So pure intention
Weird (and long) headline.
Dylan Mulvaney Gives Tampons to People Who Need Them. Transphobes Are Mad
In a video posted to TikTok on Thursday as part of
herpopular “Days of Girlhood” video diary, Mulvaney explainedshewas “so tired over sticking up for myself for something that was so pure intention,” referring tohercarrying a tampon around in case someone else needs it.…
“The bigger problem,” Mulvaney went on, “is that you feel me carrying a tampon around is a threat to you and your womanhood. How is someone doing something nice so repulsive to you?”
Where to begin.
I guess with “something nice.” It’s not something nice. It’s creepy and intrusive at best.
That’s not a thing. Women don’t carry tampons around just in case some Fellow Woman might need one any more than people carry extra coffee around in case some Fellow Coffee Drinker has run out. Nobody carries extra anything around in case someone needs it. Where would we begin? Where would we end? How would we carry it all?
Anyway needing a tampon isn’t that big a deal. You can use a big wad of toilet paper, or grab some paper towels and use those. Maybe you’ll ask someone at the sinks to pass you some towels over or under the partition. But the spare tampon thing? Get out of here.
So, no, I don’t believe for a second that Mulvaney is “doing something nice,” I think he’s doing something prurient and passive aggressive and creepy. Is that repulsive? You bet it is, Dylls.
I’m betting Mulvaney envisions himself in the women’s toilets for this exchange with “someone who needs it”.
I live in hope a transwoman will ask him for it. Meanwhile, sales of period underwear and moon cups will have a huge rise amongst young women in his area.
I have to say, I’ve been asked if I had a tampon in toilets a couple of times over the years, and the women who asked me were very embarrassed and uncomfortable. I hope Mulvaney just imagines it as a great moment of validation. Jonathon Yaniv was really creepy about it.
I really don’t get it (I’ve always just done the toilet paper origami thing) but according to this handmaidentastic thread, it’s a totes normal thing that everyone does. https://twitter.com/KillerMartinis/status/1600993895638503424?t=DHoQ8MBlu3y9lUMSlDPGiw&s=19
I’m long past menopause, but I still happen to have a couple of pads in my bag on the off chance that someone besides me might need them. I have given pads to women in the past, but on reflection it’s always been very young women (when I was a young woman, or an older woman) who might still find themselves in a situation where they’re caught out. I guess the difference, if there is one, is that I carried these around because I might need them myself, but was happy to share if someone else needed one; the weirdness maybe is more equivalent to a nonsmoker ostentatiously carrying a pack of cigarettes around just in case someone asked him for one.
Well, that plus the fact that it’s about something women put up their vaginas.
[said with great disdain but the disdain is all for Mulvaney and his ilk.]
Yet another example of a man with zero experience of what it’s like to actually *be* a woman doing something because he thinks “it’s what women do.”
See also: hair, makeup, clothes, head tilt, voice modulation, gait, hobbies, etc.
How do folks who so quickly decry blackface not see this for what it is?
And how much mental gymnastics do they have to do not to see this for what it is?
Ah, I love the classics! This is the one where a man does or says he will do something THAT I NEVER ASKED HIM TO DO but still demands my eternal groveling gratitude. Amazing how men like dylan feel that we real women should be so easily and cheaply bought. Of course, since men like dylan see women as less than human commodities, I guess I should not be surprised that he figures a nasty old crushed up Tampon should buy any of us off.
Ha that’s a point, he says he carries one around with him all the time, it would be all crushed and nasty, wouldn’t it. Maybe he unwraps it and plays with it and then carries it around for months.
Y’know, if Mulvaney really was trying to be ready to help out, it would be pads, not tampons. While I know many women prefer tampons, I’m fully aware that others don’t like them, or even avoid them due to health issues. My UTI-prone wife treats them like the literal plague.
If Mulvaney were operating off of actual research into the subject, out of a desire to do better, then this would be a known data point and could be incorporated. I suspect that pads aren’t considered sexy enough, since they don’t allow the woman to pretend to not have her period when she’s in the buff.
@9 yes, I never used tampons, and they’re certainly less generally used than pads, particularly by younger women who might be more likely to have an unplanned ’emergency’. Even someone used to using tampons would happily take a pad in an emergency, while someone who never used them wouldn’t appreciate the offer of help; I know I wouldn’t have. Also see Ophelia’s point at @4 above….
And also @7 good point, classic move from the abuser’s handbook.
I don’t understand why he thinks like that. I’m almost thirty years past menopause, but even during the olden days when I was menstruating (up to the mid-nineties), the most I would have asked another woman for would have been to change a note for coins for the machine, (there’s one in every ladies*) so I could buy my own pad or tampon.
But I always carried a small bag in amongst the rest of my stuff with a wrapped pad, tissues, and a packet of wipes; as I still do (except the pads these days are incontinence ones°). I’m 65 years old, and no-one in my entire life, except my daughter at home, has ever asked me for menstrual products.
*One of the annoying aspects of having to use unisex disabled loos is that no-one ever thinks to put a sanitary products vending machine in them. Or perhaps they suspect that they’d be vandalised by the male users. Sigh.
°My definition of middle age is the brief interlude between having to use sanitary pads and having to use incontinence pads.
What I’m saying. It’s not a thing, and I’m getting very very fed up with these creepy cosplaying men pretending it is and that they’re being nice by doing so.
Re “Or perhaps they suspect that [menstrual product vending machines would] be vandalised by the male users”: this has happened in some places where menstrual product dispensers have been placed into boys’ or men’s restrooms. Dispensers torn off the wall or otherwise vandalized. Of course the motivation is somewhat different in those cases, but still.