http://www.canada.com/toronto/story.asp?id={028A1586-F2EA-4CF6-8569-6FDDB3BF9E11}

What do you think?

If you ask me, the problem of endlessly overpriced and potentially dangerous so-called sanitary products can be avoided with this handy-dandy little item: http://www.keeper.com/ It's absolutely the greatest thing I've every used

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: Relyc ]

And, I'm with Relyc on the joys of the Keeper. I paid $50 for mine...in 1994! Ever since, I've been a one-woman crusade for the company, getting all my women friends, and my men friends who love their women, to invest in them.

Dawna M, you should check out some of the testimonials re: The Keeper. I bet it could take on your heavy Aunt Flo without breaking a sweat. Like andrean, I can't say enough about this product--it kicks Playtex's bleached, toxic white ass on every front: cost, women's health, enviromental-friendliness, efficiency, um *tidiness* and so forth. Which is a prim way of saying with tampons I always needed panty-liners. Not so with the big K. It rocks six ways from Sunday.

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I wouldn't be too keen on bottling up what is essentially a system flush

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It doesn't "bottle up" anything - the Keeper collects the menstrual flow in a receptacle, instead of absorbing it, like a tampon does. One empties the device at intervals throughout the day as needed. It's not like you're inserting it at the start of the cycle and taking it out at the end - that would be at the least unpleasant and possibly dangerous as well.

There's nothing about the Keeper that can be harmful. It's made of natural gum rubber, a renewable resource, that isn't permeable so doesn't absorb bacteria and isn't absorbtive, so it doesn't dry out and damage the inside of the vagina.

Dawna Matrix - I have no idea what they do with returns! Maybe they are so few that they can handle the loss?

What's wrong with tampons? Are you telling me that the cotton is BLEACHED?!

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I mean, would you put something in your mouth and keep it there for several hours if you didn't know what it was made of?

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In 1991, however, some products - yogurt, pudding and lottery tickets among them - were exempted from the GST.

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The "keeper" also has an advantage for men.

How many times have I gone to the drug store at all hours because the women in my life have been "surprised" by a visit from "Aunt Flo" and been caught out of pads?

Something reusable would end this problem for everyone.

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So literal! I didn't mean foodstuffs!

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Unless it's every month, and you have more than one woman in your life to buy for, and one shortly to join womanhood. Last minute "emergencies" start to wear a little thin.

The other thing that gives me a bit of trepidation is the fact that it is WAY too easy to buy the wrong pads. You probably don't know, but there are packages that say stuff like:

"Maxi overnight protection with wings, for women named Fiona with red hair and freckles".

It gets that specific, I kid you not. And woe betide the insensitive male who inadvertantly buys "Maxi overnight protection with wings, for women named Fiona with red hair sans freckles".

There is such a thing as too much consumer choice, and it is best exemplified in women's monthly needs.

But, be a hero when you get the chance. Buy the right pads/tampons, some pain reliever, and chocolate.

My latest joke when out shopping with my girls is when I pay for items that are gender specific, like pads, or underwear, I'll turn to the daughter with me and say loud enough for the cashier to hear, "Oh, I'm sorry, is there anything YOU wanted?"

I did this last saturday, while paying for a package of panties, and the Cashier froze and waited a long time before she looked at me and knew I was joking.

My feet are average-size for a man my height, but of course unusually large (size 13, it turned out) by women's standards. So a woman in a thrift store directs us (TLM was accompanying me) to a store for "big and tall" women. In we walk, me leading, as befits the customer. It turns out to be a very conservative-type store, full of slightly older "church ladies," as TLM later calls them.

Naturally, as soon as it becomes apparent I'm the customer, they stop what they're doing, stare discreetly (if that's possible), and don't stop until we leave the place.

Affecting to take no notice of this, I walk up to the woman at the counter and say, perfectly straight-faced, "yes, I'm looking for something for the evening, say up to a four-inch heel, probably a size 12 or 13?"

