Is InSync Miniform back in business? Maybe right after Thanksgiving, writes the company
I found an address for someone at A-fem [which made InSync Miniform] and wrote. He said the Website should be back up by November 1st if you would like to post that on your Web site! I sure hope so! [Corrected to right after Thanksgiving on 7 November.]
[InSync Miniform is a tiny pad that sits between the lips of the vulva to absorb small amounts of urine and discharge from the vagina. Several woman have asked me if the company went of business; this is the first positive response I've had. However, as of today, 3 November, the Web site is still not up. Keep checking it.]
Another part of the miniform story: e-mail Always! A woman writes:
While A-Fem Medical, the company that made Insync Miniforms, appears to have shut down, there might be something us loyal users of miniforms can do. A-Fem Medical Corporation and Proctor & Gamble entered into a license agreement a few years ago that granted to Proctor & Gamble certain rights to use A-Fem Medical,s miniform technology. In early 2000, the Proctor & Gamble Company launched its first interlabial pad product, the Envive miniform, in a single test market in Eau Clair, Wisconsin.
I sent a message to Proctor and Gamble inquiring about Envive, which was marketed through their Always brand of feminine hygiene products. They wrote back that the testing period for Envive is over and that they are unable to provide information on future availability. They wrote that they would pass along my interest in the product to the appropriate individuals. Now, this might be wishful thinking, but perhaps if enough of us loyal users wrote to Proctor and Gamble about Envive miniforms, they might consider making it available, even if it was just through their internet site.
Go to http://www.always.com/innovating/index.html, click on talk to Always, and let them know how you feel about Envive (a.k.a. Insync) miniforms!
Mooncup vs. The Keeper menstrual cup (see some cups and read about them)
Dear Harry,
I was browsing the MUM site and saw the mention of the Mooncup [see www.mooncup.co.uk]. I was very interested, because I recently had an unfortunate accident with my Keeper, involving putting it in Dettol overnight. I know, I know - it says not to in the leaflet. But Dettol [a kind of disinfectant] isn't bleach and I hoped it would be okay; it worked fine the first couple of times I did it. However, this time I promptly forgot I'd put it in there, and when I finally remembered, several days later, it had, um - melted. Or at least the outer layers had, leaving the cup sticky and smelling very strongly of Dettol.
Much soaking and scrubbing removed the stickiness, but not all the Dettol smell, leaving me a bit wary about using it again. So, I ordered a Mooncup to replace it. It arrived very promptly, with a clear instruction leaflet. It looks like an exact copy of the Keeper, except in silicone rather than rubber. It works just as well as a Keeper and if anything it's slightly softer and more flexible, and therefore a little more comfortable.
As it's silicone, it's also translucent. I suppose this might put some people off; I found it quite interesting, but then I'm weird like that. :-)
You're welcome to put this letter up on the MUM board, so that anyone else considering the Mooncup can read it.
Love,
A-
Abnormal menstruation in the Bible
Hello!
I was reading through your site, well put together by the way, and came across the section on menotoxin (the alleged "poison" in menstrual discharge). True, women in menses have historically been precluded from many activities, and I as a biologist cannot figure out why. However, I noticed a reference to a story from the Bible regarding a woman who was suffering from a constant flow of blood. She had spent all her life savings on doctors, and none was able to help her. If this had been a normal menstruation, she never would have gone to see a doctor. The implication is clear that the flow of blood was distinctly abnormal, hence the reference to doctors, and because the doctors could not help, she sought Divine help with the problem. Christ was the only one who could heal her, and she was healed. As soon as Christ perceived that Virtue had "gone out of him," he singled out the woman, and remarkably for that day and age, showed considerable compassion toward her and her difficulty. "Your faith has made you whole, go in peace." I believe is the quote, although I'd need to check to be sure.
Thanks for putting together a marvelous museum and site.
Ruth
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Later she wrote,
It does seem strange, the menstrual cycle. While studying physiology, we studied it rather in depth, and it seemed even more strange. It requires a tremendous amount of energy to maintain, and is a negative feedback cycle, one that culminates in destruction of body tissue, not the building of it. Women who have complete hysterectomies notice a drastic change in their metabolism, and many gain a lot of weight. Dogs that have been spayed display the same tendency.
