Not Everyone Who Gets Periods Is A Woman!

While the silence around women and periods is slowly being broken, there is still an absolute lack of awareness around men who bleed. Here’s a call for more empathy towards trans men and their problems with menstruation.

Menstruation is considered a taboo in India and we often see that there is a lack of discussion regarding this subject. What is appalling is that there are educated people whose belief-system still doesn’t allow them to talk about this issue. Periods are stigmatised to to the extent that many women are deprived of their rights on account of menstruation. Here we are talking about women who go through this stigma but there are other people to consider too: People who identify themselves as Female-to-Male or FTM, i.e. those who are born biologically female but later realize that they identify as men. It is then that they start to face difficulties and sometimes, an identity crisis too.

Menstruation is so heavily associated with the ‘woman’s body’ and her health that it results in horrifying trans exclusion and neglect by a large section of the world. There is an added layer of social shame for trans men who menstruate, as they need to hide their periods from society. According to Transfaith, a transgender faith and spirituality organization, 36% of non-binary people have refused to seek health care out of fear of facing discrimination. There are many trans men who are diagnosed with dysphoria, which is a clinical term for the experience of having strong and persistent feelings of identification with a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and discomfort with your assigned sex.

People often face difficulties in finding a gynaecologist who can help them get rid of the uterus and its bleeding; moreover, hysterectomy costs a lot and there are often complications in surgery. Also, most healthcare and insurance plans don’t cover the surgery.

At an everyday level, there is another problem which is annoying and embarrassing, which is how to dispose of a pad in a men’s washroom. If we look from a historical perspective, we can see that the whole community has met with strong opposition and backlash and there is lack of studies on trans men and menstruation. That’s how far behind we are in providing the basic needs, of respect and dignity.

We need to take care in terms of creating an environment which is more gender-neutral. Education must start at the primary level and whether it is healthcare, the arrangement of public washrooms or the attitude of society as a whole, we should be more empathetic towards menstruation. We need to have a more inclusive approach to sex education.

Image via Unsplash

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