Feminist social-justice heroes recently started the hashtag #LiveTweetYourPeriod to reduce the “stigma” that women experience surrounding their periods — only to be criticized by other social-justice heroes for covering it as women’s issue because transgender men have periods too.
Various publications wrote articles supporting the hashtag (such as the Huffington Post’s ”Women Share Their Menstruation Woes With #LiveTweetYourPeriod, Hilarity Ensues” and Marie Claire’s “Women Have Been Live Tweeting Their Periods and It’s Amazing”). The idea, as Jenna Wortham of The New York Times Magazine put it, was that “posting about taboo topics in public, right alongside the quotidian details of our lives, helps normalize, desexualize and destigmatize women’s reproductive health — a topic shrouded in shame for far too long.”
But, it turns out, associating women with periods is ignorant. The conservative blog Weasel Zippers posted a tweet from someone with the handle “@feministfists” saying, “Pls remember to be inclusive of our trans sisters, brothers & genderqueer kin when you #LiveTweetYourPeriod. Not only women get their period.”
“@Feministfists” appears to be a private account, but a search of the hashtag reveals that she (to hazard cisnormative guess) is not the only one with that opinion:
https://twitter.com/SHREKFLEX/status/613839942301712384
I have a real problem with the menarchy movement. Not all women have periods, and not all who have periods are women. #LiveTweetYourPeriod
— Maddie (@disneyland_dame) June 24, 2015
https://twitter.com/ihatewhiteboys/status/613030749856473088
And it’s not just Twitter. Earlier this year, the blog Everyday Feminism published a piece titled “5 Ways to Still Feel Like a Man When You Have Your Period,” with tips such as “Recognize This Experience Actually Enhances Your Masculinity — By Dismantling It” and “Embrace that Man-Struation Isn’t Inherently Female.”
#related#You might be thinking “Uh — then what is?” but actually, the crusade against considering “woman” and “uterus” to be related concepts extends beyond periods — to issues like abortion, which some say is also offensive to call a “women’s issue.”
After all — just like periods — men have abortions too.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter at National Review Online.