Feminine label on Tampons not inclusive

[MsGreying]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk./news/2026/07/10/waitrose-rebrands-feminine-care-products-after-complaint/

Waitrose drops ‘feminine’ label from tampons after trans complaint
Waitrose has dropped the word “feminine” from its sanitary products after receiving a complaint that it was not inclusive of transgender people.

Period products will no longer be marketed to females following an internal complaint that said “not all people who have periods are women”.

In the document, the complainant wrote:
(Just one?!)

A spokesman for Waitrose said the term “feminine products” was changing because the range now included incontinence products for men.

I have to say I've always hated the coy label "feminine products". It makes it sound like I need something pink and scented to help me mince through the fields in a floaty dress (or possibly rollerblade in white trousers). Dealing with one of the annoying consequences of being a woman with a functioning reproductive system has nothing to do with the stereotypes of femininity. "Feminine hygiene" is even worse as it suggests this basic biology is somehow unhygienic. For once the alternative term, period products, is actually an improvement. Can't imagine why my complaints to this effect haven't been taken this seriously...

I totally agree @UnaOfStormhold . Feminine products/feminine hygiene - ugh, so coy and giggly and blushing! Like a proper demure laydee! Perhaps that's why some TRAs have a tampon fascination.

Much prefer the term period products. That's what they're made for. The end.

Dropping the word 'feminine' is fine by me. 'Feminine' does actually mean what the trans lobby would like 'female' and 'woman' to mean. It relates to a gendered performance, not to sex. I've never been 'feminine' (at least I've striven to avoid it!) but I still needed something to mop up my menstrual blood.

Trans men and butch lesbians can feel happier buying tampons if that nasty Barbie word is dropped. And perhaps it will also make tampons less appealing to the transwomen who mistake 'feminine' for a sex.

Agree. They’re menstrual products or just call them by what they are

I think they should call them blood plugs.

I feel that there just might be more important things to worry about?

Although if this has been done after a trans complaint this irks me since I don’t see why anything that affects me as a woman has to change because someone else wants to become a woman then doesn’t like it.

Hear me out - this is renaming the aisle, not the products - and - men really do need sanitary products, specific male ones as well as general - and perhaps all of these products could sit in an aisle called sanitary products and really thats ok?

I have the inference that being feminine is something inherently not hygienic.

Period Products keeps it nice and simple but why Waitrose added mens continence products to this area will remain a mystery.

To be honest it all makes sense to be there. Pads, tampons, urinary incontinence products all in one space makes sense. The female incontinence products are always there too.

Presumably it's because that's where the continence products were already, so it makes more sense to keep the men's ones there than some other random spot in the store.

I think the concerning part is the report that the change was made 'following an internal complaint that said “not all people who have periods are women'.

But the correct description for the product itself (leaving aside the aisle where they sit) is surely 'female', not 'feminine'?

“Not all people who have periods are women” eh? Of course they are.
‘Feminine hygiene’ has always irked me as a phrase. Menstrual and continence products is all that’s needed.

I'm gender critical and I've always thought the word 'feminine' was an eye roll when it relates to women's hygiene products.

Female hygiene would be okay.

But the fact that they changed it after a man was upset because he doesn't have periods is disgusting. Shame on them.

Involuntary discharge products?!

MyThreeWords Trans men and butch lesbians can feel happier buying tampons if that nasty Barbie word is dropped.

I'm genuinely trying to work out whether this is a joke or not - transmen and butch lesbians feeling 'happier' if a word doesn't appear on the packaging?
Seriously?

I can't speak for transmen, but I can assure you that butch lesbians have been buying tampons since time immemorial - well, since tampons were invented😄 - and the absence or presence of the word 'feminine' on the packaging is a matter of supreme unimportance.

It's like saying 'people with a cervix' instead of 'woman' so transmen are included - because, according to that logic, transmen are so dim that they don't know that they are women and have a cervix and will ignore any health advice that says 'women'.
Saying 'people with a cervix' will make them go 'Oh now I get it, I'm not a woman but I have a cervix, thank heavens they said 'people with a cervix, I'd never have known...'🙄

Credit butch lesbians with a bit of common sense - transmen too probably but I can't speak for them.

Apologies, @MarieDeGournay . It was only intended as an extension of what would be my relief at the zapping of the word if I were still menstruating. Obviously I didn't mean that butch lesbians would be attaching any more importance to that ugly word than I do. It just seemed an even clearer example of the sense of incongruence that the word provokes in me.

It's just the removal of an annoying bit of nonsense. You surely don't imagine that I meant anythIng more than that by 'happiness'? But, regardless, I shouldn't have spoken beyond my experience.

Aw, thank you for that MyThreeWords, and my apologies if I went in a bit hard.

I agree that about the word 'feminine' being cringe, I reacted to the idea that the absence or presence of a word is pivotal in anybody deciding whether or not to buy tampons, or have a smear test.

I may also have reacted as much to background noise about words being literal
annihilation as I did to your individual post.

And my 'FFS' point is possibly more easily reached when the temperature goes over 25degrees.

It's a good corrective, tho, @MarieDeGournay, and thanks for that.

Now that we've shaken off the nasty euphemising of the blood plugs (in Waitrose at least), can we move an aisle or two along and get Tesco to stop using the term "household essentials" for the toilet paper aisle? It's not my house that wipes its bottom.

Strongly agree.

I had my bag stolen many years ago. The bag was found, without the purse, and handed in to the police who contacted me and said to come and retrieve it. The tampons in the bag were included in the list of contents as ‘feminine requisites’. That still makes me smile.

Is a man in a dress not feminine?
I wouldn’t think it was a particularly masculine thing to do.