To not stop saying that menstruation is a women's issue?

[HermioneWeasley]

Despite the fact that Twitter loons insist that it is triggering for trans women and erasing trans men?

On behalf of the millions and millions of women and girls suffering due to periods, and lack of access to sanpro and toilets (a FAR bigger human rights issue than where people with gender dysphoria pee) , I will keep saying this is a women's issue.

CoteDazure
Do you not know any women on HRT after hysterectomy?
I looked this up and it seems they are given Oestrogen at least up to the age at which they would havd started the menopause.
www.hysterectomy-association.org.uk/information/hormone-replacement-therapy-hrt-ert/

Rickety
They just don't realise that's what is happening. They think it's happening because they are transgender, when what she explains about being verbally or even physically assaulted is the experience of millions of women around the world

I think you are making a good pint there. Also, the point you made earlier up the thread about maybe they could be piggy-backed.

FelasCloak
What an intereseting and maddening link that was.

I was annoyed by the idea that latent femininity had been awakened and that this was compared to animals of all kinds (like frogs and hawk fish)
changing gender all the time in response to environmental stimuli, as though it was all natural when the change had occurred entirely because of a man-made intervention.

I was born female and feel female. I refuse to say I am Cisgender but there will probably eventually be great pressure to do this soon.

suburban

Yes funny enough dd 1 just started it. Hopefully this will do the trick. We tried oestrogen and that was awful followed by the implant which was horrendous. So many of their friends had the implant removed due to constant heavy bleeding.

It's seriously crap that it seems to take so long to match contraceptive needs to the individual.

For myself I get so bloody fed up of being told heavy bleeding is all part of the menopause and unless you present with cancer or a condition they can treat it's just get on.

It's crap.

Fingers crossed for your DD, only.

I was on the verge of giving up work because my periods were every two weeks and so heavy I was terrified of leaving the house for more than half an hour.

So it's no exaggeration to say the POP changed my life.

Fingers crossed indeed and hope it stays good for you too. The flooding is quite scary really.

Why is MN so obsessed with trans women and so uninterested in trans men?

I'm interested in transmen. In fact, I feel strongly that transmen are not being warned of the health risks of cross hormones to the point where I believe it constitutes medical neglience. Some young transmen are finding that testosterone use has put them in irreversible menopause, and at 22, they are having medical problems that are the sole preserve of women of 70 and over. They are discovering, with shock, that it is recommended that, after five years on testosterone, you should have a hysterectomy.

No one told them this.

Another fascinating aspect is that transmen are more truthful about their experiences. There are a number of youtube videos of transmen talking about how testosterone use made their personalities and realities change (whereas I have only found one or two transwomen admitting that synthetic oestrogen made their personalities and realities change). Of course, this then suggests that these trans individuals never "had the brain" of the opposite gender in the first place.

What all this is, at the end of the day, is a wish to socially and culturally perform as another "gender". Why transactivists have to try and redefine biology and anatomy into the bargain, I have no idea.

Interestingly, I suspect the next line in this identity war will be race. I noticed, with interest, that the NUS passed a notion declaring that "black" no longer wholly means someone with African or West Indian ancestry. While I understand the thinking behind it, I am wary that the particular historical injustices done to people of this heritage could be be diluted or even erased by the inclusion of non-white people from other cultures and historical circumstances. It does not take a genius to forecast a time when someone who identifies as "black" stands up and says "the legacy of slavery is not a black issue."

declaring that "black" no longer wholly means someone with African or West Indian ancestry

wtf does it mean then?

Um, what does black mean then. If not someone of African/Carribean descent?

Does black now mean anyone other than white people then? That's like "men" and "not-men"!

Hopefully the "trans race" issue is where this will all start to come unstuck and the public will hit peak trans in droves. Have tried to understand why "transgender" is apparently fine whilst "transracial" isn't, but all the arguments given seem to equally apply to both! Actually "transracial" seems to make slightly more sense tbh.

I'm, er... trans-national? Or something. Oh yes. Am a different nationality inside. Must be. Whenever I meet people of this particular nationality I get on with them, feel an affinity with them. I feel drawn to the language and love hearing it spoken (haven't actually learnt it but oooh I feel it's my language somehow). I actually get mistaken for being this nationality when abroad - including by people from the country in question who approach me speaking in their native tongue. Crucially, aspects of my pesonality and preferences actually resemble their national stereotype.

The above is all true. Yet I have never been to this country, my family are not from there, I have no idea what it's like to grow up there, and my passport says "British". So being trans-nationality is bollox, not based on the way nationality is actually defined and allocated. And yet, where an identity catergory is allocated based on actual biological markers, actual fact, rather than feeling or coincidence (eg. birthplace), we are supposed to cast all this aside and agree people can "transition" based on stereotypes!

Had a great conversation with DB (22) recently. He said "What I don't understand is, if we've agreed that a load of stuff is untrue sexist sterotyping, what does someone mean by 'feeling like a woman'?" I think he thought I'd be able to answer that question. Rather satisfying moment hearing him hit peak trans over the phone.

Does black now mean anyone other than white people then? That's like "men" and "not-men"!

I think this is the idea, yes. That "black" now indicates "not-white", just as "women" is now being used as a term to indicate "not-man."

The question then is: what could be included in the identifier "not-white"? Because you can argue practically everyone from a non-North Western European ancestral heritage is "not-white".

