BCome on, Republicans are on the offensive. Still pissed off about being called “weird,” it looks like a bunch of GOP strategists got together in a room this week to brainstorm devastating nicknames for Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. After squeezing their dozen or so brain cells together, they came up with a winner: Tampon Tim. The name is trending on social media as folks on the right desperately try to nail #TamponTim.

Aside from the fact that it’s alliteration, what gave rise to this nickname? Well, in 2023, Walz signed a sweeping Minnesota education bill that, among a number of other provisions, required public schools to offer free menstrual products in their restrooms.

To anyone with an ounce of common sense, this sounds like a great thing. Tampons are expensive! And “period poverty”—the inability to afford menstrual products—is a serious problem in the U.S. According to a 2021 study commissioned by Thinx, a menstrual product company, 38% of menstruating U.S. teens said they “often or sometimes cannot do their best school work due to lack of access to menstrual products.” A 2019 edition of the same study also found that over 84% of students in the U.S. have either missed class or know someone who has missed class because of lack of access to menstrual products.

For a long time, period poverty was overlooked as a problem. But in recent years, there has been a wave of legislation addressing it. According to the Alliance for Period Supplies, 28 states and Washington DC have passed laws giving students free access to period products during school hours. So while the law Walz signed was commendable, it was by no means radical—it was part of a nationwide trend to combat a serious problem.

To Republicans’ credit, it’s pretty hard to spin “implementing mainstream policies that make life easier for kids and help them stay in school” into a negative, but it seems like they’re always happy to try. Predictably, the right has used the bill to attack not only Walz, but transgender people as well.

“There is no greater threat to a woman’s health than politicians who support tampons in men’s restrooms in public schools. These are radical measures that Tim Walz supports,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Tuesday.

I want to clarify that the law itself does not specifically require tampons to be provided in men’s restrooms. It does say that free menstrual products “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in fourth through twelfth grade.” But the very idea that such a policy could be inclusive and help transgender students seems to drive Republicans crazy.

The “Tampon Tim” attacks are not just a result of hatred of transgender people, they also reflect Republicans’ disdain for women. There are memes of Walz’s head on a tampon and of him menstruating in his jeans – all of which are designed to convey the impression that Walz is feminine. Which, for many men on the right, is the most offensive term you can think of for a man. Last week, for example, Fox News host Jesse Watters wondered why any self-respecting man would vote for a woman. “To be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish – that person has issues with their mother – or they’re just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said. “I heard scientists say the other day that a man who votes for a woman is actually becoming a woman.” Ah yes, that’s exactly what the scientists say.

While Republicans may find her silly nickname funny, I’m not sure it will help them in the polls. If anything, it will help Walz. Hillary Clinton tweeted, “How nice of the Trump camp to publicize Governor Tim Walz’s compassionate and common sense policy to provide free menstrual products to Minnesota public school students.”

The Republicans’ childish tampon jokes also underscore that Walz represents a very different model of masculinity than the one embodied by Trump and JD Vance. In 1999, for example, when Walz was a high school teacher and football coach in rural Minnesota, he helped students form the school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). Walz has said he felt it was important that he became an adviser to the GSA because “it really had to be the football coach who was a soldier and was straight and married.” In other words, he wanted to show that masculinity doesn’t have to be toxic, that a real man has empathy.

All of that to say: Thanks for the nickname, folks! Tampon Tim is not the insult they think it is, but a compliment. One that underscores the fact that the GOP is suffering from a serious case of Toxic Jewelry Syndrome.

New York’s oldest person says her secret to a long life is staying single

“That’s why I’m alive… because I didn’t get married,” 112-year-old Louise Jean Signore told reporters this week. “I prefer being single. When you’re married, you have a lot of problems.” The fact that Signore doesn’t drink or smoke probably has something to do with it, too.

Who says complaining online is a waste of time? After TikTok users recently shared their painful experiences with intrauterine device insertion, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued updated guidelines on how doctors should communicate pain management options to their patients. This is a small step toward taking women’s pain more seriously.

Bulgaria’s parliament bans LGBTQ+ “propaganda”

This reflects the regressive legislation adopted in Russia and Hungary in recent years.

The gender police repeatedly target female athletes with dark skin

“In sports, more women from developing or developing countries are subject to gender testing,” the executive director of a sports advocacy group told AP in the wake of the Imane Khelif “controversy.” The AP goes on to note, “International sports federations do not tend to promote an understanding of the diversity of gender and gender identity, and gender testing often targets female athletes of color who do not conform to typical Western, white ideals of femininity.”

Israeli minister: Millions of people in Gaza could starve – possibly “justified and moral”

While extremist Israeli politicians dream of starving two million people and justifying rape, Harris has declared that she does not support an arms embargo against Israel. It is becoming increasingly clear that Harris, just like Joe Biden, knows no red lines when it comes to the suffering of the Palestinians.

Women in China spread a secret language reserved only for women

Nasch, sometimes called the “script of tears,” is a secret language that dates back centuries in China.

A political candidate who told voters not to be “weak and gay” lost her race

Valentina Gomez, the Republican from Missouri who released homophobic campaign videos, lost her position as Secretary of State by an embarrassing margin.

The week in the Pawtriarchy

Behind their prickly behavior, cats are big wimps. New research suggests that cats mourn the death of other pets. They even mourn the death of dogs. Cats, it seems, have more empathy than the average Republican politician.