but seriously: Why aren’t tampons free?
Because they cost money to produce. Which means that you can change who pays for them but you cannot make them free.
but seriously: Why aren’t tampons free?
Because they cost money to produce. Which means that you can change who pays for them but you cannot make them free.
They’re also substitutable (if that’s the right term) – it’s far more environmentally sustainable to use something like the Diva Cup.
I liked this comment: http://i.imgur.com/Kqz8NOD.png
The first two Graun comments have been moderated out of existence – what on earth they might have said I have no idea. The first non-modded is the ever wanky Captain Cash, with this:
‘Tampons are not free, because they are a marketting solution to a problem, designed predominantly by men.’
Fuck me. Where to start? It might be trivial to observe that a man who cannot even spell marketing might not know much about it, so I will confine myself to observing that women are also allowed to invent stuff.
We could always revert to the Jewish tradition of sending “unclean” women outside of the City walls for a week each month.
Reading the comments so you don’t have to.
Someone asks if Capn Cash means men invented periods, to which ‘contributor’ ManWhoFellToEarth replies:
‘I suppose the Cap’n’s contention is more that the “problem” is not periods per se but the solution (sanitary stuff) is a relatively recent thing that we all got on fine for years without, hence it’s a solution-in-search-of-a-problem which is usually a hallmark of marketing. Blokes do marketing.’
Leaving aside that it is a bullshit suggestion that men ‘do marketing’ (and women don’t – in 2012, as far as I can tell, the head of marketing at Bodyform was a doris, and there are women in all the major manufacturers’ marketing teams), and that heavily bleeding women just wandered around the gaffe with red skirts before the arrival of Bodyform, who the fuck buys tampons?
They appear to be saying that women can’t invent stuff, and nor can they decide for themselves what to buy, or negotiate through the maze of lies and artifice laid down in their path by sneaky marketeers, the poor little simpletons.
That does not strike me as a very feminist position.
“we all got on fine for years without”
Well, men did, obviously. I think he might have wandered off the reservation with that thoughtless lack of empathy.
We all got on fine for years without contraceptives either. Ban the Pill, damn male marketting gimmicckk
I like your thinking Rob. I can feel a hashtag coming on – #Wegotonfineforyearswithout
Forward to the Stone Age!
So, to be a modern feminist you must demand to be a sort of giant adult baby, a screaming ball of self-absorbed need for someone else to take care of you?
No thanks, ladies.
I’m sure the Guardian put this sort of stuff on as click bait. But then why moderate the comments, it’s more fun reading the batsh*t comments than the original batsh*t article.
It seems there’s a popular myth that razors are VAT-free.
Tampons are necessary, right. But so is food, for both men and women, and the state doesn’t provide free food for everyone.
What the state does do is provide a safety net in the form of various benefits etc so that those who cannot otherwise afford food do not go hungry, while those who can afford it have to pay.
Applying the same logic, those women who can afford to pay for tampons should have to pay, but there should be a safety net such that those who (through no fault of their own) afford them, do not have to go without.
Now, because we generally think people should get the opportunity to decide for themselves how they eat (and also because it would be grossly inefficient), we don’t just dole out food to those who are on benefits; we give them money so they can choose for themselves.
Based on the adverts I see on TV, there are lots and lots of brands of tampons and other devices with the same function, so presumably we would want to operate the same system: instead of just doling out tampons, give women who would not otherwise be able to afford them extra money and then they can choose to spend it on whichever brand they prefer.
So in conclusion, and given the obvious parallel with food, the correct thing to do here is simply to increase the benefits paid to women compared to those paid to men by an amount equal to the average cost of tampons needed each month.
Bish-bosh, problem solved. Next one, Guardian.
Of course this all leaves aside the fact that they would not be ‘free’ at all. Some poor sods would be taxed to give government money to waste and given the usual efficiency of government, they would cost about a tenner each. Here’s an idea, sort yourselves out instead of trying to pick MY pocket at every opportunity; I get to pay for my stuff, you pay for yours.
“We” did do “fine” without modern feminine sanitary products until relatively recently. If your definition of “fine” is washing bloody rags for reuse. Just the same as we did fine without modern nappies, if you are happy to wash dirty ones.
It is worth noting though that a bundle of rags around your chuff is more suited to the full skirts of yesteryear than modern fashions. But I’m sure that women who want to do their bit for the environment won’t mind the visible rag bulge under their stylish modern clothes.
(Which actually reminds me of my sister saying how mum started her off with those belted towel things, and her feeling embarrassed that the bulge was showing under her school skirt. She quite rapidly went out and found the tampons in Boots).
