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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that a lot of these camps as well as the entire outdoor adventure industry in general are based around logistics created by and for men. It wasn't until well into adulthood that I found all-woman outdoor experiences and appropriate mentorship for handling some of the challenges of having a female body outdoors.[/quote]

This is shockingly true. The sad truth is that the most likely situation is that no one planning/leading the camp thought for one moment about periods or the kids who have them. I'm sorry, OP. It really sucks to be both a kid and a parent facing this situation.[/quote]

I don’t believe in living like this. It only sucks if you want to be a victim about it. I’m sure there are women involved in the camp. There are also adult men who know people menstruate.

I mean what, no one has ever had diarrhea at this camp?! Everyone else has a fairy butt? I highly doubt it. [/quote]

Many adult men are shockingly ignorant of how menstruation works. And in many situations, not thinking about something keeps you from having to be responsible for accommodating people, so this might be deliberate ignorance. I stumbled into a conversation about this on a backcountry ski trip that was majority male, ages 20-40. I was at the very old side of that age range at the time. We were discussing how logistics for bathrooms for the next day would work, since we were going to be in a situation with exposure and no privacy- the team had been running these trips for years and somehow the accommodation for women who would need to use a bathroom on that specific terrain was "we'll just have to turn around or you'll have to hold it until we get back." There was a ton of impatience with the bathroom breaks that me and another woman on the trip had to take because it took us longer to deal with our gear.

The conversation eventually went to periods and one of the men actually thought having a period was like urinating and that menstrual flow was released in the same way. Most of the other men thought that tampons or pads were like a bandaid on a cut and had to be changed once or twice a day at most.

I'm in my mid 40s now, and the health and development curriculum at my kids' school suggests that younger generations are not learning about bodies of the opposite sex in the way that we did back in the 80s and 90s. I'm sure there are tons of reasons for that, but the consequence is that we live in a more open society with more information, yet people are more ignorant.[/quote]

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