‘We Play Period Bingo’: Librarians Get Creative To Offer Sex Ed, Period Products, And More

People often think of the library as a place to borrow books. But it can be so much more than that.

As a full-time librarian in Brooklyn, New York, I know that the best libraries act as a community hub that attends to the needs of the people who live in the area. One need that has become more urgent in recent years is access to reproductive and sexual health resources.

For many decades, Planned Parenthood and local health clinics were the go-to spots for people to get information and services about menstrual health, sex education, and abortion access. But with abortion access and reproductive health care now under attack by federal and state governments, these offices are shuttering. According to the sexual and reproductive health and rights research organization Guttmacher Institute, the number of brick-and-mortar clinics declined by 5 percent across the U.S. between 2020 and early 2024, from 807 to 765.

And local public libraries are stepping up.

I knew from working at the Brooklyn Public Library that some libraries are creatively filling the gaps in reproductive health-care information and services. Here, for example, all branches have free period product dispensers in their bathrooms. But I didn’t know how widespread these efforts were.

So, I asked around. I interviewed librarians in big cities and small towns, from Georgia to California. I also polled librarians on Reddit, posting an anonymous survey on the subreddit (or online community) called r/Libraries, which describes itself as “a place to discuss all aspects of libraries and library work.” I only got seven responses, meaning the survey was not statistically significant. But it was telling nonetheless.

On Reddit and in interviews, I discovered libraries with a broad range of reproductive justice initiatives. Some offer free pads and tampons. Others hold “period parties” where menstruating teens can celebrate their changing bodies.

A note about language here: I’ll use the umbrella term “reproductive justice” to describe all these initiatives. Other librarians prefer language like “gender and sexuality education.”

Libraries find like-minded partners

At least two libraries—one in California and one in Wisconsin—teamed up with their local Planned Parenthood to get reproductive justice programming in their branches.

In the spring of 2024, the Will and Ariel Durant Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library turned their community room into an inviting space for occasional workshops. Led by a Planned Parenthood facilitator, participants discussed topics like gender expression, healthy relationships, sexually-transmitted infections, and self-advocacy in medical settings.

Each session, Anders Villalta—the young adult services librarian, and my personal friend—set up “much more seating than needed” so that participants could “pick what felt comfortable for them.” They spread handouts across tables in the back so people could take them discreetly, and made sure to put some seating close to the entrance because “some patrons like to check things out before deciding whether to join the conversation.”

The Durant branch serves the area’s large LGBTQ+ population, and people in the community have varied ways of expressing their gender and sexuality, Villalta said. Some patrons may still be figuring out how they identify. So the organizers were careful to frame sensitive conversations, for example about gender identity, as an exploration and learning opportunity—not a prescriptive lesson.

Each Planned Parenthood workshop typically attracted about six to ten people. But they reached the broader community, too.

“Even if they didn’t attend, patrons gave a lot of positive feedback,” Villalta said. “To see [these programs] at the library is uplifting and really powerful. The library is now talking about things that people would rather us not talk about.”

The Durant library’s success has translated into a system-wide opportunity. Today, all 72 branches of the LA Public Library can request to host a Planned Parenthood workshop.

Period parties ‘embrace the joy’ in puberty

Brooke Newberry, public services manager at the La Crosse Public Library in Wisconsin, works with her Planned Parenthood affiliate to host “period parties.” At each event, she sets up 45 chairs in classroom style, with a table for the Planned Parenthood presenter up front. She hangs tinsel curtains and uses pink and red items to set the mood.

We “wanted it to look like a fun place to be,” Newberry said.

The local schools do teach sex education, but Newberry wanted to embrace the joy in menstruation.

There are snacks and take-home period packs with pads, tampons, letters of encouragement, and some chocolate. Each session also includes menstruation education and games.

“We play period Bingo” on a board with vocabulary words like period, cramps, tampon, and the like, Newberry said.

Winners get small prizes, like a Squishmallow or a heating pad.

The parties, now in their second year, are a huge success and “delightfully intergenerational,” Newberry said. Some of the teen girls who attend are brought by single dads.

“Because they’re like, ‘I don’t know!’” Newberry said.

Parents, teens, and siblings bond over shared experiences, with older participants telling the story of their first period—a topic some older generations have never talked about openly.

After one event, a caregiver attending a period party with a young girl told Newberry that her “body was going through second puberty,” referring to menopause, and asked: “What do I do?”

