Guardian: World Needs Taxpayer Subsidised Tampons

Here’s something to make you choke on your cornflakes: the Guardian has returned to the subject of menstruation. In a widely-read editorial yesterday, the paper informed us that tampons should be made free for any woman who decides it’s beneath her to pay for them herself.

With the elegance and lightness of touch we’ve come to expect from Comment is Free, Jessica Valenti informs readers of her “particularly impressive” flow, and says it’s a travesty that women in prison don’t have access to Tampax Pearls.

Well! It’s a wonder she didn’t go full earth mother radfem and call for free reusable moon-cups for all – they’re better for the environment, you know – but perhaps even Valenti lacks the stomach to go where her arguments lead. 

Back on Earth, we might ask who’s that bothered about convicted criminals’ personal grooming products and what a well-paid newspaper columnist is doing with her money that she has nothing left over for the essentials. But on Planet Guardian other people’s financial mismanagement is a problem for the rest of us. 

Anyway, since we’re getting our requests in, allow me to respond on behalf of the hairier sex with a shopping list of our own. Sorry, taxpayers! But here are some things you really ought to be covering. 

Porn. Men have higher sex drives than women and regular ejaculation is essential for the healthy functioning of male sex organs – not to mention how ratty we get when it’s been a few days. To best please the womenfolk (no one’s impressed by pent-up two-minute wonders), can we have a gender-wide subscription to Brazzers, please? 

Razor blades. There’s a fad for beards at the moment but I’m not persuaded that women actually like them. Anyway, “becoming a man” isn’t a luxury and facial hair – especially if there’s not much of it – is closely tied to male self-esteem. You don’t want us all getting depressed now do you? So a Gillette Pro Fusion and a regular supply of blades, if you please. 

Condoms. Who wants to become an accidental father and get stung for child support for twenty years? The expense and heartache are horrendous. I know if you put yourself out you can get condoms pretty much anywhere but they’re not very nice ones. Can’t the government send us vouchers for something ribbed and, hey, what about those nice banana flavoured sheaths? Everyone’s a winner. 

I’d go on, but I’m bored of my own joke. As Valenti admits, this isn’t really about costliness: it’s about enlarging the remit of what taxpayers have to subsidise. She drops in a few nods to the Third World, of course. And yes, I’m sure there are serious health risks there. But local women would probably tell you to concentrate on an ebola vaccine before worrying about pantyliners. 

Back in the West, at least according to Valenti, the entire 50 per cent of the population that needs female sanitary products is so helpless and hopeless that they need charity just to go about their daily lives. How incredibly patronising. 

To some people, this is going to sound misogynistic. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a gay man, my entire life is spent around women. I love them. I to listen to their emotional dramas, I manage their insecurities… I even put up with their icky personal issues. And I don’t even get a shag at the end of it. 

But perhaps that’s because none of the awesome birds I’ve got on speed dial are spending their lives whining about getting free stuff from the state. They realise you can’t run a society on all takers, no makers. I asked one of my harem of sexy broads whether she’d be up for free tampons from the government. “Why?” she replied. “Don’t they think I can manage my own life? I thought we’d got over that sort of sexism.”

Because this isn’t really about women’s health. It’s simply another volley of provocation, misandry and attention-seeking from the far-Left in a political atmosphere that rewards women, gays and everyone else who isn’t a long-suffering white bloke for throwing their toys out of the pram and demanding MORE FREE THINGS.