It’s kind of like an “out of sight, out of mind,” deal
Oh god oh god oh god sometimes it’s time to just tell people to sit down and be quiet and stop writing anything for awhile, until they know something. It’s for their own good as much as anything. Nobody wants to be haunted forever by whatever idiotic thing she thought she believed at age 17 or 12 or whatever the age is of this tragically lost young person. It’s someone called V. Tanner at The Establishment, explaining Why We Must Stop Calling Menstruation A ‘Women’s Issue.’
That’s easy: we mustn’t. There is no “must” there. We don’t have to stop that.
For one thing who calls it that anyway? It’s not an “issue” (except in a rather antiquated sense of the word, as in “an issue of blood” – which is not the meaning here). It’s a reality and a nuisance, not an issue. There are some issues around it, like taxes on tampons and pads, but it is not itself an issue.
But whatever it is, an issue or a nuisance, it certainly is a woman’s whatever it is. Of course it is. It’s been one pretext for the persecution and subordination of women since forever. The fact that trans women don’t menstruate does not make menstruation not a women’s issue.
Also? I am very very very tired of people telling us yet more ways in which we need to erase women. So tired of it. So tired of it I could happily set fire to it, and then bury the ashes under a toxic waste dump.
But that’s just the title. It’s when you start to read the article that you realize how desperately V. Tanner needs to stop writing anything and learn things instead.
When we talk, write, and yes, even sing about menstruation, it is typically discussed from the perspective of cis women. And on the surface? That makes a lot of sense. Cis women are the majority when it comes to the demographic affected by this much-maligned shedding of uterine lining.
“This much-maligned shedding of uterine lining”??? Stop writing. Stop now, before it’s too late.
Also there’s the obligatory contempt for “cis women” and the grudging admission that there are several of us and the insistence on saying we’re “cis” at every mention. This isn’t how to social justice. Clunkyness is not a winning strategy.
However, the fact is that many cis women’s consistent framing of this biological phenomenon as a “women’s issue” does a lot more harm than many know.
What “consistent framing”? There is no such thing. Nobody bothers to “frame” menstruation as having to do with women, because of course it fucking is. How dare cis men consistently frame beards as a “men’s issue” amirite?
There’s some brilliance (we’re told) from trans people talking about how menstruation is all about them and not those horrible cis people.
Ame: Menstruating does cause me dysphoria. I feel extremely uneasy in the days leading up to my period, and it gets even worse during my period. I counteract this dysphoria by taking a contraceptive pill. I take it in a way that allows me to skip all my periods so I don’t have to deal with them, however sometimes I accidentally forget to take a pill, and end up having my period for the month. When this occurs, I opt for using tampons as I find that I’m less dysphoric with them as opposed to pads. It’s kind of like an “out of sight, out of mind,” deal.
Um…yeah? That’s not dysphoria, it’s menstruation. That’s because menstruation is unpleasant at best and disabling at worst. What do you think, it’s a picnic with Mozart playing for “cis” women? It’s not. And well done figuring out the advantage of tampons, which – don’t tell anyone! – is not exclusive to trans people.
I’m not going to read any more. But I do hope these people take a break from writing until they get better at it. These things take time.
Also, they go on about microaggressions, but they never, ever ever listen to women say “Calling us cis when we DON’T agree with the gender system and DON’T feel how we are told women should feel and we don’t even know what this magic internal gender sense you talk about is because we don’t have it — THAT’s also a microaggression and we don’t identify that way and you use it as a slut so STOP!”
Yeah. That too.
Is the point supposed to be that menstruation is not a “women’s issue” because a) transmen menstruate; or because b) transwomen don’t menstruate? (a) makes more sense, but it’s a completely pedestrian point that many women don’t menstruate. Regardless, even if we agree that some men menstruate, so menstruation is not just a “women’s issue”, I still think it is necessarily a female issue. A transman that menstruates, or is capable of menstruating, has a female body. It should go without saying that femaleness is necessary but not sufficient for menstruation, and that if x is necessary for y, we can call y “an x issue”, if “x issue” means something like “x is especially related to”.
On another note, when will we see a campaign for tampon and pad disposal bins in men’s toilets, and tampon and pad dispensers? It really does seem as though there is a one-sided emphasis on the plight of transwomen as opposed to transmen, which could be explained by some kind of male privilege carrying over for transwomen.
Aside from the occasional expression of sympathy for friends who have th curse the only time I talk about menstruation is in discussing how to provide more supplies to girls who will be unable to go to school without an adequate supply of sanitary pads, and how to convince men that their daughters do not deserve to be beaten because they started menstruating. It doesn’t mean they have been having sex with males. No it does not.
I have zero fucks to give for how some overzealous control freak thinks I should mind my tongue when I talk about menstruation.
You know, if people had never had any discussions about lady things, how would these people know they’re women at all? Because it all depends on their appropriating “lady” business. Honestly, this is such bollocks.
hahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahaha
Don’t these people ever ask themselves where’s the outraged outcry from menopausal women, women who’ve had hysterectomies, women who for any other reason don’t menstruate? Have they really been oppressed by ‘menstruation being considered a women’s issue’ all this time?
I have to admit that as a woman with no children I’m not always that thrilled about support for children being considered a ‘women’s issue’. Obviously I know why this is, and wouldn’t object in public, but how is it the responsibility of, say, the Women’s Equality Party to include better education for children on its platform focusing on women’s rights? (I just tried to go to their site, to copy the exact wording, but it’s being blocked by my ISP for malware.)
