Periods don't have a gender

[Keke94LND]

This Instagram page that I follow (I have just unfollowed them) that literally has female in their name, and their bio says 'changing the equation, closing the gaps, we're on a mission to connect women around the world and achieve a gender-equal future', thinks it is appropriate on National period day to post something saying 'periods don't have a gender' .. unbelievable... if you can't state that women have periods and are discriminated against because of this fact, how exactly do they think we can have gender equality and close the gaps? Thankfully, although this post got 7k likes, all of the comments are critical, including a few from people with blue ticks. One of the comments I really liked was
'patriarchy: discriminated against women and makes them feel ashamed of having periods.
Modern day feminists: being a woman is a social construct and period has no gender. Meanwhile women around the globe: still exist, still suffer from patriarchy'

I have PMT today. This is giving me even more rage.

Periods don't have a gender.
Cushions don't have a wheel.
Feet don't have a head.
Flowers don't have a carrot.

That's how stupid they sound.

It’s a strange phrase. Periods themselves don’t have a gender, but they certainly are highly gendered in that the patriarchy has transformed a natural biological occurrence that affects the female sex into a site of gender oppression. So periods are encoded to mean impure, disgusting, etc and have loads of patriarchal invented rituals and language surrounding them (shame, period huts, ritual cleansing, etc). And this has been done to oppress and control women, and to signify that women are different and inferior to men.

That grey icing makes me uncomfortable. Yuk.

Holy shit the comments on that post are on fire!!! It's really starting to seem like women have had enough of this shit.

Colin Wright skewered this sort of idiocy quite well the other day.

Yeah, and tbf I didn't include the description underneath the photo which says 'it's time to remember that not only women menstruate

Which is true, if they’re referring to girls.

But they’re not.

I am now singing Only Women Bleed by Alice Cooper. Not actually about periods but all of the rest of the crap women suffer.

@NecessaryScene

it's time to remember not all people who menstruate are women.

In much the same way as not all multiples of two are even, if you redefine "two" or "even".

But any redefinition that ends up hiding clear truths is clearly counterproductive.

The statement is saying absolutely nothing about material reality, it's just illustrating the brokenness of the definitions.

Words that mean nothing make all statements using them meaningless.

That is really well put.

@Skysblue

I vote we just erase the word gender, everyone wears what they like / sleeps with whom they want and we get a proper conversation going about sex discrimination and sex-based violence and how utterly crap it is to be female.

Yes

Cis women and trans men have periods, so periods don't have a gender.

I would have thought this would unite gc feminists and transgender people.

What women?

You do realise that it’s generally trans women who would get airiated over things like pregnancy and periods don’t you?

If you find out you have a period, guess what? You're a girl or a woman.

I think they deliberately love the muddying of language.

Also who thinks anyone but a female can have periods? Of course they also use the word female interchangeably with woman as despite what they say they don’t care about the distinction between sex and gender.

I also still don’t get why defining people by gender is progressive. It makes no sense. It’s regressive.

@Eucalyptustrees

Periods don't have a gender. Cushions don't have a wheel. Feet don't have a head. Flowers don't have a carrot.

That's how stupid they sound.

Lol.

And yet while periods don’t have a gender, breasts, hair and eyelashes apparently do.

To be fair, periods don’t have a gender. Having periods or not depends on your sex. Your wibble gender identity is irrelevant imo.

@DadJoke

Cis women and trans men have periods, so periods don't have a gender.

I would have thought this would unite gc feminists and transgender people.

Well no because 'woman' isn't a gender, 'woman' is a female. Gender is the characteristics of a woman or man that is socially constructed. Periods aren't socially constructed though.

Cis what dadjoke. My eyes rolled back in my head when you just denied my gender. Misgendering me dadjoke