She looks, for a moment, just the slightest bit disconcerted, but she's a businesswoman and a professional, and promptly says "Well, I don't have too many shoes that big, but I'll have a look."

Fine, says I, and while she's looking around in the stock room I turn to Maria, and we carry on a quiet conversation about the items on display. Most of the stuff's too day-time, says Maria, too business-y; I'm not trying to look like a banker, here. Yer right, says I, and besides, the cheapest thing there is maybe $140.00. Too rich for my blood.

For years I used unbleached cotton reusable pads (really messy and inconvenient), avoided the sea sponges (knowing what hideous toxic sludge we dump into our oceans) and eventually went back to tampons and pads (disposable).

I hate the mess and expense, and am ordering a Keeper. I hope it works well with my body - if it does, I'll get one for my eldest daughter and, eventually, for my youngest.

Why hadn't I thought of this? I guess I just assumed that there would be some regulation against poisoning the bodies of half of the population.

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Why hadn't I thought of this? I guess I just assumed that there would be some regulation against poisoning the bodies of half of the population.

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Well, gosh, you'd think so Trin, but clearly the same folks think nothing of poisoning the entire population and the planet's wildlife as well.

Spillage isn't usually a problem. It forms a seal inside (which you break by pinching the cup together in order to remove) that prevents most leaking/spilling. If it gets very full, there may be a chance of leaking, but usually you notice before it gets too severe. Everybody is different, and each woman needs to learn the pattern of her cycle as to how often it needs to be emptied. For myself, twice, three times max daily is sufficient.

One needs to be a little careful during the removal - if the cup is full and you don't hold it upright, you can wind up looking like an axe-murderer. Removal while sitting on the toilet provides one with a little margin for error - just be sure not to let it slip into the bowl and get flushed away. My room mate actually did that, to her great dismay.

The only drawback that I can think of is if one is terribly squeamish about blood. There's no avoiding the reality of your blood. And if you're used to thinking of it as a stain on a white surface, seeing a little cup filled with blood might be a little horrifying.

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The Keeper is painless to insert/remove, worn internally so it's not messy, easy to clean, odourless, environmentally friendly, woman-positive

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The plans for the compound and mote are still on.

Like I said, it looks like the Keeper is a bonus for oral sex, unless you don't mind flossing your teeth with a tampon string, or enjoy the taste of menstrual blood.

Think about it - how many times have you heard this type of exchange: "Did you have sex?" "No, we just fooled around, we didn't go all the way". And often "fooling around" would include oral sex, masturbation, etc. I figure that's just as much "having sex" as penetration.

It's this idea that sex happens in a straight line. That whole first base, second base, third base thing really illustrates that. The line goes from kissing to necking to feeling up on top of clothes, to feeling up under clothes, to getting naked together, to feeling up privates, to (possibly) oral sex, and then the ultimate, the thing that defines the whole sexual experience, penetration.

Not that penetration isn't great. Not that it's not sex. But to make that the defining characteristic of sex is, in my view mistaken. Not just because it's not the only way to have an orgasm. But also because it's a completely male-defined view of sex. Most women need some kind of clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm, which is something that you cannot get from penetration alone (well, not easily, anyhow). Many women cannot orgasm by penetration. But almost all women who experience orgasms can have orgasms by oral sex. Most can experience them through masturbation. And yet neither of these are the real thing - these are "fooling around" or "foreplay" or whatever. Not until penetration occurs has sex occurred.

We're getting better about it these days. When Clinton did his assinine waffle about Monica (oh, you mean oral sex is part of "sexual relations"?) everyone rolled their eyes and thought he was a knob. Most people consider oral sex to be a type of sex.

But my point is, when we say something like, "When was the first time you ever had sex?" or "When did you lose your virginity?" or "Are you sexually active?" what they usually mean is, when did you first have intercourse? When was your first penetration? Are you having sexual intercourse now? Because many women I've talked to (including me) were having non-penetrative sex for a significant amount of time before they started having sexual intercourse. I didn't have intercourse until I was 18. Was I a virgin until then? Well, by the popular definition, yes, but I was having sexual encounters long before that. It seems kind of silly when a girl has been having a sexual relationship with someone for a couple of years to call her "a virgin". Particularly since women often get so much more out of oral and manual sex than through just penetration. Or for instance, it would be silly to call a lesbian a virgin if she's been sexually active for the last 20 years but only with women.

