Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri films in a public washroom to prove a point.

Over the last few years, you may have seen a conservative individual on your social media feed upset about what's going on in some public washroom somewhere in the world. Usually, the rant revolves around which washrooms a trans individual should be using and is amplified by a thinly veiled version of transphobia.

The reality is that people can and should be able to use whatever washroom they want to feel comfortable when needing to go. In a perfect world, all public washrooms are gender-neutral, and everyone goes in, does their business, and leaves, hopefully washing their hands in the process.

Conservatives seem to have big issues with washrooms, especially public ones. They seem to think that terrible actions are happening in public washrooms. The concept of having gender-neutral facilities or having a trans man go into a men's washroom or a trans woman going into a women's washroom makes them blow a gasket. They seem to think that it will turn into a room where sexual assault is rampant, and people would be exposing themselves. Anyone who can critically think knows this claim is nothing more than a steaming pile of nonsense, but they are very firm that this is wrong.

Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri is one of these people who has this pearl-clenching fear of what goes on in a public washroom. This fear was proven yet again yesterday when she posted a video on her Twitter account, showing her going on a few-minute rant about some conservative nonsense about Trudeau causing food banks or something equally crazy. After that rant, she barged her way into a public male washroom to find that there were period products available for staff in this federal office building.

Technically, she had a male staff member open the door and yell, “Hello?” but waited no time for anyone to actually respond, dragging her camera crew into a public washroom. A washroom that, I'll remind you, is marked as a male washroom that she, a ciswoman, walked into. Can anyone see the irony here?

In her 5-minute video, she continues to say that the government is out of touch and "lacks common sense," repeating Conservative buzzwords that you see on all their respected social media pages. The irony here, on top of her going into a washroom of a gender that is opposite to hers, is that putting period products in male washrooms is actually completely in touch.

Even if Michelle doesn't like it, trans men exist. Trans men possibly still could contain female reproductive parts, which causes them to have a period. So, in certain situations, you would need to have period products in a washroom. Furthermore, to the Conservatives' original points, they wouldn't want a male-presenting individual walking into the women's washroom to grab a tampon or pad, right?

There is also the argument that cis-men also could have a use for period products. Maybe they have a wife at home who still gets her period or maybe a teenage daughter going through that process of growing up. Putting period products available in male-dominated spaces isn't a bad thing. Normalizing periods is a productive way to advance acceptance in our society.

Fifty percent of the population gets them, and yet a large chunk of the other side of the population has an inane fear of them or doesn't understand how it works. Remember that NASA sent 100 tampons with a female astronaut who was in space for 6 days not during her period. It is a hilarious realization that there is a lack of education about periods and how they work, even among academics.

Canada has lots of issues right now, mainly caused by corporations being themselves during a crisis, but regardless, we have a cost of living issue, and people are struggling. A Conservative MP going into a men's washroom and finding tampons and having an outrage on social media shows truly how out of touch Conservatives actually are.

Until next time.