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From the Earliest Days of the Sexual Revolution
This report of Harvard’s ongoing madness was recently posted at The College Fix:
Harvard recently launched a program to provide free menstrual products—pads and tampons—to women on campus. This in itself is actually a decent idea; it is nice for a university to provide essential goods for its students, and it is encouraging that the historical taboo surrounding menstruation is slowly but surely ebbing away: There’s no need to be scared of it.
Times being what they are, though, this couldn’t just be a useful and thoughtful program for Harvard women. In fact, the products aren’t necessarily intended for women at all: They’re intended for “menstruators.” This is a politically correct term that has been gaining popularity in recent years; activists use it to avoid referring to “women,” out of the belief that, as the saying roughly goes, “not all women menstruate and not all who menstruate are women.” Gender theory, which is as incoherent as it is relentless, has declared that some “men,” i.e. women who think they are men, menstruate; and moreover that some “women,” i.e. men who believe they are women, don’t. To that end, as The Harvard Crimson reported, the new dispensers “are mostly located in gender-neutral restrooms in order to reach students who may not be comfortable in a women’s bathroom.”
Unexpected news from another university’s tampon giveaway:
University blows through entire run of ‘free’ tampons in first two weeks of semester program
An assistant editor at a publication called The College Fix probably isn’t going to be old enough (or to have been in the right place at the right time even if he had been) to remember that in the late 1960s the University of California at Berkeley’s pioneering Conception Control clinic offered instructions on how to put a condom onto a “person’s” penis.
Or to know that a waggish and even then very un-PC Catholic doctor’s response was to suggest that a sign be posted at the clinic reading
As a humor writer, I wish to protest that these people are making parody impossible.
Pity the poor historians who will have to write about it and get readers to believe what the historians are writing is factual.
No kidding
As it’s becoming increasingly clear, intellectual achievement (i.e., good at reading and taking tests) and common sense sometimes don’t match.
Most intellectuals voted for Mrs. Clinton. Need I say more?
As someone who self-identifies as a 6’5″ 26-year old cis-hetero male with rippling muscles and insists on the pronoun ‘his hunkitude’, I have enough issues getting acceptance for my own identity without worrying about dudes who think they need tampons or chicks who think they don’t.
Do you not understand how expensive it is to go to Harvard? Or any of the Ivy League schools? Or even the local state university system?
By the time you pay for tuition, dorms and cafeteria expenses, and for books, what woman would have money for anything else?
Even 25 years ago, young adults attending university were economically challenged.
My father never got to college due to the Great Depression wiping out his great aunt’s fortune.
But in 1993, he decided to accompany my son during the weekend billed as “Parent’s Intro to Northwestern University” in Evanston Illinois.
I thought he’d be thrilled and waited eagerly here in California for him to call and tell me how pleasant a time he had. Surely he’d comment on the gorgeous modern buildings, the serene parks of tall maples and pines, the vibrancy of the newly arriving students.
His only comment was “The kids at that place are so broke they have safety pins holding their clothes together. And most of them can only afford ripped jeans!”
I call racism on that!
Tamponds, pads, make excellent improvised bandages for gunshot wounds. And what community suffers the most from gunshot wounds? That’s right; minorities.
Q.E.D.
I have a question that should probably be its own post to discuss. We have a two party system and those parties are always evolving. Is it possible we are evolving towards two parties that align with stereotypical women and men? That is, will the Democratic platform continue to take on female priorities (financial security, equality of outcome, international cooperation, free tampons, abortion, “nurturing”,…) while the GOP platform takes on male priorities (risk/reward, guns, rule of law, nationalism,…). Trump’s numbers are hugely skewed by gender already (he’s -35% for approve/disapprove by women). I don’t think a complete gender split is possible, but is it possible to go from the current 20 point spread to 30? to 40?? Or is this just transient TDS?
There is an optimistic assumption implicit in your comment, my aquatic friend — that future historians and their audiences will find such nonsense exceptional, rather than mundane.
As a fellow optimist, I too hope that common sense prevails. I think the jury is out.
Back when I still found Stephen Colbert funny, he had a skit where he was reading news articles from our future year 2038. The funniest article began with “In today’s news, President Honey Boo Boo signed off on legislation that…”
By the time the jury returns to their seats, Idiocracy may already have become the law of the land.
Shouldn’t they be called womenstrual products? Or perhaps womynstrual?
This has been a problem for historians since Herodotus’ book tour. Humans are good at sorting it out. When Gregory of Tours tells you about Queen Fredegund it’s fairly clear that you’re not learning facts but the essential elements of a medieval hatchet job. Which any historian will tell you is damned useful information. No, it’s the alien historians I pity. They’ll never get it.
In a science fiction short story I read years ago there was a lovely scene of archeologists of the future conducting an excavation on a long abandoned Earth. They found, intact, a glass object which was quite prevalent in most digs and therefore of great cultural significance. They were agreeing that the proper pronunciation of the characters found on it was Ko-Ko-Ko, except that some guy, the “labial surd chap” was holding out for something else.
Looks like a business opportunity.
A “menstruator” rounds up all the feminine products he can grab then ships them down to Venezuela, I hear they are having various shortages there for some reason. Then just sell them all on the black market. Your only cost is distribution so once you have the logistics figured out this is free money just waiting to be picked up.
As referred to earlier, they can work for gushing wounds also, perhaps blood control/containment products. It seems like if the government is involved it should be multi worded to obscure the real intent. Like neutralize someone is to kill them.