(LifeSiteNews) — A self-described “genderqueer” and “menstrual warrior” has produced a children’s coloring book about a cartoon character named “Toni The Tampon,” who teaches children that men can menstruate.
Cass Clemmer’s “The Adventures of Toni the Tampon” features a gender-neutral tampon with eyeballs who does things with her other “menstruation-themed friends,” like “Marina the Menstrual Cup,” “Sebastian the Sponge” and “Patrice the Pad,” Mashable reported.
“To any fellow GNC [Gender Non-Conforming]/ trans menstruators out there: I support you. I know that we live in terrifying times, but please know that the menstrual activist community and I all stand with you and #wewillnotbackdown,” Clemmer wrote in an Instagram post. “I am sorry there are so many people out there who feel the need to spit their hatred out at you because you are different, who feel the need to control you because you do not fit within some arbitrary category that they have determined for you.”
The idea that “men” can menstruate is along the same lines that “men” can become pregnant, i.e., a product of semantic activism. Transgender LGBTQ activists believe that sex (which they call gender) is not innate but “assigned” at birth. From that point forward people —even very young children — can “construct” their own “gender identity.” Thus, if a biological, natural woman decides to identify as a “trans man,” they would consider her monthly period that of a “man.”
Reaction to “Toni The Tampon” from conservatives and everyday Americans fatigued at the ever-more-radical array of gender-bending media stories was quick and severe.
“’Menstruators of all genders’ is not scientific at all. Thus it is not a good tool for educating kids,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon.
“No. Just, no,” said another, B. Robinson, under the headline, “Men cannot menstruate … ”
Breitbart writer Dr. Susan Berry said “Toni The Tampon” “is one aspect of the progressive campaign to blur the differences between male and female, and to ultimately create a ‘genderless’ society which bars the commonplace civic distinctions between biological males and biological females in a heterosexual society.”
Indiana pro-family advocate Micah Clark said “Toni The Tampon” is yet another sign that America has become a nation of fools.
“The first chapter of the [New Testament] Book of Romans in the Bible describes what happens with the decline of sexual morality and the acceptance of immoral acts in a culture. Verse 22 says, ‘Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.’ That’s where America is right now. We are a highly advanced culture of fools,” wrote Clark, president of American Family Association of Indiana.
Who is Cass Clemmer?
Clemmer dedicates her 2016 book, published by “Bloody Queer Publications,” as follows: “This coloring book is dedicated to the menstrual warriors; those who always color outside the lines.”
Apparently a disaffected missionaries’ kid, Clemmer graduated from American University but grew up in the Congo, where, she said, she was taught to hide and be ashamed of her period.
“I didn’t know what a uterus was, and I didn’t know where this blood was even coming from or why,” Clemmer told Mashable. “The only thing I was taught was how to clean it up so the world didn’t see it — and then I was sent on my way to figure the rest out myself.”
“A lot of us are taught to keep periods to ourselves, to the point that even having a wrapped tampon outside the confines of the bathroom can feel inappropriate,” she said. “It’s a tough conversation to have with kids, especially when you consider that adults are often struggling with their own internalized period shame … But hopefully, by opening up a fun and creative gateway to discussion, my period coloring book will help make that conversation a little easier.”
One Amazon reviewer of the gender-confusion-promoting coloring book took great umbrage at Clemmer’s “shame.”
“First off as an adult woman I am appalled at this sudden notion that people feel they need to make periods ‘shameless,’” wrote “Ranya.” “When in the world did they ever become shameful? I have never in my life been ashamed of my period nor have I ever heard of someone EVER complaining about how they are ashamed of it. It is a bodily function just as using the toilet.
“Feminism started off in the right direction wanting equal pay, etc., for women but somewhere along the lines someone took an extremely hard left and is now in la-la land of being not just [uber] disgusting and repulsive but a disgrace to our gender,” she said.
Ranya added. “I am also tired of people shoving transgender down everyone’s throat and telling me I have to embrace it. No. No, I don’t and no, I won’t. You’ve gone overboard, Miss Clemmer in telling people that now men can have periods and can conceive.”
Child abuse?
Clemmer identifies as “genderqueer,” which means she chooses not to affiliate with any particular gender (sex) but floats within the seemingly always-expanding spectrum of identities and orientations. She picked the name “Toni” for her cartoon tampon because it is sex-ambiguous.
Clemmer was so upset that one pro-family leader called her Toni The Tampon kids’ book “child abuse” that she took to her Instagram page last week to announce that all proceeds from the book (for just that week) will go to a group called Trans Life Line, which also promotes gender confusion (which those on the pro-LGBTQ Left increasingly call “gender non-conformity”).
“Teaching children that even men or boys can have periods is scientific malpractice and child abuse,” Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, told the Christian Post. “This coloring book is a solution in search of a problem. Undermining children’s comfort with their own bodies is no service to anyone. Most children who experience gender dysphoria grow out of it.”
Similarly, the American College of Pediatricians — the pro-family counterpart to the pro-LGBTQ American Academy of Pediatrics — issued a statement, “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” that declares, in part, “Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.”