Texas State Legislature Declares War On Feminine Hygiene Products While Debating Ladyparts Regulation Bill

By now you have probably read about the Great TAMPONGHAZI!!!! at the Texas capitol building in Austin Friday. While the state senate went through their little Kabuki theater to pass a bill with stringent restrictions on abortion, everybody entering the gallery to watch the performance got searched for contraband tampons by officers of the Department of Public Safety. Yr Wonkette has been mildly hard at work sifting through all the conflicting reports of what exactly went down. Join us as we ask ourselves “What in the everloving fuck?” Will there also be <headdesking>? Probably! You’ll just have to join us after the jump!

Were you aware that women carry around items called “feminine hygiene products” to manage the flow of menstrual gunk ‘n’ whatnot from their bodies? It’s true! Ha ha, women areadorable!But in the wrong hands, those maxi pads and tubes of cotton or whatever tampons are made of could be turned into deadly missiles of disruption, we guess? So the Texas Department of Public Safety, having received information that protesters might use props to disrupt the proceedings, searched purses and backpacks of anyone wishing to enter the senate gallery to watch the debate over HB2. Here is a list of items the officers were reported to have found and confiscated:

• The aforementioned tampons and maxi pads

• One (1) jar of urine

• Eighteen (18) jars or bags of feces

• Bricks

• Glitter

• Paint

• Magazines

Here is a list of items reported found and not confiscated:

• Guns

No, really. Anything that could be thrown from the gallery was confiscated. Anything that could be shot from the gallery, as long as the gun owner had a concealed-carry permit, was A-OK! What DPS would have done about guns being used as a feminine hygiene product, we cannot say. Apparently the issue never came up.

Anyway, let’s look at these items and see if we can't come up with some less nefarious reasons why women would have been carrying them around:

• Magazines: Women wanting something to read in case there were long breaks during the debate and they got a little bored? Maybe if the magazines were non-threatening junk likePeople or Better Homes and Gardens. But what if they wanted to read more incendiary propaganda, like the Daily Worker? Best to just get rid of everything to be safe. 30-round magazines were, of course, perfectly OK.

• Paint: Maybe these women stopped at Home Depot on the way to the capitol building to buy cans of paint so their husbands could repaint the garage or the guest bathroom or something this weekend and didn’t have time to drop it off at home first? Husbands, when you get home later make sure you scold the little lady for being so  disorganized. She should have gone to Home Depot sooner!

• Glitter: Either these women were Code Pink protesters who really did plan a glitter bomb, or more likely they are doing some sort of art project at home with their passels of good Christian children. Ever seen a diorama of the manger scene that didn’t have the baby Jesus covered in glitter? Still, Code Pink. Better safe than sorry. Those women with passels of good Christian children waiting at home to work on their projects will just have to go to the art store again later!

• Bricks: There was an early report that seems to have originated with theTexas Tribune live blog of the event. The source was one lone officer who was apparently another silly female. Still, that did not stop this one from spreading all over the internet pretty quick, as sharp-eyed conservatives know that radical left-wing protesters are always spoiling to start some of the ol’ ultraviolence. Katie Pavlich, who has recently become yr Wonkette’s favorite go-to fount of unsourced, misinterpreted bullshit, tweeted it out. When we suggested maybe what she meant was that Republican senators were actuallyshittingbricks, she ignored us and continued tweeting out the rumor. It has now become an object of faith on the right that “pro-aborts” tried to carry bricks into the hearings, possibly while chanting "Hail Satan." Later statements from the DPS, while sticking by the report of jars of urine and feces, do not mention bricks. We’re sure Katie will tweet a correction any minute now. In the meantime, we suggest the same advice for those ditzy women who brought the paint: plan your day so you have time to go to Home Depot and pick up your home-improvement project supplies and then drop those items at home BEFORE you head over to the capitol building to protest your government taking away your long-cherished rights. Otherwise your husbands will have to give you such a scolding! And maybe somespanking if you have been particularly naughty.

• Jars of feces and urine: Maybe these womenare all astronauts? Or had started lining up early in the morning for a seat in the gallery and did not want to leave the line to go to the bathroom? The DPS first said these items were confiscated. According to the Houston Chronicle, "DPS officials later said that jars with the suspected materials were not confiscated, rather discovered and disposed of." Presumably this clarification was mandatory under the Distinction Without a Difference Act of 1997. In any case, yr Wonkette finds it awfully convenient that something that would gross even us out was, um, leaked to the press, and then the jars were conveniently disposed of. The cover-up, or the flushing, is always worse than the crime! In any case we cannot conceive of a scenario in which someone planned on dumping jars of urine and feces onto the Senate floor because what fucking good would that do? This is all another way of saying that until someone comes forward to admit she planned on dumping bags of poop onto the bags of poop who were voting to take away her rights, we simply think this story is a sack of, well, poop.

• Guns: Obviously these were needed to protect the legislators from the dangerous magazine- and glitter-throwing feminazis in the gallery. DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS!

Anyway the Senate passed the bill in the middle of the night with nineteen votes in favor, because the bill is so popular that obviously the GOP has the public on its side and does not need to resort to trickery. Same thing with Wisconsin and North Carolina! Sorry about your rights, ladies. Now get going on those home-improvement projects.

[ Texas Tribune / Burnt Orange Report / Houston Chronicle ]