You can’t set up a culture of censorship then complain over a banned tampon ad – Independent.ie

It took until Day 11 of the period drama for it to turn out the Tampax ad ban wasn't the fault of the patriarchy after all.

In fact, 83pc of the complaints that got the ad pulled were from women, which came as no surprise to me. Most every woman I know thinks it's awful - because it is.

Not that it's shocking, or embarrassing, or because it "dares" to talk about menstruation. Who cares? The pretence that we're persecuted for periods in 2020 smacks of martyr complex.

It's because the Tampax and Tea ad is degrading, patronising, crass and vacuous. It cheapens women and pretends to be empowering.

It literally suggests many women are so stupid that they can't insert a tampon. It's hackneyed, empty-headed girliness: it does women no favours.

The pathetic attempts at double-entendres - "Get it up there, girls! Not just the tip, up to the grip!" - are puerile and not actually funny.

And no: getting the obvious innuendo is not a case of men "sexualising" women's bodies - but perhaps it's ad executives commodifying them.

Good riddance to the most annoying ad on television. Saves me the bother of having to switch over every time it comes on.

Why is no-one saying this, even though the gender ratio of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) prove it was women themselves who were miffed?

Could it be because the consensus in Ireland has decreed: you must love the Tampax ad, or else you're a body-shaming woman-hater? Failing that, you are suffering from internalised misogyny. And if you don't think it's sexist, then you're sexist.

We're all supposed to cheer for Procter & Gamble, supposed sponsors of the modern-day Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights event.

You should be embarrassed at your lack of sisterhood if you thought the ad was tacky. You must realise you're a prude if you felt uncomfortable. If you found it repulsive, you must be full of shame.

I don't feel remotely grossed out about it myself. But I'm not going to judge another woman if they do.

That's not sisterhood. The basis of the majority-female complaints was how it was offensive to women and condescending. If some women think that, we should listen - not shout them down.

It's an alternative - and valid - feminist perspective.

I'm against all censorship, so I don't support the removal of the ad. Yet the loudest voices criticising the ASAI ban are the same ones who cheer petitions calling for Prime Time to pull transgender debates, or call for exclusion zones around hospitals.

You can't set up a culture of censorship and then sneer when it's not always from liberals.

I'm a freedom feminist: joyfully indecorous and without any hang-ups about sex or sexuality.

I'm not a Victorian maiden, so I don't feel shame about female functions. I don't need to tell you stories about my uterine lining to illustrate this.

I'm with Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch when she challenged women to taste their own blood if they thought they were emancipated, saying: "If it makes you sick, you've a long way to go, baby!"

I thought Donita Sparks' tampon-throw at the Reading music festival in 1992 was one of the best moments of rock history. YouTube it: not to spare you the details - to see it in all its glory.

But as someone who has pride and respect for female fertility, I found the ad slyly demeaning to my sex. I won't apologise for that, or pretend otherwise, in fear of the girls' brigade.

To deliberately misconstrue this as "something from old Catholic Ireland" is disingenuous. Remember, this is the country that gave the world the sheela-na-gig.

Feminism is complex, and a broad church. There isn't a Little Red Book we all read from. Just because a murmuration of middle-class media feminists tell you something is great, doesn't mean it is.

I'm not going to make a global corporation the good guy, while painting Ireland as backward, to prove I'm a female warrior. I'm not going to bleat on about how our vaginas are sexualised and how the removal of a dumb ad is somehow proof of society's need to shame and control women's bodies.

I'm not about to jump to the conclusion that it's evidence of how men are disgusted by women's monthly blood, without first at least waiting to find out who the actual complainants were.

Incidentally, that's a fiction up there with pregnancy being a turn-off: any red-blooded man finds their pregnant partner sexy as all hell. Maybe there's a way we can castigate them for that too.

The whole conversation has veered into the stupidest stereotypes of women: self-absorbed, over-analytical, attention- seeking and obsessed with what men think of us.

The truth might be harder to accept: nobody cares. Period.

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You can't set up a culture of censorship then complain over a banned tampon ad - Independent.ie