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Rod and Karen respond to listener feedback.
Twitter: @rodimusprime @SayDatAgain @TBGWT
Email: theblackguywhotips@gmail.com
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Okay, one more comment, this time regarding men and period products. I think women pass on period shame to their daughters and in their lives. If not women, just society in general. Why is the special school assembly about periods only for girls? From the beginning, boys are taught period info aren’t for them and they just absorb societal myths and misogyny about it. I remember the message I got early and often as a teen was to hide that you had your period. Powders to hid the smell. Pantyhose under pants to make sure no one could tell you were wearing a pad, etc.
I remember my period started once while I was having sex with my boyfriend (the man I went on to marry). I was 19 and mortified, because he popped up to tell me. I didn’t have any pads so he went to the store for me. He couldn’t understand my embarrassment. He explained that it didn’t bother him because he grew up with a mom and three sisters. I think because if his experience of always being the gender minority in his home makes it easier for my daughters to tell him they need pads.
I vaguely remember the heroin addict as I was born in 1972. Many of the Vietnam vets that returned to my Brooklyn Neighborhood were addicted. I would hear my grandmother and her best friend or my mom and her brother and sister talking about former classmates and friends being strung out. When the anti-drug cops started coming to my school in 82, they weren’t talking about crack. They were talking about heroin, weed, acid, and pills (downers and uppers). They showed us pictures of collapsed noses and infected arms from addicts searching for veins. I remember advertisements that warned NYers to not wear their gold jewelry on the train during the summer or to tuck in chains because chain snatchers was a big crime and those chain snatchers were usually addicts. By 1984, when NYC started tackling the AIDS epidemic, it was all about needle exchange programs and condom use. There were PSAs about cleansing needles with bleach and not sharing needles to prevent the spread of AIDS. But, by the time I started high school in 1986, crack was king.