More to come soon
Why is this called an insurance?
Insurance is when you want to protect against an adverse event. Sometimes, members of the MIT community find it hard to fully participate in academic and social settings due to the lack of access to free menstrual products on campus. Menstrual Insurance posters provide free menstrual products, which will be filled weekly in Spring 2020. Even more importantly, these posters encourage community members to donate any spare menstrual products by leaving them in the bags on the posters. This is a powerful idea of giving back and paying forward. A lot of the times, I was able to get an "emergency" pad/tampon from my friends. I thought expanding it to a school wide project shows the solidarity within the community. People can be helped as well as help others if that's within their ability.
Available Locations
| 1-167 | 2-150 | 2-364 | 4-201 | 5-116 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7-207 | 8-113 | 16-488 | 36-108 | 36-408 |
How did I chose these locations?
I tried picking bathrooms near big lecture halls and on commonly traversed paths to potentiallly help more people. Some additional considerations are: 4-201 is a gender neutral bathroom. Building 2's women bathrooms don't have paid menstrual products dispensers installed. Having quarters doesn't even help! So I included 2 bathrooms in building 2.
I am committed to refilling all locations every week in Spring 2020. However, I am working in San Francisco in January so I am emailing offices near these locations to ask for their help on occassionally refilling these posters. People who kindly help with refilling will be listed below:
To be continuously updated...
What if this project "fails"
One question that I am often asked is, "what if people take advantage of these free menstrual products and hog products?"
When people ask me that question, I usually compare menstrual products to toilet paper. As far as I remember, no one at MIT seemed to have ever been concerned about others hogging toilet paper. Could that happen? Yes. Does that happen? Occassionally. To be completely honest, I caught a bad cold sophomore year and took lots of toilet paper from my dorm bathroom because I ran out of tissues and was too sick to get more. I believe that anyone who takes toilet paper and/or menstrual prodcts from public bathrooms needs these products. That's why free access is so important.
I don't think empty bags mark failures of the project. It simply means that there's a high demand in the community for these basic necessities. This project will be successful if one person can avoid missing class because of their period. It will be successful if it one person can walk into a PE class in confident strides, instead of worrying about bleeding through a dozen layers of toilet paper. It will be a successful project if people start sustained dialogues about menstruation and period poverty. It will be a successful project if MIT can progress further in providing free menstrual products in more bathrooms permanently.
Menstruation is not an accident and "Menstrual Insurance" is not the ultimate answer.
Disclaimer
This project was created between finals and international flights. The crafts quality is in no way representative of the talents in the MIT community. Should you be interested, please check out the get involved page to help make this project more presentable and thoughtful.