So the library worked with Planned Parenthood to host menopause parties, too.

“It was much harder to find information about menopause than it is periods,” Newberry said.

Ultimately, the events they created attracted not only “people in their upper 30s and 40s,” Newberry said, but also “their moms.”

At each event, the facilitator explains the experiences that can come with menopause, like the smell of burning when nothing is on fire. Often, participants chimed in with comments like, “That happened to me back in the day, and I thought I was going crazy!”

But the educator assured the participants they had actually experienced a symptom of menopause, something they may not have ever known without the LaCross library’s menopause party.

Too polarizing for publicly-funded libraries

But not all librarians have been able to provide reproductive health resources to members of the community who need it most.

Many of the people who responded to my Reddit survey saying that their libraries did not have any reproductive justice initiatives explained that they found the topic too controversial. They worried that even talking about reproductive justice could jeopardize their government funding.

Kati Hall, a Texas-based librarian, has observed this kind of self-censorship. (We are granting Hall a pseudonym; Hall and one other librarian interviewed for this story worried they could face personal and professional repercussions for discussing their work publicly.) Topics like abortion access and sexual health are generally “just not talked about” at work, she said.

In a previous librarian position in Georgia, Hall got creative. She quietly put pads and tampons in a basket in the women’s bathroom. The items were donated by herself and other staff, not paid for with taxpayer money. They were never discussed or acknowledged by any patrons, as far as Hall knows. But the baskets were routinely being emptied, so she kept refilling them. She knew the supplies were needed.

But in Texas, which has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the nation, the situation is different, she said. Since her library is city-funded, staff tiptoe around reproductive health.

As a result, Hall said, “I don’t know exactly what the patrons need in regards to reproductive justice.”

Still, the library is a site of education. And for some patrons in Texas, Hall guessed, their educational needs could be how to get out-of-state to access abortion or gender-affirming care. Under those circumstances, Hall told me, the most important thing for librarians is “knowing the context”—and the law—“but not giving up and doing what you can.”

An Indiana library finds a way

Despite the concerns around how the work will be perceived by lawmakers and the public, some librarians have still found a way to get reproductive health education and supplies to the public.

In 2020, Fern, a library assistant at the Monroe County Public Library in Indiana who requested that their last name not be used, worked up a proposal to put free period product dispensers in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms.

Initially, Fern faced pushback. The library’s then-director rejected the idea with what Fern recalled as a note essentially saying, “I don’t really want to do this.”

But three years later, Fern tried again with a new director.

“I gave him my research from back then and my current research,” they said. “I told him what I’d like to do, and he was very in favor of it.”

The program was approved for a six-month trial in collaboration with Aunt Flow, an organization that installs free period product dispensers in schools and businesses. Fern began working behind the scenes with colleagues to make sure the launch succeeded.

They met with the building facilities manager, whose team would be in charge of installing and refilling the dispensers, and cobbled together a budget to fund the project. Fern also solicited feedback from the staff so they could troubleshoot for “any concerns that they might have.”

In 2022, Tori Lawhorn, the library’s communications and marketing director, added another layer to the library’s nascent reproductive justice initiative. She had noticed more patrons calling in with questions about their reproductive rights.

“It was right when Roe v. Wade got overturned,” she said. Indiana quickly moved to ban abortion. The law was challenged in court, but in 2023, a total abortion ban with limited exceptions went into effect.

Amid the confusion over abortion access, Lawhorn created an educational page on the library’s website called “Reproductive Rights Resources.” It explains current policies, the legal fight underway, and how the process affects Indiana residents.

“It was providing not only accurate information but confidential access to resources so patrons could still get information without necessarily having to compromise their security or their identity,” Lawhorn said.

The site, which remains active today, lists reproductive care resources and includes a booklist if people want more in-depth information on specific aspects of reproductive rights.

The Aunt Flow project, now in its second year, gives people access to “products that some people might have barriers to,” Lawhorn said. The whole initiative was built on a tenet of “equitable access for all.”

These days, the free tampons and pads have become “very normal,” Fern added. “People just know that they’re there now and use them.”

Editor’s note Oct. 1, 2025: This story has been updated to correct an erroneous last name inadvertently introduced during editing.

The post ‘We Play Period Bingo’: Librarians Get Creative To Offer Sex Ed, Period Products, And More appeared first on Rewire News Group.