5 Reasons Demanding Free Menstrual Products At College Is A Bad Idea

In October 2017, student government Parliamentarian Katie Hicken indicated that she wanted to start a new student organization, a chapter of PERIOD, Inc, to advocate for UT Tyler to provide for free menstrual products in female bathrooms throughout campus. Hicken, a student athlete and active participant in student government, would make a excellent leader for this chapter due to her leadership experience and administrative skill.

Yet, PERIOD is a radical egalitarian outfit that demands universities pay-up for feminine products in the name of breaking "financial misogyny." Consequently, it asserts that access to feminine products is a human right.

Regardless of Hicken's capable leadership, here are five reasons why I think demanding that the University paying for free menstrual products is a bad idea.

1. Poor quality products. Although menstrual products costs between $7 and $15 per month, purchases for a student body with over 50 percent women could significantly strain the University’s budget. As a result, administrators will likely choose volume over quality, resulting in poor quality products for women rather than products of commensurate quality to those purchase on their own.

2. Students will still pay for menstrual products, only this time indirectly rather than directly. PERIOD touts university intervention as a means to help the poor. However, when the cost of providing the tampons goes up, so does the need for revenue in the form of higher tuition prices. Only this time, students go without the option to choose their acceptable price range as they did when they bought from the marketplace.

3. Demands for entitlements undermine the belief that women are resourceful, independent and able to bear the responsibility for themselves. It is one thing for a university to provide hygiene products as a courtesy to students. It is another thing to brow-beat administration into providing tampons and other products under the false claim that unless the University does so, women cannot survive college. This wrongly assumes that women are categorically incapable of providing for themselves. This misrepresents every woman’s God-given dignity and potential.

4. Demands for sex-specific entitlements undermine the belief that women are co-equal with men. One way this occurs is by PERIOD or other advocacy chapters persuading a university to give disparate treatment between men and women. When this happens, the university forms a unique relationship with women in a way that is dissimilar to its relationship with men. Women get special products. Men do not. Women get hygiene products and possibly other care in the future. Men do not. Condoms are available to both men and women. As far as university policy, is concerned women would effectively become a special class.

Now, the point here is NOT that it somehow objectionable that women have periods. Rather, it is that some women, acting as self-appointed representatives of all women and who claim entitlement due to their period, assume that the disadvantage of having a period places them in a weaker outlook than the perceived advantages of being a man. Therefore due to this weaker position, they claim entitlement to university aid.

This is what I meant when I tweeted that, in this comparison, free menstrual products portray a woman as less independent than a man. I said that women derive this class status from a claim that the weaknesses of having a period warrant their right to university intervention in order to sustain their well-being. This arrangement, by definition, is a state of dependence.

Toilet paper has a universality to it: both men and women receive it. Menstrual products make a women into a special case, denoting they're on an inferior level than men due to dependence. Universality leads to seeing men and women as equals. Special cases, unequals. #PeriodUTT

— James Hescock (@JHescock) January 26, 2018

I can understand from the tweet's text why some people claimed I was saying women are naturally inferior to men. Yet, instead I meant so only in this hypothetical arrangement, that there is an inferiority in comparative position that derives from these women's claim that a university's non-intervention positively inhibits--indeed, injures!--their ability to operate autonomously and successfully while in college.

In truth, women are just as capable of being responsible for themselves as men are and these entitlements predicated on the assumption that they are not capable, undermine the belief that women are co-equals with men.

5. Success encourages more class warfare. Rather than seeing the student body as a collection of adults who equally share in the University's opportunities, this policy that affords special benefits to specific sexes (in this case, women, if we still assume women are a class) encourages other classes or affiliate groups to form and lobby for access to the university's power on the basis of "rights." .

Such rights may be, for example, the right for men to receive more food at lunchtime since men are larger in size compared to women, or the right for a student of a certain race to obtain special equipment, etc. Once the game becomes special treats for special classes, any enterprising individual could claim special status in order to cash in on the University’s treasury. This leads to one student body splitting into a not unified classes and encourages class warfare at a university.

Overall, it is not the pursuit of easy access to menstrual care with which I disagree nor the effort to provide free products to women. I support these efforts and hope that many women can benefit from them. However, it is the notion that the University injures a woman if it does not provide free menstrual products that it purchases that I reject. I hope that students find many ways to come up with the money and provide solutions through voluntary action, but I hope that none of the students’ efforts are successful when they try to coerce money out of the school.

Twitter: @Jhescock

Image: Flickr