Tampons are a "Luxury"

Tuesday I strolled into Kroger to buy tampons. I bought a pack of 18 for nearly five dollars—and that was the cheapest box available. I couldn't help but ponder as to why something extremely necessary to uterus-owners was priced so highly. As a broke college student barely being able to afford mac and cheese, this was a significant purchase.

It's recommended to change a tampon out every four hours, therefore a uterus-owner uses six tampons in a day. A period generally lasts between four to seven days.  At the most, one goes through 42 tampons a period. That's a lot of cotton and plastic (or cardboard for the eco-friendly). 

Cristina Garcia, an assembly woman from California, also noticed this problem. Through an anger-fueled investigation, she noted that: "on average, according to Garcia's office, women in California pay about $7 per month for 40 years of tampons and sanitary napkins. Statewide, it adds up over $20 million annually in taxes." According to Garcia, these items are a necessity and should not be taxed, especially with women already dealing with being on the short-end of the wage gap.

The map below shows which states tax tampons/pads as "luxury items":

Garcia is attempting to pass an assembly bill to end the tax in the United States.

"Basically we are being taxed for being women. This is a step in the right direction to fix this gender injustice. Women have no choice but to buy these products, so the economic effect is only felt by woman, and women of color are particularly hard hit by this tax. You can't just ignore your period..." stated Garcia. 

Canada's feminine hygiene tax was lifted in the summer of 2015 and British women protested fall 2016. Hopefully America will soon follow suit.

Why is this topic relevant? Over half of the world's population has a period. We shouldn't have to spend more than we already do to simply exsist.

How does this relate to HIST420? This topic reminded me of condoms being available to only the affluent population when it was first produced. 

Criminalizing Sex Work - An Archaic American Policy with Better International Ways of Going About it

In 2015 Amnesty International shocked millions when they proclaimed that "Sex worker's rights are Human Rights," and other than a few other remarks published by news organizations, conversation about the decriminalization of sex work has diminished. However, with the state of the free world in jeopardy of being Trumped, Amnesty's statement must be brought back to the table for discussion. Much like those that have come out in support in protective legislature for sex workers have said, decriminalization of sex work should happen because: 1) criminalizing sex work creates barriers for protecting workers, 2) workers are being targeted by police, and 3) some countries have had positive results from decriminalizing and legalizing sex work. 

            Initially, the criminalization of sex work keeps workers from being protected and even negatively impacts their quality of life. Similar to what the US experienced in the 20’s with the VD pandemic that resulted from the condemnation of condoms, sex workers that are employed in areas that criminalize their work are in a weak bargaining position with their clients. Because sex work is illegal workers are unable to seek protection when they are confronted with tough situations. Because violence against sex workers is so prevalent, the threat of violence is often used to coerce unprotected and risky sexual behaviors; leading to such a disparity in cases of VD between women in and out of sex work. Vox reported in 2016 that generally only 5% of women not in sex work have Gonorrhea but women that are employed by sex work are more than four times more likely to contract it, with 23% of them being diagnosed.

            Next, because of their disadvantageous position in relation to the law, sex workers’ fates are often in the hands of the officers that handle their cases. Unfortunately, this means that they often are exploited while in the custody of police officers. Revolving Door: An Analysis of Street-Based Prostitution in New York City, found that 27% of those that participated in the study experienced violence at the hands of police. This study shows the experiences of sex workers only based in the US, a larger scaled report has yet to be conducted.

            Finally, there have been a few places that have tried legalizing/decriminalizing sex work. In 2003 New Zealand passed “The New Zealand Prostitution Reform Act” that completely decriminalized sex work. Though it had been in the process for nearly a deacde due to inhibitions by a few opposition groups. One of the biggest fears these groups had was that it would, “… lead to an explosion of brothels and of human trafficking”. However, after five years of the act being in effect those opponents published a statement:

“The sex industry has not increased in size, and many of the social evils predicted by some who opposed the decriminalisation of the sex industry have not been experienced. On the whole, the PRA has been effective in achieving its purpose, and the Committee is confident that the vast majority of people involved in the sex industry are better off under the PRA than they were previously.”

Clearly, those in favor of the act found these statements as evidence of a success. Furthermore, a similar instance happened in the US, but under different circumstances. Vox published an article in 2014 detailing the event. “In 2003, Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution.” You read that right. Apparently, in 1980 the state was amending a law that they believed made some sex between consenting adults illegal. However, that wasn’t the case and they unknowingly legalized prostitution indoors. What’s more is that this went unnoticed until 2003. In this time both STDs and cases of sexual assault decreased by nearly 30%. Despite this, though, the state preceded to close the loophole in 2009.

