As any woman knows far too well, getting your period is not a choice. But pads and tampons are, more often than not, taxed as a luxury item.
You may have seen a photo of Charlie Edge floating around Facebook lately, rockin' her Doc Martens, white pants and an unmistakeable red stain.
From where she stands, "tampon tax" is an issue of sexism and classism. Research has shown that women (not both men and women, that's the sexist part) spend about $28,000 on period-related products over the course of their lifetime. Most governments (consisting of mainly men) have decided that this is money spent "by choice."
But as Edge demonstrated, the choice to not use tampons and other products isn't exactly a socially-accepted option. Plus, at $8 a box, buying tampons gets real expensive, real quick. There's the classism.
Here's her point, found on her Facebook post:
"They [periods] can cause you so much pain that you physically can’t move from the foetal [sic] position on the floor. They can make your head hurt, your stomach hurt, make you throw up, mess up your bowels… They make you feel consistently uncomfortable for a week. And if you aren’t lucky enough to be 100% regular, they can surprise you at the worst of times and you end up looking like me, but not as part of a protest, but in the middle of a restaurant or class or supermarket.
They are gross.
And tampons and pads are a necessity.
As you can see from my post, most people really don’t like seeing period blood.
So they SHOULD NOT be classified as a luxury item.
We oppose the tax. This is why."
And what about here in the United States?
Only five states (Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Jersey) have chosen not to tax feminine hygiene products. Yikes.
Ladies, what do we think?