A backed up Twitter thread, because I regularly delete my tweets (here’s why, and why you should, too).
R T if you’ve never abused a marginalised woman just because you’re on the rag
RT@ksej
Apparently that terf who yelled penis was on her period and that’s why she did it. Because periods making women behave ridiculously isn’t a misogynist stereotype when there’s trans women to hate, I guess
Things I do when I’m on my period:
-Eat
-Nap
-Complain
-Cry at videos of animals reuniting with owners from years ago
-Tweet gory details at politicians with a bad track record of abortion rights
Things I don’t do when I’m on my period:
-Abuse marginalised women on TV
Valid reasons to say “I was on my period”:
-Taking a sick day from work
-Borrowing a cuntplug
-Explaining why it’s 3pm and you’re still crying in your PJs.
Invalid reasons to say “I was on my period”:
-When u made a tit of urself abusing a marginalised woman on TV
For real though, I’m going to use this thread now to talk about some unpleasant period things which nobody really talks about, that happen to a lot of menstruators and are perfectly normal. Hint: one of those things is NOT hurling abuse at marginalised women.
The runs. A lot of people get the runs around period time. For years, I thought I was the only one. But nope. It’s really fucking common. Your body sends out “squeeze blood out” hormones which sometimes also tell your guts to eject everything too. Cheers, body.
Sense of smell. My sense of smell changes when I’m on the rag. I don’t think it’s *heightened* per se, but pretty much every human odour smells a bit like off dairy just before my period comes. It is fucking horrible, happens to a lot of menstruators, apparently.
It’s lumpy. I don’t think we talk enough about how fucking solid periods can be. I use a mooncup, and because of the mechanics of that, the blood mixed with mucus can make really long strings. Sometimes I compete with myself to see how long a strand I can get out of my pussy.
Clumsiness and forgetfulness. Jesus fucking wept my dyspraxia goes up to 11 when perioding, and basically everyone gets it to some degree. Note: you don’t clumsily and forgetfully hurl abuse at marginalised women, tho.
I don’t get this but a hell of a lot of menstruators seem to get sore or itchy bums around period time. Lovely.
Love how all the responses on this thread are now “holy shit, I thought that was just me”. So, to conclude, periods do weird stuff, but don’t make you hurl abuse at marginalised women.
By the way, science doesn’t really know why any of these things happen, and hasn’t even documented how common it is, mostly, because science tends to go “ugh, unimportant weird womb stuff”. But if you find any weird recurring symptoms, do monitor yourself- and talk about it!
Periods are weird and kinda gross and fuck it, talk about that because chances are someone else has had the exact same weird grossness.
on more than one occasion, I’ve had TERFs dogpiling because of how I talk about periods as though they’re anything but ~sacred womb magic~ but fuck it, today I’ve raised awareness and reassured menstruators while they’re just out their spreading misogynistic stereotypes.
This is an area for which I’ve heard SO much anecdotal evidence, and, like the weird period symptoms I’ve been tweeting about, there’s no real “scientific” evidence because there’s no interest in studying these experiences. However, anecdotal evidence is it’s common af
RT @sapphixy
Reminder that many trans women experience periods — everything shy of actually expelling blood from one’s nethers. Cramps? Yup. Mood effects? Yup. Period shits? Yup.…
11:57 AM – 10 May 2018
Science obviously has no will to study this because it’s so much easier to dismiss women’s experiences as made up, we all know this, and add some transmisogyny on top, but here’s a couple of hypotheses as to why it’d happen.
An effect of oestrogen every day is its uptake varies according to a cycle? Everyone, literally everyone has an endogenous cycle of hormones, and it’s only visible in AMAB people who take oestrogen because it makes this rhythm more observable? Research this!
Anecdotally, when I go back-to-back on my contraceptive pills, I’ll blow up like a balloon, have the shits and weird smells around the time my period would have been, just without the actual period bit.
And hell, maybe it could lead to even more important developments. for example, we know periods often give you gut trouble, and also that there’s a genetic aspect which means both ovarian and bowel cancers run in families. Are hormones and guts connected more than we thought?
It’s fucking absurd that so many people have been talking about all of this for years and there could be a lot of really positive medical applications if someone just fucking researched it.
_
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“Are hormones and guts connected more than we thought?”
Depending on who “we” are, yes. Science has long known of a connection between oestrogens and the gut. My own GP told me of it over ten years ago. There are in fact oestrogen receptors throughout the digestive tract, I’ll start you off with a couple of easy to find studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8419141
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5722595/
Ah that’s fantastic! Thanks so much for this.
There are, I believe, loads of people who are doing the research for the weird physical/psychological stuff that happens to us. In fact, so much of our behavior (men too!), positive or negative moods, ability to work and sexually activeness (duh) comes from this biological process and hormones. It’s both helpful and slightly disappointing to know that we are so controlled by these biological facts. Hormone Horoscopes may sound cooky, but they’re pretty well founded.
Bottom line, though, I agree. racism, trans misogyny, or any other kind of debasing behavior has nothing to do with the period.