Menstruation For All Gender Identities
Gianna Cox
Throughout this article, I will be referring to those who identify as female as ‘womxn’. Many believe this to be a more inclusive term than ‘women’, particularly for trans and non-binary women. Although menstruation is often perceived as something that only womxn experience, there are countless individuals who don’t necessarily conform to our binary standard of gender. This includes those who are transgender, non-binary, intersex and many more. We need to start looking at menstruation as something that all different types of people from all different walks of life experience, and move away from our stigmatized roles surrounding gender.
One of the biggest problems that transgender men experience regarding menstruation is gender dysphoria. Although the majority of the time they are able to work around their dysphoria through the use of binders, packers, etc, there is no getting around the fact that they still have organs that they don’t relate with and have to take care of. Worse still is the reality that menstruation products are targeted towards the ultra-feminine individual. Boxes of tampons and pads are decorated with flowers, almost always pink and usually mention womxn in some manner or another. As well, pads don’t work on boxers, so most trans men have to resort to wearing more feminine styles of underwear in order to use these products. It’s difficult to try and live your life as a man when you are constantly reminded once a month that you still have a vagina, and that society perceives all those who menstruate as womxn.
An equally large problem for transgender womxn is the assumption that all womxn menstruate. Identifying as a womxn often comes with the various types of period talk. You can share period products with your coworkers, and complain about “that time of the month” with your roommates. Yet, for so many womxn, this is not their reality. We have to move away from this idea that the most feminine thing that exists is menstruation, and instead, come to terms with the reality that menstruation doesn’t define gender. You can live in any way that you choose, and your ability to bleed once a month shouldn’t continue to have any bearing on how people categorize your life.
These problems also exist for those who identify as non-binary, two-spirit or are otherwise gender non-conforming. Gender is already such a large part of our everyday lives that we don’t need to exacerbate it by putting a gender label on menstruation. There are many people who are intersex, which means that they have a discrepancy between their external and internal genitalia. This may mean having a uterus while simultaneously having a penis, having a vagina while having testes, and so on. It can be very harmful to these people to have their existence categorized into binary definitions of male and female when this is not enough to actually explain their sex or gender. It is possible to have a Y chromosome and be biologically female, yet many would say that, because they can’t experience menstruation, they are actually male. These are just many examples of how believing that the only people who can menstruate are womxn can be harmful to many different communities.
There are so many more discussions that need to be had on gender identity, but one thing that should be agreed upon is that menstruation shouldn’t have any impact on this. Changing the conversations that we have regarding menstruation is just one way to support our friends and members of our community who don’t conform to the sex assigned to them at birth. Modifying the packaging of menstrual products is another way to lessen the dysphoria that certain individuals experience during this time. Menstruation is a part of life, but it shouldn’t be something that we weaponize against others.
