Tampons aren't free, subsidized, or even exempt from sales tax, and feminist writer Jessica Valenti wants to know why. She makes the case for free feminine hygiene products over at the Guardian, and it's a compelling argument. In many developing countries, lack of access to sanitary pads means girls don't go to school and women can't work while they're menstruating. Organizations that tackle the rights of girls and women have prioritized the distribution of menstrual pads as part of their development agendas.
But even in wealthy nations, feminine hygiene products are treated like cosmetics instead of health care. While $10 or $12 for a box of tampons may not sound like much, if you're working a minimum wage job, that's almost two hours of work; if you're only bringing home a few hundred dollars a month and having to pay rent and feed a family, $10 every month for 30 years (and more than $10 if you have daughters) isn't chump change. You can't buy tampons or pads with food stamps, even though they're necessary items. And in many states, you pay sales tax on feminine hygiene products but aren't taxed when you buy antiperspirant, hand sanitizer, or sunscreen.
"But this is less an issue of costliness than it is of principle: menstrual care is health care, and should be treated as such," Valenti writes. "But much in the same way insurance coverage or subsidies for birth control are mocked or met with outrage, the idea of women even getting small tax breaks for menstrual products provokes incredulousness because some people lack an incredible amount of empathy ... and because it has something to do with vaginas."
Valenti isn't kidding about the outrage: When she tweeted the question, "Anyone know a country where tampons are free or somehow subsidized?" she was quickly attacked by commentators, many tweeting abusive and misogynist comments — which seemed to confirm Valenti's suspicion that this is about sexism, not common-sense economics.
https://twitter.com/adam_mcphee/statuses/497892354331000832
https://twitter.com/skzdalimit/statuses/497828918851043330
https://twitter.com/MrSugarButt/statuses/497869223830761472
Of course, there are some legitimate arguments against subsidizing tampons: other necessary hygienic items, including toilet paper, aren't subsidized or free, and you can't buy them with food stamps either. And normal menstruation isn't a medical condition. But at the very least, states should stop taxing tampons — women should demand it. And employers should offer free tampons in the bathroom (along with the free toilet paper and hand soap they already offer, which no one suggests employees should have to bring for themselves), as a simple, relatively inexpensive way to be a female-friendly workplace. Hopefully Valenti's article, and the backlash to it, will be a call to women to demand better for our health and our bodies.
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Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com. She is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. A weekly CNN columnist and a contributing writer for the New York Times, she is also a lawyer.
