Kean’s PRISM educates about period poverty and transgender issues
By Siobhan Donaldson | Published by October 22nd, 2019
PRISM, Kean University’s LGBTQ+ activism club, will be running a tampon drive with the American Medical Women’s Association to collect menstruation products and educate students about period poverty, the Pink Tax, and healthcare for transgender individuals who menstruate.
The event will be held between Oct. 21st-25th from 12-4 p.m., in various locations including the Nancy Thompson Library, Miron Student Center and Miron Student Center Atrium.
Club President, Patrick McEachern, views period poverty as an “extreme lack of access to the proper hygiene products they need for their period.”
“We want to help break the stigma behind talking about something that is so natural,” McEachern said.
PRISM member, Oliver Vivian, specified on how the club has been a wonderful experience and how excited they are to educate others on menstruation.
“With this Tampon Drive, we’re going to be able to educate a lot of students about menstruation and the effect it has on people who menstruate,” Vivian said. “I think is really important because there’s not that much education on the whole of menstruation, and people should really know more about it.“
In an Op-ed published this month by Teen Vogue’s Courtney Roark, the Alabama policy and movement building director at URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, wrote that menstruation is not just a women’s issue. Roark said that gender non-conforming individuals, non-binary individuals, and transgender men are also affected by a lack of access to products and education for menstruation.
“When we consider that trans folks are more likely to live in poverty than cisgender people,” Roark said. “It’s easy to see how a lack of access to period products falls especially hard on trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people.”