Thanks, Period

You know what really gets me? The fact that I’ve had a menstrual cycle all these years when I didn’t even need it! As a kid, I thought the only question was how many kids I'd have, not if I'd have any at all. Now, here I am, child-free by choice, wondering why I’ve spent decades suffering through cramps, bloating, and mood swings for absolutely no reason. If I’d known early on that child-free living was an option, I’d have saved myself the trouble—and maybe even invested that tampon money into something more useful. Seriously, if you add up the cost of menstrual products over a lifetime, it’s *absurd*—close to $18,000 by some estimates! And to make matters worse, lawmakers across the country don’t even want to subsidize these products. In many states, menstrual products are still taxed as "luxury" items. Luxury? Oh please, I assure you, there’s nothing luxurious about bleeding every month.

Let’s take a moment to talk about *why* this is even still an issue. Men in power are deciding what’s necessary for women’s health, from menstrual products to birth control and abortion access. How about instead of regulating our wombs, they start funding the things we need? Basic necessities like menstrual products should be free, or at the very least, untaxed! Some states are catching on—New York and California have removed the tampon tax and now offer free products in schools and public facilities. Minnesota has joined the effort, with Governor Tim Walz signing a bill to provide free menstrual products in schools, despite backlash. The fact that we even need to push for this shows just how out of touch lawmakers can be. Meanwhile, in Texas, we can’t even get lawmakers to protect basic reproductive rights, but they have all the energy to pass restrictive abortion bans and take birth control off the table .

And speaking of taking things off the table—how is it that with all of this control over women’s health, no one told us we didn’t even need to menstruate at all? Science shows that women don’t *need* to have periods if they’re not planning to get pregnant, and yet, here we are, still fighting for the right to control what happens with our bodies. Imagine if teenagers were given the option to pause their periods and harvest their eggs, preventing all the unnecessary suffering. We could stop the cycle—pun intended—and invest that time and money elsewhere. Instead, lawmakers are focused on controlling women, rather than giving us options.

And let’s not even get started on the control men have over women’s bodies. The idea of bodily autonomy is under attack, and it's happening everywhere. I mean, it’s like a never-ending game of who gets to make the rules about what we do with our health. Just last year, Texas passed Senate Bill 8, which bans most abortions after about six weeks, before many women even know they're pregnant! Meanwhile, in California, they’re finally getting it right by offering free menstrual products in schools and public facilities. It’s about time, right? But progress is slow, and we’re still dealing with places that try to defund Planned Parenthood while pushing policies to limit abortion access. It’s wild how many hoops we have to jump through just to maintain our bodily autonomy  .

And what about those kids these lawmakers claim to care so much about? Nearly 24,000 teens aged 15 and up are stuck in the foster care system, many of whom may never be adopted. Yet the same politicians who want to force women into motherhood are doing very little to address the crises these kids face. These teens are fighting for stability while we’re out here fighting for control over our own reproductive rights .

Now, I’ve made my peace with the fact that I didn’t opt out of menstruation sooner, but here’s the kicker: the one thing I could always count on was my period. While lawmakers and men were busy telling me what I couldn’t do, my body reminded me every month that, like clockwork, I had this little sliver of consistency. It’s funny in a twisted way, that the thing society loves to ignore or overregulate was the one thing I could always count on. So, while the world tries to control women's health, I find a certain ironic comfort in the fact that, through all of it, my menstrual cycle has always had my back.

When They Claim They’re “Protecting Women,” I Don’t Buy It

Every time I hear lawmakers say they’re protecting women, something in me pushes back. Protecting women’s sports. Protecting women’s privacy. Protecting women’s spaces. The words sound familiar, but the actions don’t match. It feels less like protection and more like performance.

Across red states—and now at the federal level—lawmakers keep pushing bills that ban transgender women from sports teams and public bathrooms. They sell these laws as care for women and girls, but all I see is a fixation on controlling a small group of people while ignoring the problems most women face every day.

Women have asked for equal pay for decades. We’ve asked for affordable childcare, paid family leave, better maternal healthcare, and real accountability for sexual assault. We’ve asked for rape kits to get tested instead of collecting dust for years. We’ve asked for protection from harassment and violence in our workplaces, schools, and homes. Yet lawmakers keep choosing a different fight—one that costs them very little politically and fixes nothing materially.

Texas now enforces laws that block trans students from using restrooms that align with their gender identity and threatens universities with massive fines if they don’t comply. Other states follow suit, redefining sex so narrowly that trans women disappear from public life altogether. On the federal stage, politicians try to rewrite civil rights protections under the banner of “fairness in women’s sports,” even though those efforts target a tiny population.

That’s what makes this feel dishonest. Trans women make up a very small percentage of the population, yet politicians center them again and again, not because they pose some widespread threat, but because they serve as a convenient symbol. Fear mobilizes voters faster than compassion ever will.

What bothers me most comes down to enforcement. Every time someone argues for bathroom bans, I ask the same question: who enforces this? Who checks? Who decides whether someone looks “female enough” to walk into a bathroom without getting questioned, stares, or worse? These laws drag all women into surveillance. They turn restrooms into spaces of suspicion. They invite strangers to police bodies—and that should disturb every single one of us.

Women didn’t ask for this. I don’t know a woman who said, “This solves my problems.” I know women who feel exhausted. Who feel unheard. Who juggle work and family without support. Who navigate healthcare systems that dismiss their pain. Who worry about safety far more often than about who stands next to them in a bathroom.

When lawmakers claim they’re helping women while ignoring everything women actually demand, it feels insulting. It feels like being used as cover. Like our lives function as talking points instead of realities that deserve serious solutions.

These laws don’t protect women. They divide us. They cast trans women as threats and treat cis women like props. They deflect attention away from broken systems and redirect it toward a group with the least power to push back.

Real support for women would look different. It would center economic security, healthcare, autonomy, and safety. It would expand opportunity instead of shrinking who belongs. It wouldn’t rely on humiliation, surveillance, or fear.

When politicians talk about protecting women, I pay attention to what they choose to protect us from—and what they choose to ignore. Right now, they ignore pay gaps, healthcare disparities, childcare crises, and violence against women. Instead, they police bathrooms.

The fact that we now have to ask who belongs in a bathroom tells me everything I need to know about how far off track we’ve gone.

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