Mooncup, the British reusable menstrual cup makers, just launched their Love Your Beach? Love Your Vagina campaign—a compelling attempt to connect the care for your body/care for your planet messages at the root of the push for alternative menstrual care.

My first reaction: that deliciously sensual vulva has HAIR! ‘Atta girls!’ This body-positive, earth-loving feminist is on board.

Then I read British journalist/commentator (and self described “broad-minded broad”) Julie Burchill’s piece in The Independent about the Mooncup ad and was brought back to reality, that is, the reality that is colored by menstrual taboos and woman-body-hating. Oh geez, really, Julie? Et tu?

In short, Burchill rails against not only the soft cup, but also the sponge and reusable pads, and by extension “breastfeeding, small shopping, slow eating”—other movements, she concludes that “conspire to straight up KEEP WOMEN AT HOME FOR AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE” (yes, her words, her emphasis). Words like gory, inappropriate, and vile pepper her indictment against options she rejects before she tried them. Her basis? Her “best ex-hippie friend, happily brought back to the land of the living.”

If you strip away her regrettable squeamishness at trying something new (single use pads and tampons FTW!), we find a rather clumsy critique of eco-feminism. Though I can’t be sure since I keep tripping over Burchill’s ignorance and the REAL public enemy.

I, too, shudder, when a product is sold to women (or anyone) because THEY MUST or THEY SHOULD. When this US national breastfeeding awareness campaign heavy-handedly warned women that NOT breastfeeding effectively meant selfish mothering, lots of feminists protested.

Give me info, support, and compassion, not a big finger wagging in my face.

So I hear Burchill’s frustration with ‘Go green, you bitch’ messages, but here, it doesn’t stick. She is mad at a cup maker for promoting a product she thinks sets women back. But for me, the scoundrel is not MORE options, but rather our old nemesis the menstrual taboo which grows out of a long standing discomfort with women’s bodies ON THEIR OWN TERMS. We are cursed with an egregious inconsistency bred out of sexism: Women’s bodies on display? Cool. Women’s bodies as commodities? Score! Women’s bodies lactating, menstruating, doing what bodies do. Eeewww!

Exposed breasts and reusable cups and a expanding field of options—these aren’t the problems limiting women’s potential.  No, deep-seated discomfort with women’s bodies in their natural state–that’s one that really keeps us back.