When free birth control became part of Obamacare, I knew that it would be only a matter of time before feminists began demanding free other stuff.
And yes, they are! The new demand: free tampons.
Inside Higher Education has this story, headlined: "If Condoms Are Free, Why Aren't Tampons?"
There's a quick answer to that one: "Condoms are birth control for men, stupid!"
But nooo….Here's the story:
Student activists at the University of Arizona issued a list of demands on Tuesday that included urging the university to provide free tampons and menstrual pads to women on campus….
Last week, Columbia University announced that it would begin providing free tampons in its health center after spring break. In an email to students, Ben Mankansi, president of the Columbia College Student Council, said the decision followed weeks of conversations with female students and campus officials. Mankansi first publicly proposed the idea during a council meeting last month.
“While this may seem like a peculiar addition to the average student council meeting, that these requests needed to be made indicates the university’s utter lack of support for people who menstruate, a group that includes a significant portion of the student body,” Courtney Couillard, a junior at Barnard College, wrote in the Columbia student newspaper after the meeting. “Sure, I can easily find a free condom on Barnard and Columbia’s campuses, but why can’t I find a free tampon in the bathrooms? Why does the administration care about my sexual protective rights, but not how I handle my monthly menstrual cycle?”
In February, a sophomore at Emory University created a petition making the same argument. More than 900 students signed the petition in two weeks. Later that month, students at Reed College formed a new student group with the sole purpose of stocking campus bathrooms with free menstrual products. The group is called Period Kollective.
Last year, in an essay that went viral online and prompted an intense backlash from critics of the idea, a student at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote that all public facilities, including colleges, should offer free tampons and pads in their women's restrooms.
Apparently, the idea, promoted by a group called Free the Tampon, is that many women find themselves starting their monthly period when they're out and about–so why shouldn't they have the "right" to run to the nearest restroom and grab a tampon for free–as opposed to running to the nearest restroom and having to drop a quarter into a mean ol' profit-making machine? Free tje Tampon's slogan is "End Restroom Inequality." The idea, apparently, is that since men don't menstruate, it's unfair that women actually have to pay for menstrual products while men don't.
One female student at Grinnell College in Iowa went so far as to "liberate" campus tampons by picking the locks on the machines with a bobby pin.
“I freed your tampons kept behind lock, key and quarter,” she wrote to the college. “Bleeding bodies deserve to think about Foucault and micro-organisms and the history of the bleeding bodies that came before them. When we menstruate, however unexpectedly, we should not feel fear in the pits of our stomachs because of your lack of foresight. We are a part of this college. Provide free menstrual products to students who need them so I can stop picking the locks on your bogus machines.”
Love the Foucault and the "bleeding bodies." Who says that liberal-arts students aren't learning anything these days?
Meanwhile, it's only a matter of time before free tampons work their way into Obamacare–because we need a federal program.
My prediction for the next feminist campaign for free stuff: free brassieres. After all, men don't have breasts–so why should women have to pay to prop up their breasts, or else suffer discomfort? The feminists could even drag in some Foucault: "lactating bodies."