Periods Are No Longer a Female Thing and That’s Where I Draw the Line

Sometimes I’m confronted with things that just strike a really subconscious & primal nerve that I can’t really defend or explain. The following is one of them.

Procter & Gamble’s Always brand period products will no longer feature the Venus symbol in its packaging. Why? Trans activists, that’s why.

The cave-in by P&G comes after Flora margarine stopped advertising on Mumsnet following accusations that the parenting website is transphobic, which also sparked a boycott as reported by The Mail on Sunday last week.

A trans activist using the pseudonym ‘Melly Boom’ had tweeted in July asking Always why it was ‘imperative’ to have the sign on their sanitary products.

The tweet said: ‘There are non-binary and trans folks who still need to use your products too you know!’

I think my severe annoyance, even anger, over this turn of events is twofold, with an honorable mention. I’ll start with that because it’s the shortest: It’s pathetic when companies scrape and bow to the whims and rage of professional whingers. And it was TWO Twitter accounts in this case! Just two! This is embarrassing for P&G.

As for the protesters themselves, I’m forced to return to my biggest complaint about the American leftist movement, probably because it’s present in EVERYTHING they do. And that is their overwhelming privilege of being American. Of all the problems you could get upset about, THIS is what you pick? What about women and girls who don’t have reliable access to period products? What about the negative environmental impact of disposable period products? What about the disproportionate rate of homelessness among LGBTQ+ individuals? NONE of that seems more important than raising a stink over Always’s labels? Think about how much must be going right in someone’s life for the decorative print on a sanitary pad to be the #1 worst part of their life.

Which kind of leads me to my third and final point– periods suck. I could buy a tampon with swastikas on the wrapper, and the worst part of my day would STILL be the fact that I needed a tampon. Look, I obviously can’t relate to body dysmorphia, but it just makes me so unreasonably angry when people “want” to have periods or get jealous of it. It’s a thing that female bodies do. If your body doesn’t, regardless of what you want it to be, you should be grateful that you dodged that bullet. If your body menstruates and you don’t want it to, well, congrats, you’re just like every other biological female.

Bottom line is, regardless of your identity, menstruation is a female biological process. Only female bodies menstruate. Whether you identify as a female is up to you, but the part of you that menstruates is female. Trying to change that fact is symptomatic of a really problematic trend; as feminist campaigner Julie Bindel explained to Daily Mail,

“Removing the female symbol from sanitary towel packaging is basically denying the existence of women. We’re now moving towards the total elimination of women’s biology. The women’s symbol has been used by feminists for decades. This is pure cowardice and virtue signalling from these big corporate brands who are capitulating to the trans agenda.”

Trans people matter. Their rights shouldn’t be (and, for the record, aren’t legally) infringed upon. But it’s not alright to demand the erasure of some for the inclusion of others.