Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.95 - Teaching Girls Their Bodies Are Good Before The World Tells Them Otherwise | Natural Womanhood Fertility Awareness | Period Genius Program | Hormonal Birth Control Risks

Transcript

Ep.95 - Teaching Girls Their Bodies Are Good Before The World Tells Them Otherwise | Natural Womanhood Fertility Awareness | Period Genius Program | Hormonal Birth Control Risks · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  If you watch TikTok videos, not necessarily of trans girls,
• 0:04
  girls who identify as trans, but even just young women talking
• 0:07
  about how they want to get their tubes tied, they want to be
• 0:11
  sterilized, they don't want to even risk becoming a mom,
• 0:15
  whether it's because of Roe V Wade or whatnot.
• 0:17
  But a lot of them mention really terrible experiences with
• 0:23
  puberty. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
• 0:26
  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good, or
• 0:30
  die trying. Here's the show.
• 0:37
  Today's guest had the misfortune of graduating from Georgetown
• 0:40
  and is currently a fellow at the Center for Bioethics and
• 0:43
  Culture, as well as the editor of Natural Womanhood.
• 0:46
  Welcome, Grace. Emily, Start.
• 0:49
  Thanks for having me, Yohan. Appreciate the not so subtle day
• 0:53
  get George Taft. I can take it.
• 0:55
  It's OK. Good.
• 0:58
  So tell us about natural womanhood.
• 1:00
  I know you do other things you write for other publications,
• 1:03
  but I was on the website and I realized pretty quickly that
• 1:06
  this website is not aimed at me or my demographic, so I want to
• 1:11
  just hear it from you instead. Sure.
• 1:14
  Yeah. So Natural Womanhood is a
• 1:16
  nonprofit organization based out of San Antonio, but we have a
• 1:20
  global reach where the online magazine of fertility awareness
• 1:25
  and Women's Health, we talk about really all things Women's
• 1:30
  Health. Although we got started as an
• 1:32
  organization to mainly talk about and promote natural family
• 1:35
  planning. So the idea that you can work
• 1:39
  with a woman's cycle of fertility for for family
• 1:42
  planning purposes rather than use something like birth
• 1:45
  control. And we've really moved from
• 1:49
  being very just kind of NFP centric as an organization in
• 1:54
  our early days in 2012 and when the website started in 2014 to
• 1:58
  now being all things Women's Health.
• 2:01
  And what's kind of neat about the way we do things at Natural
• 2:05
  Womanhood is there are a lot of other great organizations that
• 2:10
  talk about natural family planning.
• 2:12
  And of course, you know, Women's Health magazines are kind of a
• 2:15
  dime a dozen. But what we do differently that
• 2:18
  really sets us apart is we lead with the evidence.
• 2:22
  So all of the other organizations that promote
• 2:26
  fertility awareness, natural family planning tend to or at
• 2:30
  least historically come from a very faith-based, very
• 2:33
  theological angle. And there's nothing wrong with
• 2:37
  that, but it was something that our CEO saw as kind of a barrier
• 2:43
  for some folks to seeing the benefit of natural food
• 2:47
  planning, of fertility awareness and, and seeing that it could be
• 2:50
  applicable to them. So we lead with the science, we
• 2:54
  lead with the evidence when it comes to those issues.
• 2:57
  We show that this is not like woo woo type of it's actually
• 3:02
  based in the science of biology. Our our bodies, how our bodies
• 3:06
  work, the natural rhythms that are built into the woman's body.
• 3:11
  And we show how not only is it a really powerful, effective tool
• 3:15
  for family planning, but it's actually how women get to know
• 3:19
  their 5th vital sign, which is what we call the cycle.
• 3:23
  And so it's a really powerful health tool.
• 3:26
  I like to tell people that like a woman's cycle, when it's well
• 3:30
  charted, is as powerful in the right doctor's hands as an EKG
• 3:37
  is in the hands of a cardiologist.
