#tampon tax

[personal-blog243]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chabeli Carranzana at The 19th:

For close to a decade, periods — yes, menstrual periods — had been one of those rare issues that could win legislative support in blue states and red ones.  Starting in about 2016, legislators from California to Alabama had been passing bills mandating that tampons and pads be readily available in public spaces — especially schools — after researchers found that students who don’t have access to these products miss days as a result. These students are facing what advocates call “period poverty,” meaning that they or their families can’t afford to buy menstrual supplies, which can cost upwards of $20 per cycle. It’s also an issue that particularly affects Black and Latinx people. 

For years, school nurses had been one of the only resources for students in need, many of them paying out-of-pocket for the products themselves. Legislators then successfully argued that schools should be providing those items. For a time, it was a winning strategy — an easy, bipartisan piece of legislation. Then something shifted. As anti-transgender rhetoric has picked up momentum in state chambers, period poverty bills have been caught in the crosshairs. Numerous states have passed legislation that bans trans and nonbinary students from using restrooms or playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The Republicans who support the anti-trans legislation say it’s needed to protect women and girls from “predators” who may pose as transgender women in restrooms.

Suddenly a topic just about everyone could agree on became a “liberal” policy, a threat to girls, a method of encouraging kids to be trans or nonbinary, or a way that Republican lawmakers could get “tricked” into supporting legislation that might mean a trans student could get a period product inside a boys’ bathroom.  Bathrooms somehow became a space that needed to be policed, said Rashanna Lee, the state policy analyst at the Equality Federation, an advocacy organization that works at the state level to protect LGBTQ+ rights. 

[...] The new scrutiny over which kids can use which bathrooms meant that legislators started reworking their bills to make them less gender-inclusive. Originally, much of the proposed legislation simply required the products to be available in  students’ bathrooms, an acknowledgment that some trans and nonbinary students have periods and need the products, too. But legislators, like those in Alabama in 2022, rewrote the bills to specify that “female students” be given products “through a female school counselor, female nurse, or female teacher.” Republican lawmakers in Minnesota tried and failed to change the language in the bill to only say “female restrooms.” Other states, like Idaho, were more explicit. When the Idaho state House took up the issue in March 2023, Rep. Rod Furniss, the Republican sponsor of the bill, specified that the products were to be only in “female or unisex” bathrooms and not “male” ones.  “We put in the language ‘not in boys’ restrooms’ because in Idaho, we believe there’s a difference between boys and girls,” he said in the House chambers during debate on the bill. “We believe that strongly.”  Furniss told the chamber that boys and girls have “two p’s — peeing and pooping” but he jokingly said he was “surprised” to learn in 2023 that girls also had a third p — periods.  “With the third p, the girls don’t have a muscle down there. It’s an emergency every time that happens,” Furniss said, adding that he “didn’t know much about this bill” that he’d sponsored, though he is the father of four girls.  However, “one thing I know,” he said, “is that boys and girls are different — one has two p’s, one has three p’s. In Idaho we believe they are different. We don’t let boys go in girls’ bathrooms, we don’t let girls go in boys’ bathrooms — we know they’re different. That’s an Idaho standard.”

[...] Still, the recent pushback created by growing anti-trans sentiment has made the conversation more complicated. That, too, is an issue of education, Strausfeld said. Period product access is an economic issue, and many legislators don’t understand the realities of trans and nonbinary people, who already experience higher rates of unemployment and poverty. Trans women, in particular, face one of the widest gender pay gaps of any group.

While some public women’s restrooms offer the products — oftentimes for a fee — men’s restrooms rarely do. It’s the same dynamic in homeless shelters: the products are typically available at women’s shelters, but not men’s. Trans and nonbinary people may also need menstrual products for other reasons, including following medical procedures such as a vaginoplasty. Public assistance programs that help people afford food and other necessities, like SNAP and WIC, the program for low-income women and children, do not allow participants to use the funds to purchase menstrual products.  As a result, Black and Brown trans and nonbinary students, who are at the intersection of racial and gender disparities, face period poverty most acutely, said Lee of the Equality Federation.

