#PadsAgainstSexism: German Teenager Spreads Feminist Message With Sanitary Towels

Imagine if men were as disgusted with rape as they are with periods.

A simple yet powerful statement that epitomises 19-year-old Elona Kastrati’s #PadsAgainstSexism project, which sees the German teenager write messages of gender equality on sanitary towels before sticking them around her hometown of Karlsruhe.

“I got inspired by a pad stuck on a window in Kreuzberg in Berlin,” Elona tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

“I thought about how society gets offended by a normal pad. I thought about it so much, the idea came to me to write quotes on them.”

Rapists rape people not outfits. My name is not Baby. Elona’s carefully chosen quotes take on a new dimension thanks to their provocative presentation, which the young campaigner admits is the whole point.

“Of course [using sanitary towels] is shocking. Menstruation is something as normal as a hand or a leg. But if a pad was a normal thing in 2015 then it wouldn’t have been spread all over the world, no-one would talk about it,” says Elona.

Since starting her guerrilla project a week ago, pictures of Elona’s pads have gone viral and inspired women as far as India to jump on the hashtag.

Students at the Jamia Milia Islamia University in New Delhi have written their own messages on sanitary towels and shared images of them being held by men around the city campus.

Messages like Period blood is not impure, your thoughts are and The streets of Delhi belong to women too have garnered thousands of likes and shares across Facebook and Twitter.

While the reaction has been mainly positive, Elona claims that some people have missed the point of the gender equality project.

“If they would look at my other pads with quotes against sex trafficking they would maybe slowly understand that it is about equality and no gender is excluded from this topic,” she tells Yahoo.

“I don’t put all men in a box, I don’t put anyone in a box. I just want to make [people] aware of sexual harassment and rape.”   

As well as the issue of sexual harassment, Elona recognises her native Germany still has a way to go on the topic of pay equality for women.

“Gender equality in Germany? Ha! We are living in 2015 and men and women don’t get paid the same for the same job, isn’t that enough?”

“Some people think that women aren’t qualified for jobs that society considers are for men only. Does that mean social jobs like being a nurse are only for women? And so should male nurses be paid less? I don’t think so.”

What do you think of Elona’s #padsagainstsexism project? Let us know on Twitter.

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