https://crosscut.com/2019/02/wa-lawmakers-want-make-tampons-...

Chicago, a small handful of cities and ten states have already eliminated this unfair burden on top of the average $18,000 spent on feminine hygiene over a lifetime [2].

But the most tragically comical story I've found about this is what happened in Utah - the all-male panel rejected eliminating the tax, citing that they would need to recoup those tax funds from other sales, and that it was "unfair to tax the whole population for something that only affects half of it." The representative sponsoring the bill keeps trying every year, and every year the all-male committee continues to say No to her...

[1] https://accountingsolutionsltd.com/faqs/sales-tax-rate-chica... [2] https://www.sapling.com/3308/the-amount-youve-probably-spend...

They should go have a chat with their moms.

Toilet paper is an essential for both genders.

In the UK tampons and pads have VAT charged on them (as they count as a luxury); there is a campaign to remove this and it has been reduced to 5%, but it's still there (due to EU regulations I believe).

As a side point, in many parts of the world, toilet paper is not an essential; it's regarded as a dirty and unclean western practice.

In contrast, I can spend an order of magnitude less on razor blades, as a pack of Harry's blades end up being something like $2/each, and that's basically about a dollar or two a month (or less).

For menstruation, you can do free bleeding.

For defecation, you can use a bidet, or go old-style with corn cobs. You can use an odd number of stones, as specified by Muhammad.

The same goes for shampoo (don't need it), deodorant (don't need it), and many other things.

What this all boils down to is a fear of having other people think you are weird, defective, dirty, gross, etc.

In walked the bidet.

My partner introduced me to them, and when I saw how expensive they were I immediately wondered how much it would cost to 3D print moulds for them so that entrepreneurial Kenyans could mass produce them as a cottage industry. I only got as far as a first print of a positive before someone pointed me to (I think) an Alibaba listing where they cost 5¢ each if you bought 1,000 at a time. I can’t find them quite so cheap any more, but I have just found them at €0.18 each. Perhaps a “buy one for yourself, get a hundred more for Kenya” marketing strategy could help? I have no idea how to do that without the annoying and condescending out-of-touch white-male saviour stereotype though.

I’m a guy. I’ve met guys like that. I’ve been on the receiving end of such presumption from both men and women. Heck, my current landlord is like that. I don’t want to be a guy like that, especially not in the context of “shove this into a part of your anatomy that I don’t have myself”.

By being me. I have enough self awareness and pay enough attention to know my own efforts, as well-meant as they are, can easily end up like xkcd.com/793

And if it shouldn't be free then why don't men get an extra check for consuming extra calories? The question is to demonstrate how ridiculous the idea is. The levels that people go to in order to sympathize with women are quite high and seem to be for the purpose of giving men a sense that they should feel bad or sorry for the condition of being a woman when really, if you want equality, you treat women like you treat men. You assume they are strong and they can handle the problem. Yes $7 a box by 9 boxes a year is definitely extra cost of living. But are we really going to make this one thing free or tax free just because it only affects women? It's such an oversensitivity to women and it should be considered offensive to them that anybody even considers that kind of special treatment.

Now if there's a way to make money, suddenly it becomes an attractive subject for some, but the liberation of women with reusable products (menstrual cup, washable pads and period pants) will always come second to potential wealth increase with single-use solutions, especially for someone who does now experience the "problem" in the first place.

Worse than all that, the people in charge of pushing single-use products genuinely believe they are helping out women, when in reality we see cases of toxic shock syndrome due to chemicals in tampons, and the ecological impact of such single-use products.

My wife has been using reusable solutions for a few years now, the cup and period pants being the most liberating according to her.

More basically, men simply won't know or the importance won't cross their mind, even if they do kind of know.

I do my best to leave informative comments on HN with details men are unlikely to know, such as this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594977

I will add that the high cost of feminine hygiene products is a problem for a lot of poor American women. It isn't covered by Food Stamps. Homeless services have limited quantities of such things. Etc.

That being said, I'm on the fence about believing this is more than a question of habit vs an actual thing that will bug you. After all, the average US woman seems to be completely thrown about how you can use a tampon without an applicator. In Europe if you ask for them, most people won't even know what you mean and I don't see what their appeal is, but if that is what you grew up with....

(edit) Just to clarify, I also use a cup and it has upsides and downsides, but overall to me it is a net win.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: I see we've asked you many times not to post like this, and saying that we'd ban you if you did it again, so we have. If you'd like to be unbanned you can email [email protected].

Here’s one: since men are larger and headboard than women, we need more food just to stay alive! A few hundred extra calories a day over a lifetime, the cost must be substantial — almost certainly greater than the cost of tampons.

Life is unfair to all of us, both sexes.

Men also get pressured in other ways, but very rarely are they directly monetary/consumptive the way women are in my opinion.

You as a man can choose not to east as much as you need. You grow a bit less and need less food. A woman can't choose not to leave the house 5 days per month if she want's to keep a job. Yes, we can keep arguing over this but I though we were done with this already 50 years ago. I'm a bit surpriced to see it to be honest. We talked about this in school when I was 12, 30+ years ago. (Sweden)

Last year one county here started with free menstruation protection for 12-23 year olds [0] (swedish...) Apparently Scotland was first in the world 2017 [1]

[0] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/gratis-mensskydd...

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-fir...