Parks and Menstruation: Sexism, Bears, and the National Park Service

Thanks for posting this! This was a really interesting read.

http://nursingclio.wordpress.com/

There are a few biological inaccuracies in this article, concerning bears that is, not women, since I am not one I can't say (I am not a bear either though, but have worked around them for years (well I've worked around bears and women for years)). But if you are planning a trip to the Arctic you need not worry about bears that would eat your tampon for the most part. The only species that might be interested, polar bears, mostly live in coastal Arctic areas and on the sea ice. Most of the places people go in the Arctic are on the land where brown and black bears live on a tampon free diet, they much prefer blue berries.

Also as someone who is the partner of a person who's partner works at the Park Service, i.e. me, I agree with some of the comments regarding how the government chooses to treat unmarried couples and the housing complications is true. But I don't fellow the agency has sexist, racist, homophobic or other discriminatory polices. I worked at a park that had a female Superintendent, I was trained by a park ranger that was a lesbian and Chief Ranger (of Law Enforcement) at a prominent park, and finally the Park Service hiring practices actually grant hiring preferences to veterans, native people, people with disabilities, and minorities. While it is far from perfect the Park Service, I feel, excels at equal opportunity employment that many private industry sectors lag behind.

So ladies, if you can overcome you fear of bears eating your tampons, I encourage you to come and work at one of our nation's fine National Parks. You may find yourself amazed by the cool things you can get paid to do as a job.

Please correct the gender of Kerry Gunther. He is a man.

This was the absolute perfect article for me to be reading this week. You see, I just returned from a two week environmental science course wherein I was continually hiking, camping, and backpacking. Our last five days and seven nights of the trip were even spent in bear county wilderness. Overall, my class consisted of one male teacher, a female assistant teacher, two boys, and seven girls including myself. Which may I say, was absolutely amazing. Us females dominated, we were quick, efficient, strong, and helpfully empathic of others'. Being around so many other women for this was great. I'm majoring in a field where, although there are more women, mens work seems to be considered more useful and practical (my major is not environmental science), and this experience only helped to reaffirm my disdain for that system of value. This was one of the times in my life where I have felt strongest, this class and the physical workout boosted my confidence immensely.

And let me tell you that Every Single Female There was on their period during that week in the wilderness. To the point where we all ran out of tampons and were running on paper towels and hope. To be honest, we were all concerned about bears catching scent, seeing as we had already run across two bears and were hiking in the same direction of fresh tracks of mother bear and its cub, several coyotes, and a mountain lion. Our first camp site had bones, okay? We had no guns despite many warnings, much to the chagrin of one of our male campers. We only had four cans of bear spray, and no clue if it would work on anything other than bears. In short, we were ALL scared.

But you know what, we made it through. The only animal that came through our site was a huge deer that we christened "Bobette" after the wilderness area's namesake. Although really, looking up so see glowing deer eyes while taking an evening poo in the woods is not pleasant. Aside from Bobette needing to learn boundaries, we had no real trouble with animals because we dealt with scent, food, and periods in a realistic, safe manner. In fact I would gladly do the whole trip again just to prove it possible while being on a period.

And let me just say, that for me personally, that was really gratifying. I hate my period, I have every since I got it at the age fourteen, and it didn't stop for 9 months straight. Needless to say I was made anemic and have been on Birth Control since then. For the longest time my period was, to me, a weakness, one so very often reaffirmed by patriarchal societal views. And this two weeks of physical labor and accomplishment, especially the four of five days I spent (quite by accident) in the wilderness on my period, has finally given me some real happiness about my period. Its still not my favorite time, but I don't hate it anymore.

The other concern noted in this article also came up at camp. You see, we go into a wide range of topics without cell phones to distract. And I was shocked and appalled to hear that most of the females on my crew thought "feminism was done and over" that it was helpful when it started out, but now had little bearing to 'the real world'. Many, even BOTH of my teachers, used our class, and the larger number of women in it as an example of how women are fair now in science. There were many points, even in general conversation where I noted the differences in how us women were viewed. My teachers noted with surprise how scientific my notebook was, and that I used visual imagery (art major, see) to note what I learned, and that it 'seemed useful' to my studies. Or even how surprised they were when we reached our camping sites almost always two hours faster than believed, even with all the 'girl' problems. Our assistant teacher was doubted when she noted a falsehood in the information of a geo science speaker (despite the fact that the field that he incorrectly quoted is Her primary field of study and that the information misquoted was from her Father's research). How there were only two "catty" girls, who were able 'to be serious when needed'. Or that I, a 5ft 1 little girl got to camp early, ran back a half mile to carry a girl with an injured ankle's backpack, and ran back again to grab her boyfriend's bag so he could carry her to our campsite.

I admit to being new to discussing feminism, and to pointing out when there is an unfairness occurring. But I'm working on it, and the confidence I earned on this trip will not go away. Honestly, fuck the prevailing ethic. Because we gal's, we kicked butt those two weeks. We surprised our instructors, ourselves, and I surely got a rise out of the Boy Scouts I met on the plane ride home who were bragging about 3 days in the Rockies. We aren't weak, and our periods certainly aren't acting as a giant red targets. ...Unless you count Bobette, but I doubt deer go on bloodthirsty rampages (Bears rarely ever do that either, by the way). Overall we did this, not despite any factor of ourselves or our bodies, except perhaps the views society seems to keeps putting on us.

I, wow, this got long fast. I apologize, I believe I just added an article. Thanks for making me reflect on this class breekessler, I don't know if i would have voiced these thoughts so clearly otherwise. Although I'm totally copying and working this for the college Fem Mag I volunteer at.

Bitches Out

As a gay woman who works for the National Park Service, I could not disagree more with your article. I have worked for the Park Service for over ten years now, and I have never experienced anything but love and acceptance and gratitude from my fellow NPS employees. I have worked at nine different national parks now and each one of them has embraced not only me, but also my partner...who is also a NPS employee. I can't say what it's like to work for other federal agencies, but I can tell you that the NPS actually staffs booths at PRIDE and marchs in the local PRIDE day parade. I myself have worked a PRIDE booth dressed in my class A uniform and my goofy ranger hat and the community is so grateful that we are there. The Department of the Interior and the NPS celebrates their LGBT employees. Check out this link http://www.nps.gov/diversity/lgbt.htm . And this one here. http://www.nps.gov/diversity/stonewall.htm
The changing demographic of park rangers is amazing. Of all the parks that I have worked at, all of my supervisors have been female. Not one male superisory park ranger for me. Most of my co-workers and fellow park rangers at this park are female AND this year, 75% of our park rangers are female. So, not sure where you have worked or what parks you have experienced, but my experience and those of my fellow LGBT park rangers (that I know) are completely opposite from what you are talking about.