| If you're even the least bit socially aware you'll know that menstruation is a massive opportunity roadblock for millions of girls and women all over the world. Affording or even having access to adequate pads and tampons means many of them drop out of school and find employment outside the home lives in the too hard basket. Well, what's commonly perceived as a problem in developing countries is happening in New Zealand. |  |
We're living in a place where girls are using telephone book pages, rags and other stupid crap whilst on their period because proprietary shit is so outrageously expensive that shrinking wages and benefits won't cover them.
This is where we are now as a society. University students are skipping classes and teachers are paying for pads etc for girls who otherwise have to resort to medieval fuckery or just stay home. Seriously. What in the fuck is going on?
Here's some context, especially for everyone thinking of emigrating here from the UK and US etc (and I do feel your pain too). This is a country with a welfare department that sends entire families to live in garages and bulldozer-worthy 'houses' without electricity in the middle of winter. It pays the slumlords who furnish these incredible opportunities directly. It warehouses homeless mothers and their vulnerable children in rat pit hotels, where they are doomed to accrue thousands of dollars of accommodation debt that will set their financial spiral in concrete. The median house price is half a million dollars.
When I was on a benefit in my twenties (early nineties), I received around $130 per week. Rent was $75, and after everything else I ended up having about $25 for food- on a good week. So I know what it's like to be premenstrual, already on the point of cutting a bitch and standing in the aisle looking at a pack of pads that will yank $6 out of that $25.
Here's some context, especially for everyone thinking of emigrating here from the UK and US etc (and I do feel your pain too). This is a country with a welfare department that sends entire families to live in garages and bulldozer-worthy 'houses' without electricity in the middle of winter. It pays the slumlords who furnish these incredible opportunities directly. It warehouses homeless mothers and their vulnerable children in rat pit hotels, where they are doomed to accrue thousands of dollars of accommodation debt that will set their financial spiral in concrete. The median house price is half a million dollars.
When I was on a benefit in my twenties (early nineties), I received around $130 per week. Rent was $75, and after everything else I ended up having about $25 for food- on a good week. So I know what it's like to be premenstrual, already on the point of cutting a bitch and standing in the aisle looking at a pack of pads that will yank $6 out of that $25.
 | That $6 spent on pads/tampons meant I wouldn't be able to take the bus anywhere that week, or buy something presentable to wear from the op shop. So no job interviews I couldn't walk to or workshops or training or being able to afford the materials to do art to sell etc. And all on top of women being paid less and having less opportunity anyway. If I'd had a kid we would have been doubly fucked. When you're hard up, $6 might as well be $500. The result is the same, except nowdays the rent is $400. |
I still feel like shoplifting the fucking things every time I'm in the toiletries lane. Need to use a public toilet? Feel free to pinch one out and wipe your arse on free toilet paper because your local government will take one for the team. But if you're going to bleed, expect to be gouged for dollars everywhere because: female extravagance.
| Speaking of immigration, when I think about shit like this I wonder where in the fuck your average mens' rights misogynist lives and if I can possibly spend a month there in summer. Because a world where women are just whining about nothing and conniving against dudes collectively for no real reason other than our intrinsic baseness sounds fucking amazing. Just tell me they have complimentary Vincent D'Onofrios circa The Velocity of Gary and I am on that fucking catamaran. |  |
I'm not even on my rag. This rant was brought to you by the power of the proliferative phase.
In other news, I want to shave Brian Chippendale's beautiful legs slowly with warm jasmine soap foam while he says things like amorphous and oscillator and talks about getting out of the car on his own in weird places.
Wipes corner of mouth.
In other news, I want to shave Brian Chippendale's beautiful legs slowly with warm jasmine soap foam while he says things like amorphous and oscillator and talks about getting out of the car on his own in weird places.
Wipes corner of mouth.
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