And this is where we see the same problems as the trans redefinition of "woman" or "female". If "black" comes to include someone of West Indian heritage but also a Russian Tatar from Kazan ... then what practical use is the term at all?

Black history month would become "every history that is not-white history" month, which you could argue is an interesting idea but you would also have to recognise that 1) such a change would negate the whole concept behind black history month in the first place, 2) actual black history, as in the history of people of African descent, would fade into the background and 3) we already have a term for "every history that is not-white history": we call it "world history".

But I am derailing here. I just thought it was interesting to note that these re-definitions of identity and meaning are not just taking place in the context of gender and sex.

I'm part italian, am i now black then?

I've heard "black" used in a political context, to indicate "non-white". It's not a new thing.

Don't think Italian counts though, because European Caucasian = white, right?

"Black" as a political signifier felt preferable to "non-white" or "ethnic minority" was fairly common in leftist circles in the 1970/80s. Cf Southall Black Sisters who are almost exclusively South Asian in origin. Less common useage now.

Cheerful Yank. There is this article from 2004. this in Think Progress is very pro-trans but reads as though auicide rates remain high for and transgender person who isn't middle class with access to health insurance suggesting some issues with differences between those with autogynophelia (who are not at high risk of suicide) and those with gender dysphoria due to a number of external factories who remain at high risk.

Black is a political identity

Black is a political identity

Rachel Dolezal would agree.

It really is just the very height of privelege - being envious of something awful someone else has, simply because they have it, not because it's something desirable or beneficial.

I'm currently pregnant and half the joy that I am feeling is the relief of not having periods for atleast a year (planning on BFing). I honestly believe I could get a job at the head office of a FTSE 100 company if they only knew my organisation and resilience skills that I use 7 days a month. I have the misfortune of having to wear a tampon and sanitary towel at the same, ensuring I wear black constantly because I leak most days anyway, setting alarms in the night to change my pad so I don't bleed onto my sheets, having a rigorous pain relief plan in place to relieve the searing white hot pain that radiates down to my ankles, whilst looking after a toddler and holding down a job. Being afforded respite from that genuinely changes by quality of life.

It's fucking awful, I don't know any woman who likes or even doesn't mind her periods. I've been ignored by doctors since I was 14, all very normal they say, and I can't take contraceptive pills due to side effects. The thought of someone being envious simply because I have what they don't is possibly the most infantile thing I've ever heard

No periods is definitely a great side effect of breastfeeding. DS2 was exclusively breastfed, and he was something like 13-14 months old before my periods reappeared.

I do wonder whether a lot of this appropriation of womenhood by certain trans-activists is to do with the notion that power now resides in less "privileged" identities.

It's something I've been picking up for a while: a desire to put themselves at the top of the hierarchy of social injustice, while double-thinking others into ignoring that they have never experienced the realities of those circumstances that create the injustices in the first place.

I think this is why some activists get so angry about menstruation because it shatters the double-think.

But it is the idea that women have power that I find fascinating, and it reminds me of the sentiments you find about women on MRA or Red Pill sites. That somehow women have all the power over men now, and the disaster of mens' lives is entirely due to the fact that women have all the power and are using it to destroy men through divorcing them or being a bitch boss and, somewhere along the line, this is all the fault of feminism.

To me, these two phenomena seem to be connected.

That's fab, MrsJ. My kid was BFed until nearly 4, EBF till she had a few solids from 7 months, but my first period went almost unnoticed because my lochia had barely stopped. Less than four blimming weeks post-birth. My midwife said it is really common.

Aaaaaaand I don't give a fuck if anyone on Twitter feels 'othered' by that discussion of post-birth periods. The nerve of these people.

Werks, I was really interested in what you said about transmen a page or two back. Do you have any suggested reading on that? No worries if not.

Beyond, some years ago I read a history book from the US written in the 1920's, which referred to Italians as black. The book was on immigration and the chapter was on how Italian migrants were forcing down wages and being generally awful. I think the author used the term to describe any group that he didn't like, which seemed to be everyone apart from WASP.

I agree, Pinkie. I want people to talk about periods at work - we're meant to behave as if they don't happen at all, whereas for many women, they are debilitating to some degree, at least for part of our lives (oh, how I wish for the periods of my 20s!) I go through all the shit my male colleagues do at work, and I deal with periods. I deserve a medal.

On the transmen thing - most of the articles I've seen have not been on the effects of hormones, need for a hysterectomy and so on, but on how much easier life is with male privilege: how their jokes are suddenly found funny when they never used to be; how people listen to their opinions; all that sort of thing. Whereas transwomen are in many cases still full of male privilege, and expect people to listen to them and be taken seriously. Also - there seem to be a lot more loud, shouty transwomen than transmen. In reality, there probably aren't half so many as all that, and the majority of transwomen are just getting on with life and wondering about how to pay next month's bills and so on, and it's just the loud activist minority whom we hear from, and because they're so loud, they get to set the agenda.

I do wonder whether a lot of this appropriation of womenhood by certain trans-activists is to do with the notion that power now resides in less "privileged" identities.

It's something I've been picking up for a while: a desire to put themselves at the top of the hierarchy of social injustice, while double-thinking others into ignoring that they have never experienced the realities of those circumstances that create the injustices in the first place.

Definitely, werks. Right on the money there I think. Great posts.

What's ridiculous is that so many of us believed that fake tampon thing. But most of what is being proposed as fact IS ridiculous

It's like some mass Frankenstein experiment