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And so we have a society where people without thinking think about penetration when they think about sex, to the point where penetration is the defining characteristic of sex, so when we hear a term like, "sexual relations" or "making love" or whatever other general term there is, we think about "all the way" sex, or intercourse

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Anyway, I talked to my eldest about the "keeper" and she's heard of it, and seemed dead set against using it. She said you could sit down wrong, and the seal could break, and you'd have what would be an embarassing mess. It sounded more like a fear she had more than an experience she's heard about. Maybe what I'll do is suggest she talk to our G.P. about it, and maybe she could wear a pad with the "keeper" at first, until she learned if her mistrust is misguided, as Andrean's endorsement strongly suggests it is.

It's just something one of THOSE kinds of dads would do.

I think your solution is good regarding wearing pads with the keeper until you know what you're doing. I think she's probably wrong about the whole idea of "sitting wrong" since I don't think there's any way you can sit that would make your vaginal passage go into strange contortions or anything - but I could be wrong. I was worried about it "slipping" too because I've had a baby (a 10 pounder!) and I haven't been quite the - ahem - same - since. But Andrean tells me that they have them for women who have had children and women who haven't. I don't think a teenager will have too much to worry about when it comes to the keeper moving around or slipping.

But again, I've never used one, so I wouldn't know.

That's a triple exclamation point grils.

I assume most of you who do use one have a cup that you use specificaly for this purpose and that this cup does not go back into a communal cupboard when not in use?

That caveat out of the way, you should ask your roomie if she would casually drink out of a glass that her grandmother had just dropped her dentures in. That MIGHT get her attention.

Onto the subject of copper compounds in Pap smears.

It seems odd to me that copper would be implicated in cancer promotion, since it's usually heavy-metal ions that are known to disrupt the function of various metabolic pathways.

[ March 13, 2002: Message edited by: DrConway ]

One of my room mates left her keeper (clean and in a plastic bag) on the dining room table and had it hurled at her head by another room mate, who discovered it. It's hard not to be squeamish about things that have been in contact with other people's bodily fluids.

Oh, drat, I was going to start that thread on birth control, wasn't I?

If someone's turned off of the idea of The Keeper, I think it's pretty easy to find instructions on making your own reusable pads (a thought later proved correct!). If you're not into making stuff, Riot Grrrl and the Blood Sisters sell them (and probably many others too). The Blood Sisters products are actually here.

I think resistance to the "keeper" probably has a lot to do with girls just prefering to use what their mom's use.

Soaking it in a glass and putting said glass back into normal use?

Oh no no no no no no no no no no no no no (deep breath) no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

.....I've been known to throw out glasses and stuff that people have used to stuff used paper napkins in.

We have garbage recepticles for garbage; eating and drinking recepticles for eating and drinking, and recepticles for soaking things that must be soaked, and never the twain should meet.

Did I mention I may not in fact be the easiest person to live with?

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.....I've been known to throw out glasses and stuff that people have used to stuff used paper napkins in.

Did I mention I may not in fact be the easiest person to live with?

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Holy dawg in heaven. This adds a whole new dimension to the whole dishwashing thing...

My roommates thought it was disgusting, but I thought they were just being squeamish. After all, I'll clean it well and soak it in bleach just for good measure.

So I washed it.

It wasn't frosted glass.

That was the grime.

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Holy dawg in heaven. This adds a whole new dimension to the whole dishwashing thing...

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I'll admit to the paper napkin thing being a "quirk", it just hits me wrong. Same with people that use say, saucers or pie plates for ash trays. In my mind, it just consigns the object as a "garbage recepticle" and that's IT.

