Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

Call me a privileged elitist, but barring a drastic change in my financial situation I will never send my child to a school where he or she has to deal with this kind of shit:
A school in New York is having problems because their absolute “no bag” policy is a bit anti-female, surprise surprise. As any woman reading this is immediately thinking, the problem with not letting students carry even small bags to school is that female students have a very real need to carry pads and tampons. The danger of bleeding through your pants is statistically much higher than the danger that you’re going to turn out to be a school shooter, but that fact didn’t give the assholes who passed this policy pause. Realizing that it’s a bit problematic to leave female students bleeding from between their legs with no way to plug it up, the school has tried to compensate by allowing students who are currently on their period to bring small bags to school during their period, but no other time. Anyone who was ever a teenage girl and remembers the high percentages of creepy men—many who work in schools—who enjoy humiliating you by prying into your privacy can see the immediate problems with this policy. The girl was called out of class by a security guard during a school sweep last week to make sure no kids had backpacks or other banned bags. Samantha Martin had a small purse with her that day. That’s why the security guard, ex-Monticello cop Mike Bunce, asked her The Question. She says he told her she couldn’t have a purse unless she had her period. Then he asked, “Do you have your period?” Samantha was mortified. She says she thought, “Oh, my God. Get away from me.” But instead of answering, she just walked back into class. At home, she cried, and told her mother what happened.And how do they carry around their textbooks without bags? Fortunately, the students at the school are protesting. One kid streaked the school wearing nothing but a bag on his head. Others showed their solidarity differently:
Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now "part of the problem."Let's hope the publicity surrounding this incident knocks some sense into that school and gets them to rescind that ridiculous "no bag" policy. How demeaning. Is there no other way to ensure safety in school?