#Actual women in prison have trouble getting access to adequate menstrual care products

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Texas is going to spend more on this guys surgery than they would on an actual woman.

US — Dallas, Texas. The United States Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will fast-track the “gender confirmation” plastic surgery of a genocidal Neo-Nazi commander and serial bank robber who sued the government after a previous request for the surgery was denied. In a June 17 status report, the BOP agreed to act to “quickly” meet the “surgical needs” of Peter Kevin Langan, a male inmate who identifies as a woman named Donna Langan.

Langan, 64, is serving a sentence of life in prison plus 35 years for convictions in 1997 on five counts of Bank Robbery, Using An Explosive Device During A Robbery, and charges related to an assault on a federal officer with a pistol. After nearly two decades in a male prison, Langan was moved to Federal Medical Center, a correctional facility for women in Carswell, Texas, under Obama-era federal guidelines.

Genocidal Machinations In 1992, Langan had joined with friend Richard Guthrie to create the Aryan Republican Army (ARA). Under the alias Commander Pedro, Langan schemed with cohorts to carry out an “ethnic cleansing.” Lengthy propaganda videos recorded by the ARA contained anti-government, anti-black and anti-Jewish rants, and called for acts of terrorism. The gang amassed an assortment of weaponry and gear, including pipe bombs, guns, a rocket launcher, gas masks, bulletproof vests, getaway vehicles, police scanners, pagers, phone cards, walkie-talkies, phony IDs, hotel rooms, safe houses and storage lockers. To finance its “nuclear, chemical and biological warfare program,” the ARA robbed 22 banks across seven states from 1994 to 1996, which net the gang over $250,000. Life & Crimes The son of a foreign aid official, Langan had a privileged childhood in a Saigon, Vietnam community made up of US intelligence agents and military advisers. His parents, who were Scottish and Irish, had callers of all racial backgrounds during the family’s traditional holiday open house. The boy’s father died when he was aged nine.

A hippie during his early teens, Langan marched for peace and brotherhood. The youth’s life of crime began at age 15 after he dropped out of Wheaton High School and ran away from home. Law enforcement shot the teen in the leg that year as he attempted to flee apprehension for a robbery. During the five-year prison stint, Langan became a white separatist.

In the years following his release from prison, Langan failed at university, a marriage and holding a job. As the struggling handyman and divorced father-of-one watched his siblings thrive, he began to feel “the world was against him,” a close friend said. While living with girlfriend Faith Ford, an IRS employee who identified as a “white Christian,” the disgruntled man began stockpiling weaponry, gathering guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. He also dressed his small son in military camouflage. At around the age of 29, Langan tried his luck in Ohio, where he converted to Mormonism and was ordained minister at a church affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1993, Langan was arrested in connection with a robbery at a Pizza Hut in Georgia that he committed with Guthrie the prior year. The duo made off with just $1800, but Langan also faced weapons violations carrying the potential for a life sentence.

The Secret Service agreed to set Langan free if he helped them catch Guthrie, who made threats against then-President Bush around the time the duo robbed Pizza Hut. Six weeks following release, Langan skipped out on the deal. With Guthrie, Langan launched a bank robbery spree that would go on for two years.

In 1995, Guthrie’s wild antics concerned the gang, and they cut him out of bank robbery jobs. Going solo, Guthrie robbed two banks before he was captured by the FBI. In January 1996, Guthrie led federal agents to Langan’s dwelling. The FBI fired at Langan’s van 46 shots in 10 seconds, but he emerged relatively unscathed. Guthrie was allowed to plead guilty to 19 bank robberies in exchange for testimony against three ARA accomplices.

