Oh it’s hilarious following the American Republican
candidacy campaigns, isn’t it? You see Republicans like Rush Limbaugh call a
Georgetown University law student a slut because she argued that contraception
should be covered by universal health insurance, and cry ‘Praise be!’ to our
lovely reserved British gods, that at least our politicians aren’t quite such
fantastic oafs as that. But then, listening to Limbaugh ridicule the idea that “thousands
of dollars in taxpayer dollars [might be spent] to satisfy the sexual habits of
female law students,” and his oh so
jocular request that there might be “videos of all this
sex posted online so we can see what we are getting for our money” did make me think a bit about the kinds of extra expense
women are put to, even in this green and pleasant land, on account of our pesky
female sex organs.
Now,
contraception is not such a Vag Tax issue – Limbaugh has helpfully forgotten
that it takes two to tango. There’s probably an even split in the sale of
condoms to men and women; the pill and all the more invasive contraptions are
free on the NHS; and even condoms are free if you don’t mind the weekly trip to
the family planning clinic to pick up a meager paper bag of extra-safes. The
problem here is more that there’s a pleasure-tax on poor people as only the
better off can afford a steady supply of feather-lite non-surgical-glove-like
sex.
Actually
the main Vag Tax that Limbaugh’s remarks have so graciously called to my mind,
not counting all the waxing and Weight-Watchers accounts it takes for us to
walk out of the house looking the way women’s magazines suggest all Vag owners
should, is the inexplicable tax on tampons. The VAT rate on sanitary products
was finally reduced from a luxury (! 17.5%) to 5% under the chancellor-ship of
Gordon Brown in 2000 (and he was ribbed roundly at the time for being unable to
say the words ‘sanitary protection’ in the Commons chamber – imagine him trying
to say the word slut!). According to the Guardian at the time, this is the ‘lowest
possible under European rules limiting the goods that can be zero-rated’ but it sounds like a miserable
compromise to me. This is an issue of staples! It’s not like we or our European
sisters can decide not to bother with tampons one month because we’d rather buy
nicotine patches and gum – incidentally also on the 5% rate. Oh thank you so
much Mr. Taxman, for helping me give up my menstrual vices one tampon at a
time.
It’s got
to be 0% surely? And we’re not even asking to have tampons for
free, which actually, come to think of it, maybe we should be. I wonder how
many blood-soaked tube seats it would take for the government to decide that
actually an unplugged menstrual flow is as difficult for society as excessive
birth rates. A monthly-sit-in on the district and circle line anyone?
