Tag: Human Rights

  • What’s in a name? Thank you Hillary Clinton.

    What’s in a name? Thank you Hillary Clinton.

    Like Hillary Clinton, I graduated from Swansea University in 2017, but that’s not all we have in common. We both have Welsh ancestry and we share a name, though mine is spelt properly (obviously). When it was announced that Hillary Clinton would be receiving an honorary degree from Swansea and delivering a speech, I applied for a press pass in the off-chance I might get one so early on in my career.

    To my surprise, this past weekend I had the extraordinary opportunity to attend the commemoration ceremony as a member of the press. I returned to my alma mater and experienced my first *real* press room. While the site I was writing for didn’t end up using my piece (ah, freelance life!) I got to catch up with friends and colleagues still in Swansea, experience a major landmark in the university’s history and find myself in a strange void, somewhere between student journalism and the real thing. Update: my article didn’t get published on the site because it in fact got published in print! Read it here and see if you can spot the irony in the byline… 

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BaOi3DGBAEk/

    As I scrawled my not-yet-mastered shorthand during Hillary’s speech I couldn’t help but get a little nostalgic. I had graduated on the same stage just three months earlier. A stage in a hall on a campus with which I had almost no sentimental attachment. My time at Swansea was spent on Singleton Campus and I had groaned on announcement that we had to graduate on the shiny, new Bay Campus. Now however, I have a genuine memory associated with the Great Hall on Bay Campus. I got to work independently with old and new colleagues, while watching a hero deliver an important speech on children’s rights that will also give my university recognition that will undoubtedly help struggling graduates like myself.

    My family have often wondered about the origin my burning advocacy for women’s rights. I have always and will always stay steadfast in saying that it comes from my mum. During Hillary Clinton’s speech however, I started to wonder if the former Secretary of State had something to do with it too. While my parents insist I’m named after a (rather depressing) Beaches character and my mother’s confidence in having ‘never met a stupid Hilary,’ I think I grew up associating my name with a very different source. One month and one day after I was born and named Hilary, the other Hillary delivered her monumental speech on women’s rights in Beijing. From then on, my name was associated with advocacy of women’s rights as human rights. While most of my friends associated my name with Hilary Duff and Hilary Swank, I think I must’ve been listening to the radio on 5 September 1995, because now I think about it, the only other Hilary I knew as a young child was Hillary Clinton. I mentioned this to my mum this afternoon and she spoke of how when she told the nurse my name the reply was ‘is that with two Ls like Hillary Rodham?’

    In her speech at Swansea Hillary spoke of how things had almost come ‘full circle’ with her return to Wales, where her ancestors began. Returning to Swansea not as a student but as a professional human being (boohoo!), things felt remarkably full circle for me too. What’s more, Hillary Clinton’s speech was about the children’s rights, where she drew attention to the fact that children are not simply ‘passive observers’ of what adults are up to. She spoke mostly of sad, negative examples of where that foolish assumption shows itself, but I think I have a slightly happier example of it. I grew up with a woman fighting for the rights of women, saying things that were revolutionary at the time. Luckily for me, she happened to share my name which perhaps made me listen a little closer. Hillary Clinton is one of many empowered women that I’ve been able to look up to, but one I didn’t full appreciate until now.

    So thank you Hillary Clinton, for giving me a genuine connection to Swansea University’s Bay Campus, God know’s not many Singleton students can say they have one. And thank you for saving it until after I graduated. I never expected a connection to the campus of my graduation to be conjured up after the fact, but I think you’ve given me some much needed self awareness in this period of Graduate Blues. An awareness of what my own name is starting to mean to me, an awareness of my sudden place in the professional world and an awareness of the importance and impact of role models on children. While it took me until your speech to realise it, you have undoubtedly influenced the course of my life so far, all because I was once a child paying attention to what adults were saying and doing.

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  • What I learnt at Clue last week #Periodically 14

    What I learnt at Clue last week #Periodically 14

    Nearly everyday I learn something new from the cycle tracking app Clue. Usually it’s about my own body, a new trend the app has noticed, a connection I thought was a coincidence that actually might be cycle related, or a fact that the app provides in its educational features. Last week however, I was lucky enough to make it to two of Clue’s events, as the blossoming company organised a week of talks in London.

