Transwomen - pseudumenopausal symptoms due to hrt - asked to approve work policy

[GrimDamnFanjo]

I have to comment on a paper that’s come for approval. It’s a policy regarding menopause at work.
theres detail regarding the experience of black women, women with disabilities, trans men and those who identify as non binary and a line that transwomen may experience pseudomenopausal symptoms due to taking hrt.
is this true?
is this any different to anyone having side effects for drugs they take or am I missing something?

I am completely prepared to believe that taking doses of hormones that are not normal for your sex causes side effects. Those hormones are not HRT because it's not replacing hormones at levels that the male body produces after going through male puberty. It's a medically dubious method of inducing a male body to change in various ways that make it a bit less male and a bit more like a female body, but not really anything like the glorious and massively complicated female body, because no male can ever have a female reproductive system. It has known adverse effects on the male cardiovascular system, IIRC. Probably others too.

I have no idea how a trans-identified male could experience menopause because what that word means is coming to the point in life where the lifetime supply of eggs a woman was born with are now too old to enable her to become pregnant. The hormones associated with the menstrual cycle, ovulation and conception therefore don't get produced at the levels they did, unless she takes medication, which in her case would be HRT, because it replaces what her body used to produce naturally.

Why would a trans-identified male stop taking their artificial hormones other than to pretend they too are going through menopause? I think some of the changes they wanted from the artificial hormone regime would reverse, so why would they do it?

I think this has been inserted into your work policy by some biologically ill-informed numpty who has swallowed wholesale the obvious nonsense that trans-identified males on artificial hormones experience period-like symptoms and has jumped to the conclusion that they must therefore also experience menopause.

It's not menopause. It's drug withdrawal syndrome.

Well, for starters, it’s not HRT when a man takes oestrogen. It’s not “replacing” anything.

”Pseudo” = fake

So it has no place in a menopause policy.

Given the broad range of menopausal symptoms I would think a lot of symptoms deriving from all sorts of things could be described as “pseudomenopausal”….they wouldn’t belong in a menopause policy either.

I would ask whoever wrote this where they got the information from.

This will be at root a political issue that it is 'unkind' to suggest that there are experiences of womenhood that a man cannot own and be part of.

It comes down to whether a polite political fiction to comfort men matters more than the truth about women's bodies. Obviously no man can experience any part of menopause, he has never had a female reproductive system.

I need to sensibly comment on this at a meeting - so trans women don’t take hrt, they take other hormones? Which will give side effects in the same way that any medication can do?

I'd be challenging any use of "HRT", it may be hormone therapy, but it isn't replacement of any sort. I find it really undermining of the importance of HRT to those that do actually need help navigating hormone imbalances and changes.

Can you say that you welcome the way the policy describes the different experiences of (eg) black women, transmen, disabled women, non-binary females etc, all of whom may have slightly different experiences of/feelings about menopause and it's really helpful to have the policy recognise the diversity of experiences. If it does not already cover early/surgical menopause, that would be worth flagging up. But then say that the experience of transwomen taking cross-sex hormones is an important issue in its own right but not, technically, menopause and might be better addressed in the organisation's policy on being supportive to trans employees (since presumably it has one)?

Cross-sex hormones, not HRT.

And yes, like any medication they can have a wide range of side effects. Some of these will overlap with menopause symptoms, but they aren't 'pseudomenopausal' any more than migraines caused by viagra are 'pseudomenopausal' just because women often get migraines in menopause.

Definition of pseudo : In medical terminology, "pseudo" is a prefix meaning "false" or "fake," used to describe conditions or phenomena that appear to be one thing but are actually another.

there is no such thing as pseudomenopause. (Doesn’t even exist as a word. Autocorrect is doing its nut 🫨.)

The menopause policy should cover the same groups as your pregnancy and maternity policy.

It's a clever trick, isn't it? "Transwomen have symptoms that resemble those of menopause" - and then they hope you'll make the jump "I want to be nice to women in menopause, so this means I should treat transwomen the same way!"

