving will make it worse. Your classmates stare and point and your teacher rises to pull you out of the classroom. By the time you reach the door, blood stains the inside of your corduroys a dark, damning red. Shame follows you into daylight as you bolt awake, until you realize - you’re home, not in middle school. You have a box of tampons under the bathroom sink, next to the pads. You’re covered. Even though you got your period, you can get up and live your life.

I’ve had a version of this nightmare more than once, and as the mother of three daughters, I’m sure it has terrorized more bedrooms than my own. A house of women, we rely on period products to function - to get out of bed, perform basic tasks, work, go to school, parent, TikTok, etc - for about a week every month. My husband does too, how bad would his life suck if he was doing bloody laundry all the time?

For me it’s a bad dream, but for thousands of women across the country the fear behind this nightmare is real, every month. The non-profit Alliance for Period Supplies estimates one out of every four women struggled to afford period products last year. And that’s in the U.S.A. Without coronavirus. Just let that sink in for a minute.

A Monthly Reminder that the Pandemic Hits Women Especially Hard

Now enter a global health crisis, and already vulnerable women become examples of the way the coronavirus amplifies deep-rooted social inequities of class, race and access to health care. COVID-19 and its corresponding economic crisis has made it even harder for women who rely on public or private assistance to access basic necessities. And this is a key point here: pads and tampons are basic human necessities. Not luxuries, not options. As basic as soap and water and band aids and toilet paper; and certainly more necessary than say, Viagra (but I’ll get to that later).

There’s been a lot on the news about the pandemic exposing existing inequities in developed nations like Great Britain and the United States as it pertains to race. In the US for example, CDC data show about 33% of COVID-19 cases are African American, while African Americans make up only 13% of the population. What has not been covered enough, is that the inequalities that are to blame for putting certain communities at higher risk for contracting and recovering from COVID-19, also make it impossible for many women to access period protection - and their dignity - every month.

“Periods don’t stop for pandemics,” Dana Marlowe, Founder of I Support the Girls in Maryland told the New York Times. I Support the Girls works with over 800 hundred affiliates across the country to distribute bras, underwear and period products to women who are homeless, refugees, in transitional housing or fleeing domestic violence.

Here in Massachusetts, the number of families applying for state safety net programs increased threefold between the March 10th declaration of the state of emergency and the first week of April according to WGBH. The biggest rise came in applications for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. In the last week of March alone, SNAP received over 19,000 applications, a 282% increase over the average. However SNAP benefits fall short when it comes to addressing women’s needs. While a woman can buy food with her SNAP benefits, she cannot purchase pads or tampons or even toilet paper or diapers.

The need is greater than ever. But the supply is running out. The New York Times and Business Insider reported on “pandemic panic shopping” wiping out supplies, similar to the run on toilet paper. They theorized that women who could afford to bought up all the available products from online retailers. Even some store shelves emptied out. But I’ve found period products pretty easily. The larger problems for women dependent on organizational support during the pandemic are lack of donations, distribution interruption due to closings and difficulty accessing monthly supplies packaged in a way which accommodates the limited storage in shelters.

The People Paying Attention

Enter the intrepid organizations dedicated to ending period poverty and advocating for menstrual equity on local, state and national levels. In our state, Dignity Matters works with local affiliates to supply women with products they need when they need them. Director of Development Meryl Glassman explains that through relationships with homeless shelters, food banks, schools and transitional housing for domestic abuse and substance abuse, Dignity Matters provides products for over 4,000 women a month. That may sound like a lot, and it is compared to the collection drives run out of founder Kate Sanetra-Butler’s garage four years ago. But Glassman says it only meets 25% of the need in the Greater Boston, Merrimack Valley and Metrowest regions they serve. And that already low percentage is going down as the coronavirus increases need.

“It’s a perfect storm,” she says, of skyrocketing need due to loss of income and physical access locations like schools being closed. But women who rely on assistance face difficulties getting products even in the best of times: they’re expensive, 34 states still tax them, many schools and universities fail to provide them, and in the case of donation-dependent homeless, domestic abuse or substance recovery shelters - donors overlook them.

When she was just a sophomore in high school, Haley Gladstone recognized this blatant oversight. While sorting donations at A Place to Turn food pantry in Natick, she noticed the absence of pads and tampons. The youngest of three girls, she knew they were a necessity, so she wondered, why didn’t people donate them? It hit her that the societal stigma attached to menstruation could really impede homeless women’s chances to succeed.

“When buying items to donate, people don’t remember pads and tampons because they are only for girls.”

— Haley Gladstone, volunteer

The experience inspired her to launch Donate (Period) in association with A Place to Turn, and soon she was marshaling friends, running product drives, soliciting donations and repackaging weekly supplies of pads and tampons in small plastic bags for distribution at A Place to Turn.

When she got to college, Gladstone met student volunteers for the Colgate chapter of the PERIOD Movement and connected her experience in Natick with an expanded global effort. PERIOD was launched by Nadya Okamoto when she was 16 years old experiencing housing insecurity. Okamoto, now 24 and a student at Harvard, has transformed PERIOD into a national powerhouse of student-volunteers. She published PERIOD POWER: a Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement in 2018. And in 2019 made history with the first ever National Period Day which included 60 rallies in 50 states and four countries and endorsements from five presidential candidates.

What does it say about a country when it won’t take care of half its population?

In her new book A Moment of Lift, Melinda Gates argues that countries that take care of women reap far-reaching social, political and economic benefits. She’s referring to contraceptives rather than menstrual products, but her message applies.

