The Campus Conservative

(Source: Period. Inc. Facebook) Many people at UT-Tyler have hailed the recent push to supply feminine hygiene products in bathrooms throughout the university. They herald it as generous, bold and compassionate. Many people cannot see what could possibly be wrong with giving away an endless amount of free tampons to students. But here’s the thing: Just because what you are doing  feels good, does not mean what you are doing is good  in the long run. In the long run, all your service and all your giving, while it feels great to service and to give, might actually be doing the poor harm. As Michael Fairbanks of Harvard University put it, "Having a heart for the poor isn't hard, we all have that. But having a mind for the poor , that's the challenge.” (emphasis mine) If we care about the poor, then we have a responsibility to make sure our serving and our giving do not go beyond helping individuals overcome into making their situation harder . That is, each of u...

(Source: Flickr) In the so-called menstrual movement--which, in part, lobbies government and higher education to provide tampons to women at no cost--there is a lot of talk of how free tampons provide women dignity. On PERIOD, Inc.'s website , an organization that encourages universities to provide free tampons in bathrooms, a red button in the center of the page reads, "Click here to give dignity this holiday season." PERIOD's co-founder Nadya Okamoto spoke of her organization's mission for free tampons this way: “We help people with periods feel cared for and dignified simply by addressing this most basic need.” While in the menstrual movement there is a lot of talk about how free tampons give people dignity, in reality, distribution of free stuff like tampons can actually do more to harm a person's dignity than to help it. Here’s why. This is because human dignity does not come from a handout , but from having a sustainable way of living that l...

(Source: Flickr) Period, Inc. is a national non-profit motivated by the belief that menstrual hygiene is a basic right and has successfully lobbied numerous university administrations throughout the country through its local campus chapters to pay for and supply menstrual products in university bathrooms. UT-Tyler even has a chapter. However, despite all of its fanfare, its claim to menstrual hygiene provides the philosophical framework for legalized theft. Here is why. Menstrual hygiene is not a basic right because it takes other people’s products and services to realize menstrual hygiene. If you think about it, if the output of menstrual hygiene is your basic right, then by extension you have the right to acquire the inputs to realize this right. And you can’t have menstrual hygiene without medical products and services, without tampons and doctor’s examinations. Therefore, what you are really doing in claiming menstrual hygiene as your basic right is making a claim on ot...