I enforce strict decorum at the dinner table too. I mean, some people have no sense. I remember my wife and her sister looking at me like I was wacked because I objected to them swaping dirty diaper stories while we were eating.

An appetite is a horrible thing to waste. When dining, formally or otherwise, it seems to me you do all the things you do to hieghten the experience, not detract from it.

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Do it by hand, it's ONE glass.

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No, actualy it's worse than that. It has rotated through most of the cups/bowls by now.

Anyhow, regarding using dishes as ashtrays - I completely understand about that. I think that is really disgusting, and I always imagine residue no matter how clean the dish actually is. I think that's just gross. So I guess I can sympathize...although a paper napkin doesn't seem to me to be on the same level...

This is my big problem with the keeper - I work in an office where there is a large bathroom with three stalls. It has very high traffic. I would be totally mortified if I had an 'oops' in the can, and then had to go wash the blood off in front of say, management? No. Not just management. Anyone.

I guess it would be okay if there was more privacy, but unfortunately there isn't.

Me, I'm a fan of the Instead Cup. I have a keeper, too, but I use Instead more often. I just rinse them out and re-use them and they last for a long long time. Bonus: You can have penetrative vaginal sex with it in place.

Sadly, the Instead Website has this absurd image on it.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: audra estrones ]

Ontario NDP MPP Marilyn Churley recently launched a campaign against the tax on menstrual products. Click here for more info:

Click!

Eeeeeeeenteresting.

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: oldgoat ]

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"Danger! Vagina Cup. Warning. VAGINA CUP. *Toxic*"

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I fully support her drive to make her menstration public knowledge. I feel that she is using this 'dish issue' as a method of show-casing her period and being unashamed of her body's functions. Fine. Great. Yippee! Let's make posters, billboards, movies! OF COURSE SHE NEED NOT BE ASHAMED! DUH!
All I asked her was to not use my eating impliments or our shared eating impliments to do so. And she will not respect my right to be uncomfortable.

I AM SOOOOO PISSED OFF!!!!

and sad
I don't know...
I'm sorry everybody...

Use her tooth brush to exfoliate, that outta impress her.

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But my point is, when we say something like, "When was the first time you ever had sex?" or "When did you lose your virginity?" or "Are you sexually active?" what they usually mean is, when did you first have intercourse? When was your first penetration? Are you having sexual intercourse now? Because many women I've talked to (including me) were having non-penetrative sex for a significant amount of time before they started having sexual intercourse. I didn't have intercourse until I was 18. Was I a virgin until then? Well, by the popular definition, yes, but I was having sexual encounters long before that. It seems kind of silly when a girl has been having a sexual relationship with someone for a couple of years to call her "a virgin

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Originally posted by audra trower williams:
Okay, now I'm using The Diva Cup and re-usable pads.

The Keeper won't be available in Canada for much longer. They didn't renew their "medical devices" licence.

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The Keeper won't be available in Canada for much longer. They didn't renew their "medical devices" licence.

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Ack ack ack! I need to order one for my girlfriend immediately. Do you know the cutoff date?

This outraged most of the student body who saw it as not only as ham-handed censorship, but also as a violation of our ability to communicate. Oddly enough, the person who complained felt that he couldn't talk to his peers about it, but of course he took matters in his own hands and basically demanded the termination of other people's discussion. I for one thought my vocal cords were cut, especially as I had put a lot of work into that listserv over the last couple of years.

As the Dean is new (a reknowned feminist author as well!), she probably felt that there was a groundswell of opposition to this discussion without realizing it was only one uptight individual who couldn't stand to read anything about female anatomy on his computer screen, nor of course just delete it when the subject line of "tampons" came up.

But as you know, for some people, once you commit to something, you can't go back. A new list has been created, and basically, all the old membership has to rejoin the new one, but you wouldn't know that unless you tried to post to the old one. Very bad netiquette -- not even a message or warning of explanation as to why the list was shutdown! So a lot of alumni have been lost from the system. Dumb dumb dumb.