Over 11,000 people have signed a Change.org petition rallying for supermarkets in the United States and the United Kingdom to make their marketing of period products more inclusive.
Terms like “feminine hygiene products” commonly used by popular retailers leave out transgender and non-binary people who also menstruate. The campaign, which was created by the personal care brand Natracare, urges the adoption of language that recognizes those experiences.
“[T]he word ‘feminine’ assumes that all people who have periods are feminine,” the petition argues. “This is not the case — trans men and non-binary people can have periods, too. The use of the term ‘feminine hygiene’ suggests you need to have a period to be ‘feminine’, when trans women and plenty of cis women don’t have periods.”
The petition, which is titled with the hashtag #RenameDontShame, had amassed a little over 11,400 signatures at the time of publication.
It also called on stores to stop using terms like “sanitary products” or “feminine hygiene products,” claiming that these phrases “suggest there is something unsanitary or unhygienic about having a period when this is not the case.”
“This stigma affects people’s quality of life, every day,” the campaign says.
Menstruation is assumed to be exclusively linked to cisgender women’s bodies, but it is also a biological function for trans and non-binary people, who have been campaigning to make period products inclusive for years: A non-binary period activist, C, shared a viral photo three years ago in which they are sitting on a bench with period-soaked pants, holding a sign that reads “periods are not just for women.”
The picture was accompanied with the hashtag #BleedingWhileTrans.
In an interview with Vogue earlier this year, the activist (who is also known as The Period Prince) discussed the importance of destigmatizing menstruation for trans and non-binary people. “All the language that we tie into periods is not set,” C said. “You don’t have to live your life under the definitions that somebody else made up.”
Last year, the underwear company Thinx responded to the call to make period products more inclusive with a commercial titled “MENstruation,” which shows men and boys getting periods. The company also debuted its People with Periods campaign, which centered a transgender man, Sawyer DeVuyst, discussing the need for gender-affirming menstrual care.
“Everyone experiences dysphoria at some point about their body, whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you’re trans or cisgender,” DeVuyst explained.
At least one supermarket chain in New Zealand has already adopted the suggestions made by Natracare, while multiple online stores in the U.S. have also introduced more inclusive language on their sites. According to the petition, no in-person retailer in the U.K. or North America has responded to the petition.
According to the petition, 26% of the global population has periods every month. Despite menstruation being a “very normal part of life for a lot of people,” there’s not enough public conversation on the reality of having one.
“[P]eople who have periods are made to feel shame from when they first enter puberty,” the petition reads.
Natracare also claims that 48% of girls in the U.K. reported feeling embarrassed about their periods, and those figures rise to 56% when they reach the age of 14. Fifty-eight percent of women in the U.S. hold similar sentiments.
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