dylanDIARY.

We’ve known for a while now that masturbating is a completely normal, healthy, and awesome practice. Doctors speak to the multitude of health benefits we get from it (we’ll talk about those later on), and almost everyone does it--95% of men and 89% of women, according to WebMD. Some (including me!) call it a self-love practice. 

And then there’s sadsturbating.

At dylan, one of our core values is to normalize pussy talk. Having a period is normal. Talking about it should be normal too. To start the conversation, I chatted with Lauren Billie (CEO of Allbodies) and Ruby Balthazar (a detox expert and health educator) about their relationship to their blood. I also interviewed myself because I wanted to talk about this. 

Period trackers. We’re into them. 

They seem helpful. They’re a nice way to become more aware of your cycles, your hormones, and your emotions. 

All good, right? 

Maybe not. 

Period and ovulation tracker applications, aka menstrual surveillance apps, are part of the growing ‘femtech’ industry, which has been developed under the pretense of improving women’s health. But what seems like an industry developed for women, may just be another space for men operated businesses to make money from women’s bodies.

Hormonal birth control changes our natural hormonal balance. Birth control tricks the body into believing its pregnant thus producing unnatural cycles. We’ve been told by doctors and big pharma that this is totally safe for us, but some studies show hormonal birth control is doing some pretty wacky, and sometimes worrying, stuff to our bodies.