Blue and red states were putting period products in schools—then came the anti-trans backlash

Blue and red states were putting period products in schools—then came the anti-trans backlash

For close to a decade, periods—yes, menstrual periods—had been one of those rare issues that could win legislative support in blue states and red ones. The 19th shares details about how the issue has affected accessibility of menstrual products in schools across the U.S.

Starting in about 2016, legislators from California to Alabama had been passing bills mandating that tampons and pads be readily available in public spaces—especially schools—after researchers found that students who don't have access to these products miss days as a result. These students are facing what advocates call "period poverty," meaning that they or their families can't afford to buy menstrual supplies, which can cost upwards of $20 per cycle. It's also an issue that particularly affects Black and Latinx people. 

For years, school nurses had been one of the only resources for students in need, many of them paying out-of-pocket for the products themselves. Legislators then successfully argued that schools should be providing those items. For a time, it was a winning strategy—an easy, bipartisan piece of legislation.

Then something shifted.

As anti-transgender rhetoric has picked up momentum in state chambers, period poverty bills have been caught in the crosshairs. Numerous states have passed legislation that bans trans and nonbinary students from using restrooms or playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The Republicans who support the anti-trans legislation say it's needed to protect women and girls from "predators" who may pose as transgender women in restrooms.

Suddenly a topic just about everyone could agree on became a "liberal" policy, a threat to girls, a method of encouraging kids to be trans or nonbinary, or a way that Republican lawmakers could get "tricked" into supporting legislation that might mean a trans student could get a period product inside a boys' bathroom. 

Bathrooms somehow became a space that needed to be policed, said Rashanna Lee, the state policy analyst at the Equality Federation, an advocacy organization that works at the state level to protect LGBTQ+ rights. 

"Nobody was ever thinking about bathrooms this much," Lee said. Then they became places "to put a lot of imaginary, sometimes conspiratorial, fears about trans people." 

Almost as soon as he joined the Democratic ticket, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz drew criticism from former president Donald Trump's campaign for passing a 2023 bill in Minnesota that provided menstrual products in school bathrooms to "all menstruating students." 

"As a woman, I think there is no greater threat to our health than leaders who … support putting tampons in men's bathrooms in public schools," Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox. "Those are radical policies that Tim Walz supports. He actually signed a bill to do that."

They even gave him a nickname: Tampon Tim. Democrats seized on it, turning the moniker into a sort of rallying cry. 

In the summer of 2022, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene went as far as blaming trans students for the nationwide tampon shortage, which was actually caused by pandemic-induced supply chain problems. "Now there is a shortage of tampons and that's probably because men are buying tampons," she said on the Right Side Broadcasting Network. "They put tampons in men's bathrooms—the war on women."

Shiwali Patel, the director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women's Law Center, who has focused on issues affecting LGBTQ+ students, said these arguments are disingenuous. "They frame it as needing to protect women and girls and really weaponizing the language of sex discrimination to justify discrimination—really turning the intent of civil rights protections against sex discrimination on its head to target an already-vulnerable and marginalized group of people," she said. 

The new scrutiny over which kids can use which bathrooms meant that legislators started reworking their bills to make them less gender-inclusive.

Originally, much of the proposed legislation simply required the products to be available in  students' bathrooms, an acknowledgment that some trans and nonbinary students have periods and need the products, too. But legislators, like those in Alabama in 2022, rewrote the bills to specify that "female students" be given products "through a female school counselor, female nurse, or female teacher." Republican lawmakers in Minnesota tried and failed to change the language in the bill to only say "female restrooms."

Other states, like Idaho, were more explicit. When the Idaho state House took up the issue in March 2023, Rep. Rod Furniss, the Republican sponsor of the bill, specified that the products were to be only in "female or unisex" bathrooms and not "male" ones. 

"We put in the language 'not in boys' restrooms' because in Idaho, we believe there's a difference between boys and girls," he said in the House chambers during debate on the bill. "We believe that strongly." 

Furniss told the chamber that boys and girls have "two p's—peeing and pooping" but he jokingly said he was "surprised" to learn in 2023 that girls also had a third p—periods. 

"With the third p, the girls don't have a muscle down there. It's an emergency every time that happens," Furniss said, adding that he "didn't know much about this bill" that he'd sponsored, though he is the father of four girls. 

