And if it shouldn't be free then why don't men get an extra check for consuming extra calories? The question is to demonstrate how ridiculous the idea is. The levels that people go to in order to sympathize with women are quite high and seem to be for the purpose of giving men a sense that they should feel bad or sorry for the condition of being a woman when really, if you want equality, you treat women like you treat men. You assume they are strong and they can handle the problem. Yes $7 a box by 9 boxes a year is definitely extra cost of living. But are we really going to make this one thing free or tax free just because it only affects women? It's such an oversensitivity to women and it should be considered offensive to them that anybody even considers that kind of special treatment.

Intent is everything and giving into pressure like this just reinforces consideration of every word you speak or write and in what possible dimension it can be deemed offensive. In your life you can contort your language and behavior to please everybody but at some point you are no longer behaving for yourself but for everyone else. You have to pretend like you want to speak different pronouns, you have to pretend that calling someone black is much more offensive than calling them African American. You have to make sure that you specifically don't interrupt women, you have to double check (and counter) your implicit bias towards women and minorities when you think they didn't do a good job in the interview.

Some of these things are hyperbole and some of them are not. I know the standard response is that I'm over exaggerating but its par for the course to get diversity training, to have quarterly updates on how more women are being hired! (as if the company were actually eliminating discrimination instead of just bumping numbers up). This is all new and its moving faster and faster.