• 3:39
  Like it's this really great snapshot of not only what your
• 3:43
  reproductive health looks like, but what your overall health
• 3:45
  looks like. And when you can find a Doctor
• 3:47
  Who can appreciate it for what it is, there's all sorts of
• 3:52
  awesome opportunities for getting women healthier,
• 3:56
  starting with, you know, really doing a deep dive in, dive into
• 3:59
  her cycle health. And so we promote all of that in
• 4:03
  natural womanhood, again, leading with the science.
• 4:07
  And so that's really where we have been able to branch out as
• 4:10
  an organization that started just really talking about NFP,
• 4:14
  natural family planning to now talking about all things Women's
• 4:17
  Health. Because once you see that the
• 4:20
  cycle, the the menstrual cycle or cycle of fertility is women
• 4:25
  impacts our whole bodies, our whole health, you can't Unsee
• 4:29
  it. And you start kind of thinking
• 4:31
  about your health as a woman very differently.
• 4:36
  When it's grounded in the fact that like your female body is is
• 4:40
  good and it's powerful and it's healthy.
• 4:42
  And that when you work with your cycle, work with your fertility,
• 4:45
  instead of, you know, circumventing problems with it
• 4:49
  or suppressing your cycle altogether with something
• 4:51
  something like hormonal birth control, that it's a really,
• 4:54
  really powerful tool for your overall health as a woman.
• 4:59
  And so that's that's what we're about in a very quick nutshell
• 5:03
  at Natural Women did. My listeners are based Catholic
• 5:07
  parents. How can they benefit from your
• 5:09
  website? So we have this really awesome
• 5:13
  program in a toot our horn on horn on this for sure called
• 5:18
  period genius. It's a it's an online body
• 5:22
  literacy education program that we developed for young girls.
• 5:27
  Target audience is like 8 to 12 year olds.
• 5:31
  So we want to educate girls about the changes that they're
• 5:36
  going to experience in puberty and not only educate about those
• 5:41
  changes, but contextualize those changes so that they understand
• 5:45
  why they're growing hips, why they're growing breasts, why
• 5:51
  their emotions are changing. And that it's all geared towards
• 5:56
  this really awesome, beautiful reality of being able to
• 6:00
  conceive, carry, deliver, and, you know, feed life.
• 6:06
  And so 'cause we, we found that a lot of the root of a lot of
• 6:10
  our societal ills come back to young women not understanding
• 6:16
  their bodies well. And when you don't understand
• 6:19
  something well, you can't really love it.
• 6:23
  And so, so many women have all these really angsty feelings
• 6:28
  about their body. And a lot of it we can trace
• 6:31
  back to your experience of puberty and how you were taught
• 6:36
  to think about the changes that you were undergoing that were
• 6:39
  happening to you, how you felt about them.
• 6:42
  And so when we educate girls, ideally even before they have
• 6:47
  their first period about these changes and frame them as
• 6:51
  something really good and beautiful, we can really kind of
• 6:54
  right the ship on a lot of things that have followed on
• 6:59
  from really kind of like our failure to educate and empower
• 7:02
  young women for multiple generations about about their
• 7:07
  bodies. And so that's what our period
• 7:09
  genius program does. And what's really neat about it
• 7:12
  is we position parents as being the the primary educators of
• 7:17
  their daughter with this program, acknowledging that not
• 7:21
  every parent is really in depth knowledge of the female body and
• 7:26
  puberty and cycles. You don't need to be an expert
• 7:29
  because we give you all of the information and it's, it's it's
• 7:33
  1010 minute videos online that we encourage moms and daughters
• 7:37
  to be together. And then we have materials that
• 7:40
  encourage different discussions that you can have based on
• 7:43
  watching those videos, different activities you can do together
• 7:46
  based on those videos. And what's really cool about
• 7:49
  that, My favorite reviews for that program are actually from
• 7:52
  the moms who say that they, for the very first time in their
• 7:57
  life, are talking and thinking positively about their bodies
• 8:01
  and like feeling the healing from that has been like really
• 8:07
  impactful for a lot of the moms who do that.
• 8:09
  And so those are some of my favorite reviews that we get
• 8:11
  about our Period Genius program from the moms.
• 8:15
  Yeah, if I was a woman, I'd be crying right now.
• 8:19
  That's, that's really nice, Grace.
• 8:21
  Thank you. Yeah, we're really proud of it.