One reason the menstrual cycle may have been seen as abnormal is the blood flow, about a teaspoon really. Typically you bleed only when wounded, so it's not a usual thing. Medical science, even today, tends to see women as abnormal men, not just different, so anything that makes us very different would be shrouded in suspicion. Prohibitions regarding menstruating women's activities may stem from the idea that if you're bleeding, you must be wounded, and therefore incapable of certain physical activities. We are, in general, physically weaker than men, and the fact that we are "wounded" and bleed every single month seems to bear out a further weakness. If you'd ever met my mother and her pals, you'd know this was not true, if ever there were a bunch of troopers, they would be it. But I digress.
I do know that, after study by researchers, it was found that the prohibitions from sexual activity during menses and after pregnancy was actually an effective birth control method, tailored to the individual woman's body [read the Bible's Leviticus for some of these prohibitions in Christianity, which also apply to men]. It spaces pregnancies out to about one every two to three years, which works to allow the woman's body to heal completely, and aids in better health and well-being. This would have been difficult to explain to men, particularly long ago, so the word "unclean" was used instead, as some husbands probably did not have the welfare of their wives in mind at any time. This probably also contributed to the "eeww!" factor, and also to women finding it hard to accept this natural occurrence.
Sorry for taking up so much of your time, but this is a subject I also find interesting, although I must confess I haven't had much time to research it a thoroughly as I'd like to.
Then she added,
Further observations on Biblical prohibitions: it seems that many of the laws relating to "unclean" things in reality relate more to maintaining good health and hygiene. Bathing after sex, not eating pork (thorough cooking may not have been possible back then, and pork is notorious for carrying trichinosis), bathing at least once a week, eta. Whether you are a Jew or Christian, and therefore believe that these injunctions were divinely inspired, is irrelevant, they are, for the most part, based more in good solid biology than in superstition.
She feels fantastic after becoming a vegan!
Hello there,
I am 31, a mother of a 16-month old and a 28-month old and have recently changed my diet from that of an ovo-lacto vegetarian to a vegan [she eats no eggs or milk products, just those from plants.]. My periods commenced at the age of 12 and have been regular 35-day cycles from the word go. Predictable, quite heavy, PMS, etc., etc. After each birth my periods returned like clockwork - very reliable. I became a vegan on 2 August 2002 and began to exclude all dairy/eggs from my diet (and I was a two-litre-a-day milk drinker).
Since that date (which was during my period) my next cycle dropped to a 28-day cycle. Ok, nothing too out of the ordinary I hear you say. Since then I have still not had another period. I am not pregnant - I have had no PMS since my last cycle - I am not suffering fluid retention for the first time since commencing menstruation. In fact I am busily trying to obtain personal accounts from others who have removed dairy from their diet and/or are vegans. I feel fantastic.
Have you any literature regarding this topic [see below!]? I have read some minor articles regarding similar occurrences but there appears to be a lack of study done in this area.
Are you able to shed some light?
Thanks,
N-
Australia
She later e-mailed this site, which helps: VEGAN-STRAIGHT-EDGE: Malnutrition And Gynaepathology http://www.vegan-straight-edge.org.uk/FOODGYNA.HTM
Translate a famous essay into Spanish!
A year or so ago a teacher in Spain wrote me that she challenged her students learning English to translate into Spanish Gloria Steinem's famous piece "If Men Could Menstruate"[read it in English]. She sent me these e-mails:
Hello, Harry, remember me?
Well, I've translated Gloria Steinem's article, quoting your page. It's in a bilingual edition now, therefore. I've learned about the FAIR USE issue, finally. I've asked my Web-lings [good word!] to write their own versions if they wish, so we can put them up and have a laugh. I'll let you know if any send anything in.
Saluditos,
Michelle
This is Michelle's offer to her students:
Translation ready into Spanish. Wanna send your version so we can have fun?
(Siento dar la plasta otra vez, pero es que no sabía que podría.)
