Feminist Demands

I was scanning the headlines on one of the alternative news sources I read when I came across this one:

Feminist Demands Free Tampons for All
The article with a link to the original column can be found Here.

And all I could think of was that we have finally reached the ultimate in expectations of government taking care of us from cradle to grave.  The argument was that women need these products for several days each month over the course of approximately 30 - 40 years.  Many poverty level women can't afford to buy tampons.  Some are selling their food stamps in order to get the money to purchase these items.  So naturally it follows that the government needs to supply women with tampons because they are a necessity.

And with that, I shut off my computer and went for a long walk down by the river.  It was either that or sit there and wait for my head to explode.

As I walked I thought about this new bit of stupidity.  I wonder what this columnist thinks women through the ages have done about dealing with this natural female cycle.  I mean long before the invention of feminine hygiene products.  Nowhere else have I seen that any woman ever in recorded history expected someone else to provide for these needs.  I expect that if anyone believes that taxpayers should pay for tampons, there is a whole list of other necessities those same people will believe should be free to them.  Perhaps each person should be given a lifetime supply of toilet paper.  Or food.  Everyone needs food to survive.  Oh, wait.  Government already has food covered for millions.  How about coffee.  I consider coffee a necessity, so shouldn't it be free?  Or as one of the people who left comments about this article said, "I'll take my free beer now."

Oh how my sweet little Grandmother would have scoffed at the notion of the government providing anything.  She and her daughters used clean strips of cloth that they washed and reused each month, as did most women of her era.  Her outhouse held the previous years Sears & Roebuck catalog.  If she wanted coffee, she sold eggs from the chickens she kept and butter she made from the cream that came from the few cows they milked, and she bought coffee.  She and her sons raised a couple of pigs each year and a steer for meat.  She butchered some of her chickens every fall and hatched out more each spring.  She raised vegetables in her garden.  The surrounding woods provided blueberries and wild raspberries and strawberries.

The government should provide tampons?  I don't think so.  And those who do could stand to learn a thing or two about taking care of your own self from Grandma.