Friday, November 11th 2016
PERIOD Episode 8: Menstrual-born killers
Excerpt: Kate interviews Dr. Felisa Reynolds about their shared experience of a workplace bathroom, and Dr. Jessica Brinkworth about the health consequences of inaccessible menstrual hygiene.
Summary: I love my job, I really do. I don’t love the bathroom by my office. It is a pastel pink dump with a couch and nowhere to put my bloody pads. The women of my department find ourselves convening in the bathroom quite often, which means the lack of menstrual hygiene is a not infrequent topic of conversation.
The weird couch in our bathroom. Good for putting my bag down, but not great for changing babies or hygienically disposing of menstrual waste. Also note the “sanitary bags” on the window sill, rather than in the stalls.
One day, after one too many conversations about that bathroom, I decided I needed to make an episode about it. I decided to interview two people: Dr. Felisa Reynolds, who is a neighbor and friend and has had to teach in my building and thus endure our bathroom; and Dr. Jessica Brinkworth, an evolutionary immunologist who knows a thing or two about the nasties you can get if menstrual blood gets left around.
My cool friend Dr. Felisa Reynolds. We talk about books and periods and racism and sexism and our daughters.
We talked not only about our building’s unwillingness to put some form of menstrual waste disposal in the stalls, but the difficulty we have in having this conversation other than scrawled on our bathroom’s walls.
![The signs in our bathroom stalls. The text from our building service workers reads "Please do not flush tampons they clog the toilet thank you!!!" The left sign has 2 comments: 1) Please provide a trash bin, 2) Walk to trash can - 7 steps. And the sign on the right has 3 comments: 1) Please provide a trash bin so that I don't have to carry a used tampon out of this stall, 2) Amen sister!, and 3) It's to [sic] small, don't be lazy.](https://kateclancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/bathroom-signs-1-e1478840730574.png)
The signs in our bathroom stalls. The text from our building service workers reads “Please do not flush tampons they clog the toilet thank you!!!” The left sign has 2 comments: 1) Please provide a trash bin, 2) Walk to trash can – 7 steps. And the sign on the right has 3 comments: 1) Please provide a trash bin so that I don’t have to carry a used tampon out of this stall, 2) Amen sister!, and 3) It’s to [sic] small, don’t be lazy.
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