Before I begin, I have to point out that I am a white male, aged 18-65. Automatically that means that I should be the target of disappointment and even hatred because I supposedly hold all the power in the world. The truth is that as little as 200 years ago, before the Chartists and the Reformists extended the franchise to men who didn't own land, I was nominally about as powerless as everyone else.
International Womens' Day which was begun in 1911 (111 years ago) was started in an era where women in New Zealand and Australia had the franchise but in many parts of the world, including the rest of the Anglosphere, they did not. Also in 1911, the terrible tale of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire took place (look it up); so apart from not having the franchise, women were still in a world where factory owners (who were virtually all men) would literally lock them into a burning building if it meant that their other assets were protected. 111 years' later, although some degree of lip service is paid to things like equality, deep down we all know that issues such as equal pay for equal work, and other workplace fights to do with conditions are still being fought. The fact that International Womens' Day still exists more than a century later is disgraceful.
This post is not about the broader issue of Womens' Rights though. As a white male, aged 18-65, I am unqualified to speak on behalf of half the population which I am not a member. So what is this tale?
Men and Women are built with different biological equipment. Apart from being more inny and outy, women are also blessed/cursed with the necessary equipment to build another human being. Admittedly they still require the genetic instructions from a man but apart from one flash of involvement, their bodies do all of the work. This is similar to a breakfast of bacon and eggs - the chicken was involved, the pig is committed.
Womens' uteruses are like a bad housemate. Every month, they get ready to have a party to welcome a guest by putting up all kinds of decorations and then every month those same uteruses get really angry and throw all of the decorations out of the door. Since we're talking about the internal organs of a person, those decorations are made of what we out here in Manland call blood and gunk. An angry uterus also gets offended and then decides to punch the woman in the guts.
I am convinced that no man know what this is like and because they don't have to go through this, they can not understand what it is like. If you can not understand some and can not feel something, then while sympathy might a thing, empathy is impossible.
When I was in Year 9, I was in a History class when sitting at a group of 6 not that far away, there was a shriek from a girl who then bled all over the chair she was sitting in because her angry uterus had decided that it was unhappy not to have a guest over, at that exact time and place, and she didn't have the money to buy sanitary products for herself and presumably she was either to embarrassed to ask her parents of they were too embarrassed to have the discussion.
My History teacher (who saw the gravity and seriousness of the situation) immediately pulled a twenty dollar note from his wallet, scribbled something on a piece of paper and sent her down to the sick bay before telling the class that she was the "bravest person in the class". This is is an awful set of circumstances and events like this stay with you forever. As a bystander I still remember this; so I can only imagine the abject awful embarrassment which this girl went through, in front of a class of teenagers, who have about as much sympathy and empathy as a sledgehammer has for an egg.
Presumably most boys before they have left high school, will have at some point at least have learned something of the plight that the other half of the population has to go through every single month. You'd think that by the time that men had reached the age of 18, they'd have at least been partially aware of this.
But no.
I live in a nation where the Goods and Services Tax is levied on most end user products except for those things which are considered 'essential'. Fresh food, water, government services, and a lot of medical products do not attract the GST. How then are sanitary products not considered 'essential'? How is it that in rooms full of green benches and red benches, the 227 people who are supposed to represent and deliberate on legislation, still haven't actually arrived at the fact that sanitary products aren't exactly 'luxury' items?
The act of an angry uterus throwing out all of its decorations every month isn't a voluntary or avoidable thing; so I don't understand why it should attract the GST in principle. Also, as it affects half the population, the GST on sanitary products is discriminatory on the grounds of gender. I guess that there is an argument to be made that men could purchase sanitary products but in all seriousness, that's not either likely or a good faith argument.
Is this really worth the extra tax revenue to put a tax on sanitary products such as this? Is there really that much of a hole in the budget that a specific tax on about 10 million people of a few dollars, if it went missing, would cause catastrophic cataclysms? Who do we need to speak to about this?
As a a white male, aged 18-65, living in the twenty-first century, I can not believe that we even need to have this discussion. It's bloody stupid.
Addenda:
"What about International Men's Day?"
- a reply on Twitter, 8th Mar 2022
International Men's Day is in September. Looking through your Twitter feed, you didn't care about it then; so why care about it now.
As far as I can tell, there aren't any men to speak of anyway. If we can't solve this simple problem, then all I see are boys with fingers up their noses who got taller.
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