"It's an actual fact that not just women experience periods"

[PaddleBoardingMomma]

So this is the latest campaign from cosmetics company Benefit...

I have a lot of questions. Firstly, why on earth a cosmetics company are not only jumping on the current trend of "let's somehow get menstruation into our ethos even though it's not related to our company, just so the women think we totally get them" but why they are jumping on it and taking such a stupid, exclusionary and ridiculous view point. Baffled doesn't begin to cover it.

Secondly, how can anyone other than a woman have a period? Answers on a postcard...

www.instagram.com/p/Cc0EGUWIYzr/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

No, the statement is written by a prime troll.

I think they were deliberately being provocateurs (aka trolling) by writing a factually correct but simultaneously highly offensive statement. Sort of like the infamous “It’s ok to be white” statement that was all over university campuses a few years back. Factually correct but also highly offensive.

If pointless, disingenuous semantic gotchas are your thing, knock yourself out. No man has ever had a period though.

There is an interview with Kenny Ethan Jones on Benefits Instagram too. In the interview, Kenny says that they went to an all girls school, got their period at 15, but when it happened had absolutely no idea what was going on. The reason for this is that 'the messaging at that time was that only women and girls have periods'. And that because Kenny didn't see themselves as a girl, they didn't think they should be getting a period.

This is the same person who apparently didn't know they had a cervix and so didn't know they had to get a smear test.

If all this is true, then something has gone seriously wrong here. I'm actually inclined to believe that this isn't true and that these stories are just emotional blackmail to try and force people to change language.

Can anyone, even at the age of 15, seriously just think that because they don't view themselves as a girl, that is going to magically stop their period from starting?

And what the deep fried fuck any of it has to do with makeup, a product that presumably Kenny doesn't use, because that's for girls, christ only knows.

People with DSDs are not all "hermaphrodites", and of course they are a biological reality.^

So would hermaphrodites, of which no doubt a few exist, have xxy chromosomes and literally be both male and female? Otherwise, if they are just xx or yy then they are one sex or the other? But we know it's not these people who are being talked about.

The reason for this is that 'the messaging at that time was that only women and girls have periods'. And that because Kenny didn't see themselves as a girl, they didn't think they should be getting a period.

So Kenny thought they could actually just pick which sex they now are? They thought that sex is assigned by someone? And because of Kenny's lack of basic biological facts, we should all join them in that la-la-land where facts no longer exist at all?

And how would the alternative training about who gets periods go? Looks to me like it might be based on genital exception? The horrors. But the word 'genital' is now also nonsensical. Outie and innie check? Do not confuse with navels.

Is there an emergency brake on this idiots' space ship called earth?

The same Kenny who feels so masculine that he finds it traumatic to buy San Pro as it's in the women's section and is pink and frilly yet Benefit, a cosmetics brand feel it a good idea to link up with him?

I call bollocks on this. Kenny went to an all girls school and had a sister. Unless Kenny has some … difficulties … in understanding, then Kenny knew /knows fine well that Kenny has female biology and (prior to hormone treatment which presumably didn’t happen before 15 because That Never Happens) is different from boring old square non speshul peers only in the clothing and haircut department.

No "true" hermaphrodites exist, as in people with fully functioning sets of both male and female reproductive organs. There are a whole range of specific DSDs which each have different features and some have different levels of severity. I once saw posted a summary of the different types of DSDs but didn't save a copy of it.

It's not as simple as just having different combinations of X and Y chromosomes, there are other factors that can cause disordered development.

at deep fried fuck! Must remember that one

Have they changed the definition of 'actual' and 'fact' now too?

If all this is true, then something has gone seriously wrong here

It is possible that this genuninely took Kenny by surprise but if so what went wrong was either Kenny being really not very bright (and to protect people in that category from being surprised at getting a period we need simple factual conversations - girls get periods, you are a girl) or more actual sensible support for people who have been led to believe that you can identify out of your biology. Either way, GI is doing the damage and is not the solution.

Time to sack the blue haired intern!

There are over 500 replies now, majority calling them out over their bullshit.

So happy to hear that the comments mostly make sense. I do despair with all the little changes and adjustments and nudges, because their overall effect is to wipe out all our words and without words we must resort to incoherent raging when trying to do feminist work.

Besides, I don't identify as a woman, I am one, and the world has never allowed me to forget that when it so desires to do.

The same Kenny who feels so masculine that he finds it traumatic to buy San Pro as it's in the women's section and is pink and frilly yet Benefit, a cosmetics brand feel it a good idea to link up with him?

