Post #769712

2026-03-23 10:52 UTC

I&#39;m reading &quot;genderqueer menopause&quot; by Lasara Firefox Allen at the moment. It&#39;s an interesting book, one take got me thinking. She writes a lot of genderqueer folx who menstruate have dysphoria about that. On the one hand it&#39;s really obvious but on the other hand I&#39;ve never allowed myself to think about menstruation in that way. I&#39;ve had quite light periods in my youth, but even than they felt like a personal insult. Later I had severe cramps, fatigue and PMDS so no surprise I wasn&#39;t happy to have a period. One of the reasons I started HRT was that a third of the twenty six days my cycles were long by then (another thing nobody had told me, the menstrual cycle gets shorter the older you get) I spent in pain or in the conviction I was a generally bad person who was worth nothing. But even then it never crossed my mind dysphoria might be involved. #menopause #dysphoria #nonbinary

Replies (1)

@enby_of_the_apocalypse@social.treehouse.systems 2026-03-23 12:23

@Zahlenzauberin i feel like the dysphoria we feel about that has often been downplayed and invalidated by cis people who say shit like “everyone hates menstruation, it sucks for everyone”, which yes, is true, but that completely ignores the added layer of dysphoria. Cis women hate the pain and cramps and the mood problems and the inconvenience, but they don’t have the added feeling of “this is wrong, my body shouldn’t be capable of doing this. I’m bleeding from an area that shouldn’t even exist”. And they don’t have to deal with stuff like period products often being designed in a way that looks like it was intended to cause the maximum amount of dysphoria, underwear that doesn’t trigger as much dysphoria often being terrible at holding pads, men’s bathrooms usually not having bins, and the social component (the dysphoria of other people learning that we menstruate in situations where we can’t hide it such as when the pain is too bad or when we can’t hide the fact that we carry and use menstrual products, going to the bathroom to change them) - which for people who are stealth can also mean getting outed. It all gets flattened down to “of course you hate menstruating, everyone does!!

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