Tag Archives: tampon tax

The Campus Witches in Turkey: “Menstrual Products Are Essential”

Turkish women protesting in pink witch hats with symbolic blood-stained cloth

Laurie and Debbie say:

Elmas Topcii, writing at DW, a German news site, brings us the story of the Campus Witches, a group of extremely brave women in Izmir, Turkey, who are focusing on a particular effect of the country’s extreme inflation: tampons and sanitary pads.

The Witches, who wear bright pink witch hats, have been demonstrating around issues that affect girls and women, primarily in university and college settings.

In recent months, they have particularly campaigned against the drastic rise of the cost of sanitary products and called for the 18% tax on such items to be abolished. They say that since menstruation is natural, sanitary products are not a luxury but essential.

Therefore, they think they should be provided for free by the state. In the meantime, they have stepped up initiatives such as solidarity boxes in women’s toilets and other public spaces where people can donate tampons and pads for those who cannot afford them.

To put this in context, sanitary products are subject to sales tax in vast swaths of the world. Leah Rodriguez wrote about this for Global Citizen last June. Her article is rich with horrifying statistics:

Period products are subject to a state sales tax in 30 of the 50 US states despite efforts to ban the tax country-wide.  

Across the European Union, most countries are not allowed to create zero-rated value-added taxes on period products and have a 5% minimum tampon tax. The tampon tax is as high as 20% in 10 member countries but it will be eliminated across the member states in 2022. However, some countries in the EU have managed to reduce or eliminate the tampon tax sooner.

According to Rodriguez, this is an international cause, and her article demonstrates that it is needed in much of the world. Nonetheless, demonstrating about the cost of menstruation in Turkey is different from doing the same thing in Germany or many parts of the United States. Tolcii’s article about the Turkish protestors says “For many of their compatriots, the subject of menstruation remains taboo.” Making taboo subjects public is risky, and takes substantial courage. Reclaiming the history of witches, who were persecuted in Europe, often for supporting women’s health and women’s needs, may well be one source of the bravery the Campus Witches show whenever they bring menstruation into the public eye.

Irmak Sarac, a gynecologist and honorary member of the Turkish Medical Association, told ANKA that conditions for female seasonal agricultural laborers was untenable. “We are hearing that women are taking leaves and putting clean earth on them to absorb their menstrual blood,” she said. She too was of the opinion that the state should provide sanitary products for free.

Rodriguez opens her article with this flat statement:

We cannot end extreme poverty if people who menstruate around the world, from Ethiopia to the United States, continue to lack access to sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, toilets, handwashing facilities, and/or, waste management.

The Campus Witches are part of a worldwide movement; their victory (if it happens) will have significant consequences both for individual Turkish people who menstruate and for the greater issue.

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It’s July! Let’s Have Some Links

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Debbie says:

In 1998 when Camryn Manheim was up for an Emmy, which she won. Designers lined up to make her dress, like they do (or did?) for Emmy nominees. Manheim, ever the fat activist, refused to take an offer from any designer who didn’t otherwise make plus-size clothes.

leslie-jones-768Leslie Jones, star of the upcoming Ghostbusters remake, complained on Twitter and found a designer, Christian Siriano, to make a gown for her. At least some of the fashion press thinks this is Jones’ fault. Kara Brown reports from Jezebel:

Pret-a-Reporter talked to Hollywood stylists who perfectly exemplified the stereotypes of the thin-obsessed, catty, narcissistic fashion industry.

 In addition to arguing that designers who have complete control over what sizes they make and still only produce the smallest sizes available do not have a size bias, stylist Jeanne Yang suggests that it would be a financial burden to create a new dress for a woman starring in what will likely be one of the biggest movies of the summer and who will soon be snapped thousands of times on the red carpet. …
It sucks that Jones had to complain on Twitter to get a nice dress to wear and that Christian Siriano was the only designer to step up, but hopefully he will do her right and she’ll show up on the carpet looking like a queen and making those fools wish they weren’t such brats.