However, "one thing I know," he said, "is that boys and girls are different—one has two p's, one has three p's. In Idaho we believe they are different. We don't let boys go in girls' bathrooms, we don't let girls go in boys' bathrooms—we know they're different. That's an Idaho standard."

Multiple Republican women in the state House also spoke against the bill, including Rep. Barbara Ehardt, who said the bill was a reflection of "woke" policy. The only thing she liked about it: that language had been added in to ensure the products wouldn't go into boys' bathrooms. 

Rep. Heather Scott also spoke up against it, saying the legislation was an overreach into children's sexuality. "What really concerns me is why our schools are obsessed with the private parts of our children," Scott said.  

The bill got a split vote—35 to 35—and failed to pass. 

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, one of the co-founders of Period Equity, an advocacy organization that has worked to eliminate state tampon taxes, remembers watching the debate unfold in Idaho. It sounded very similar to the feedback she'd just received while speaking on a radio show in Florida, where callers had expressed disgust at what they described as schools getting involved in children's sexuality.

"Really quickly, I saw the connection that people were making between period products bills and regressive sex-ed and anti-trans bills. And that was a big light bulb moment for me—I can see where this is going," Weiss-Wolf said. "Anti-trans and regressive rhetoric has come into play around menstrual policies that have otherwise enjoyed a lot of bipartisan support. That, to me, was cause for concern about the direction these might be going in." 

Straight to the presidential election, it seems. Writing in Time earlier this month, Weiss-Wolf said "zeroing in on any issue that implicates reproductive health, menstruation among them, is a risky gambit for Republicans" because polling shows Americans turn out to vote in support of reproductive rights. 

Weiss-Wolf helped lead the charge for period equity legislation because she sees it as an invisible issue that directly affects the lives and livelihoods of people who menstruate. In 2016, she brought the issue to the attention of the New York City Council, which passed the first bill mandating menstrual products in public places, which became the foundation for scores of others. More than half of states have since passed legislation requiring period products in schools. Thirty also exempt them from taxation.

Research released around this time helped make the case. A survey of low-income women in St. Louis from 2017 to 2018 found that 64% were unable to afford pads or tampons the previous year—some were using cloth, rags, tissues and even children's diapers to make do.

A follow-up study of students in St. Louis in 2020 found that nearly half needed products but didn't have the money to buy them at least once during the school year. Up to 17% had missed at least a day of school because they lacked tampons or pads.

This research helped educate people about how pervasive period poverty actually is. For Laura Strausfeld, who cofounded Period Equity (now called Period Law) with Weiss-Wolf in 2016, the ignorance about menstruation was shocking. Male legislators "didn't know we'd bleed through our clothes," said Strausfeld, now the executive director of Period Law.

This year, she has been pushing to change the term "feminine hygiene products" to "menstrual discharge collection devices." Her reason: Referring to them as medical devices helps men understand why they are a necessity, not a luxury. Indiana is using the term in its legislation to eliminate its tampon tax. 

"If we can raise a generation of people who do not menstruate to understand what the needs are of those who do, then we won't have to fight any of this ridiculous legislation," Strausfield said. 

Still, the recent pushback created by growing anti-trans sentiment has made the conversation more complicated. That, too, is an issue of education, Strausfeld said. Period product access is an economic issue, and many legislators don't understand the realities of trans and nonbinary people, who already experience higher rates of unemployment and poverty. Trans women, in particular, face one of the widest gender pay gaps of any group.

While some public women's restrooms offer the products — oftentimes for a fee — men's restrooms rarely do. It's the same dynamic in homeless shelters: the products are typically available at women's shelters, but not men's. Trans and nonbinary people may also need menstrual products for other reasons, including following medical procedures such as a vaginoplasty.

Public assistance programs that help people afford food and other necessities, like SNAP and WIC, the program for low-income women and children, do not allow participants to use the funds to purchase menstrual products. 

As a result, Black and Brown trans and nonbinary students, who are at the intersection of racial and gender disparities, face period poverty most acutely, said Lee of the Equality Federation.

Not only must they overcome financial challenges, but then there is the experience of menstruating. It can be confusing for any student, but for trans and nonbinary students, it can intensify feelings that their gender and their sex are misaligned. 

"The mental health outcomes of this are really challenging," Lee said. "It can force students to out themselves before they wanted to or were ready," because the products aren't in the bathroom they want to go in, or because they need to ask the school nurse for help. "It could be too much for kids to handle."

