[jfc]

> There are also myths and fears surrounding the use of sanitary pads - that women who use them will go blind, for example, or will never get married.

Such myths abound globally, especially in rural environments. Worse myths exist around tampons--that a woman who uses a tampon is no longer a virgin. The implications of this in more rural societies are staggering, as young women can lose marital prospects or even be killed.

What impressed me most about his work was the lengths he went to in order to understand the problems the women were facing. That "football uterus" made him an outcast and he was rejected, which is not wholly unlike how menstrual women were treated in his village. He really got the full "customer" experience.

His work will also greatly help those women who have severe menstrual bleeding problems, in which they bleed non-stop for weeks (or months or, sadly, years) at a time. Not only are they outcasts in their communities, but even children will pelt them with rocks. It's profoundly sad.

It might sound trite, but we hear about the man who built the Taj Mahal for his beloved wife. Look at how much he is revered! Now consider what this man has done out of love for his wife--he has far eclipsed even that magnificent structure.

[silencio]

> Worse myths exist around tampons--that a woman who uses a tampon is no longer a virgin.

Lest someone believe this is a belief held only in rural areas, let it be clear that ideas like this are incredibly common in not-so-rural places like in the US. It's usually accompanied by some equally ridiculous beliefs about what virginity is in the first place (protip: it's about having sex for the first time, not about whether the woman bleeds or how "tight" anything is), hard to find comprehensive and unbiased education, the total lack of knowledge of or misinformation concerning alternatives to pads and tampons (reusables, cups), and straight up shaming and misinformation about birth control usage. The big difference between the poorer and the richer is that honor killings, genital mutilation, and whatnot are far less common for the latter.

I love what this guy did for his wife and other women in the same situation, but there's no shortage of similar problems for women elsewhere and I wonder if there will be something revolutionary on that front too any time soon. I've been considering going to med school and see if I can eventually merge my interest in that and tech at the same time to do something here but that's a long term iffy goal, and surely there are already others interested in the same thing too.

I'm pretty lucky to have had reasonable and educated parents that were willing to tell me (or let me discover) all I wanted to know about these things when I was 10. But it feels like at least once a week if not daily I discover a teen or a preteen or even an adult woman asking basic questions on one of the women-focused communities I spend my time in. I wish I could help them. :(

[Myrmornis]

I have a bit of a problem with the way you're talking about "virginity". Scientifically, it's not a concept at all. In fact "vagina has been penetrated at least once by an object, whether penis or not, and hymen possibly broken" is a more scientifically valid definition of female loss of virginity than yours. So basically, you're wrong, the problem isn't people thinking that using a tampon is loss of virginity; the problem is people thinking that "virginity", however defined, has any particular significance.

[crassus]

People that marry as virgins have a much lower chance of divorce[1]. If you think that stable families are a good thing for your society to have, then you have to reject "sex positive" modern culture and value virginity.

Coincidentally, the family structure of the west has rotted since the sexual revolution of the 1960s[2]. Maybe if all those damaged children of divorce had a say in the matter we'd return to traditional morality and shaming of sex outside of marriage. The highest value of society shouldn't be doing whatever feels good regardless of the consequences.

[1] https://twitter.com/Witch_Hammer/status/435979358348378112/p...

[2] http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/u-s-historical-livin...

[dTal]

I think happy families are a good thing for society to have. Divorce is not ipso facto bad. Unscientifically, so far in my life I have seen far more children damaged by a toxic family life than by divorce. It's hardly surprising that if you've been with the same person your entire life, you're going to be very afraid of change even if your home environment is terrible.

Of course, it's preferable to choose the right person to marry and settle down with in the first place, so that divorce isn't even on the table. This takes careful introspection and maturity. How does forcing people to get married before they even find out if they are sexually compatible help? How does tying an important life decision to irrational biological instincts help people choose sensibly, so they can have a happy life?

>Maybe if all those damaged children of divorce had a say in the matter we'd return to traditional morality and shaming of sex outside of marriage

Traditional morality? How traditional? Which era do you think had superior morals? 50 years ago, when racism and sexism were common? A hundred years ago, when women couldn't vote? 150 years ago, when brother fought brother over the right to keep slaves?

[bananas]

I think your point is quite possibly the greatest example of religious thinking I've seen for a while.

Perhaps the family structure is just as rotten as it always was but now we don't lobotomise our depressed wives, pile them up with valium and beat our kids to shut up about it.

It's no longer acceptable to put up with shit and abuse and unhappiness is the greatest thing that has happened to the western world.

[Ancorehraq]

Speaking of depressed wives and valium,

"Over the past two decades, the use of antidepressants has skyrocketed. One in 10 Americans now takes an antidepressant medication; among women in their 40s and 50s, the figure is one in four."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/a-glut-of-antidepre...

[eevilspock]

To be clear, that does not imply that people are more depressed over the past two decades. On the positive side, it could mean that we're finally able to diagnose and treat something that has plagued us all along. On the negative side, it could be the direct result of the Big Pharma marketing and profit machine.

[crassus]

Where did I bring religion into it? It's valuable to have community norms that prevent people from throwing away their family as soon as times get rough or life fails to be "fulfilling" or entertaining. At least, ours is the first society that's ever thought differently, so we'll get to see how this whole experiment plays out.