“These are not the soft issues... These are the issues that, if you invest in women, we know from good data, they invest in everybody else. [These] are the issues that lift up societies and economies.”

— Melinda Gates

Many of the access points homeless women rely on for menstrual products are closed due to the coronavirus. Photo credit, Adreea Popa

The global stigma she explores around contraception mirrors a global stigma around menstruation (yep, the two are connected). The world struggles shamefully with what it considers “women’s problems.” Much easier to shove them aside and ignore them than to make the systemic changes which would improve not just women’s, but everyone’s lives. And, as is so often the case, lawmakers make a lot of noise about why doing the right thing for women is a bad idea.

The average woman has her period for about 2,500 days of her life - about seven years. So, why is bleeding so taboo, so ignored and feared by society? Why does our government, which spends more than 20 million dollars a year outfitting Trump Tower with security for two members of the President’s family not take responsibility for the 106,000 women who are homeless in this country - some camping right outside Trump Towers’ Fifth Avenue doors?

As we have seen with the recent protests against stay at home orders, we are a country divided. Free speech allows for an extreme range of opinions. So how are we to feel about the opinions of male lawmakers who tax already expensive products? And more importantly the society at large that still assigns shame to women for having their periods?

The Period Tax

The biases surrounding accessibility to period products include the bloodiest of issues: taxes. Menstrual products are still taxed in 34 states, while Viagra, because it is a prescription drug, is not. The has led to much protest over the so called period tax but not much change.

In 2019, 22 state legislatures saw bills introduced which would eliminate the sales tax - none advanced. This is where I see red. This is where I feel the nightmare readying itself to attack again - when I hear about women having to sell their SNAP benefits to buy tampons or foregoing a meal for their kids because they have to choose to buy pads so they can go to work. Remember that statistic about one in four women struggling to afford products? And male dominated legislatures do nothing about it.

we have to do better

Why do we put up with shaming about something as natural as growing a beard?

Take Tennessee. Last February, Tennessee lawmakers reviewed products to be included in a three day tax-free weekend. You know these weekends - consumers get a break on taxes on tons of items from clothing to cars, and Tennessee even granted breaks to sports agents, architects and accountants. But when removing tax from period products came up, Republican lawmakers balked. Sen. Joey Hensley insisted that upon hearing news of the tax break, women would run out and buy enough tampons and pads to fill the Grand ole Opry.

“I would think since it’s a sales tax holiday, there’s really no limit on the number of items anybody can purchase,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “I don’t know how you would limit the number of items someone could purchase.”

The response from his female Democratic colleague, Sen. Brenda Gilmore, shows the pervasiveness of the stigma. Even she struggled to talk about it. “It's a very uncomfortable conversation to have, there are some young girls who use rags and cloths because they can't afford these products and we should not allow our young girls to be subjected to this humiliation.”

Really Brenda? Why didn’t you just stand up and tell him his Viagra would be taxed until he agreed to removing it for tampons?!?

But I get why. Even our president (small p for him) promotes shame around women and menstruation. As only he can, Donald Trump brought misogynist stigmatization of female biology to a new low in 2015 when he insulted Fox News’ Megyn Kelly with his execrable “blood coming out of her whatever” comment.

In response, the Internet embraced the radical feminist actions of the “freebleeding” movement exemplified by Kiran Gandhi, drummer for M.I.A. and Thievery Corporation, who ran all 26.2 miles of the London Marathon without any period protection.

Kira Gandi at the London Marathon, 2015. Photo Credit, The Independent

"...when people need to talk about something that's really taboo and uncomfortable, they need to 'other' it from themselves, they don't want to talk about their own period, they need a safe place to comment and engage… See, when did we decide to think about 'This life is okay and this one's not,' and since when did we decide a period is disgusting but a bloody nose is not? We've just decided these things arbitrarily."

Does dignity matter less when the whole world is in crisis?

While the world suffers, it feels like everybody needs help. How do we prioritize women’s needs once every month when job losses (as of this writing over 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment) are leading to homelessness, illness, food insecurity and increased risk of domestic abuse every day?

The truth is, it’s more important than ever to help those that so often get overlooked, those who are afraid to ask, and those who are taking care of children as well as themselves. Women have horrific stories of resorting to ripped t shirts, mattresses, newspaper, diaper or socks in order to function. Men could not take care of themselves or others without toilet paper. Period products are just as necessary for women.

Dignity is life. As Meryl Glassman from Dignity Matters told me, “It’s not socially acceptable to leave your home without proper protection. Free bleeding is not an option.” Our country needs to prioritize obvious and easy solutions like dropping the period tax and making menstrual supplies as easily available as toilet paper.

Detail, Jackson Pollock Convergence, 1952. Oil on canvas.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably lucky enough to sleep with the comfort of knowing you or the women in your life have period products in reach. You may not love that time of the month, but it’s not a barrier. You can get out of bed and work from home in your pajamas knowing you won’t bleed onto the chair in your makeshift home office. You can Zoom with colleagues knowing you won’t have to get up and run to the bathroom. You can chase your kids around without playing Jackson Pollock on the carpet.

The coronavirus is proving this is another socioeconomic advantage we cannot take for granted. If we all pitch in to change this, thousands of homeless women will be farther from the nightmare and closer to the dream - the dream of independence, recognition and dignity.

Please visit the websites below and read about the women and men working to change this reality. And then go DONATE. Period.