@Emily #3
Reading that article (occasionally pausing to bang my head against the wall) I think the ideal is for the concept to be that “some people menstruate” with no gendering at all because some agender folks menstruate too.
One of the biggest dents in the wall came from the person who very kindly pointed out that another reason we shouldn’t frame reproduction etc as a women’s issue is because some “cis-women” don’t menstruate and/or cannot bear children… except, except if they do want to then obviously it an issue for them and… Oh fuck this, the sheer logical incoherence is far too tedious to go into in detail.
Yes, I think better education for children should be a children’s issue, perhaps a human rights issue, but not a women’s issue. We all benefit from better educated children. The problem I have with it is that it still couches women in the role of caregiver, while ignoring the obvious fact that there was a man involved in the conception, and he should be helping with the child rearing. It implicitly recognizes the “mother” part of women that has been such a great tool for keeping women down – can’t have the same jobs because we have to give birth to/care for children, for instance, while being a tool for men to increase their wealth – they need more money than women because they have families to support (that’s the only time, honestly, that I hear much about men and children, unless someone is throwing a tantrum about child support or custody issues).
Ugh I hate the “But infertile women!” argument. Infertility is a medical problem with either the male or female reproductive parts, it affects 1 in 8 couples and can be very painful to deal with. Yet I’ve never seen an infertile woman complain “why doesn’t the world centre around me and my personal problems?”
Neither have I. I guess those stupid “cis” women are too stupid and selfish to think the world revolves around them.
But she has ‘jaded hipster intellectual’ down so perfectly!
And ‘Movember’ being all about “changing the face of men’s health,” those bastards!
Reminds me of Trump. It can’t be surprising that people THINK this kind of nonsense. But that they can find an audience that will keep a straight (and probably ‘cis’) face while they bloviate? And that some tiny splinter ‘cell’ can make themselves the Vanguard Party is just nuts.
I tried to read the whole article, but I couldn’t. The self importance, the obnoxiousness… How do people become like this?? I’m ‘only’ 26, but those people make me feel really really old and cranky and make me want to yell about stupid young people who seriously need to get away from their social media and experience the real world to get some fucking perspective.
I know, it’s torture to read. In fact I might decide it’s a violation of our rights to publish it at all!
No, menstruating does not cause you dysphoria. You have dysphoria, and mestruating triggers it, presumably by reminding you that your body is female. How about learning to cope with your feelings instead of asking the rest of the world to tiptoe on eggshells around you?
Well except that what Ame says isn’t even about that, it’s just about the utterly routine feelings of discomfort and inconvenience that ALL girls and women feel. That’s not a special “dysphoria” it’s just not liking menstruation because there’s nothing to like about menstruation.
“There is nothing to like about menstruation”-
Not quite.
1. Shows you’re not pregnant. A huge relief for women in certain circumstances. Hetty Sorrel, for instance, in Adam Bede, is shown, very obliquely, as waiting for the period which will rescue her from shame and disgrace.
2. Shows your body is functioning properly.
3. Anne Frank writes eloquently about how she welcomes her first periods as a sign she’s growing up.
However all these reasons to rejoice at menstruation aren’t the thing itself, but the message it sends.
I do like that the use of the word “issue” in this context. It has a slightly King James Bible sound to it.
I’m glad I read the whole thing. Because as all of them speak, it just gets more bizarre.The only thing they have in common is this anger that the world hasn’t been created to cater to them specifically. One of the trans women is angry they are expected to want kids, another, angry that talk of menses reminds her that she can’t get pregnant. Some trans men are angry that menses isn’t seen as a mans issue, others are angry that they still have it. And Sapphire, the woman-oriented agender person who keeps being mistaken for a cis woman (uh, in other words, a woman who doesn’t like to be called cis), seems to be unaware she’d really belong with rad fems if she wasn’t being steered into a trans definition by popular opinion.
Seriously, ALL of this would be better addressed by feminism– access to menses-blocking hormones, check! Women not feeling shamed for infertility or even not wanting kids, check! Being allowed to be female without having to perform gendered behaviors and attitudes, check!
Kids, enroll in Feminism 101, kplsthnx, before denouncing rad fems. All your problems belong to us!
Speaking of menstruation:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/nepalese-girls-take-photos-of-all-the-things-they-cant-touch-during-their-periods-due-to-menstrual-a7052266.html
“woman-oriented agender person”
Ha ha from now on, that is what I am.
You know, this makes me angry, too, and I’m not trans. I actually dealt with this for many years. I did have a kid; I didn’t necessarily want a kid, it just sort of happened. But my mother was always poking and prodding at me to have more kids.. Now I’m expected by all and sundry, everyone I meet, to want grandkids. If I never have grandkids, so what? If my son wants kids, really really wants kids, and decides to become a father, I will be a grandmother. It is not something I either want or don’t want, because IT ISN’T ABOUT ME. My mother never realized that; the fact that I didn’t have six kids wasn’t about her; that was her choice to make, and then I, kid number 3 of 6, could choose not to have 6. So she had only had 26 grandchildren instead of 31.
In short, while I can get angry about the message about wanting kids, I don’t know why it has to be a trans issue; all women are given that message, and there are probably a lot more like me that don’t really want kids but had kids by accident or on purpose, partially because of societal messages, all those “shoulds”.
Yeah, I can’t even tell you how glorious my lady brain feels to have my “woman identity” reaffirmed to me to every month by menstruation. I can only imagine the rush of womanly feels should I ever get cervical cancer. Cis privilege indeed!