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Boston to start stocking library restrooms with free menstrual products
By adamg on Fri, 08/11/2023 - 11:35am
Mayor Wu today announced a pilot program to stock the restrooms at BPL branches with dispensers offering free pads and tampons.
Initially, Aunt Flow will install the dispensers at the Brighton, Codman Square, East Boston, North End, Mattapan, and Roxbury branches. If the pilot is successful, the program could be expanded to other BPL branches.
Along with expanding access to menstrual products, Love Your Menses, Inc. will be hosting monthly workshops at each participating branch beginning this September through December 2023. These workshops will bring awareness to the program, provide residents with more information about menstruation and help remove the shame and stigma often associated with menstruation.
Earlier this year, City Councilor Gabriela Coletta (North End, East Boston, Charlestown) called for such dispensers in municipal buildings. In a statement, she said:
I am proud that we are breaking barriers by providing products that over half of the population uses, but remain unaffordable for many.
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Comments
Finally!
This is great!
Library restrooms
Great if you want to venture into the restrooms of the public library. Just a public service announcement, the ones at Copley are to be avoided at all costs. You'll be stepping over people, for one thing. And there are other sights you really don't want to behold. Even some of the branches that require a key for the restrooms have intravenous drug users who go in and don't come out for long periods of time. I'm sure they will find ingenious uses for these products.
Will they be in the men’s room too?
.
Yes.
Yes.
And how long before
some outraged male says "eeew, that's just icky"?
Not long at all, of course
Already gotten a comment along those lines on the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter (where, thank goodness for small favors, the block control still works, at least for now).
FFS
FFS
you're against this? You
you're against this? You want them to remove toilet paper too? Soap? BYO urinal?
"For Flo's Sake"
"For Flo's Sake"
What you did there
I see it.
Don't worry
When you grow up and get your period, there will be resources available so that you don't have to make a giant wad of tissue to absorb it in a sensitive place just to get home.
The leftover lunch bag can be used for additional shielding.
Sigh.
Yes. This is a priority "problem" for the mayor and city hall. Copley has become a VERY EXPENSIVE homeless shelter. Majority are mentally ill and/or have severe drug addictions. SMGDH.
What is it with you people ...
Who think the city can only do one thing at a time?
The city of Boston has thousands of employees. The city can work on more than one thing at a time.
That one particular office worked on a free-tampons pilot doesn't mean there are no people working on all the other issues that affect the city. Yes, addiction and homelessness and mental health are big, important issues, but I suspect if you ended this one small pilot thing, you still wouldn't solve those problems any faster (and that's assuming this one small pilot thing is not, in itself, doing something important).
I mean, you could apply your logic to everything else the city does: Trash pickup is a priority "problem" for the mayor? Hmph!
For women, it is a priority problem
Especially for girls and young women. You don't have to be homeless to find yourself unexpectedly bleeding without supplies. Younger women are prone to irregularly spaced periods and can easily end up in an emergency situation. And you do not want to be a tween or teen walking around with bright red blood on your pants between your legs at school or otherwise away from home - it's bad enough as an adult.
Bathrooms should have the hygiene products needed to clean nether parts. When I go to the toilet at the library, I don't have to pay for toilet paper or paper towels. Sanitary products are the same category of necessity.
Besides the cost, these days people are less likely to have change with them to put into the machines, which are also often broken. And cost is a serious issue. When you are having trouble keeping food on the table, the cost of having sanitary supplies for every female in the family is a major burden. Go to that aisle next time you're at the store and see the prices - they're not cheap.
Sigh back atcha
How can people be opposed to this, and who exactly are you pissed off at more? The mentally ill who feel safe there, women for daring to have a biological issue every month that becomes quite expensive, or the city for trying to do something to give people a hand? Your outrage is just … weird….
When you have to improvise or experience embarassment
You can come here and blather your keyboard off.
Sorry to make you wince at a
Sorry to make you wince at a reality of what it's like to be poor, but I was homeless and addicted to crack back in the day. Women like me had to use toilet paper stolen from restaurants' bathrooms. Drug addiction will make you poor real fast, then homeless, then in survival mode which will, guaranteed, inlude doing things with no money to take care of the "flow" . It was easier to achieve long term sobriety back then than it is now. These addicts today don't stand a chance with the fentanyl and all the methadone/suboxone dispensaries, hospitals, and sleepy government and international airports. Therefore, the need for the wonderful people of Aunt Flow couldn't be greater. Keep up the amazing work!!!