            Not only is there a theoretical basis for decriminalizing sex work, there is empirical evidence that shows positive results from decriminalizing sex work. Unfortunately, as I previously mentioned, the current political regime that we are under may keep us from giving these people the rights that they have been denied for some time, now we can prepare for the day that that goal is finally achieved.

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5898187/prostitution-rhode-island-decriminalized

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/18/9166669/why-legalize-prostitution

https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/fraser-crichton/decriminalising-sex-work-in-new-zealand-its-history-and-impact

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/186320#ref-jco05090-6

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/05/amnesty-international-publishes-policy-and-research-on-protection-of-sex-workers-rights/

Pornography in the Media

With the growing amount of pornography shown in the media the idea that we as a society seem to be becoming more accepting of this. Even last night I was watching HGTV, which is portrayed like a family friendly channel, and there was a Volkswagen commercial that insinuated a couple having sex in their Volkswagen car, having a child, and then upgrading to the next biggest car that Volkswagen has to offer. The were ultimately advertising their new edition of one of their largest vehicles, but used sex and the growth of a family to do so. We also see this in other commercials such as the Hardees, where women, wearing next to nothing advertise hamburgers, French fries, and sausage links in provocative ways. We see more and more television shows having sex scenes such as Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and Orange is the New Black and movies such as Magic Mike, Fifty Shades of Grey, Friends with Benefits, and No Strings Attached reaching top charts all over the nation. Sex, although we have learned throughout our class has never been fully suppressed, but at the very least with the Comstock Acts and the opinion of people such as him, even the talk around birth control and women's bodies was considered obscene and banned from public access. Now there are not only birth control, tampons, and other feminine products advertised and publicized, but sex itself is advertised and flaunted throughout the media in general. Even though this seems progressive for our society, we still have regressions such as women's "secret gardens" and sex education is still suppressed throughout our society. Therefore, even though we the use of pornography and other items related to sex and sexual anatomy, our society may not be as progressive as thought, including the sexism and discrimination against other sexualities that is also present throughout our society.

No Homo!: Is Moonlight Gay?

A friend of mine recently tried to convince me that the 2017 Oscars Best Picture Moonlight was not about the main character, Chiron, being a gay man. He argued that they had played the gay scenes heavy-handedly, and when I asked what the movie was instead about, he seemed to cop-out by saying it was about Chiron exploring several different parts of herself. To be clear, I fully agree that the movie was multi-faceted; I simply believe that the greatest intersection explored throughout the movie (almost certainly capturing the most screen-time) was between Chiron’s being a black man and a gay man. Of course, if you’ve seen the movie for yourself, you probably have your own opinion of what the movie is about. I just find it difficult to argue that Moonlight is not a movie you will find under the LGBT category of Netflix in a month or two (especially when "is moonlight gay" is the 3rd Google autocomplete option when you start typing it out).

In contrast, Tucker Carlson of Fox News recently decried Moonlight’s Oscar win for being too “politically correct,” and implied that only Hollywood could love a film like that. In Tucker’s view, the film was too gay (and likely also too black) to have fairly won an Oscar, whereas in my friend’s opinion, the gay themes of the movie weren’t strong enough to make it a gay movie. These seem like opposing viewpoints, and in some ways they are, because I don’t consider my friend to be a socially conservative person. However, it’s important to note that both of these views work toward the same end. One of the central takeaways from both arguments is that there is need to suppress the gayness of Moonlight as it contributed to its winning an award; my friend’s argument marks the gayness of the 2017 Best Picture as forgettable, and not relevant to the film’s winning such a high-profile award; Tucker forcefully suppresses the movie’s “politically correct” aspects by condemning their merit to take home the gold.

In theory, it could be difficult to see Moonlight as quintessentially gay when compared to a movie like Brokeback Mountain, which was nominated for best picture in 2006. It was more sexually explicit than Moonlight, and didn’t deal with many intersections of oppression considering that the main characters were white. One could say that each of these movies portrays, and furthermore serves, a different gay experience. Perhaps the intersectionality of Moonlight compromises between the two experiences of being black and gay, making it difficult for some audiences to take the two in tandem, as I believe they were meant to.

Moonlight’s victory at the Oscars was certainly a triumph for every gay in America, but our society still has a lot to work on in terms of embracing, in this case, homosexuality, and more broadly, queer sexuality. Neither Brokeback Mountain nor Moonlight are universal gay films; as it stands, any sufficiently mainstream gay movie is exclusionary in some way. This is not to mention that lesbian films have yet to achieve the same success as gay movies, along with films centering their themes on being bisexual and trans. In my mind, despite the success of Moonlight, which absolutely deserves celebration, many aspects of the reception of the movie prove that there is still squeamishness and misunderstanding among moviegoers and LGBT movie subjects.