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Transcript:
Did you know that May 28th is Menstrual Hygiene Day? Well, it is, and menstrual hygiene season starts earlier and earlier every year, so today we’re going to talk about vaginas and stuff that comes out of them, which means that YouTube will probably demonetize this video before it even finishes uploading. Shout out to my awesome patrons at patreon.com/rebecca for supporting me even when I’m talking about Things That Shall Not Be Named, like, you know, body parts half the population of the planet has.
The last time I talked about menstruation was all the way back in 2023, when people on the internet lost their damn minds because Thinx settled a lawsuit about “forever chemicals.” In case you missed it, Thinx is one of the largest manufacturers of underpants that keep you blood and pee and any other fluids from leaking out of your nether regions and ruining your favorite pants. They’re awesome! They work really well. Not a paid ad, just a happy customer.
But for three years, the company faced down a class action lawsuit alleging that they misled consumers into believing they didn’t use “harmful chemicals” but lab testing revealed the existence of PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals.” Thinx settled without admitting fault but this led a lot of people online to rush home and tear their undies off and throw them into a bottomless pit. There’s no evidence that the chemicals found on the underwear actually harm your nether regions, and a recent study showed that commonly used laboratory gloves are throwing a ton of false positives when testing for PFAS, but whatever, that’s just how the US legal system and public outrage work.
I imagine that many of the people who threw away their period panties without watching my level-headed analysis were forced to do something else to keep their various fluids in check. There are menstrual pads, of course, which are awkward and prone to leaks and may contain endocrine disrupting chemicals, and there are tampons, which have a rich history of turning out to be terrible for us, with the most recent reveal being a 2024 study that found concerning levels of lead and arsenic in more than a dozen popular brands.
There’s “free bleeding,” of course, but my shame hut is still awaiting permitting from the City of Oakland and I can’t afford to throw away my sofa every month.
Finally, that leaves us with the humble little menstrual cup, a product I discovered around the same time that period underwear hit the scene. These are reusable cups made of medical-grade silicone or rubber, which you fold up and shove up your vaginal canal, allowing it to pop open and collect your periodicals. That’s what I call the blood and tissue that comes out during menstruation. Periodicals. I got a 40-year subscription and I’d love to cancel early but the fee is exorbitant.
Anyway, once I got the hang of the menstrual cup, I loved it. I thought it was going to be a bloody nightmare (literally) but with some practice and some kegel exercises, it became like second nature. I saved money and felt less wasteful for not needing to buy products that just became trash. There was no down side.
That is, until a microbiologist friend pointed out a slight problem: no one really knows if menstrual cups are actually safe to use.
Now, I’ve been in this game a long time, and I know that the funding is dire for research on any topic that is almost exclusively relevant to women. But things have gotten better in the past few decades, right? Surely companies wouldn’t be selling tiny silicone cups for 40 fucking dollars without first making sure it’s safe, right? Right? If I can’t trust a multibillion dollar multinational consumer goods corporation with 25% of the market share, who CAN I trust?
Oh, right: I can trust my microbiologist friend. If you’re a careful viewer of this channel, you already know I’m talking about Dr. Siouxsie Wiles, who I interviewed last year about her experience stopping the spread of COVID in New Zealand while battling a university that didn’t care about the relentless attacks she was experiencing from psychotic COVID-deniers. In that interview, she mentioned that COVID disrupted her life in another, relatively minor way: it stopped her from investigating the safety of menstrual cups, filling a gap (ha ha) in the literature that could help millions of people who use these products.
Back in 2018, French researchers published a study on the potential for menstrual cups to carry the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome, a rare but very dangerous disease that is a risk when using tampons. They actually found that menstrual cups were even more dangerous than tampons…but. Here’s how they determined that: they put either cups or tampons into plastic bags, filled the bags with the bacteria and some growth medium, shook them up, and tested them eight hours later, finding that the cups had more of the bacteria on them then the tampons.
Now, I’m not an expert in vaginas, but I do own one, and I can say with some amount of certainty that it bears little to no resemblance to a ziploc bag full of bacteria. Maybe I’m just lucky.
Siouxsie had the same thought, and so when she saw that paper, she went looking for other studies on the topic, and found that there weren’t any. That was it. Just the plastic vag.
So, she started to run her own tests, but then the whole pandemic thing happened and she got waylaid. Now, she’s back on her feet and wants to run the studies, but she hasn’t been able to find any funding, because who gives a shit about, you know, millions of people possibly growing dangerous bacteria in their bodies just to be able to move around the world in peace for about 12 weeks out of the year.
Siouxsie promises that if she can secure funding, she will run tests that actually mimic the human body, including the use of blood. Because even the few follow-up studies that followed that one in 2018 haven’t bothered to use blood.
She’s also going to look at more than just the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome, since there’s just as much of a chance that these products might be increasing the risk of urinary tract infections, thrush and vaginosis. In the end, she hopes that not only can she establish a baseline safety for these products, but also figure out the optimum way for consumers to use and clean them.
So, if you have a few bucks to spare and want to support good science that will benefit women worldwide, toss some Siouxsie’s way. And if you use any of these products, please don’t freak out and throw them all away like in the aftermath of the Thinx settlement. Pay attention to your body, practice good hygiene, and don’t feel bad if you ruin the occasional pair of white pants. Seriously, I still get nightmares where the other kids are laughing at me behind my back in middle school, and I have practically no shame about anything anymore. It’s a normal bodily function and we need to all be way less uptight about it. Including you, YouTube advertisers.
