Women are subject to a wide spectrum of shame that shows no sign of abating. Amongst many others, we are shamed for having nipples, for gaining weight, for losing weight, for being sexual, for not being sexual enough, and even for eating on the tube.

 

These everyday forms of misogyny are not just annoying: they are damaging, too. They install a sense of external ownership, internal shame and eternal wrongdoing that degrades women.

 

Sanitary taxation not only epitomises this, but it exacerbates it too.

 

In 1973 a male dominated (if not effectively male exclusive) parliament discussed what should and shouldn't be taxed, based on a scale of essentiality. In doing so, they made one significant 'mistake'. Rather than considering what was vital to the entire population, they considered what was important to those within an elite subsection of the UK: namely, white privileged men. They cast the needs of women aside when they placed a 17.5% tax on sanitary items (which has since been reduced to 5%) claiming that women survived without the mass production of such products once, and that therefore they could logically do so again without too much difficulty.

 

On the other hand, other items were considered essential enough to avoid being taxed. Such goods include maintaining your many private helicopters, consuming exotic meats such as horse, crocodile and kangaroo and gambling.

 

Essentially, Parliament marginalised the menstruating population of the UK (consisting of women and trans-men), taxed them for the unavoidable functioning of their bodies because they were underrepresented (and still are) and laced a discourse of shame into the lining of period pads, mooncup seams and tampon strings to discourage us from talking about the issue and simply make it go away. Meanwhile, menstruators folk out £18K a year in period-related expenses of which nearly £1K goes straight to the taxman.