Brown University students are stocking all bathrooms with tampons & this is important

Last week, members of Brown University’s student government stocked 70 bathrooms on campus with tampons and pads that students would be able to use, free of charge. While their actions made headlines at the same time that several states are attempting to abolish the “tampon tax,” the students’ actions are getting noticed for another reason as well: they placed the menstrual products in women’s, men’s, and gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

Viet Nguyen, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, hopes that his and his fellow students’ actions will motivate the Rhode Island university to take over the program. For now, the student government will restock the bathrooms with products every week, Nguyen explained in a letter sent to Brown’s students.

Nguyen’s letter addresses that tampons and pads are not luxuries, but necessities, and declares that these actions are long overdue. He is right on both points, but he makes his most significant statement in the paragraph excerpted below:

“We also hope to set a more inclusive standard for this issue moving forward, both in terms of the language used and how future initiatives will be implemented, keeping in mind that menstruation is experienced by more than just those who identify as women and that not all people who identify as women menstruate.”

In case you missed that: Menstruation is experienced by more than just those who identify as women and that not all people who identify as women menstruate.

In the era of bathroom bills and candidates using trans people peeing as the ‘Latest Thing Conservatives Should Be Terrified Of,’ progress like this is vital to queer and trans survival. Women have spoken out against “pink “and “tampon taxes” for years, and used them as concrete examples of institutionalized economic sexism. But we rarely hear in mainstream media how that sexism targets people with queer bodies, and we are especially lacking the narratives of transmen who are still impacted by the stigma of menstruation.

There is a definite media bias that favors transwomen’s stories over those of transmen; going from a beefcake to a bombshell is more salacious and garners more of the public’s attention. Stories of trans folks who decide not to get surgery also don’t get much screen time; media outlets like dramatic before-and-after shots and getting all the gory details of a subject’s genitalia. Whether or not a transperson wants surgery is no one’s business but their own, but the media silence can lead to ignorance about the difficulties transpeople face in a world built around a binary.

For example, being a man but still having a uterus that bleeds every month and needs to be taken care of in public restrooms.

The students at Brown are making a very public statement about the safety and needs of trans folks on their campus, and their university — alongside everyone else in this country — needs to learn by their example.

Tampons and pads are not luxury items. Trans and queer folks deserve safe and inclusive bathroom spaces. Despite what some conservatives might want you to think, these things are not debatable.