“Don’t Be Afraid” – Public Domain
How’s that for a title? I’m guessing we just lost several men right there. That’s okay, for those of you still here—let’s discuss this incredibly disgusting obsession that men of the reactionary right seem to have in regard to the very normal and what should be mundane, workings and plumbing of the female body.
We’ve come to a point where references to periods are evidently to be used against the Democratic VP candidate, Tim Walz (Tampon Tim if you aren’t aware of the latest Trump campaign puerile nickname). Evidently in this nation, full of individuals barely keeping their head above water, paying egregious rents to simply survive, people working full-time who can’t even afford a one-bedroom apartment…..the far right thinks an important matter is—free tampons for high school students in all bathrooms. Of course, they think this is a significant touch point, it involves the female body (ew gross), something “free” for all, and perhaps the availability of the tampons in all bathrooms– so the accompanying trans-panic is the three-fer with this non-issue.
Let’s look at this foul affliction, the need to try to put down this candidate, who if judged on this one little fact, looks pretty freaking good to me (again, just this topic, not speaking to any other wildly pressing issues in our world). First, the wholesale obsession with demonizing and pathologizing the very average and boring (sometimes kinda painful) sloughing off of the uterine lining that occurs for women monthly is no fucking big deal. We don’t obsess about men’s bowel movements, about well….anything to do with men’s bodies, really. This seems to be an affliction man of the right wing have in regard to women’s bodies. In fact, as so eloquently put in the book Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon, women’s bodies have been treated as a bit of an aberration, the male body has been the one deemed the human “baseline”–studies over time have focused almost exclusively on men, to the point that women, with differing symptoms from serious illnesses like heart attacks, have been under-treated to the point of being more likely to die upon presentation to Emergency Rooms simply because they don’t exhibit “male-typical” symptoms. The misogyny does in fact kill.
The female body has been ignored in scientific studies, but not ignored by the right-wingers–no…… it has been quite the topic to demonize. The very fact that there would be any controversy in regard to providing free menstrual items for teens is incredible. Have you ever heard a woman rail about the fiscal insanity of providing free toilet paper for some big fat dude’s shit? I haven’t either. But it’s all just normal, routine bodily functions, but for some reason, women have to pay for their bodies, and hoo boy do we pay.
The right-wing loves to indicate how foul these normal processes are, think Donald Trump and Meghan Kelly and the “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”. So many things to attack Meghan Kelly on (like how about being a Grade A Jackass) but Trump went with what to him is an ick factor for a totally normal bodily function. This is the same energy we are getting in regard to calling Tim Walz “Tampon Tim”.
Of course, the absolute nonsense of giving a shit if there are free tampons in the “boy’s room” is also part of this. I don’t freak out if there are condoms in a women’s bathroom. I don’t fall into a panic as I search for a penis to put one on. As a matter of fact, I say condoms should be everywhere! Like Werther’s Originals on a nursing home coffee table, just put them all over the place, and put in some tampons and pads as well and call it good. It should be no more exciting than a tissue box sitting here and there. The men pushing these narratives that any of it is shameful or a necessary tax for being a woman can take that nonsense and give themselves a prostate exam with it. I’m completely sick of how the female body has been commodified, regulated and viewed with disgust. Women are to be breeding machines, but wow, we don’t want to know how the sausage is made. We just want to strut around with our sausages and decide you’re gross for being a woman– but yeah, we would still like to fuck you. Just shut up and reproduce so you’ll have some worth—and while you’re at it be white, please and thank you. This seems to be the worldview coming in from the far right (obviously not including the men who treat women as they do each other, humans worthy of respect–you guys know I wholeheartedly am not including you in this). The fact that there is so much prurient interest in the inner goings-on of the female body by the Trumpian right is completely abhorrent and it needs to be called out for what it is—absolutely disgusting, and frankly quite unseemly.
Those who share photos on Twitter of deli sandwiches, one with floppy sandwich meat splaying out of the bun (meant to represent of all people’s labia, Taylor Swift’s), one assumes because she is a favorite incel topic due to being wealthy and likely to write a song about you after dating– and a sandwich that is well behaved with tidy deli meat packed tightly in the bun—that one is to represent a chaste lady– well that’s nothing short of filthy. I guess the meme is to show the imaginary and horrifying effect of having sex with more than one person, not just your duly church-assigned breeding partner. If any of you have been on Twitter (yes, I still call it Twitter because as one user said “I was at home on January 6th”) you know the deranged meme I’m talking about. I don’t think women are sharing images of shredded and crumbling donuts compared with tidy little glazed numbers saying, hey boys, fuck around a lot and this is what your prostate will look like and no self respecting woman will want to wed you, impressive dowry or not. No, you don’t see this because……. well, it’s goddamn insane. Leave half the population alone and worry about your own body, you degenerates.
I think back to also disgusting notions that breast feeding is somehow sexual and the freaking out that occurs when, god forbid a breast shows itself in a baby’s mouth rather than in a porno as God intended. The thing is, and I can speak from experience……there is not a damn thing sexual about breastfeeding. There is massive relief, sorry to compare it to this—but when those things get full of milk and get a release, it’s much like the relief you feel when you have ingested a Big Gulp two hours prior and finally get to pee. And that’s the truth of it. It feels good in a thank god that pressure is gone sort of way. So men being weird (and again, their weirdo trad women allies) about the whole thing—get a grip on yourself and quit worrying about how babies need to eat.
And anyway, beyond tampons—-wow, that sounds like a really terrible and unsuccessful side hustle of Beyond Burgers, but again, beyond tampons……we have the interest in the female body due to the ability to make a whole new person. This ability seems to have given some men on the right (and many women too, for that matter) a deluded notion that somehow this implies communal ownership. These types go full on communal property Marxists when it comes to your uterus. These are the same people, mind you, that could give two shits about dead Palestinian babies, about shot up schools……it almost makes me think it’s truly about something besides “oh them poor little microscopic babies”. Yeah, it all comes together in the sickening obsession with controlling and diminishing half the population.
Weak men (and sad women who want to please them) let themselves become obsessed with women’s bodies. And I am including the fixation on trans women as well in this. Right wing freaks should mind their own fucking business, and yes, the tampons should be free. In my mind “Tampon Tim” is a name to be proud of, and on this topic, this guy has my support and appreciation for assisting half the population in keeping blood off of the chairs we all sit on. If you want to complain about this sort of thing, I’d suggest you forgo any free toilet paper in public stalls from now on. You know, it’s wrong, right?
The post Enough of the Creepy Obsession with Fertility, Menstruation, Labia and Boobs appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
