Graphic by Sana Amin/The Gazell

ACCRA, Ghana — The free condom versus free tampon conversation has raged on in the wake of the tampon tax debates in the U.K. and U.S., so I was unsurprised to read Paris Martineau’s opinion in Washington Square News imploring us to disregard the comparison.

She has a point: How can you compare the two? One involves an action that is a deliberate choice: Don’t have a condom? Well, sorry to burst your horny bubble but you can wait. Don’t have a tampon, and you’re faced with a humiliating choice between stuffing your underwear with tissue, or bleeding through your clothes.

Regardless, the author doesn’t seem to have understood the original comparison.

Those who are calling for free tampons don’t believe that there are “a cabal of conniving misogynists… plotting to bring down womankind.” We know that it’s simply ignorance on the part of politicians and those with the power to do something. But you cannot say that it is “just ignorance.” It is ignorance born out of a systematic disregard for women’s needs, and men’s dismissal of menstruation.

Don’t believe me?

Yesterday I sat at my internship, a digital publication in Accra, and researched about a filmmaker who I would be interviewing shortly. This fantastic woman, Selasie Djameh, had created a short piece titled My Red, a celebratory reflection on periods. When my supervisor noticed me watching the video, he informed me that he hadn’t been able to finish it. The reason, he told me, was that it was, and I quote: “Too bloody.” If a progressive founder of a publication that seeks to champion LGBTQ rights in notoriously homophobic Ghana finds a two-minute video about a natural bodily function unbearable, what hope do we have for the rest of the world? I must ask myself, don’t people who share his view sit through hour upon hour of graphic, senseless action movies? Why is blood oozing out of a person’s heart acceptable, but when it’s insinuated to come out of a vagina, it’s unwatchable?

No one is arguing that condoms shouldn’t be free. I agree that it is a fantastic development in keeping populations, specifically in this argument students, healthy. But what I find so utterly disheartening about Martineau’s opinion, and such attitudes in general, is that a health product must benefit both sexes before being considered necessary. To reduce tampons to a personal good — by which Martineau means a good restricted to women — is to completely ignore the obstacles that not offering sanitation creates.

As privileged members of society, we are fortunate that our monthly bleeding doesn’t hamper our education. Month after month, I sit in class while my body does it’s thing. However, girls all over the world are forced to miss school because of their periods, which over time greatly diminishes their future prospects. And yet the pattern continues: condoms are given out free across the world to prevent the spread of STIs, but when have you heard the same being done with sanitary products? Thankfully, many organizations are starting to recognize this issue. For example, on U.S. based website SHEVA, for every product you buy, a month’s worth of sanitary products is delivered to a girl who would otherwise go without them. This is a brilliant start, but it is one that needs to continue and grow. Tampons and condoms are equally important health items and they should be treated as such.

Thus, when toilet paper and hand soap are readily available in public restrooms, I ask, why can’t tampons be freely provided too? The added expense would be small, but would serve a critical purpose. Not only would women caught short have an instant solution to save them from the humiliation and impracticality of making other arrangements, but we, as a society, would also be saying to half the world’s population that we respect their health needs.

Tampons are just as, if not more important, than condoms, and to suggest otherwise is to once again discredit a gender who never asked for such a bodily imposition. I would love, more than anything, to be able to maintain my reproductive abilities without having to shed the lining of my womb once a month, but in the absence of a complete biological overhaul I have one simple request: please put free sanitary products in bathrooms.