The period bracelet, a cringey fashion statement for Liberal men

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It’s hard to find a word that captures the feeling of seeing a man sporting a menstruation bracelet. It’s not quite “creepy” but it’s almost there. It’s strangely invasive, private bodily functions being paraded about and all. And finally, it’s effeminate in the worst possible way.

The feeling was triggered on Tuesday, when a few bold Liberal MPs took it upon themselves to promote “Menstrual Hygiene Day,” another observance in the awareness-raising calendar unbeknownst to the population at large.

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Revellers included Ahmed Hussen, Seamus O’Regan, Mary Ng, Mélanie Joly and Lisa Hepfner, who each donned a bracelet with five red beads symbolizing the five days that women usually take to shed their uterine linings each month. The bracelets evoked “used pad,” inviting viewers to quease or cringe (or both).

The goal? Fighting stigma. Taglines like #PeriodFriendlyWorld were tweeted alongside cheery platitudes about breaking down barriers for women. Some MPs capitalized on the opportunity to remind us of menstrual advancements made under the current government.

“People don’t bring their own toilet paper to work, so they shouldn’t have to bring their own pads and tampons,” O’Regan wrote in a post. “We changed that. We put free menstrual products in federally-regulated workplaces.”

Perhaps this would have actually meant something to the onlooking public if inferior treatment of women during menstruation was remotely close to being a problem in Canada. We don’t have menstruation huts, to which various global groups banish their women during that time of the month. The menstrual taboos reinforced by nearly every major faith have lost their force in the western world, too. Whatever one thinks of these traditions, it’s safe to say they are practiced by few.

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The physical burden of the experience — the aches, pains and sartorial limitations — have also been minimized in the contemporary era. With capitalism has come the mass production (and mass, shame-free advertising) of cheap, sterile, disposable products that preserve clothing and mobility. Modern septic systems and medication ensure that health and cleanliness in the home are maintained. Short of pausing ovulation entirely, which is likely on the horizon, women have a historically high degree of autonomy from their cycle.

The Liberals always need to find something new to liberate, however, which is why they’ve raced to become champions for the period cause. In 2022, they started a “Menstrual Equity Fund” — another make-work project for Marci Ien’s gender department to consult with community stakeholders and ultimately distribute pads and tampons, as well as provide some education on the subject. More importantly, it will supplement a bureaucracy to manage these tasks to an unnecessary degree.

We can only hope that the gender department will get the Javier Milei “afuera” treatment later in the decade.

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Under O’Regan’s lead, Employment and Social Development Canada has pursued the even more unnecessary task of mandating tampons and pads to be offered in each of the nation’s federally regulated workplace washrooms — male and female. It was a largely redundant move for the ladies, who generally buy according to their preferences and can get by on toilet paper or the generosity of a well-supplied colleague in emergencies, but it was certainly welcome by some.

Comically absurd was the fact that the tampon mandate extended to men’s washrooms. Male soldiers, male pilots, male pipeline workers and so on now have full access to sanitary items they will never use because the feds insist on dedicating an outsized amount of resources to the fraction of a percentage of the female population that identifies as men.

The government estimated that it would cost employers (public and private) $50 million to upgrade all bathrooms to meet menstruation needs, with another $7 million in annual maintenance after this year. Employees are predicted to save about $10 million per year, which is surely an exaggerated figure.

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In many instances, the government’s menstrual messaging is gender-neutral, using terms such as “menstruators” and “people who get their period” to describe an exclusively female phenomenon. Indeed, the federally-funded Science Up First initiative, which claims to communicate credible information on topics including menstruation, insists on sex-agnostic terminology. These clumsy attempts at respect ultimately dehumanize women by reducing them to their discharges and secretions.

On a wider scale, these public honourings of the period speak to the state’s hunger for ritual. As we abandon older traditions that honour the whole woman, like the Catholic veneration of Mary, and even newer traditions, such as the biologically grounded feminist movements of last century, society still feels the need to honour that half of the population.

The people who have attempted to uncouple physiology from womanhood have resolved to celebrate physiology by itself. To make it less weird, they tie in a liberatory message: period-havers will be free of inconveniences, for the state shall provide. It’s the same idea for the Liberal initiative to fund female (but not male) contraception.

Unless we start importing period-phobic traditions from elsewhere in the world, Canadian women will continue to be just fine. This government is not known for its rationality, however, so we can expect that its members will continue to don the garish bracelets and litigate uncontroversial but intimate aspects of women’s lives to free them from chains that don’t exist.

National Post

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