Mastodawn

I'm reading "genderqueer menopause" by Lasara Firefox Allen at the moment.

It'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's really obvious but on the other hand I've never allowed myself to think about menstruation in that way. I'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'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

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undead enby of the apocalypse Mar 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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zahlenzauber*in

Mar 23

@enby_of_the_apocalypse there is a big tangled mess in my head that I had to partly untangle before I even could say confidently I am not a woman. Because I feared I was just taking the easy way out (as if being nonbinary is were easy in this society 🙄) . I think I have not thought about menstruation before, because it is in the still tangled part of the mess.

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Mad Argon

Mar 24

@enby_of_the_apocalypse @Zahlenzauberin yes, my whole damned life I thought everybody also hates it so much they would willingly sell their souls to devil to be free from this. And people in my family was like "yes, it's awful but it's a fate and nothing could be done about it". It didn't help in my family I had opinion of "always exaggerating person".
Never thought about dysphoria because didn't know about enby identities and not clearly feeling like a man meant to me I couldn't be trans. (As a result my negative feelings evolved into more vague "I hate being human", " I hate having body" and wishing death to this body and being just free soul.)
You are right about thing which shouldn't exist. For me one of worst things is being forced to think about it. Damn, my whole life I not fully consciously tried to get it out of my mind as often as possible (most of my personality is made of dissociaton and maladaptive daydreaming).
Huh, and for some reason I always felt strong need to cover menstrual products, sneaking secretly to bathroom like it was doing something wrong and shameful.

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zahlenzauber*in

Mar 24

@madargon @enby_of_the_apocalypse I grew up in the eighties environmental movement. Part of that was the idea to let take nature it's course and a lot of holistic medicine. So periods and the accompanying pain were seen as something natural letting women getting in touch with their bodies. So not wanting them was in itself a failure at womanhood. In a society that knew only to genders and me definitely not being a man.

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Mad Argon

Mar 24

@Zahlenzauberin @enby_of_the_apocalypse sounds almost like "natural" fetish among anti-vaxxers... Here in Poland I also could sense kind of "natural womanhood" cult. Menstrual suppression is almost secret arcane knowledge, I learned about it accidentally. "It just has to hurt" (even if real medical science currently says it shouldn't... And well, endometriosis or other problems are often diagnosed late, after years of suffering).
I always failed in any thing "expected" from women. But I just couldn't force myself to pretend to care about them. I saw most social dynamics like a competion for a prizes which I wasn't interested in...
Damn, it would turn out all my society-avoiding life was indirect result of unacknowledged dysphoria...

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zahlenzauber*in

Mar 24

@madargon the eighties environmental movement certainly contributed to the German anti vaxx movement.

As I really need people around me to thrive, so I tried really hard to cosplay woman but turns out that did not really work. Somehow the others always knew there was something wrong.

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I. L. Villiam Mar 24

@enby_of_the_apocalypse @Zahlenzauberin

I never felt so bad about menstruation and I think one reason is that I felt "manly" about dealing with pain and not complaining about it. I spend quite some time thinking about different ways to advertise period products, because I've always been annoyed but those pink flowery packages. But blood and pain? Never felt female to me.

(And I do think that's all messed up, therefore the CW, but it's also ...

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I. L. Villiam Mar 24

@enby_of_the_apocalypse @Zahlenzauberin ... interesting and I don't want to feel bad about feelings that make my life a little easier. Some days, you have to take any Gendereuphorie you can get.)