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    Tuesday at Facebook London

    On Tuesday evening I went to Facebook’s London HQ for a talk entitled ‘Hormones and the Cycle’ and on Wednesday I went to a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session on ‘Sex and the Cycle’. The events were brilliant and provided an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, with one common interest – a desire to learn more about the menstrual cycle. The events were hosted by Clue’s Ambassador Program Manager, Maddie Sheesley, and its Researcher and Science & Education Manager, Anna Druet. This pair of brilliant FemTech advocates both fought the corner for how powerful education about reproductive health can be – teach a girl about her body and you can change the world.

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    Runway East for Lunch on Wednesday

    So without further ado, here are a few things I learnt at Clue this week, that I didn’t know before.

    • PMS as a concept that was coined before we even knew about hormonal fluctuations in the menstrual cycle, and yet we still use the same information to talk about and categorise it. Clue have written about the rarely discussed positive effects of PMS. 
    • I knew that the cervix moved throughout the cycle (as I terrifyingly discovered when I was learning how to use the menstrual cup). What I didn’t know was that it moves up and down throughout your cycle, an occurrence that can improve, or at least change, how sex can feel. What’s more, the combined pill (that’s the standard birth control pill) stops the cervix from moving up and down, it potentially lowers slightly during a placebo week. There are also reports of cervical orgasms – who knew?!
    • Perhaps most interesting for me and my own health was learning that research strongly suggests that chronic pain is worse towards the end of the luteinising phase of one’s cycle – the run up to a period. I clarified at the event, was this reproductive chronic pains or all chronic pain? It is all chronic pain. So when I wrote a few weeks ago that ‘whatever the problem is, it is either worsening or being worsened by my menstrual cycle’ I was right on the money. Even if it’s my kidneys, my bladder, my bowels or elsewhere, it was always going to get worse around my period because pain tolerance goes down. Imagine how useful that knowledge would have over the last year if I’d had it. Knowledge of self is POWERFUL. 
    • Some research has suggested that a low risk of pregnancy can cause people to enjoy sex more – explaining potential peaks of sex drive near menstruation. I certainly know a lot of people that can attest that low risk of pregnancy is sexy.
    • Very early research suggests that the clitoris grows 1/5 of its size during ovulation. That is bonkers!
    • The level of Oestrogen in combined pills has been dropping over the years. Now they start low and build up if necessary.
    • Each time you’re late taking the combined pill the follicle grows slightly. So if you consistently, occasionally forget to take the pill on time, it can eventually lead to ovulation. That is terrifying (but also kind of cool). 
    • The Progesterone Only Pill (POP/Mini-Pill) stops pregnancy by changing the consistency of your cervical fluid to block sperm. I was on the mini-pill for two years and only now do I know how it works.
    • Emergency contraceptives aren’t all equally effective at every point in your cycle – also terrifying and not common knowledge.
    • Most methods (or all, I’m unsure) of tracking ovulation are retrospective –  we can’t yet predict when that moment is going to happen.

    Interestingly, many of the questions from the audience started with ‘I recently came off the pill…’ or similar. So it’s not just something I’m imagining, there is the demand for a contraceptive shake-up. The events did remind me how valuable and life-changing hormonal contraception can be, but if you ask me, there has to be a better way. One of my favourite things about Clue is that the data you input is used in research into the menstrual cycle, so while there’s so much more to learn, at least my data is helping the cause (I hope!)

    To keep up with what I’m doing, follow me on Twitter or Instagram for beautiful photos of my lunch with a side of condoms. Thanks, Clue! 

     

     

  • Articulating Pain #Periodically 11

    Articulating Pain #Periodically 11

    I think I have always been quite a moany person. When I was little I would moan about going to summer camp or after school club. As I got older I moaned about maths and music lessons. Then I started moaning about redundant news stories in prime time spots, the patriarchy and inequality, Brexit, tuition fees. Last week I was moaning about how annoying people were for moaning about Big Ben going quiet.

    I’ve also, from time to time, moaned about pain. I remember following my mum around the supermarket when I was eleven or so, complaining about a dull achey back ache. I moaned about the same pain when I started my period a few years later. I moaned about it even more when I started working at pizza delivery chains and the pain would present itself after an hour or so of a five hour standing shift.

    I have a family full of aches and pains. Moaning about back ache or knee pain is pretty normal business for us. Remarkably, given I have two older sisters, moaning about period pain wasn’t much of a thing in our house (until I hit puberty, that is). I remember texting my mum under the desk in French class the day after I started my period saying ‘I think I have period pain’ and she said ‘try to move around’. An answer I found very unhelpful at the beginning of double French.

    My friends say I moaned about my periods at sixth form. I can’t say I remember that – but it does sound like me. When I started university I was having monthly periods for the first time because of the pill, and that definitely made me more aware of my periods and the pain that accompanied them. I remember paracetamol, hot water bottles and bean bags becoming monthly essentials.

