So there’s a bit of a row over whether or not trans people menstruate.  This is not a new debate amongst the loudest portions of the Internet, but it appears to have flared up in response to an article on some website.  I think it was NPR, but I just realized I don’t really care. The article in question was discussing the quantity of sanitary pads and tampons and whatnot that are used each year.  Apparently, the sales tax alone is $150 million. That would be about one dollar per woman, per year, on average. But that’s beside the point. Something much smaller caused things to go off the rails.

The NPR article did not say that “women” spend that much.  It said that “people who menstruate” spend that much. And since much of the Internet is primed and ready to pounce on anything that appears to vaguely touch on the subject of transexuality,  all hell broke loose.

In fairness to NPR, “people who menstruate” is not necessarily them acquiescing to the dark hordes of the woke Gestapo who seem to spend their entire lives hunting and punishing all those who dare to cross the lines of political correctness.  There are a large number of women who don’t menstruate. They’re called, old women.  Post menopausal women do not menstruate.  It is entirely possible they were just referring to them.  On the other hand, why not just say “women who menstruate.”?

Having said that, there are trans people who menstruate.  Trans men (who are biological women) still have uteruses, and therefore still menstruate, although I gather that the hormone treatments can interrupt this or make it irregular.  But the most odd part of this debate is the insistence by some that trans women have periods.

The denizens of the Interweb machine were already on a razor’s edge in the wake of the second annual International Pronouns Day and the first ever National Period Day.  Those two celebrations of gendered wokeness resulted in endless virtue signalling and trolling and rubbed a lot of nerves raw. So pretty much everyone with too much time on their hands had trans on the brain.  As a result, the hate tweeting ramped up in the past few days.

Angry vituperations from the religious right and from many left-leaning feminists (strange bedfellows indeed) insist that trans women cannot have periods, because they do not have uteruses.  Angry responses from trans activists insist that trans women can have period-like symptoms, including cramping and various other things, brought on by hormone treatments.

I don’t pretend to know everything about this, and one thing that aggravates me is the sheer number of people who insist that they do know everything about this and vehemently defend their points of view as if they are holy writ.  

In the case of the angry feminists, I at least understand why they would take umbrage at this.  Maybe trans women have some cramps and other symptoms, but they do not dispose of a uterine wall on a monthly basis.  I’m sure regular women would consider this to be getting off light.  

What’s confusing to me is why trans women are so committed to convincing people that they have periods.  They may feel that they are women. And I don’t pretend to understand the science (Spoiler alert: Nobody does; it’s far from settled), but why would the periods be so important?  It seems like the least awesome part of being a woman.  

And the fact that I’ve never been a woman doesn’t mean I can’t know this.  Firstly, every guy has noticed that women get a bit cranky during their time of the month, so one can deduce that they’re not having a good time.  Secondly, women have straight up told me how much it sucks. The only woman I have ever met who was even slightly okay with getting her period was one that was worried that she was pregnant, and did want to be.  This was not my doing, by the way.  This girl put me in the friend zone almost immediately.  Anyway, even when the period came, her relief was not enough to offset her normal irritation because of menstruation.  The point is, if it were possible to experience being a woman (presuming that one wanted to) without having periods, that would seem to be a bonus.

I don’t get the insistence that we all must believe that trans women have periods.  If you want to take hormones, get surgery that fundamentally changes your body, and believe that you have periods (even if it means referring to hormone side effects as a period), then you’re welcome to do and believe whatever you like.  Although I might push back a bit if you expect other people to pay for it. But why is it so important that everyone thinks as you do?

This actually seems like less of a big deal than the pronouns arguments a few days ago.  Maybe someone who, say, believes that they are a woman born into a biologically male body might find it irksome when someone uses the “wrong” pronouns.  For example, if I were confronted by a large, male appearing person, say, in a Gamestop, I might say “sir” even though this is not the case. And I can understand how hearing the wrong pronoun can be irritating.  

I was once referred to as “ma’am” when I was sixteen.  Not because I’m particularly feminine looking. I was handing out food at a homeless shelter, and I think the homeless guy who called me ma’am was high, or drunk, or both.  But it was annoying, and if it happened to me daily, I’m sure it would be really annoying.

But it seems there is less of a reason to obsess over the period thing, because I can envision no circumstance where someone might accidentally inform you that you do or don’t have periods when the opposite is true or you believe the opposite is true.  What are the chances of someone “mis-perioding” you?  How would this even come up in a normal interaction?

You’re not going to just walk up to the dude in the video game store and instead of saying “sir” say “person who doesn’t have periods”.  Even someone who is either hardcore evangelical or a rage-filled TERF wouldn’t do that. They might use the “wrong” pronouns, but why would anyone bother bringing up periods?  Why would we bother policing speech that isn’t likely to happen at all?

One thing that has always been a bit off-putting for me (and many others) is this insistence that we all must hold conform to the increasingly myriad rules of political correctness.  It is not enough that we be accepting or tolerant. We must believe exactly as the paragons of the new left do, or fall victim to a deluge of Internet outrage. Failing to acknowledge that biological men have periods or that not only women have periods is the latest law of progressivism, and woe betide anyone who violates these precepts.  Although, there is one upside to this for heterosexual men.  If one of our dudebros is acting overly emotional, we can accuse him of being on his period and it won’t be crass or toxically masculine.  It would actually be woke.

My advice is that if you want to insist that you can do things biological women can do, instead of picking one of the least awesome things about being a woman, why not one of the most awesome?  Like multiple orgasms? Why not declare that that’s a thing? Maybe it is? I even thought about researching it. But I think if I started Googling “trans women multiple orgasms” I’d probably just get a bunch of porn.