‘Gender Dysphoria’ During Langan’s 1997 trials, revelations that the ARA commander was in a sexual relationship with a man, and that both identified as ‘pre-operative transsexuals’, sent shock waves through the media. “She is my soul mate and we are lovers,” Mishka Alexander Jackson, who also used the alias Cherie Roberts, told the press. Showing off a silver band on his ring finger and a ring with a large stone that hung around his neck, he claimed to have met Langan at Crossdressers and Friends in Kansas years earlier, and become his life partner. Langan, now responding to the name of Donna, “dressed as a woman and assumed the female role” in the relationship, his paramour revealed. The dramatic paramour burst into tears when a US Marshal stopped him from approaching his “wife” in the courtroom. The Washington Post marveled at the “prissy”-looking Langan, who showed up at trial with “dyed, flowing hair and long, carefully tended fingernails” and looking nothing like the “hardened thug” federal agents said he was. The paper implied Langan was acting. After over two decades in prison, Langan joined two other transgender-identifying male convicts in mounting a legal challenge against Texas Family Code 45.103, which prohibits a person with a felony conviction from changing their name while in custody and within two years of release.

The men, who named Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton in the joint complaint filed December 4, 2019, argued that being denied a name change while “transgender” constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Langan told the Trans Pride Initiative at the time: I need the legal name change for many reasons, practical as well as to help affirm who I am now. To change the sex on my birth certificate I also need to have a name change to a gender appropriate name, as well as the surgery, and it will help in the approval process towards my surgery. I have gone by Bella Donna or just Donna for over 24 years, I have been forced to use my legal name many times and many people when they want to harass me they call me by my legal name to try and get under my skin or to make me mad. I have tried many times over the years but local laws and or the cost has prevented me from being able to do so. The inmates have not managed to overturn the Texas law, but Langan has won the privilege to undergo the cosmetic surgery he demands.

In a September 2021 complaint against the BOP, Langan claimed to be experiencing “debilitating anguish as a result of severe and inadequately treated gender dysphoria.” Langan said he knew by the age of four that he “had been misidentified as a boy,” and that his “entire life has been shaped by the agonizing tension between the immutability of her gender identity and the often life-or-death danger of publicly living” his “truth.”

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The Troubling Economics Of Having A Period, & What To Do About It

Happy Women’s History Month! This month, my blog will focus on issues that specifically affect women and their financial futures. This particular week, I’m talking about periods. If any guys are reading, I’m not sorry! Menstruation is a normal (and essential) process that affects most people with uteruses at some point in their lives, oftentimes for up to 40 years! But just because menstruation is a naturally occurring process doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still result in financial trouble for women, girls, and other people with periods. This piece will review those issues and then lay out some ways that you can help.

Menstruation Products Cost Money

As with most things, menstruation products (also called feminine hygiene products), such as pads, tampons, period panties, and menstrual cups cost money. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of people have a hard time affording or getting access to these necessary products. Low-income women, especially, are struck by this hardship.

According to Groundswell, “the average woman spends about $120 per year on pads and tampons and an additional $20 each year on over-the-counter medication to combat cramps and other period-related side effects. Women on average menstruate for 40 years (taking into account that some women have children), so each woman spends approximately $5,600 on her period over her lifetime.” That’s a lot of money that a lot of people don’t have regular access to throughout their lives. In fact, for one in eight women living below the poverty line in the United States, affording menstrual products is a problem.

Products such as menstrual cups (Diva Cup, Mooncup, Lunette, MeLuna, and more) and period panties (Thinx, Sustain, and more) are reusable and they last longer, so even though they cost more upfront, they may save money over time. The menstrual cup can also be a safer alternative to tampons, as there isn’t a risk for toxic shock syndrome.

To add insult to injury, in some places, feminine hygiene products are taxed as “luxury items”. This means that women are required to pay sales tax on these products, even though they are essential. As you know, women are not able to control their periods, so they need tampons and pads to get through the day while they are menstruating. Luckily, after much activism and protest, several states have begun to exempt feminine hygiene products from taxation. As of November 2018, ten states had done so.

Access Is Not Always a Given

Around the world, only 12 percent of young people with periods have access to the products they need.