Up until the last couple of years ago, menstrual equity policies such as tampons and pads in school bathrooms were a bipartisan issue. Now, as a result of the anti-trans (and anti-LGBTQ+) hysteria-fueled campaign by Republicans, period products got turned into a partisan issue (see the “Tampon Tim” insult lobbed at Tim Walz).

[guilty-feminist]

[digitalisnarcissus]

Can we teach journalists some basic pattern recognition skills please, please, I am begging, please don't be the most gullible people on earth, you're so sexy aha.

[jackass-democrats]

A democrat has no free thought.

As always, never buy anything made in china. Don't ever trust a democrat and NEVER leave your child alone with one.

[jackassdemocrats]

Kamala Harris Tax Proposals

[sofieofbooktopia]

if people have been rolling joints for so long, surely we can roll our own tampons?

[cryptidjeepers]

Ita actually insane to me that the people that made up the boogeyman trans person in the bathroom are actually the predators. Theyre so obsessed with protecting bathrooms from the invisible meance that theyve now made bathrooms a dangerzone for both cis and trans people. Not to mention theyre the ones recording themselves in the bathroom? I genuinely think there must be sole kind of brain rot that makes these fuckers incapable of self reflection

[x-ladydisdain-x]

They hateee paying taxes to fund social services until it comes to the tax on menstruation products..

[singular-ghost-sound]

Did you know that a small pack of midol and a thing of 10 tampons is 20 fuCKING DOLLARS AG THE GAS STATION. WHAT IN A V TAX

get fucked

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ryan Adamczeski at The Advocate:

It isn't just women who need menstrual products, or who experience period poverty. While Republicans push legislation targeting transgender people, there's several policies they refuse to pass that could benefit all Americas regardless of gender. The states passing trans bathroom and sports bans are the same states that reject measures that would make menstrual products free and accessible to all. Here's everything you need to know about period poverty, and why free menstrual products are good for women, men, and nonbinary people alike.

What is period poverty?

Period poverty refers to one's inability to access menstruation, sanitation, and hygiene products due to cost or lack of resources. One in four students who menstruate in the United States have trouble accessing supplies, according to a survey from Alliance for Period Supplies, and over one in three (37 percent) adults who menstruate say they or their family have struggled to afford menstrual products.

Why are period products so expensive?

Period products are taxed differently in the United States than other medical or sanitation products. While Viagra, the erectile dysfunction pill, is classified as a tax-exempt health product in many states, period products are classified as luxury goods and are therefore taxed at the highest rate, which has been denounced by the United Nations. [...]

Why should period products be free?

One in three low-wage women will miss work, school, and other events due to lack of access to period products, according to APS. Over 44 percent of teens reported stress and embarrassment due to a lack of access to period products, and 25 percent of teens are unable to do schoolwork due to lack of access. However, after New York passed a law mandating free products for students, participating NYC schools saw a 2.5 percent increase in attendance. The government also already provides other free sanitation products in public bathrooms, such as toilet paper, paper towels, and soap.

Why should period products be in men's bathrooms?

Transgender men and nonbinary people also experience menstruation, as well as period poverty, which can be reduced by putting products in men's restrooms.

Despite the right-wing outrage about menstrual products in men’s restrooms, putting such products in men’s rooms is a net benefit.

[imatallelf]

women deserve free money from the government for their periods

its literally cruel and unusual punishment, its ILLEGAL

[barin-mclegg]

I've never heard the term tampon tax before, what does it mean?

A man can ask me out once the tampon tax is abolished and the wage gap closed. Until then, he don't got TIME to date, he better be on the line fighting for our rights.

[jackassdemocrats]

Hypocrisy From The Left About Pronouncing Kamala Harris' Name

[rknase]

successfully inserted a tampon for the first time in my life. i don't feel it at all. what the fuck.