Because dad's husbands and boyfriends have never bought it for their daughters/wives etc

And why are we indulging the idea thay the cashiers give a shit what they buy. They sell lube, sanpro, condoms etc all the time.

The same Kenny who feels so masculine that he finds it traumatic to buy San Pro as it's in the women's section and is pink and frilly yet Benefit, a cosmetics brand feel it a good idea to link up with him?

You know what else gets right on my tits, it's this stupid, insulting pretence that everything that's for women is pink / frilly / feminine. It really isn't. Some stuff is, but period products are generally medical-looking, much like toothpaste or painkillers, and the packaging tends to be blue/green or white - this is done with health-related products to counteract any image of bodily excretions etc and make it all seem clean and sterile (hence the famous blue liquid used in pad ads).

It is just a barefaced, infuriating lie that everything for women is pink and girly. It's like that ridiculous non-binary poet a couple of years back who write about how they couldn't get a haircut as hairdressers for women are all "pink perfumed femininity" IIRC. But they are simply not. Most are unisex, most are white/silver/black/wood effect etc., very few are pink, even fewer are frilly.

I am so sick of having womanhood and women's stuff blatantly lied about to try to make trans people look different and special. Just bore off!

And yes what kind of man is traumatised by some things being feminine-looking FFS. Straight, manly men all over the world sleep in floral bedsheets or use pretty pink teapots that are in their homes because their wife chose them, as well as the many men who like those things themselves. I wish they would just stop talking total shite!

Kenny isn't very bright is he?

Kenny also has a monstrous ego.

More from Kenny: www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-men-pain-menstruation-more-just-physical-n1113961

This highly toxic and delusional individual isn't going to be happy until tampons are called manpons, are they?

But those who but they for show won’t like that one bit.

can’t we just have toy packs (like kids have in their play shoot) for people to call things whatever they like and carry them around, so that they rest of us can get on with life.

Having watched (some, couldn't get through the whole thing) of the interview with Kenny saying how they didn't think they would ever get periods, and how their mothers face dropped when they came home and told her they were bleeding... I have to ask, isn't this some pretty fundamentally flawed parenting? Surely their mother was aware she birthed a daughter, and being a woman herself we can assume she understood biology and puberty, but at no point had these conversations about the the fact Kenny would indeed menstruate ? Rather it seems she instead perpetuated the gender dysmorphia and clearly quite significant mental and emotional issues Kenny was experiencing at that time by either avoiding the issue entirely, or potentially encouraging Kenny to believe periods were not going to happen for them?

I wonder if we're now seeing some of the trickle-down effects of gender ideology being widely disseminated, taught in schools, treated as the only right thing to think (and anyone who disagrees it a bigot/dinosaur). Perhaps not everyone really does, deep down, get that sex doesn't really change. Maybe there are a lot of people now, especially kids, who really think that if you decide/say you are the opposite sex then you immediately, literally are, including in a physical sense - because they are being told that, and anyone who tries to point out the truth has been suppressed, cancelled, sacked etc.

Not everyone is going to see this in the context of history, feminism, an understanding of totalitarianism, the lessons of Orwell, etc. Some people, especially those lacking in intelligence and/or education, will just think it's reality. The fact that they unexpectedly menstruate, or can't get the right medical care, or can't (or alternatively can) get pregnant, etc. belies the nonsense of it all and shows that there is actually such a thing as reality and that gender ideology isn't it. But for people caught up in it and being taught it from a young age, of course some of them are going to be extremely confused.

What pisses me off about this is Kenny's assumption that the identity of girls is someone of a hive mind. The menstruation issue is very simply one of just biology. There is NOTHING that binds women together other than our biology and it's highly arrogant of him to assume that there is. Kenny wants to be an individual - sure. But this does not mark him out from other women. They GI people made the problem when turning 'woman' from biology to identity (or trying to). They did this for their own needs and now people like Kenny who are too daft? fucked up? to see through this are paying the price. The pain of menstruating it more than just physical for many girls too Kenny - this does not mean you're a man or special I'm afraid.

Yes it makes one really question just what the hell children have been taught in schools and at home over the last decade. In an age where sex education has never been so open how are people growing up and being so ignorant of human biology? This could well be the start of the trickle down effects but we haven't really even scratched the surface yet. From my experience the whole gender identity ideology in schools seemed to explode only in the last 2-3 years. There's going be a hell of a number of seriously confused kids out there.