Aquí está al fin la traducción de "If Men Could Menstruate", de la feminista estadounidense de los años 70 Gloria Steinem. Es un texto escrito en tono agradable y que hace humor hasta con las propias feministas de la época. Si alguien se anima a hacer una adaptación a su pueblo y su época... podríamos irlas subiendo y sería gracioso e interesante... (No vale malos rollos.)
http://www.webdianoia.com/users/michelle/pages/lecturas.htm, abajo, en "Lecturas cañeras".
Saludos,
Michelle
The Greens in Andalusia have published the translation on their page. You can find it in the summary under the title "Si los hombres tuvieran el periodo".
http://www.losverdesdeandalucia.org/eboletin.php#not-12
Saluditos,
Michelle
MUM among the Best of Net
Congratulations! I've just named your site a "Best of the Net" site for the category of Women's Health within the About Women's History site. I give that award very rarely - only a few times a year - but your site certainly deserves to be among that elite group!
[Many thanks! The About Women's History site has many links to valuable articles and sites.]
You'll find the Best of Net designation for your site at Women's Health: Historical Perspective
http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/health/
You're also now listed on the 2002 Best of the Net page at
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/news/blbestofthenet.htm
Pages from your site are also listed elsewhere on the About Women's History site:
Museums of Women's Issues
http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/museumsissues/
Women's Lives in History - Overviews
http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/livesoverviews/
Judy Chicago - Images of Women
http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/chicagojudy/
Lydia E. Pinkham
http://womenshistory.about.com/
No, no, don't stop now! Keep writing!
I LOVE your site, and I think I'm a little bit in love with you! Feminine acceptance, AND cats????? [See, for example, The Supreme Kitten and his mom, Mrs. Jablowski. A newspaper in Chicago criticized my attention to cats on this site. Those people will come back as MICE in the next life!] YOU'RE A DREAM! Thanks for the site, truly - I was a tomboy who "blossomed" at 11, boobs, blood and all. I HATED it. Still hate aspects (mine is too heavy and I wish we COULD just let it flow - jeez you can blow snot in public but don't you DARE have the bulge of a pad or leakage or buy a fem product from a salesMAN, etc.) but your site's helping me come to terms, and even appreciate the miracle of this body's function. Now if only they'd invent something for heavy flow. [That's one of the most common things people write to me about. Read the letters about stopping menstruation. Men have it easy.] There just isn't ANYTHING. I'm tempted to buy a pack of Depends to see if those will help at night! Keep up the good work!
The Women's Library, London: a place for this museum?
There's a really nice, cozy organisation situated in the City of London called the Women's Library - occupying an old wash house. They have a marvelous collection about women in general, health included, and run exhibitions, etc. What a good place for your museum. Check out their Web site: www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk.
If the museum was located there, maybe then I could I get a job working with a subject matter which fascinates me, having just completed a masters thesis on the impact of oral contraceptives on family doctors in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.
Ask the Expert feature, etc., from Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre and The Centre for Research in Women's Health
I am writing to you from the Women's Health Matters Web Site at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.
You may be interested in adding womenshealthmatters.ca and its sister site femmesensante.ca to your list of women's health resources. Womenshealthmatters.ca is produced by women's health experts at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre and The Centre for Research in Women's Health, and provide consumers with the latest information, news and research findings on women's health, diseases and lifestyle. Women can learn about topics such as cancer, cardiovascular health, pregnancy, sexual health and osteoporosis. They can meet our women's health experts in our Ask the Expert feature and discuss their health concerns with other women in our moderated discussion groups.
If you would like further information about these sites please feel free to contact me.
Sheryl Mitchell
Director, Women's Health Partnerships
Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre
#908-790 Bay Street
Toronto, Ontario M5G 1N8
Phone: 416-813-4752
Fax: 416-813-4720
www.womenshealthmatters.ca
www.femmesensante.ca
No menstruation education in New York City?
I discovered your Web site when I was looking for some information on menstruation to support a planned conversation with my daughter about the subject. I love it! Thanks for all your work on it. Some of the historical stuff is a hoot.
I grew up in Canada in the '60s and remember, fondly, Growing Up and Liking it [a booklet for girls published by Modess]. I live in New York City right now and was shocked to discover that education about menstruation is not taught here, and that people in general find this (in 2002!) an uncomfortable topic to talk about. Is this some kind of new trend in education - to avoid an issue that affects more than half of the country's population?