I'm sure they might have similar symptoms. Likewise, various diseases have symptoms that overlap with being drunk. That doesn't mean a sick leave policy should treat drunkenness like an actual illness!

While nothing would surprise me less than larpers larping, I'm completely unaware of there being middle aged transidentified men looking to manipulate their hormone prescriptions in order to induce menopause-like effects.

I'd ask for solid evidence that this exists before approving a work place policy based on it.

It seems to me, OP, that the fact that you’re asking these questions means that the information is not in the paper. This your comments should push back and point out that the paper is unclear, does not define its terms and nor does it explain the issues. It’s not for you to make good the deficits.

This. And no others.

This is an excellent point.

Info via AI but from Mayo Clinic, Boston Uni (US, but don't see why UK would be any different) about what TW take:

Oestrogen and anti-androgens, the former make for a more 'female' appearance while the latter reduce the masculine characteristics.

Some will also take progesterone to potentially aid in the increase of breast development (limited evidence for this) and some take Finasteride 'to address androgen-dependent hair loss or promote scalp hair growth'.

What do we women take in our HRT? I'm on very low dose oestrogen. I'm not aware of menopausal women needing meds to reduce testosterone levels, generally speaking. Does bigger-dose HRT than mine (standard dose?) include progesterone? If it does, it's unlikely to be to aid breast development in menopausal women. I suspect most of us are way past that sort of desire.

Questions are usually an excellent way to go, OP. Someone has written this policy, or whatever it, so they should be able to justify every single thing they've written in it.

What is the point of this policy and who has written those terms in and what relevance do any of them have in terms of what happens at work?

Just be aware that if it is a TRA who has written this policy, they will absolutely insist that HRT is the correct term. It’s all part of female appropriation.

Women take either oestrogen or oestrogen plus progesterone - the latter is to protect the uterus, so quite different from the reasons a man might take it. They certainly don't take testosterone suppressors and indeed may actually take a small testosterone supplement.

Since there are transwomen who believe they get periods it really shouldn’t surprise me that there are some who can also apparently experience the menopause
Takes delulu to new levels

Depending on how things go, in the discussion of cross-sex hormones, you might also want to mention that male people taking hormone therapy for prostate cancer experience similar symptoms, but this isn't menopause (it's side effects of medication) and should not be included in this policy - just as medication side-effects for transwomen should not.

I’d go wide-eyed:

‘but the point of HRT is to relieve menopausal symptoms! Surely it’s the wrong treatment if it’s doing the opposite of what it’s prescribed for?’

What trans-identified men take is a different drug regime for different purposes and with different effects from women’s menopause treatments. Anyone who can’t be clear about this is utterly dishonest.

None of which is anything to do with menopause, as that is a completely female medical state.
Any male who experiences hot flushes, ‘vaginal’ dryness, brain fog or flooding needs to get himself down to A+E pretty sharpish.

It's possible that a company might need a policy to accommodate men or women who are transitioning but it should be a separate thing from a policy for menopause. Trying to combine the two would needlessly complicate both.

I would focus on what the policy is actually about. Is it making special provision for menopausal women? Do they get extra facilities or leave? Or is it mostly about awareness among all staff so that e.g. hot flushes are understood and responded to appropriately?

The mention of specific groups will either be relevant or not to the provisions the policy is trying to make. To me it seems a bit odd and even othering that black women, for example, would need special provisions. Is that the only ethnic group mentioned and if so, why? The inclusion of trans women will be completely irrelevant because if special provisions are being offered, these won't be tailored to trans women (because they don't actually go through menopause). If it's just about increasing awareness, it's contrary to the purposes of the policy to imply that trans women go through menopause. You're not actually raising awareness there, you're misleading and creating confusion (because they don't actually go through menopause). So my advice is to keep it really factual and proportionate and focused on what the policy is actually trying to achieve.