• 8:26
  I helped develop some of the supplemental materials for it,
• 8:30
  the the different guides that we have.
• 8:32
  So we've got a guide to the science of your cycle.
• 8:34
  We've got a guide to how, what, when to see a doctor and not
• 8:39
  only when to see a, to see a doctor, but what kind of doctor
• 8:41
  you should be looking for, the kinds of questions parents
• 8:45
  should be asking. So we really kind of, we kind of
• 8:48
  hold, you know, mom and dad's hand, whoever's doing the
• 8:50
  program with the daughter so that they're the ones who are
• 8:53
  informed so that they can be seen as the authority on these
• 8:55
  issues with their daughters. And it really bridges like make
• 8:59
  some beautiful communication happen between daughters and
• 9:04
  their parents, which we really love to see.
• 9:07
  And that we think is really, really important to instill in
• 9:11
  in young girls before ideally they start going through
• 9:15
  puberty. But, you know, better late than
• 9:17
  never. We've had some moms tell us that
• 9:19
  they're like 16 year olds have been sitting in on it as they've
• 9:21
  been doing it with her 10 or 11 year olds.
• 9:24
  And they're learning a lot too. And I think it's a testament to
• 9:28
  our program that that wide range of ages can learn from it
• 9:32
  without feeling like they're being talked down to.
• 9:35
  And then it's still interesting is my colleague Jackie at
• 9:38
  Natural Womanhood, who's kind of the talking head in the videos.
• 9:42
  She's doing the explaining, and she's great.
• 9:44
  She's just so like, engaging but also maternal, so you feel safe
• 9:48
  but also like you want to listen to.
• 9:51
  She's great. She strikes a great note.
• 9:52
  She was perfect for it. And I can encourage anybody who
• 9:57
  wants to know more. We have the first video of the
• 9:59
  series of 10 free for you to view.
• 10:01
  View on naturalwomanhood.org. If you want to get a taste of it
• 10:05
  first, sure. So I personally believe it's
• 10:08
  really important for society to be united and even from
• 10:12
  different backgrounds. But you know, a lot of my
• 10:14
  listeners want to hear how your website destroys the position of
• 10:19
  woke liberals. So what would you respond to
• 10:22
  that? I would say that we're not in
• 10:26
  the position of trying to destroy anyone.
• 10:31
  Destroy their position intellectually.
• 10:33
  Sure. While loving them as unique
• 10:37
  creatures of God. Sure.
• 10:40
  I think, I think actually what we do with period genius is
• 10:44
  really profound in that in particular, not to keep harping
• 10:49
  on period genius. But now that you got me talking
• 10:51
  about it, I kind of tell people tongue in cheek that I almost
• 10:56
  see it as like the the trans proof your daughter program in a
• 11:00
  way in that. And I mean that like kind of
• 11:02
  just very cheekily in that I have seen with a lot of the, the
• 11:08
  trans movement and the fact that it the it's now kind of the
• 11:12
  modern movement of it is now young women who seem really
• 11:16
  disaffected with femininity and kind of wanting to throw in the
• 11:21
  towel on being a woman all together.
• 11:23
  It's really interesting because if you watch like TikTok videos,
• 11:28
  not necessarily of trans girls, girls who identify as trans, but
• 11:32
  even just young women talking about how they want to get their
• 11:36
  tubes tied, they want to be sterilized, they don't want to
• 11:39
  even risk becoming a mom, whether it's because of Roe V
• 11:42
  Wade or what not. But a lot of them mention really
• 11:47
  terrible experiences with puberty.
• 11:50
  That seems to be something that a lot of these girls mentioned.
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  And also they talk about having really terrible, awful, painful
• 11:58
  periods that no one has ever given them real help for.
• 12:03
  They've just been put on birth control and then the birth
• 12:06
  control makes them have mental problems a lot of the times.
• 12:10
  We know that putting girls, young girls on birth control in
• 12:13
  particular, just skyrockets their risk for depression and
• 12:18
  anxiety. There are some really great
• 12:21
  studies out of the University of Copenhagen from a several years
• 12:24
  ago now, but they are really groundbreaking When they came
• 12:27
  out and I want to say like 2018-2019, that showed that
• 12:31
  young women, teen girls in particular that are who are put
• 12:34
  on hormonal birth control just have astronomically higher rates
• 12:39
  of, of depression and anxiety. And so we've taken these young
• 12:43
  girls, we've not taken their experience of puberty seriously.