You may think that the United States is not one of the places where women do not have access to menstrual products. You’d be wrong! In fact, 50,000 homeless women in the United States don’t have proper access to menstrual hygiene. Incarcerated women don’t have it much better. In 2015, the Correctional Association of New York published a study about reproductive injustice for menstruators in New York state prisons. The results found that 54 percent of menstruators in prisons have insufficient period care supplies, and the access they do have don’t meet their needs.

Why do incarcerated women need access to free menstrual products? Because if they are working in prison, they are often making less than a dollar a day, so it would take days or weeks to save up enough money to purchase these products for themselves. Plus it’s a matter of human dignity to have access to the products that allow you to get through life.

In 2016, New York became the first city to require free tampons and sanitary pads in correctional facilities, public schools, and homeless shelters. In August 2017, women in federal prisons were given access to free tampons (regular and super size), pads (regular, maxi, and super size with wings), and pantyliners (regular). However, the majority of incarcerated women are actually housed in state and local prisons, so this rule does not apply to them. Some states are beginning to follow New York’s lead by guaranteeing free feminine hygiene products to inmates.

Products Aren’t Always Safe

As I mentioned above, some products can cause infections that lead to serious conditions like toxic shock syndrome. In addition to that, a lot of menstrual products are filled with chemicals that we don’t necessarily understand. Oftentimes, companies aren’t even required to disclose what they put into these products. And your pads and tampons? They don’t always come naturally white, they are often bleached. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of putting bleach inside my body.

Plus, lack of access to these products can lead to the reuse of products that shouldn’t be reused. This is especially true for incarcerated and homeless women. Not having enough to get through the month means that women are forced to reuse products, making them unsanitary and unsafe. The economic effects of this are obvious, as medical attention would be necessary in the case of infection or disease.

Menstruation Causes Girls to Miss School

Menstruation negatively affects educational access across much of the globe. Menstruation affects educational access across much of the globe: more than 20 percent of girls in Sierra Leone miss school during their periods. In Nepal and Afghanistan, 30 percent do. Almost 25 percent of Indian girls drop out of school when they start menstruating and those who don’t miss on average five days a month. In Africa, one in ten adolescent girls miss school during their period.

Of course, it isn’t menstruating alone that causes girls to miss school. It’s the inability to access menstrual products. It’s inadequate access to bathroom facilities at school. It’s the ongoing taboo and shame that exists around menstruation. All of these things make it so that girls are not receiving the education that they deserve.

Interrupted or incomplete educations don’t only affect young girls themselves, but it impacts entire communities. According to the World Bank, a woman’s future earnings grow with every extra year of education. Plus, when a girl receives education, she marries later, has fewer, healthier children and is less likely to experience sexual violence. Adequate education improves individual lives, communities, and the world.

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These are just some of the reasons that menstruation impacts women’s financial well-being. It is also a basic human right to have access to the things that your body needs. And obviously, feminine hygiene products are something menstruating people need once a month for more than half their lives.

What Should We (As a Society) Do?

Make menstruation products available to all, for free.

Create safer feminine hygiene products that can be easily sanitized and reused.

Break the taboo of menstruation.

What Can You Do?

Donate products to local women’s shelters, VA hospitals, prisons, and other similar places.

Donate money to organizations working to provide products and/or end the stigma.

Check out the short film Period. End of Sentence. It’s on Netflix and it won best documentary at the Oscars this year. It follows women in India fighting the stigma around periods.

Organizations to Support:

More Safe Products:

Maggie is a Certified Financial Education Instructor and financial coach for women. She founded Maggie Germano Financial Coaching with the mission to provide women with the support and tools they need to take control of their money and achieve their goals. She does this through one-on-one coaching, monthly Money Circle gatherings, writing, and workshops. Follow Maggie on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and join her Money Circle group! For more information, or to contact Maggie directly, visit her website.

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Source: https://thefinancialdiet.com/the-troubling-economics-of-having-a-period-what-to-do-about-it/