Educating people about how all of these issues are connected can make period poverty legislation a space to address disparities for trans kids—and extend to them the rights other students already enjoy.

But to get there, "a lot of work needs to be done to bridge the gaps between the reproductive justice movement and the movement for queer and trans liberation," Lee said.  

The lack of education on menstruation was on full display in Kansas earlier this year when Caitlyn Hammack, the state organizer at URGE, a college campus-based organization that advocates for reproductive and gender equity, was at the state Capitol tabling for period equity legislation. The group had set out some tampons on their table, and a male state lawmaker that supported the legislation approached and asked what they were. "Candy!" Hammack's colleague joked. The legislator took a yellow one, saying, "This one looks lemony."

The exchange left Hammack dumbfounded. Did he really think it was candy? "We have people making our laws who have never seen a tampon before," Hammack said, reflecting on the awkward moment. "This really shows we need to hone in on the cultural and education piece of this campaign." 

Kels Bowman, a doctoral student at Duke University, started tracking period bills in 2018 when dozens were being proposed. Since 2020, about 90 have passed, ranging from bills recognizing menstrual equity in the states to ones putting products in schools. The ones with bipartisan support had the best chance at passing; in some cases, they were introduced by Republicans as well as Democrats. But the language in them changed over time, Bowman noted. 

"They first start out just saying, 'We want to give period products to people,'" Bowman said. "But then you do see a lot of states starting to peel off and say, 'We're only going to do this in a female-designated bathroom.'"

In Connecticut, the issue wasn't controversial at all in 2023, when the state passed a law to put 

period product dispensers in school bathrooms, including all-gender bathrooms and "at least one men's restroom" per school. 

The law won't go into effect until this September, but staff at Brookfield High installed their tampon dispenser in a boys' bathroom early, in January—and they were the first to see how the law had become more controversial after its passage. Only 22 minutes after the dispenser was installed, students ripped it off the wall and destroyed it, scattering tampons across the floor.

In an email to students and staff, principal Marc Balanda said he was "dismayed" and "disgusted" at the act of vandalism. "I am aware that the law says 'men's bathrooms,' but the actions today that led to vandalism and destruction of property are the work of immature boys, not men," Balanda wrote. "I also apologize to those students who are negatively impacted by the lack of availability of menstrual products." 

Jennifer Tolman, the president and chief operating officer of Dignity Grows, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that works with community organizations in 27 states to distribute totes with free period products, said the group also advised on the Connecticut law. That included holding a symposium for school nurses and guidance counselors to teach them what period poverty looks like and how they can help students.

Advocates say the recent backlash has taken the focus away from the important work that's already been done to get all students the products they need. "Clearly," Tolman said, "the intention [of the law] is to make sure the products are available to them as they need them, and that the school day and the learning environment is not interrupted by any lack of access or availability of products." 

In South Florida, Ashley Eubanks Johnson has spent eight years working on bringing products to Broward County schools. She started her nonprofit, The Beauty Initiative, in 2016 to distribute menstrual products after she encountered a woman who was panhandling while bleeding through her clothes. An employee of the Broward school system, Eubanks Johnson also saw students who came to school without any products at all. During the first half of this year, her group has donated more than 55,000 tampons and pads, largely to schools and shelters. 

Eubanks Johnson also started working with state legislators to advocate for legislation and help draft bills, but she faced pushback at the local level from county school board members who said they didn't believe the issue was big enough to merit attention—and funding—in Broward.  

"I don't understand why there is such a hard stop on providing all of these needs," she said. "If you're getting free and reduced lunch—if you're struggling to purchase food—I know you're struggling to get hygienic products."

In 2023, after years of pushing, her legislation finally passed, but no additional money was given to the schools. They'd have to rely on organizations like hers to provide pads and tampons to school nurses.

Eubanks Johnson has tried to not let the anti-trans rhetoric disrupt her work. To avoid vandalism or students feeling embarrassed to use the products in boys' bathrooms, she puts them in gender-neutral school nurse's clinic bathrooms. "It allows them access to the products and it allows them to be safe," she said.  

Over time, she has watched how adults have started to question whether trans kids should have the same access as other kids. 

"They are taking a health issue and making it political," Eubanks Johnson said. "It's up to community members to say: 'Forget all that. The main thing is to make sure our children have everything they need.' We are not serving the entire child when we don't have this product—no matter how they identify."