• 12:48
  In a lot of cases, they've been made to feel like, especially in
• 12:51
  with their periods, that it's something dirty or shameful that
• 12:54
  they need to hide. And then we tell them, like, oh,
• 12:58
  this is if they have pain with it or, you know, heavy periods
• 13:02
  and it's disrupting their life, we just tell them all this is
• 13:05
  your lot in life as a woman. And you either go on birth
• 13:08
  control or, you know, you just kind of have to deal with it.
• 13:12
  And if you do go on birth control and you don't like the
• 13:14
  way it makes you feel, well, that's it.
• 13:16
  That's all we have for you. And then we sit back and we
• 13:19
  wonder, like, why do girls hate themselves?
• 13:21
  Why do girls not want to be girls?
• 13:23
  You know? And so I think that that's
• 13:26
  what's really powerful about something like our period genius
• 13:29
  program where we're like, here's what's going to happen to you.
• 13:32
  We're going to let you know and we're going to make, let make
• 13:34
  make you feel safe about it, make you feel knowledgeable
• 13:37
  about it. So it feels less like something
• 13:39
  that's kind of happening to you that you can't control.
• 13:43
  And that's what's really powerful about cycle charting
• 13:45
  too, is moms have been able to catch their very first ovulation
• 13:49
  with their preteen daughters and then they know that their period
• 13:53
  is coming 2 weeks later. So imagine a world where a young
• 13:56
  girl is never caught off guard by her very first period.
• 13:59
  Like that would be incredible, right?
• 14:03
  Because right now, as it stands, there's something like crazy.
• 14:06
  It's like 6070% of girls. Maybe it's not quite that high,
• 14:10
  but it's it's higher than it should be of young girls who
• 14:13
  start their period actually have no idea what's happening to them
• 14:16
  when it happens. And they are right.
• 14:20
  It's I have three young girls. And the thought of that ever
• 14:24
  being a reality won't because they already know what periods
• 14:27
  are because I, I do the work that I do.
• 14:30
  But the thought of like one of my daughter's or one of their
• 14:33
  friends living through that is. Yeah, disconcerting is a great
• 14:37
  way to put it, and heartbreaking is another.
• 14:40
  We had a a young woman who was on our team for a while at
• 14:44
  Natural Womanhood who thought she had cancer and that she was
• 14:50
  dying. When she had her first period,
• 14:52
  she was 10/11. She Googled it and she was so
• 14:55
  terrified from what she searched.
• 14:58
  She ended up figuring out, finding out, thinking that she
• 15:00
  had cancer somehow. And yeah, for months just hid it
• 15:04
  thinking she was dying. And that's not a world that I've
• 15:08
  learned to live in. That's not a reality I want for
• 15:10
  any young woman. And we can really, we can do a
• 15:14
  lot for women's relationships with themselves if we give them
• 15:20
  proper body literacy education at a young age, even before they
• 15:24
  start their periods. And so that they can see these
• 15:27
  things as good and natural and that their body is doing what
• 15:30
  it's supposed to do. So that's, that's one thing that
• 15:34
  I, I think we're doing that's really powerful.
• 15:37
  The other one is we have cycle mindfulness clubs on college
• 15:41
  campuses, which are really cool. They're support groups that
• 15:46
  young women run on college campuses across the country.
• 15:49
  We had, we started with only two clubs at Texas A&M like 3 years
• 15:54
  ago. And now we have over 30 all
• 15:56
  across the country, at university campuses all over the
• 16:01
  country. And so we train up a young woman
• 16:04
  to lead it. Somebody we just have them come
• 16:07
  to us and say, hey, I'd like to lead it in my club.
• 16:08
  And we say great, apply. And then we train them up and
• 16:13
  they go back to their universities and they leave
• 16:15
  these clubs and they have great discussions.
