Friends who work in a location with a bathroom for customers/clients, do me a favor. Ask your manager or facility service person to change bathroom signs that say “feminine hygiene” to “menstrual products”.

There are two reasons for this:

One, “feminine hygiene” implies that having your period is gross. That people who get periods are less hygienic.

Two, feminine people aren’t the only people who get periods. Men get periods. Non-binary people get periods. Why have a sign that just casually misgenders someone every time they need to swap out a tampon?

Try “please dispose of menstrual products and paper towels in the trash can, and not the toilet”. Or heck, if you want to save characters (is anyone paying by the letter for a bathroom sign?), say “pads/tampons” instead of “menstrual products”. Everyone knows what pads and tampons are, and if they don’t, they should.

If you need a professional, fancy sign (i.e. not a sign you typed up and laminated and taped over the toilet), I’ll bet dollars to donuts that I could find a nice professional looking sticker in five minutes of googling. So, that can happen. (if you wanna go rouge and get the sticker and just…stick it over the existing one in the bathroom, I support that. I ALSO bet dollars to donuts that everyone in your office will think that someone else authorized it, and do nothing about it.)

So yeah, do that thing. lmk if you need support.

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