Ireland and “boys who menstruate”

The Irish Labour Party has decided to “help boys deal with the costs of menstruation.” The underlying logic is that menstruation is a gender-neutral experience.

Labour Senator Rebecca Moynihan, the author of the bill in question, explains through a series of tweets how some girls perceive themselves as transgender during childhood and therefore end up declaring themselves male. But since they still have an undeniably and unavoidably female body, the time will come when they will start menstruating, as is only natural. However, these females who “feel” male, the Senator explains, are “really” men—because they say they are. Hence, the idea that “some men get periods” has pretty much become official Irish Labour Party policy!

In short, it is no longer correct to say that “women menstruate” because that excludes “men” who menstruate. From now on, this will have to be corrected to “persons with periods.”

The calculation is as subtle as it is dishonest. Alleviating the poverty of women is an excellent goal in political terms. It would be pretty hard to argue with someone who wants to help a young woman buy tampons or sanitary napkins. In a decent, modern, Western country you certainly don’t want women to be ashamed of their physiology or worried about not being able to access basic sanitation. Basing everything on this, the Labour Party is advocating a wide and summarial social acceptance of transgenderism.

Of course, proclaiming to the country that some males get their periods, and therefore need help to pay for tampons, is hilarious on the hand. But it’s also serious: if the offensive succeeds, they will have achieved a big goal for progressivism. Still, in the very days in which the proposal was launched, a poll gave the Labour Party only 3% of the votes: an all-time low. Perhaps it coincides precisely with the consensus among the citizens regarding the proposal that we should help “men who menstruate.”