Part of the problem with this nonsense is the Fems keep going on about a mythical “stigma”. It shows how Jewish the movement is. Menstruation is indeed stigmatised in Jewish culture, but then so are bacon sandwiches, foreskins and mixed fabrics, which is just evidence that Judaism is a bit silly. There isn’t any stigma in Christendom, never has been, other than the general one about the privacy of bodily functions. For which same reason it’s not normally considered polite to discuss bowel movements over dinner in polite company. That’s all.
G>
My first reaction was to have some sympathy for women – after all, why are sanitary products VATable?
Then I checked with the wife, and she buys a pack of top-brand products from the pound shop once every couple of months or so. It’s not worth even beginning to worry about something which costs a fiver a year.
The Worstall answer to the question was triff. Little more need be said.
Right up there with the NHS “free at the point of use” bollox. No the NHS isn’t free it is pre-paid at the point of use and pre-paid is not the same as free.
That comment about “doing fine without” illustrates a classic Guardian trait – the wallowing in relative luxury while idealising a more primitive past and agitating for a return to it, yet not moving an inch from their comfortable modern life.
Then I checked with the wife, and she buys a pack of top-brand products from the pound shop once every couple of months or so. It’s not worth even beginning to worry about something which costs a fiver a year.
Well, that’s easy then. Up benefits for women by 10p a week to pay for the extra expense incurred by menstruation.
Job done. Would that all the terrible problems of the world were so easy to fix.
So its not actually tampons that women need, its some way of dealing with menstruation?
What was used in the past – rags wasn’t it?
So perhaps they should get rags for free – tampons are a choice, not a requirement last I heard.
Judging by the choice of non tampons available in our local Morrisons supermarket not every woman wants to use tampons.
Why isn’t the TV licence free?
(Please don’t respond, I do know the answer. However, if you can think of any more of modern life’s absolute ‘necessities’ that “should be free”, please do respond.)
I saw a mocking website or email before listing things the Daily Mail say cause/prevent cancer. How about a website listing things The Guardian think should be ‘free’. I think the Guardian ‘free stuff’ list would be significantly longer.
Yeah, why don’t all those tampon-factory workers turn up every day for nothing?
What, they want to feed their children? The bastards.
What JuliaM said.
This is like the recent lulzy tantrums of American feminists, equating some people being opposed to being forced to pay for other people’s “free” contraception with a “War on Women”.
They should update that Helen Reddy song to “I am woman, hear me whinge…”
G said “the correct thing to do here is simply to increase the benefits paid to women compared to those paid to men by an amount equal to the average cost of tampons needed each month.”
I suspect the reduced food cost for women caused by their average calorie need being lower than men more than cancels out the cost of tampons.
Which actually reminds me of my sister saying how mum started her off with those belted towel things, and her feeling embarrassed that the bulge was showing under her school skirt. She quite rapidly went out and found the tampons in Boots
My sister had exactly the same experience. Walking around with some contraption strapped onto her, and then finding Tampons (which my mother, somewhat hypocritically, used) and thinking “What the f…?”
@ Rob The “doing fine without” display of ignorance argument always comes crashing down the moment you mention “well actually, tens of thousands of people were dying of X until the invention of Y”
eg. When I were a lad we did fine without central heating.
Except of course for pneumonia, TB and malnutrition, yes, just dandy.
Even factoring in the fact that in the last fortnight virtually the entire non-Semitic journalistic corps of of the guardian appears to, whether from fear or for ideological reasons, have turned into propagandizers for Hamas and ISIS. this article took the cake – a complete moron……
We are angering Mother Nature by frustrating her efforts at population control. She will have her revenge. So the Greens tell me.
She should move to South Africa. One of the main political issues which the ANC used to win the election was when Zuma stated that sanitary pads will be a free issue for all woman in the country. No big deal and a lot cheaper than all the windfarms Tim wants to erect with the carbon tax he favours.
In Mali, every rural village has a designated tree outside the village on which the washed and used rags are hung out to dry. Not a pleasant sight which men tend to avoid, unless you are stupid mining engineer with an orebody to follow and outline!
@G
Don’t forget, if you’re going to give women more benefits for tampons, then, like most benefits, it has to be means-tested. So, pregnant & breast-feeding women stop getting the benefit, and women who use ‘no period’ contraceptives, women past menopause and women who have had hysterectomies get it stopped too. There will need to be a whole Ministry of Menstruation to administer it…
I’m amazed. I always assumed she was a transvestite.
No you can’t have a pony for Christmas.
But we’ll give you a hobby-horse.
How about a Tampon Marketing Board, which will ensure random shortages, and the need for a quango which will address issues around tampon recycling?
Tractor Gent,
The Ministry of Cunts. I thought we already had several of those.
There was less need for tampons in the past as females spent a lot of time being pregnant.
Peter S wins the thread!
Why aren’t razors free?
Because the grauniad-writing wimmin have no use for them?
Would now be a good time to remind everyone of the discussion earlier, about which ATL topics generate the most comments?
Why isn’t toilet roll free? Public health need, innit?