Thanks again,
Call for papers: MENSTRUATION: BLOOD, BODY, BRAND
THE INSTITUTE FOR FEMINIST THEORY AND RESEARCH
WWW.IFTR.ORG.UK
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY, United Kingdom, 24-26 January 2003
An under-explored territory for the scholar of the body-in-history, the menstrual has remained one of the last taboos of both cultural and academic discourse. A recurrent motif in specifying the body marked female, menstruation has nevertheless remained on the periphery of the feminist second wave. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together various previously disparate critical approaches to construct an evolution of menstruation. It will examine and revisit visual, literary, medical, legal, autobiographical and historical texts.
Keynote Speakers
Julie-Marie Strange
Marie Mulvey-RobertsProposed Papers/Panels
- Visual Culture and Menstrual (in)Visibility
- Menstrual Technologies
- The "Speaking" Body
- Revising the History of Menstrual "Disorder"
- Theorising the Menstruating Subject
- Female Bodies and "Emission"
- Enlightenment's Menstruator
- Taboo and Totem
- Menopause and Ageing Femininity
- Psychoanalysis and Hysteria
- Race/Blood
- PMS
- Advertising Menstruality
- Maternity vs. Menstruation?
- Vampiric/Gothic Menstruation
- Menarche and the Invention of the Teenager
- Periodicity and Images of the Natural
- Dioxin and TSS
- Gaps in the Civilising Process
- Class and Menstruality
- Feminist Waves and Menstrual Evolution
- Menstruation, Statute and Work
- The Wisdom of the Wound?
- Representations of the Bleeding Body[The MUM director was invited to talk about this museum either in person or by video tape.]
300-Word Abstract Deadline 31st August 2002
Abstracts by Post or by Email Attachment to
Andrew Shail
School of English
Queens Building
The Queen's Drive
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4QH
UK
Phone: (01392) 264265
Fax: (01392) 264361
Email: a.e.shail@ex.ac.uk
Participate in three UCLA studies
Dear Mr. Finley,
My students and I are currently conducting three online studies relating to menstruation. We are seeking volunteer participants, women age 18-50, to take a few moments to complete anonymous surveys. I would greatly appreciate it if the Museum could publicize our efforts.
These studies have been approved by the University of California Los Angeles Office for the Protection of Research Subjects; participation is on a strictly anonymous, strictly voluntary, and unpaid basis.
Participants can access each of the surveys by clicking on the Web links below:
Disgust and the Menstrual Cycle
http://hillinfo.orl.ucla.edu/disgust_survey/
Subjective Changes over the Menstrual Cycle
http://hillinfo.orl.ucla.edu/cabin_fever/01_info_sheet.asp
An Investigation of Opinions about Incest and the Menstrual Cycle
(for women over 18)
http://hillinfo.orl.ucla.edu/menst_cycle
Many thanks in advance,
Cheers,
Dan
Daniel M.T. Fessler
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
390 Haines Hall, Box 951553
University of California Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553
tel. 310 794-9252
fax 310 206-7833
Email: dfessler@anthro.ucla.ed
Canadian TV film about menstruation Under Wraps now called Menstruation: Breaking the Silence and for sale
Read more about it - it includes this museum (when it was in my house) and many interesting people associated publically with menstruation. Individual Americans can buy the video by contacting
Films for the Humanities
P.O. Box 2053
Princeton, NJ 08543-2053Tel: 609-275-1400
Fax: 609-275-3767
Toll free order line: 1-800-257-5126Canadians purchase it through the National Film Board of Canada.
Did your mother slap you when you had your first period?
If so, Lana Thompson wants to hear from you.
The approximately 4000 items of this museum will go to Australia's largest museum . . .
if I die before establishing the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health as a permanent public display in the United States (read more of my plans here). I have had coronary angioplasty; I have heart disease related to that which killed all six of my parents and grandparents (some when young), according to the foremost Johns Hopkins lipids specialist. The professor told me I would be a "very sick person" if I were not a vegetarian since I cannot tolerate any of the medications available. Almost two years ago I debated the concept of the museum on American national television ("Moral Court," Fox Network) and MUM board member Miki Walsh (see the board), who was in the audience at Warner Brothers studios in Hollywood, said I looked like a zombie - it was the insomnia-inducing effect of the cholesterol medication.