All I can say is “Still? After all these years?”

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In the class of “how was this ever not true?” towards the end of June New York City passed a law providing tampons and pads to all women in public schools, shelters, and correctional facilities.  As Mattie Kahn said at Elle:

New York City is leading the crusade to free women from shelling out for a public health imperative. No one is forcing high schoolers to pay for toilet paper, dudes! 

“Tampon taxes” are going away, but seriously: how did anyone ever think that supplying menstrual products was not a necessary thing?

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Medium went to Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal to show us a biting overview of how female firsts are covered, from Amelia Earhart to Hillary Clinton. Hint:  the woman’s accomplishments are often not given any credit. Here’s just one of my favorites:

December, 1903, OSLO, Norway — “Ignoring voice vote, rigged Nobel Prize committee hands award to Marie Curie.”

Bee also cites reports about Billie Jean King, Sally Ride, and … Joan of Arc! Sadly not surprising, but well worth the two-minute read.

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I really liked B.A. Beasley’s essay at The Toast on genderqueer parenting:

You see, there’s no such thing as a parent. We only have mothers and fathers.

Here’s what I don’t mean: I don’t mean that women and men are hardwired to parent differently. I don’t even mean that the social construction of gender is so overpowering that overcoming motherhood or fatherhood is difficult for individual parents. I mean the social category of parent just doesn’t seem to exist.

I say this despite the fact that my social world is filled with people who are deeply invested in egalitarian parenthood. I personally know inspirations in the realm of splitting reproductive labor. They are not doing it wrong.

But all the good people in the world making all the right decisions about sharing, pitching in, and helping each other out can’t fix the fact that every form you complete, every book you read, every law you face, every policy you confront has two categories: mothers and fathers.

There’s a lot more: very thoughtful and some of it very personal. If the topic interests you, read the whole thing.

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Discussing a different aspect of families, social circles, and social expectations, Amalthea Aelwyn at Queen of the Chaos Circle wrote a long, detailed advice column for the families and friends of people with autoimmune diseases. Her piece has over twenty bullet points of things to think about and do: here’s just one that struck me.

  • She will already be her own worst critic. In her head, she will most likely be struggling to avoid chewing herself out regularly.   Nothing you can say will possibly be as harsh as she is on herself.  So she needs you to be especially careful of the things you say to her, and how you say them.  It’s okay to have your own feelings, and to express feelings, but you always have a choice in how you say something. There is a big difference between grumpily demanding “why do I have to stop eating wheat (candy or whatever else), just because you’re sick all the time!?” and saying “I wish there was a way to make you better, so we wouldn’t both have to skip candy and soda.” The first statement becomes an attack on a person who can’t help that she has this problem. The second statement is a way to express your frustration in a way that shows you care about her, and know that she misses those things too. It is even okay to be mad at her disease, but it’s not okay to take that mad out on her. Tell her that you are mad at her disease, too, if you want. But don’t yell at her for it. She can’t help it.

I have both family and several friends with autoimmune diseases. I found this a hard read, the kind I sometimes push against saying either, “That’s not fair to me!” or “But I already do that!” in my head, which usually means it’s things I need to hear. I’ll come back to it again and again when I need it.

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Finally, Casey Chan at Sploid features an adults-only video by SuperDeluxe that takes those of us who want to go there (not for everyone) through a sex-doll factory:

Being inside a sex doll factory and watching all that plastic nakedness get shaped is much more haunting than it is titillating. It gets unsettling, like if you were trapped inside a scene from a horror movie and couldn’t get out. But it’s also somewhat intriguing, just to see the mixture of products and body parts that they put together in a puzzle to shape a doll.

The queer parenting link is from zulu. Otherwise, links are from my regular reading, which includes Feministe, Shakesville, Sociological Images, Feministing, io9, and TakePart, along with other sources.