The Scottish Parliament just voted (unanimously) to make tampons and other period products available for free to those too broke to pay for them. It’s a big victory for the campaign against “period poverty.” Now no one in Scotland will have to miss school or work because they can’t afford sanitary products.
Naturally, the fellows in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit have reacted to the news with their customary good sense.
“Sanitary products” are free, EXCEPT THEY’RE PAID FOR WITH MEN’S TAX DOLLARS, blared one headline in the subreddit. And the assembled MEN waxed furious about this terrible new financial burden. (The cost of the program is estimated to be roughly £8.7 million a year, or less than £2 for every inhabitant of Scotland.)
“Every time I see the word free I know it means some man or group of men are paying for it,” complained one commenter.
“Guys in Scotland, including bachelors, asexuals and homosexuals, are going to be paying for vaginas that they dont care about, regardless of their financial status,” charged another.
“The only thing free for men, is dying,” still another commenter moaned.
Several MGTOW Redditors fantasized about ways to sabotage the program. Wrote not_a_beleiber:
If I was Scottish, I’d buy a woman’s pant suit, put it on, then demand free hygine products. Increase the cost, the commentary, and hence the regulation on this.
“No need,” replied Miserable-Lemon.
If I was scottish I’d immediately open a drug store that only offers feminine products. You hand them out like candy, charge like 50$ a pop to the government and buy as much stock as you can store it. You’ll make a hundred times your investment on a monthly basis
(In fact, the products aren’t going to be available at stores bur rather distributed by schools and other public facilities.)
The-Rover-666 demonstrated his keen grasp of period products and their use, writing “[s]o their whymin are that smelly they had to give them free…”
Replied Legs2Big:
They’ve always spent so much of their time hiding their true appearance from a young age, they act like their lives depends on it.
What that has to do with sanitary products is anyone’s guess.
Non-w0ke offered this perplexing political program:
Because single moms are pure toxic cancer for children it makes sense to let those independent to go their own way and provide free stuff only to those who are willing to care for children. It includes a stress free home, food, housing, full family and adequate attention.
Cant provide for a kid? Fuck off, buy your own tampons.
What any of this has to do with sanitary products is also anyone’s guess.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Miggies always seem to think that women are exempt from taxes.
Men have periods too and it’s not just adult women that bleed, teenage girls and little girls bleed as well. there are kids around the age of 9 when they first start bleeding.
So, less than $2.68 per year, per taxpayer. The MGTOWs are simply against anything that might benefit women, it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter that they might also benefit, as well.
I got the last period of my lifetime several years ago…I seem to remember paying more than $4.00 for a box of 40 tampons. I’d use at least 20 of those suckers per monthly cycle.
Wait, the NHS in Scotland covers prostate care, right? So female taxpayers over there are paying for that. Doesn’t seem like they’re pissing and moaning about it, either.
I’m very glad that Scotland did this, hopefully other countries can follow their lead. I’m also waiting for the inevitable TERF meltdown from the fact that the law includes people who menstruate that aren’t women.
I don’t quite see how this profiteering scheme would work. Wouldn’t the government probably just buy the products elsewhere? Their beloved free market in action.
I don’t even understand what this means. Is he saying MGTOWs should be exempt from taxes but also get special stuff? And how does one find a “stress free home”?
I saw this yesterday. Good for Scotland!
On the topic of a previous post, here’s Karolina Żebrowska (fashion history/comedy YouTuber) on reactionaries’ reactions to Harry Styles in a dress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roPQKEZK2X4 ?
Excuse me while I just
*moves to Scotland*
Once the pandemic is over, why don’t you go to Scotland and do just that. Put your money where your blather is.
Well I’m none too happy about *my* tax dollars going to America’s number one welfare queens — the men in men’s prisons. But I don’t make a point of going to women’s misandry boards to whine about it. (Side note, are there such misandry boards? Because I’d love to poke around and see if/how they differ from MGTOW sites!)
Of course the men in men’s prisons are often put there simply because they’re dark enough to railroad, while men who are noticeably paler get to take plea deals or ‘time served’. And while feeding and housing a singular male prisoner we as a nation pay enough $$$ per year to have given a person a year of college education instead. (Or it could’ve gone to anti-crime initiatives, targeted poverty reduction, soup kitchens, homeless centers, school improvements, or any number of other places that would’ve prevented so much crime to begin with!)
@athveg34f
The closest I can think of is the now closed Radfem Hub (link is to RationalWiki page on it, which has some posts from it, and also cites WHTM). I never spent time there because it also had some extreme transphobia (see example 2). Ironically, because they tended to sound a lot like what MRAs think feminists sound like, there was a bit of a hubbub in the manosphere when one MRA “infiltrated” it.
I don’t know of any still active sites dedicated specifically to hatred of cis men, they may exist but most of the types who frequented Radfem Hub seem to have moved onto TERF sites like Reddit’s now banned r/GenderCritical and other forum sites like Ovarit, Saidit, and Mumsnet. Posters there generally seem to like cis men (or at least cis men that are sufficiently transphobic) and focus all their hatred on trans people and allies (and occasionally GNC and queer cis people).
