On Calumny, Tampons, And A Moral Panic

A stack of pads and tampons — image via Pixabay

There’s certainly been a lot of talk about tampons lately.

I mentioned yesterday that Democratic governor and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is being called “Tampon Tim” by Republicans, to mock him for making sure that girls in Minnesota high schools had menstrual products free of charge. That is a very odd thing to tease somebody about, but Republicans can’t get it out of their heads. They keep on insisting that Walz is somehow corrupting little boys by making them share bathrooms with tampons, as if tampons are something to be ashamed of.

I thought the Republicans would be done with this talking point in twelve hours or less, but they were still at it last night. Yesterday evening on X/Twitter, former Trump advisor Stephen Miller called Walz “the assistant football coach who gives tampons to underage boys.” Again, as if tampons are scandalous.

Miller is actively rooting for a rapist to become president, but never mind that for a moment.

It’s important to note that Walz’s legislation does NOT actually mandate that tampons be placed in boys’ bathrooms at school, only that they be available to students. Some schools have them available in the office and some put them in girls’ and unisex bathrooms. Unisex bathrooms have always been a thing and have nothing to do with some insidious plot to (gasp!) accommodate transgender people. The unisex bathroom is most often also the wheelchair access bathroom; it’s designated unisex so a caregiver of either gender can go in with the disabled person and help them if need be. Unisex bathrooms in schools are a good thing, because disabled children go to school. It’s good to keep tampons in there because some disabled girls menstruate. But that’s not really important right now.

Why is a grown man freaking out about “underage boys” seeing a tampon?

It’s only a tampon. It’s not a marital aid. It’s not a contraceptive. A tampon is a cylinder of cotton or a cottonlike material, with a string on one end. Often there’s a plastic applicator on the outside. It’s covered in a wrapper to keep it clean. There’s nothing scandalous about a tampon. It’s a hygiene product like a Kleenex.

Besides flushing it down the toilet to make a mess, what kind of mischief could an “underage boy” get into with a tampon? It doesn’t make a good pop gun. It doesn’t burn for very long if you light it on fire. It doesn’t have enough material inside to unfold and teepee somebody’s house. It’s as innocuous as a thing can be.

Yes, adolescent boys have a reputation for prurience, but no boy would be sexually aroused by a tampon in a bathroom who wouldn’t also be aroused by the soap dispenser and the paper towels. This isn’t the tampon’s fault. Hygiene products are in bathrooms. Teenage boys will have to cope with that.

For sensible people, a tampon should be no more shocking than a roll of toilet paper, because toilet paper and tampons do the same thing: they keep you tidy down there even though you’re a human being and therefore occasionally emit fluids. The only difference between a tampon and toilet paper, is that tampons are only used to absorb fluids in the 50% of the human race who have vaginas as well as urethras. Does that make them dirty and gross? Why?

Speaking of people who have vaginas, Megyn Kelley was also ranting about tampons as well last night. She tweeted a photo of the talented gold medalist boxer Imane Khelif, with the following rant:

Don’t you see? Don’t you see what this insanity is doing to women?? WHY DO GIRLS HAVE TO SHARE THEIR BATHROOMS W/BOYS? THEIR LOCKER ROOMS? THEIR SPORTS? THEIR PRISONS? WHY DO 4th GRADE BOYS HAVE TO SHARE THEIRS W/GIRLS (& THEIR TAMPONS) IN MN? NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL, SAFE OR FAIR

Yes, she trailed off at the end without a punctuation mark. I imagine her passing out with her Jack Daniels just then, but that’s not the point. Imane Khelif is a woman.

As we covered last week, there was a conspiracy theory that started circulating on social media that she was a transgender woman, or even just a man in disguise, but that is not the case. There are photos of her as a little girl in Algeria where gender transition is illegal. She is a plain old, all-original-parts-out-of-the-box, biological, cisgender, whatever you want to call it woman. The International Olympic Committee, who does not allow transgender women to compete as women and is very persnickety about this, examined her and found her to be a woman. She’s a woman.

There was an unsubstantiated allegation by exactly one corrupt and unreliable source, that Khelif may be an XY woman,, and those do exist. There is a rare genetic anomaly where occasionally, a woman is born with XY chromosomes instead of the usual XX. Such a woman will have labia and a vagina; they will grow up as a girl and perhaps not know there’s anything odd about them until the usual age for puberty. At puberty, they will NOT somehow turn into a man, but will fail to get their period or develop breasts. An XY woman doesn’t have normal ovaries but undeveloped “streak gonads” which sometimes have testicle tissue, or sometimes undeveloped testicles where the ovaries would normally be, but they certainly can’t ejaculate sperm or father a baby. They can’t produce eggs either, but given hormone therapy, they can have menstrual cycles, and given a donor egg they can sometimes get pregnant and carry the baby to term. It is not known whether XY women have a biological advantage at sports; they’re often assumed to, but there’s controversy about that. But XY women are not men. And remember, the only people saying that Khelif is XY have not been able to keep their story straight this whole time. The IOC, which is not at all some woke agenda queer-friendly organization, cleared Khelif to compete. She’s almost certainly not XY at all, and she’s definitely not transgender. We have known this for certain for several days now.

I hope that Megyn Kelley gets sued for everything she’s worth. She is deliberately spreading libel against her fellow woman– libel that, if it’s believed, could get her in legal trouble in her home country. It’s disgusting. As a Catholic, Megyn ought to know that calumny is a grave sin.

But again, what’s all this about tampons? Why is she ranting about a boy being near a tampon in the bathroom? How is she connecting this to a conspiracy theory about a female boxer?

Does a tampon take over a boy’s brain and make him grow up to impersonate a woman, and fabricate a history of photos of himself as a little girl, in order to fraudulently win a women’s gold medal?

Can you imagine being this terrified of a perfectly normal thing like menstruation?

Can you imagine being so terrified of a woman who can do well at sports and punch very hard, that you’d take part in an online mob spreading vicious rumors?

Can you imagine having such a deranged mind that you’d mash up the two manufactured controversies as if they’re all a conspiracy?

I can’t imagine anyone as terrified of women as the current crop of Republican talking heads. Even the female Republican pundits like Megyn hate women with all of their souls. Women’s menstruation is so dangerous to them that a boy could catch it like a disease by being in the proximity of a tampon. Women aren’t allowed to be too good at sports or they must necessarily be men. Every woman should be examined and held up to scrutiny just in case they have a genetic disorder. Women suspected of having a genetic disorder should be harassed and subjected to a moral panic, because genetic disorders are dirty like periods. Women who are on their period can’t possibly be accommodated with hygiene products at school, for fear a boy would take offense. It’s the most appalling misogyny.

As a woman, I want nothing to do with it.

Let’s all try to make it a more just world.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.