You saying, “we’ve all been there” is what makes this so powerful. It takes away the shame.

That sweet girl. How lovely that she had you with her. I remember getting my first period at school and hiding away in the girls' bathroom, seriously thinking that I had a super embarrassing health problem.

We have definitely ALL been there. I have had good friends ask me for pads. I've had total strangers ask me for pads. I've had work acquaintances ask me for pads. I have cried with my best friend about my period making a forceful appearance at a bad time. I have never seen women go to male friends for a word of comfort in those moments. I've never seen them go to their male boss to try to laugh it off after the fact. I've never seen them ask Joe Schmo on the street if he can cover their backs for a minute while they tie a jacket around their waists. When it comes to young girls experiencing their periods for the first time, the LAST thing they want is for any boys to involve themselves in what is almost always a scary, nerve-wracking process. Girls and women know this - we try to protect our friends from any men seeing period accidents or laughing at them (and we do it instinctively). Men lack that instinct and don't care to understand it.

My older sister told me about The Girl Code, and I told my daughter. If you need emergency menstrual supplies, ask any girl. Even a stranger. And if any girl asks you, you share even if it is your last one. This is the way.

It made me feel better knowing that we were all in this together, and I have both the giver and the receiver of emergency supplies in my life.

Now I think about Jonathan Yaniv just drooling over the fantasy of teaching a little girl how to insert a tampon and I feel so uneasy.

Lmao. So I got my first period around 8 years old (precautious puberty). My friend was using the stall next to me and most of the other girls from our class were in the bathroom too. I saw the red in the toilet and bragged to my friend in the stall next to me that I had just started my period. Enter a chorus of "nuh uh" and "no you didn't" and "liar".

Two minutes later and all of the girls in third grade were crowding into the small stall to stare into the toilet together with me like moths drawn to a lightbulb, lmao.

I was embarrassed and didn't want my mom to know, so I would just wear my underwear and then throw it into the canal near our house. When I ran out of underwear I started stealing hers and she caught on that something was going on. lol.

Glad you were there for this girl. Starting your period sure is an experience that can either go traumatically or be a bonding experience for women and girls.

"This girl, in this moment, needed privacy and some gentle reassurance, and women who understood."

I recently re watched Mad Men and in the episode where Sally has her first period in a public place and tells her mother what happened, Betty tells her that if this ever happens again all she has to do is wait in the bathroom and ask another woman, "she'll know what to do".

I had basically the same thought you did : in spaces where men are allowed to cosplay or just creep, this safety and simplicity is just not a possibility.

I've seen a few posts by women recounting their experiences with AGPs just chilling in the women's changing rooms or bathrooms "doing their makeup" or otherwise staying there for an inordinate amount of time, for whatever reason—making the experience last, making the most women uncomfortable, being able to watch as many women as possible, who knows, and frankly who cares ? The result is the same, they're making the women and girls uncomfortable.

Imagine if this girl had come across some Yaniv type, wanting to hear more about her period so he could do whatever he does with this info.

TIMs and males in general, whether well intentioned or not (I'm still willing to believe some of them "just want to pee") disrupt the safety and privacy of these spaces, and they cause consequences mostly for the vulnerable among us. This is another argument that should not be neglected.

Man, I still remember bleeding through my jeans in 11th grade during class while sitting at a set of desks in my all male friend group. Couldn't interrupt the teacher's lecture to be excused to the washroom. When I could finally bolt out of there, I made a joke about how now I'd have a good submission for the "My Most Embarrassing Moment" column that used to be in either YM or Seventeen when those were still actual published print magazines (Gen X represent!) The reference probably went completely over my friends' heads. Anyway, can't imagine navigating something like that alone and in public as a young teen and having no private space to regroup. Would not be cool.

Ya did good, Sis. Glad you were there today.

I'd be inspired, if you get to choose! Such a universal experience she's dealing with. I think we all, literally, have been there. And that's pretty wonderful in a way. We share this unique, troublesome, extraordinary biology and it transcends time and race and culture. We're all women and those first periods are a fuckin doozy. No matter where and who we are, we have older women ahead of us empathizing with our strange bodies as they deal with menopause and we have young girls coming after us dealing with the unstable emotions, acne and shock of an unexpected heavy flow. I think it's pretty special.

Our bodies can be embarrassing and frustrating and often shamed, and we can bleed and cramp and suffer the challenges of being the life giving sex. But we're all together in this and there's a sisterhood in that which men can't experience. Identity politics and this ridiculous new wave misogyny will fail because our bodies are ancient and tie us to every other mother, grandmother and daughter down to our very bones.

We know what we are and we can recognize eachother. We're the same and we'll keep being the same even as they try to blur the lines and erase the language that describes these shared experiences.

Thank you for relaying the story, and for keeping supplies. Wonderful that she found what she needed (more than supplies! a good friend, a good mother, a helpful stranger).

As to your question? We just have to keep fighting for separate spaces.

What if that wasn’t the case? If she didn’t have a private, actual safe space for that experience? Do we really live in a society where this 13/14 year-old girl would be called transphobic if she were to be vocally grateful for this space?

Or even worse, what if she had a "Jessica" Yaniv type of male who was in the restroom at the same time, asking her if she needs tampons, and if she would like him to come in the stall and help her insert it *(if you've seen the screenshots of his messages, you know exactly what I'm talking about).

I'm not sure if I feel inspired by this or defeated. Lol. Either way, it felt important.

It is both and it is so important. That was a great thing that you did.

What is going to happen to all the young girls and young women with nowhere to go when they need female-spaces? I truly can’t even fathom it.

We are failing girls in our society and they are being used as guinea pigs in some sort of societal experiment based on nothing more than the delusions of TIMS.

I still can’t believe this has happened.

Aw, what a sweet story. Our single sex spaces are necessary.

No, I don't think I've ever been there. My period felt like a far too private thing to share with others, and I live in a country where conversations with strangers are frowned on. The idea of trusting random strangers with period information in a public area that I may wish to visit again would never have flown.