And almost two years ago Megan Hicks, curator of medicine at Australia's Powerhouse Museum, the country's largest, in Sydney, visited MUM (see her and read about the visit). She described her creation of an exhibit about the history of contraception that traveled Australia; because of the subject many people had objected to it before it started and predicted its failure. But it was a great success!
The museum would have a good home.
I'm trying to establish myself as a painter (see some of my paintings) in order to retire from my present job to give myself the time to get this museum into a public place and on display permanently (at least much of it); it's impossible to do now because of the time my present job requires.
An Australian e-mailed me about this:
Wow, the response to the museum, if it were set up in Australia, would be so varied. You'd have some people rejoicing about it and others totally opposing it (we have some yobbos here who think menstruation is "dirty" and all that other rubbish). I reckon it would be great to have it here. Imagine all the school projects! It might make a lot of younger women happier about menstruating, too. I'd go check it out (and take my boyfriend too) :)
Hey, are you related to Karen Finley, the performance artist?? [Not that I know of, and she hasn't claimed me!]
Don't eliminate the ten Regional Offices of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor
The Bush Administration is planning to propose, in next year's budget, to eliminate the ten Regional Offices of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor. This decision signals the Administration's intent to dismantle the only federal agency specifically mandated to represent the needs of women in the paid work force.
Established in 1920, the Women's Bureau plays a critical function in helping women become aware of their legal rights in the workplace and guiding them to appropriate enforcement agencies for help. The Regional Offices take the lead on the issues that working women care about the most - training for higher paying jobs and non-traditional employment, enforcing laws against pay discrimination, and helping businesses create successful child-care and other family-friendly policies, to name only a few initiatives.
The Regional Offices have achieved real results for wage-earning women for eighty-one years, especially for those who have low incomes or language barriers. The one-on-one assistance provided at the Regional Offices cannot be replaced by a Web site or an electronic voice mail system maintained in Washington.
You can take action on this issue today! Go to http://capwiz.com/nwlc/home/ to write to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and tell her you care about keeping the Regional Offices of the Women's Bureau in operation. You can also let E. Mitchell Daniels, Jr., Director of the Office of Management and Budget, know how you feel about this. You can write a letter of your own or use one we've prepared for you.
If you find this information useful, be sure to forward this alert to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign up to receive Email Action Alerts from the National Women's Law Center at www.nwlc.org/email.
Thank you!
Book about menstruation published in Spain
The Spanish journalist who contributed some words for menstruation to this site last year and wrote about this museum (MUM) in the Madrid newspaper "El País" just co-authored with her daughter a book about menstruation (cover at left).
She writes, in part,
Dear Harry Finley,
As I told you, my daughter (Clara de Cominges) and I have written a book (called "El tabú") about menstruation, which is the first one to be published in Spain about that subject. The book - it talks about the MUM - is coming out at the end of March and I just said to the publisher, Editorial Planeta, to contact you and send you some pages from it and the cover as well. I'm sure that it will be interesting to you to have some information about the book that I hope has enough sense of humour to be understood anywhere. Thank you for your interest and help.
If you need anything else, please let me know.
Best wishes,
Margarita Rivière
Belen Lopez, the editor of nonfiction at Planeta, adds that "Margarita, more than 50 years old, and Clara, 20, expose their own experiences about menstruation with a sensational sense of humour." (publisher's site)
My guess is that Spaniards will regard the cover as risqué, as many Americans would. And the book, too. But, let's celebrate!
I earlier mentioned that Procter & Gamble was trying to change attitudes in the Spanish-speaking Americas to get more women to use tampons, specifically Tampax - a hard sell.
Compare this cover with the box cover for the Canadian television video about menstruation, Under Wraps, and the second The Curse.
An American network is now developing a program about menstruation for a popular cable channel; some folks from the network visited me recently to borrow material.
And this museum lent historical tampons and ads for a television program in Spain last year.
Now, if I could only read Spanish! (I'm a former German teacher.)
Irregular menses identify women at high risk for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which exists in 6-10% of women of reproductive age. PCOS is a major cause of infertility and is linked to diabetes.