Single parent families are a big part of the increasing economic stratification between rich and poor, and I expect our amorality will bear even worse fruits as time goes on.

[bananas]

Religious thinking is not about religion. It is a logical concept where the conclusion appears out of thin air devoid of any connection with the evidence. Similar to magical thinking but probably less fun.

Whilst you might be right that our amorality will bear worse fruits, the status quo prior to this wasn't any better ergo morality and the stable family isn't necessarily better, just different.

The difference is purely that people don't suffer in silence now. This in itself is a wonderful freedom that we all deserve.

[dTal]

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/06/my_virginity_mistake/

Would you have preferred she stayed with the man she impulsively married and had children in a loveless marriage?

[Myrmornis]

People that marry as virgins have a much lower chance of divorce

There are several confounding variables affecting this correlation, notably the fact that people who marry as virgins are much more likely to be practicing Christians (the data set is of US women).

[dusklight]

While I personally think the above post is morally repugnant, I was very disappointed to see that it had been downvoted significantly and I upvoted it to try to balance it out. The poster might be wrong but he did so with a civil tone and an actual attempt to include citations. I question his basic premises but this is exactly the sort of thing that free speech should protect. He may be wrong and you can ignore it but you shouldn't be allowed to shut him up.

[miked]

>> ideas like this are incredibly common in not-so-rural places like in the US.

I've never heard of this happening in the US at all, never mind being "incredibly common". Evidence?

[silencio]

I don't want to make assumptions about gender on HN, but if you grew up female it was kind of hard to avoid. You can just search for "tampon virgin" and come up with a ton of sites and people that try to reassure girls that using a tampon doesn't mean you lose your virginity.

I also grew up in LA and not in the middle of some super conservative area, but my girlfriends used to freak the hell out when they needed to dip into my stash during emergencies and all they found were tampons. Sex ed until I took the high school edition didn't help much there either. It was only into high school/college that tampons were way more commonly used. Today I still have a mix of tampons and pads in my bathroom for anyone that needs it.

I don't have an explicit "tampon virgin" story to share right now, but here's one I saved from reddit a while ago that made me gag: http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/utzu0/ladie...

There's also some terrible stories in this link shared with me on irc that made me almost have an asthma attack laughing earlier today: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1zinku/sexed_teac...

For the other stuff...idk. I hang out in /r/twoxsex and used to hang out on the VaginaPagina LJ community and read the hell out of Scarleteen among other resources. It's a bit self selecting, but there's a lot of myths that get busted often. One I can think of - I started hormonal birth control really early because I had very heavy+painful periods with iron deficiency anemia (like, passing out in the middle of the street bad) and my parents and I went through a couple different doctors that were all judgmental about a 13-14 year old on the pill. I eventually just went to Planned Parenthood for gynecology needs (amazing people!) and they were all understanding and hush hush because parents of other women would sometimes illegally pester them for more information. So there's the "young teen/woman on birth control must be having sex and not need it for anything else" bullshit right there. Another one: right now I have an IUD, and everyone feels the need to tell me about the one friend of a friend story about a uterine perforation - legitimately a risk, but not like it's an inevitability for everyone using the IUD. There's also the twist on the tampon virginity that involves the menstrual cup. I also like to talk about skipping periods since I used to do it for a few years, and so. many. people. think it's a terrible thing to do. Meanwhile every doctor I had since going to Planned Parenthood thought it was a good thing to do, and this year for the first time in ~14 years since hitting puberty I finally have normal levels of iron without making an effort to supplement it. It's pretty wild. So much of it is so everyday if you spend enough time around frustrated women that I almost forget that these are really big problems.

[Crake]

> if you grew up female it was kind of hard to avoid

>I also grew up in LA and not in the middle of some super conservative area

>So much of it is so everyday if you spend enough time around frustrated women

I grew up in a fundamentalist conservative family in the midwest who believed the earth was 5,000 years old. Even we thought the "tampons kill your virginity" thing was ludicrous. I can believe it's a problem in the third world, but suggesting it's a common modern day belief in a first world country like America seems a bit hard to believe.

(A lot of religious people are still weird about the pill, though.)

[Spearchucker]

This is one of those unusual posts to which I have nothing of value to add, but feel compelled anyway to take the time to say that it's one of those insightful perspectives that I find inspiring.

[bane]

I'm a guy, and I grew up pretty rural and it was not terribly uncommon for some of these ideas to float around. Many girls I knew were not taught anything at all except all the various religious negatives about women's reproductive bits and as they hit puberty had no idea what to do.

A few teachers in my high school took it upon themselves to provide a sort of underground sex-ed for some of the girls who couldn't get parental permission for the official classes.

There was a fairly large Pentacostal group at my high school (you may recognize them as guys dressed like 1920s farmers and girls with long hair and all denim floor length skirts) and this group of teachers were a virtual life-line for those girls. [1] [2]

1 - To get an idea of what the mindset is read this page and the comments http://www.themodestmomblog.com/2012/07/why-i-wear-skirts-al... and then meditate on why women growing up in this have a terrible lack of knowledge and misunderstandings about their bodies.

2 - And another post on similar, but from somebody who escaped from it all http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/06/how-i-u...

[mlent]

I had friends at my private, religious high school whose parents forbid them from using tampons for this very reason.