I was inspired by severalarticles about the Tampon Tax recently and some of the protests against the categorization of tampons as “luxury items,” so I made this up. It’s funny because it’s true.
Tampons are a “luxury item”
Once I worked as an intern in the state capital. One of the representatives I worked for was this middle-aged guy. And he hated the tampon and napkin machines in the women’s bathrooms. Hated them. He insisted that they weren’t necessary.
I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.
He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.
“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”
His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”
I thought, You have got to be kidding.
Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.
And that’s how, at twenty, I had to give a talk on menstruation to a middle-aged married state representative who was one of my bosses. American politics, ladies and gentlemen.
“Months after a CBS show gave needy families
$101,000 and challenged them on camera to give some or all of it to
other, needier families, another competitor has emerged in the seedy
poverty porn circuit.
Television network UP TV (formerly the Gospel Music Channel), which the Washington Post reports is focusing on an “uplift someone” campaign this year, produced an unintentionally dystopian take on uplifting viral videos by
subjecting dozens of low-income children in Atlanta to a moral purity
test in order to earn Christmas presents for their families.“
About 30 people, friends and family of McDole, gathered to mourn his death on Thursday morning,DelawareOnlinereported. They expressed doubts about the police justification for the shooting, and the man’s uncle, Eugene Smith, described what happened as “an execution.”
“That’s what it was. I don’t care if he was black, white, whatever,” Smith added. “I didn’t see no gun. He had a book bag, but I never seen a gun.”
The race of the officers involved in the shooting has not been released, but the unverified video appears to shows three white officers fire at McDole, who was Black. This was the second police-involved shooting to occur in Wilmington this year.
There’s people standing around everywhere totally unconcerned about this guy but the cop is scared shitless. They look like the biggest pussys in the world shouting at a man with an invisible gun. And then murder the fucker.
Ill never understand why these cops are so fucking trigger happy and the general public just accepts it. Yet these fucking animals are just itching to pop some rounds off. Makes me sick to my stomach.
Okay, so there’s an ad on Youtube for Scream. The first five seconds are of a really creepy face staring at you and moving around, while the phrase, “Click skip and die” is repeated over and over super creepily. I wanted to let people know that this thing exists, because it’s creepy af and I hate it.
I skipped the ad, and I didn’t die, so it’s safe. But man, it’s terrible. I can’t believe anyone thought that was a good idea.
Kevin Allen, a 36 year old black man, has been shot and killed inside a library. A library of all places. What would it take for everyone to see that the cops are actually coming for black people?
He was described as a quiet man who frequented the library and liked to watch videos and listen to music at the computer stations. He was shot around 1:35 PM and taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
How are the racists gonna justify this? Black people getting killed shouldn’t ever be some commonplace occurrence we should just have to accept. This is an epidemic. This can’t be the world we live in.
Cops would kill black people for buying (allegedly stealing) cigarettes, wearing a hood, jaywalking, being in a library, playing with a toy, sleeping, the list goes on and on.
It’s as if white people just want black people to stop existing.
I knew there was evil in the world, but I would’ve never imagined anything like this explosion of racism since August 9th could ever be possible again. And the sheer fact that white people are not only ignoring and disregarding this genocide, but they’d even go to great lengths to justify it.
How does it feel, looking for reasons to justify murder? Aiyana Jones was only seven. Tamir Rice, only twelve.
Racism is far from over. Kevin Allen, along with the thousands of innocent black people killed in less than one year, never deserved to be forgotten.
if anybody asks me why i hate men, i’m just gonna redirect them to this post.
it’s pretty fucking obvious that men only want to invest in breast cancer research to further degrade, objectify, and jerk off to body parts they already feel 100% entitled to. that’s what is at stake for them.
what about the women whose “tatas” weren’t saved? how must they feel being surrounded by awareness ads that focus more on keeping women’s sexy-sexy-titties-to-continue-titillating-the-males than saving real life human beings and helping survivors?
If anyone’s wondering, those posts came from here. It’s a forum for breast cancer support. Give it a read, and you’ll see how many women are outright abandoned by their husbands, sometimes after being married for decades, because their “tatas” couldn’t be saved.
This culture of “save the tatas” even goes as far as the doctor’s offices themselves. Most doctors request that the husband be present during surgical consultations, as though he has an equal say in the patient-professional discussion.
If the woman is single, as was my case, doctors have actually recommended postponing surgery until she finds a relationship, because “it could be nearly impossible to find someone who accepts it [your unnatural tatas] in years to come”.
I’m 15 months post-mastectomy, and the date I had this past week was the first time since then that a guy hadn’t reacted negatively to my scars. The relief was so overwhelming that I was fighting back tears. When I told him —essentially warning him that my body wasn’t what he must be expecting — I felt so guilty; it seemed to have the same weight and shame as telling someone I had some sort of an incurable STI or a felony record.
I shouldn’t have felt that way. I should not be ashamed of choosing to live.
This is how an autistic 11-year-old is treated in a police state.
this is why we needed people to participate in autistic visibility day, it is not a little white boy condition, this is how we treat autistic black boys when they have a meltdown after being yelled at
