What a horrible story! I’m so sorry that happened to you.
When i got my period, i told my mom, who handed me an unopened box of junior tampons that she’d obviously bought to have for me, and she shooed me into the bathroom and told me they came with instructions, but if i had any questions, she’d wait outside.
And i read the instructions, which were really quite clear, and everything went fine.
Naw, i found the applicator really helpful. I sometimes carried OB’s because they were small, but i hated having to use them. If i wasn’t wet enough, they would stick to the side of my vagina and it was really hard to shove them far enough up. I never had that problem with any tampon that had an applicator.
Interesting. I’m glad the applicators aren’t just a waste of material.
The old cardboard applicators I found far more likely to stick than the OB’s. By the time the plastic type came out, I was used to the OB’s, and found them much easier to carry; but in any case, for me they didn’t usually stick, and if so only when my flow was so low that I didn’t really need one, just a pantiliner once those showed up; I think those might have been around by the time the plastic applicators were.
ETA: My mother provided me with pads; that was what she was used to, and it would have been the very early 1960’s. I remember seeing ads for Tampax “internal protection”, and thinking that this must be something that had to be installed by a doctor; when I found out otherwise, I must have either asked me to buy me some, or else just dropped them in the grocery cart while we were out shopping. I don’t remember talking to her about it, though it’s possible that I did (I think it was one of my considerably-older sisters who told me tampons weren’t something long-lasting that had to be put in by a doctor!), but she wasn’t using them herself so wouldn’t have known any more than the directions in the box, anyway. The ads may have been vague, but the directions were quite clear.
Another data point confirming that your mom was exhibiting not only somewhat messed-up values but also substantial ignorance: I used tampons for at least a year before having PIV intercourse for the first time, and there was still the classic broken-hymen situation of sharp pain and blood. Fun fun fun. I would have passed any historical “virgin bride” postcoital inspection, notwithstanding the prior months of tampon use.
(I didn’t throw away that washed-but-still-detectably-stained bedsheet for years, coming from an upbringing in which one didn’t discard Otherwise Still Perfectly Good household items just because of some cosmetic damage. I only used it while sleeping alone, natch, but I remember secretly feeling weirdly smug about my so-called “Macedonian bride” sheet as a symbol of my long-awaited Losing It. (That name was inspired by a biography of Alexander the Great, and I was not aware until just now that bridal sheet checks are still a thing in some parts of Macedonian culture. Yikes.))
I believe there was also a traditional workaround, based on the fact that historically there was no way to tell even what species the blood came from, let alone what individual or whether it was menstrual.
Accomplishing that without some complicity from the husband may in some cases have been difficult, however – and particularly hard on the bride who didn’t know she needed to be prepared, because she actually had been a virgin: just not one who bleeds on first intercourse, either because of a stretchy hymen or because of one missing for any of a number of reasons, including the opposite of my situation in which there never was much of anything there.
– whoops, typo too late to edit. I must have either asked her (my mother).
I will jump in with some Diva Cup love. I think they’re the most comfortable, for me, and because they’re reusable and portable, I feel more confident during this “whodunit” time of Perimenopause( yes, I’m still guessing if/when, and how much, every month). I will say I have access to a decent and private bathroom when necessary, so there’s that. I’ve never tried the period underwear described -so carry on.
I feel like “TMI” is a phrase that ought to fall by the wayside on this site. If the Dope is to be Straight, then I don’t think there really is such a thing as too much information.
So yes, please feel free to continue sharing info about leaks, stains, clots, and all manner of feminine hygiene products (both adequate and inadequate). As noted by some others, this thread is an education for men on what a lot of women have to deal with. The occasional awkwardly-timed boner is really nothing in comparison.
holy ******* ****. I knew there was a segment of the population that hates trans people. I didn’t realize there was an organized segment who hates adolescent girls and wants them to worry about normal biological processes.
I had to google that to make sure it was real. It’s real.
They want girls to start bleeding without knowing why.
And, apparently, when they’re crying in fear in the nurse’s office, to prohibit doing anything other than, maybe, scaring them even further by saying only “We’re calling your parents to come take you home as soon as possible.”
(While the legislators might, considering the apparent even current state of education in Florida, have been ignorant enough to start with to have thought nobody starts until at least far enough through sixth grade to have taken whatever limited instruction they’d allow at that point, they can’t possibly have gotten the bill this far along without somebody informing them that this is no longer 1950 and starting earlier is now pretty common.)
Sure demystify menstruation, the how and why of it, at the same time let’s get the men on board to take greater responsibility for birth control. Keep those periods flowing. We know there’s a male BC pill, speak up for it! would men be so empathetic as to get a hormonal device implanted in your arm?
No not in Fl or really anywhere else afaik. So show interest in that and not my dirty period underwear.
They want to limit any form of sex
education until sixth grade yet HB 1069 offers no alternatives other than abstinence.
I did read the bills sponsor is open to some language changes so that elementary teachers can talk about periods since some girls get theirs early.
Not really, at least, not yet, as I understand it.
This article, from a few weeks ago, mentions several male birth control pills that were in trials as of 2019, and showed promise (as well as some other treatments that have also shown promise in preliminary trials), but I don’t think that there’s anything really analogous to female birth control pills that’s widely available today.
