Stories in The Guardian that never happened

Elizabeth Payne tripping over herself about some perceived ‘right’ to access to menstrual health. Apparently having your tampons bought for you by the taxpayer is now a human right

Access to menstrual health and hygiene is a right. Period.

Menstrual health, products and services etc, are provided by people. People expend time, effort and money in order to produce menstrual health products and make them available. To suggest women have a ‘right’ to those products is to suggest women have a right to the labour of other people

What we have here is an article by a woman advocating slavery. I hope she’s not black

All around the world girls, women, transgender and intersex people suffer from the stigma of menstruation…

No they don’t. Only women and girls do

She whacks on for a while about period poverty and the inability of some people to afford sanitary products. Packs of tampons are a couple of quid in Tesco, so I’ve no sympathy with anyone whose life choices have been so bad, they can’t afford that. At most, the argument to remove VAT is as far as we should go, as they are essential products

She does talk about Uganda and places, but I’m of the opinion that if this is a problem for the Government to ‘solve’, it’s a problem for the Ugandan Government to solve. There is no period poverty in our country that is not self inflicted

Then we get the personal anecdote, hence the title, stories that never happened

I vividly recall an experience I had in high school where there was not enough time between classes for me to change my pad. I leaked through my pad and on to the back of my school skirt. Mortified, I hid in the bathroom, not knowing what to do. I finally went to the office, complaining of being sick. Luckily the staff could guess what was wrong and offered me some pads.

I bet that brought a tear to your eye? Just kidding. What a load of bollocks, eh?

I vividly recall an experience I had in high school where there was not enough time between classes for me to change my pad

I’m no expert on changing pads, but I also vividly recall school and changing lessons. There was never a question of time, even during lessons you could give the teacher a nod and leave to go to the toilet

I leaked through my pad and on to the back of my school skirt. Mortified, I hid in the bathroom, not knowing what to do

Change your pad? You had this mishap apparently, because you didn’t have time to change your pad. Now you’re hiding in the bathroom with no idea what to do? Change you pad!

I finally went to the office, complaining of being sick. Luckily the staff could guess what was wrong and offered me some pads

Why? It wasn’t pads you were short of, it was time to change one. If you’re gonna make stuff up in the papers, you’re gonna have to do better than that

You’re just not trying…