    Then of course I stopped having periods. I won’t go into that again. For the ‘fun’ of that adventure read A Tale of Two Pills.

    Fast forward a year and a half and I’m in Clermont-Ferrand, France. I’ve been off of the pill for three weeks and my boobs suddenly hurt. I moan about it and my parents and, quite rightly, tell me they don’t care. A week later I have my menarche 2.0. A week of tender breasts before my period starts is now a thing. It was never a thing before I was on the pill.

    This very second, I am using Clue and my old diaries to trace when exactly the pain got noteworthy. I had three periods that seemingly passed as nonevents and then we get to January 2015. After a 63 days cycle my period promptly started in a crêperie in Lyon three hours after a friend from home had arrived to visit. Two days later, I got up and began my long commute into the Rhône-Alps countryside and started to feel sick from some sort of new period pain. When I arrived at work I taught one class and then vomited in the toilet before going home – I never take sick days. Actually I’ll just quote my diary here, I think 2016 Hilary was quite eloquent about it:

    ‘I’m finally having a period but once I got to school I felt so faint and sick and there was basically blood pouring out of me. It was horrible. Very strange day, David Bowie died.’

    My next period, seven weeks later, appears in my diary as a divine event. It is the day I wrote a certain blood/vagina quote as discussed in Blood, Books and Vagina. I also wrote:

    ‘The more I learn about vaginas, periods, childbirth and motherhood the more my curiosity grows.’ 

    I was clearly on some sort of (hormone induced?) vagina trip. Though if you’ve read Blood, Books and Vagina you’ll know I had just read Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography. 

    Right, so now we’re in March 2016. Once again I’ll leave it to past me (and Shania Twain, apparently):

    ‘Man, I feel like woman! Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I came on my period 28 days after my last period! Everything about this period is different but familiar… Today I feel like total shit and I cannot stop eating, but I know why and for the first time in three years I feel like me and my body are on the same page, yipee!’

    Oh young, naive girl. I don’t know where I got the idea that this was the dawn of a new age because this next cycle would go on to be 44 days, and the following would be 47. What is consistent on my Clue though, is the increase in cramps and ovulation pain. Around this time paracetamol stopped hacking it and I moved onto ibuprofen. Like sore boobs, ovulation pain was not something I experienced before I went on the pill. I have, until now, categorised it as sharp, often breathtaking pain, towards one side below my belly button, usually the right side.

    Once I started having sex again, the occurrence of these pains was no longer limited to where I was in my cycle. Suddenly I was having ovulation pain and period cramps three out of four weeks of a cycle, and recently four out of four (or five out of five). This includes weeks and months where I deliberately stop having sex, the pain continues regardless of my sex life, but is definitely worse when it’s active.

    Yet, it now seems that those pains are not ‘period cramps’ or ‘ovulation pain’. After last week’s ruling that whatever is causing my pain it is not gynaecological, I am stumped for how exactly I now talk about my pain. One option is to shut up and not say anything, quit a lifetime habit of moaning and leave my friends and family in peace. One thing that I’m learning to be really difficult about pain, especially chronic pain disorders, which it now seems is a group I may belong to, is that if you don’t say anything nothing happens. The only way anyone is going to know something is wrong is if you say something aloud.

    There is nothing, bar a heavy period and a bit of bloating, that projects my pain into the physical world. Which means everyone is going to think you’re fine unless you moan, but if you moan all the time then it’s fucking annoying for everyone. But how else do you express that you’re unwell? I need a metaphysical censor above my head. It’s a concept I find really tricky to get my head around.

    Now though, the language I have been using to express that pain is redundant and incorrect. I have focussed so much on my pain-cycle connection that it is incredibly difficult to disassociate my pain from my menstrual cycle. However, the raving pedantic within me can’t get on board with using now incorrect terms. I daren’t start saying ‘ow my bladder hurts’ because in a year’s time we’ll have probably moved onto my bowel or something else. It does of course all come under the category of pelvic pain but there’s something very clinical about ‘ow my pelvic area hurts’.

    I need to find a new language for articulating this pain – any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. So far all I have is Twilight Saga’s Jane blank staring while whispering ‘pain’.

    pain

    In the meantime, I might channel 2016 diary Hilary’s bizzaro way of articulating pain – with utter nonsense and writing a novel…

    Update: since I wrote this my sister showed me this picture. Could this be the language I’ve been needing to moan about my pain?! dementors

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