• 16:18
  They learn about kind of like the basics of cycle charting,
• 16:22
  but also what it means to kind of live out the embodied reality
• 16:26
  of womanhood. So, you know, they'll talk about
• 16:29
  the reality of having libido and that your your libido is
• 16:33
  strongest around ovulation. So, you know, let's talk about
• 16:38
  maybe the kinds of decisions we should be making when we know
• 16:42
  we're in this heightened state. Like maybe we shouldn't be
• 16:46
  having like being in our dorm room watching movies in the dark
• 16:50
  with her boyfriends when we know mid cycle when our libido is
• 16:54
  highest. And so we might not be making
• 16:56
  the best decisions then. You know, they like, they talk
• 16:59
  about these things very openly and honestly, just what it means
• 17:02
  to to be a woman who's knowledgeable about her body and
• 17:06
  the different ways that the different phases of our cycle
• 17:09
  affect us not only physically but emotionally and mentally
• 17:12
  too. And so we've seen some really,
• 17:16
  really awesome testimonials come out of those clubs to young
• 17:19
  women who join the clubs, not really knowing anything about
• 17:23
  their bodies, not having a great relationship with their bodies,
• 17:29
  feeling like, you know, they've had these painful periods their
• 17:32
  whole life they never knew how to deal with and that they just
• 17:34
  kind of had to suffer through it.
• 17:36
  And by the end of the year, we give them these surveys and all
• 17:40
  the answers are stood on their heads.
• 17:42
  They they understand why they were created the way that they
• 17:45
  were, why their body works the way it does.
• 17:48
  They have confidence now that they can find the right kind of
• 17:50
  doctor to help them actually heal and get better.
• 17:55
  And so they can actually protect and preserve their fertility
• 17:59
  that way for later on when they want to become moms.
• 18:03
  So there's just, there's a lot of really good stuff coming out
• 18:06
  of our cycle, mindfulness clubs too.
• 18:09
  And I think all of all of this is how we really are changing
• 18:13
  the culture that in our, our online magazine, which as the
• 18:16
  editor in chief, that's that's what I run.
• 18:20
  And when we talk about Women's Health at Natural Womanhood, we
• 18:23
  do it and just this really profoundly different way then
• 18:27
  you'll see anywhere else. And it's from the standpoint
• 18:30
  that women's bodies are good, that we're not just small men,
• 18:34
  that our fertility is actually a feature and not a bug of our
• 18:39
  system that we need to just kind of like squash into submission.
• 18:43
  And so everything that we talked about, no matter what it is
• 18:45
  we're talking about in relation to Women's Health, we start from
• 18:48
  that fundamental standpoint, which frankly, you just don't
• 18:52
  see anywhere else and any other, you know, women's magazine or
• 18:55
  Women's Health type magazine. So to answer your question, I, I
• 19:00
  think that's what we're doing to, to make our impact, our
• 19:04
  positive impact on the culture and really reframe some of the
• 19:07
  conversations we're having about what it means to be a woman and,
• 19:13
  and just the truth of it, right? That's really beautiful guys.
• 19:18
  And frankly just encouraged and uplifted, honestly, no sarcasm,
• 19:23
  thank you. Just to just to know that
• 19:25
  Someone Like You is out there helping these girls.
• 19:29
  Thank you yeah it's it's sometimes it's funny I I wake up
• 19:34
  some mornings and I'm like do I really like run a website
• 19:38
  dedicated to like fertility in the menstrual cycle and things.
• 19:43
  How did I get you and it and I, I'm always just they constantly
• 19:49
  pleasantly surprised that I get everyday I can just get up as
• 19:53
  fired up, get as fired up as I do about these things.
• 19:57
  It's a real gift and it just tells me like we're on to
• 20:01
  something here and it's important.
• 20:03
  And it is a little bit like being the tiny, tiny little
• 20:08
  tugboat trying to turn around the great big massive ship that
• 20:12
  is our culture. But we just, we just keep
• 20:15
  plugging away at it day after day.
• 20:17
  And I, I think we're seeing some real, real inroads now that have
• 20:20
  been super encouraging to witness.
• 20:25
  Thanks for listening. Please like, subscribe and share
• 20:27
  with your friends. See you next time.