Transphobic Tampons: Why Julia Serano has no love for Libra®
January 5, 2012
http://lenoregore.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/transphobic-tampons-why-julia-serano-has-no-love-for-libra/Seriously Libra, what were you thinking? It's 2012, and the transgender community is organized. We will call you on your ->-bleeped-<- if you try to publicly ridicule us like this. And we will win.
Let's review the events: a TV commercial featuring Libra® tampons begins airing in New Zealand on December 21, 2011. The ad depicts two women in a bathroom competitively applying mascara, lip gloss, and other modern accoutrements of femininity until the woman on the right pulls a tampon out of her purse, seemingly "proving" she is more feminine than the transgender woman to her left, who then storms out of the bathroom. Transgender activists quickly denounce Libra's ad as "transphobic" and begin filing complaints with the company, leaving comments on Libra's facebook page, and even popularize the Twitter hashtag #transphobictampons to mobilize opposition to the commercial. News finally starts hitting the United States on January 3rd when Libra publicly announces they are pulling the ad from the airwaves. The transgender community celebrates.
But what did we really win? And what can we learn from this?