Naglfar – I’m thinking of a TERF parody line I made up a while ago:
“Feminism isn’t about hating men, it’s about hating trans women”
@epitome of incomrepehensibility Thank you, this Karolina Żebrowska person has said what I’ve been trying to say for years, but she did it *so* much better than I’ve ever been able to. I hate this most recent rendition of masculinity that bashes a guy for daring to dress/look/behave less masculine than Duke Nukem, ffs.
@Naglfar I wonder if that’s the same site that a bunch of MRAs tried telling me was rife with evil feminists plotting to Kill All Men™, rape all male children, and commit all sorts of misandry-for-the-sake-of-misandry BeCaUsE FeMiNiSm. They said an MRA was able to breach it (just by claiming he was female…???), and he copy/pasted what he supposedly found. It really just looked like the entire site was a shit-ton of MRAs/MGTOWs all masquerading as the imaginary feminists they all pretend are real tbh.
In all my years of feminism — online and irl — not once have I ever encountered such over-the-top, phony-looking feminism as what they were claiming to have found by infiltration. Thanks for the link… it really sounds like what they were telling me about, and the more I read it the more I’m convinced it was a bunch of infiltrators driving the general misandry. David wrote a few articles about when RooshV (remember him!) and other gems told their lackeys to infiltrate feminist sites to wreak havoc. The little I remember, they called it Operation Lollipop… oh, yes, here it is: https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/24/internet-nazis-plan-to-take-down-sjws-by-pretending-to-be-mexican-trannies-on-tumblr-if-they-can-stop-fighting-each-other-first/#more-17316
If we want to talk about grievances that are much more unfair: I don’t think I should have to pay in to insurance that covers Viagra as a necessary thing for men’s quality of life, but won’t pay for contraception because some fucking old white man decided women should bear the consequences of his ability to get it up with said Viagra. Talk to me when you’ve fixed that one, MGTOW, then maybe I’ll listen.
Nah, who am I kidding, I’m not going to. I pay taxes all the time for shit I don’t believe in, you can too. We live in a society.
“I’m also waiting for the inevitable TERF meltdown from the fact that the law includes people who menstruate that aren’t women.”
They really love trans guys, though. I mean, they misgender them all the time and erase them, but that is love. /s
“If I was Scottish, I’d buy a woman’s pant suit, put it on, then demand free hygine products”
Pant suit? Blasphemy! A true Scotsman should wear nothing but a hygine product under his kilt.
@Big Titty Demon
I’m personally more annoyed that my taxes go into paying for stuff for GOP politicians. Trump’s golfing has cost taxpayers millions, the salaries of GOP politicians come out of taxes, franking privileges, subsidies to corporations, etc.
@galax
A weird permutation of “trans women are men in dresses”.
It is excellent Scotland has done this, although I’m still kinda upset their staunch refusal to back Labour has contributed to England’s state of Forever Torydom 🙁 Can’t blame them I guess!
@epitome
I’m watching that now! Costuming YouTube is fabulous.
Posted a comment a few days back about this, on r/News IIRC.
Anyways, glad that Scottish women have that now, let’s hope Canada (or at least my home province of Quebec) follows suit.
I, for one, welcome paying taxes to help provide hygiene products to those who need them, be they women, trans men, or otherwise.
Also, this just in: misogynist manbabies still misogynist manbabying. Also, sun rises every day. More info on the news at 6.
(Seriously it looks like it’s not even a majority of women, just the poorer ones… Because Azathoth forbid we give anyone a bit of a leg up out of poverty, especially if they’e women, amirite?)
There’s a scheme in England; but it currently just applies to people in education.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/period-products-in-schools-and-colleges/period-product-scheme-for-schools-and-colleges-in-england
Be interesting to see if it expands to the Scottish system. That’s a very popular policy here; so wouldn’t surprise me to see it in a few party manifestos come election time.
I’ve been saying for years now that people were gonna socialize tampons, and everyone just laughed. Women merely point to their vaginas, proceed to bleed, and then get special privileges that men can only dream of.
Men dream about leaking blood for days at a time, and having to deal with it by sticking objects up inside their bodies, or sticking absorbent pads to their underwear?
Oh, if only I could pass along this special privilege to a cis man!
I would consider corporations and military contractors to be the biggest welfare queens.
@PoM
It’s about the way which society treats you all like royalty, simply for possessing a (frankly disgusting) biological tendency to urinate blood every “time of the month.” Personally, I would never want to soil my linens with such putrid bodily fluids, but if I acquired tax dollars for doing so, I could see myself faking it in order rob the producers of society (largely men) of their resources.
It won’t stop here, though; eventually, women will complain that the tampons they get in public restrooms just aren’t good enough to dam up their clamato caverns, and men should just be fine with forfeiting so much of their money in tax dollars DIRECTLY to women, so that they can just “buy whichever products they need.” (*coughs* use the money to purchase whatever they want and game the already overworked system *coughs*)