The menstruating population
George Mason University shouts Breaking Barriers for Menstruators:
Menstrual equity has been a prevalent topic that is kept behind closed doors for centuries, even though it requires more attention and recognition in our society.
Wut?
Wtf is a “prevalent topic”? How do you keep any kind of topic “behind closed doors”? What centuries are we talking about? Was there a time before all those centuries when “menstrual equity” was front and center?
Menstrual equity can be referred to as the idea that
Wait wait wait – you mean “defined as.” Not “referred to” but “defined as.”
Why is a barely literate adolescent allowed to write rules and regulations for a university?
Period poverty is a kind of poverty that is least talked about, but it is also the kind of poverty that affects menstruators all around the world. It may seem like I am heavily trying to focus on the term “menstruator”, because this is a neutral and impartial term that we all must try to use.
Why did George Mason University see fit to include this execrably written drivel on its official website?
Menstruation should not be associated with certain genders only as this biological phenomenon is experienced by individuals belonging to diverse gender identities.
Wrong. Exactly wrong. The thing you claim is the opposite of the truth.
An individual does not have to be a menstruator in order to empower menstrual equity around us. I come from a developing country, Bangladesh, where only 15% of the menstruating population has the privilege to afford proper period products- and this is the reality of many other regions around the world as well.
Ok well that explains the clumsy wording, so I withdraw the part about the barely literate adolescent. (I comment as I read, rather than reading the whole thing before commenting. Risky, but I want to pin down first reactions.) But what a tragedy that someone from Bangladesh of all places has been befuddled by this trendy luxury ideology that’s bad for women.
Also, while that makes the clumsy writing understandable, why doesn’t the university have someone to fix that? Seeing something written so badly would certainly not encourage me to attend that university.
No authoritarianism to see here.
Telling me I must do something makes me want to disobey just to see what happens.
It’s not a language barrier.
It’s fluent English, but it embodies the muddled thinking of a child who hasn’t been taught how to write (or think).
Well I think some of it isn’t fluent – like “It may seem like I am heavily trying to focus” for instance.
I think writing well isn’t entirely something that can be taught directly; I think it also depends on reading good writing and conversation with people who are good at it. Immersion, I think it’s called.
Which is why so many of the current generation write like they are on Twitter (pardon me, X).
I disagree. It is entirely true that women do not have a consistent “gender identity” (as a matter of fact, many don’t have one of those at all, because it’s a silly social construct that isn’t all that widespread). It is also true that menstruation shouldn’t be associated with certain “genders,” as in “magical intangible personality essences that conveniently overlap with sexist stereotypes while having nothing to do with them.”
The issue here is the implication that the word “woman” should be understood as referring to a gender identity, and the underlying assumption that gender identities are meaningful and important. It’s a terrible framework in which to work. But within that framework, I can appreciate that the author acknowledges that sex itself has some significance, and is not always superseded by gender identity.
It’s interesting how trans are so determined to steal the thing women didn’t want in the first place. We’ve spent our lives being defined by our cycles – ‘are you on the rag?’ ‘oh, dear, it’s PMS day.’ or worse. Then, when you get older, everyone assumes any bad day you have is ‘hot flashes’ or post-hormonal meltdowns. Of course, by then, we’re not worth anything except baking cookies and making soup.
So go ahead…take that off of us. I wish you could…then maybe, just maybe, you would figure out that you have NEVER felt ‘like a woman’, but only like ‘your perception of what a woman feels’ which is often 180 degrees off.
Mosnae – the quoted bit says the opposite of what you say it says.
I’m sorry – I’ve read it a few times, and I don’t see it.
Is this what I’m not parsing properly? It seems likely that the author isn’t using “genders” as a synonym of “sexes” here, because the statement would imply that there are at least three discrete sexes. (Granted, this is perhaps Ahsan’s view of things, but it would be an unusual one.) The mention of “gender identities” in the same sentence also leads me to believe that “genders” is used in the matching sense.
Based on the rather creative claims usually made about menstruation, I’m guessing that the sentence can be (and was meant to be) understood as claiming that males menstruate?
You’re overthinking it. The author is bad at writing (perhaps because English is not her first language). There’s no deep meaning to “certain genders”; it’s just a clumsy attempt to say the usual nonsense.