Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reportedly made good in the week leading up to Christmas on his May 2023 promise to install dispensers for feminine hygiene products in men’s bathrooms. Former Canadian Senator Linda Frum fumed that Canadian taxpayers were being forced to support transgender ideology:
Back in the day, when only women menstruated we had to pay for our own products. But now that men menstruate too, these products, as of this week, are mandated to be free in all Men’s washrooms in all federal workplaces including Parliament Hill —where this photo was taken today. pic.twitter.com/YuIXVZnqH9
— Linda Frum (@LindaFrum) December 12, 2023
The New York Post (NYP) on Tuesday corroborated Frum’s tampon sighting with a post from someone who presented themselves as a staffer in the House of Commons.
“They’re also going to build dispensers for all the tampons which won’t be used since 1) men don’t menstruate and 2) they are just going to bring them home to their wives for free,” the putative parliamentary staffer pointed out. The cost of showering the men’s rooms in Parliament with ladies’ products might not be too bad, but the Canadian Labor Code now stipulates that all “female-identified, male-identified, and all-gender toilet rooms will need to have menstrual products.”
The requirement will eventually fall upon private sector potties as an unfunded mandate, the favored political instrument of Western authoritarians. Critics slammed the regulation as an effort to eliminate masculinity and femininity, noting that the regulations managed to stuff every bathroom with tampons without referring to either men or women – it refers to tampon users as “menstruating employees.”
The UK Daily Mail on Monday reported the mania for women’s sanitary products in men’s bathrooms began with a push to make toilets more “inclusive” and reduce the “stigma often associated with menstruation.”
Activists argued it was unfair to expect “menstruating employees” to bring their own products to work, portraying them as overcome with insecurity and anxiety because they might have to take time away from work or school to purchase them in emergencies.
This quickly became a demand for tampons to be made available to people who imagine they are menstruating because their periods are every bit as real as any woman’s period, period.
“Not only women or those who identify as women menstruate. Trans men, gender non-conforming and two-spirit folks menstruate as well, and everyone who menstruates deserves to menstruate with dignity,” insisted activist Rachel Ettinger, who launched the push for menstrual products in all bathrooms in 2020.
Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley wrote a much-quoted column in mid-December in which he noted the cost of this “man-pon” crusade went far beyond simply putting a few baskets of feminine hygiene products in men’s rooms:
Everyone who has worked in, with or near the federal civil service in Ottawa knows that there is now a whole section in every department seized with this issue. They will have meetings, develop plans, write reports and only deal with this issue. Even in departments dealing with pressing issues that matter to Canadians – like housing – there is a group of people solely devoted to ensuring man-pons are in place. It’s outrageous, but par for the course with the federal civil service.
We have an affordability crisis in this country. Food is more expensive than ever, rent and mortgage payments have doubled, if not worse, but our federal government’s priorities lay elsewhere,” Lilley observed.