I felt like I had no choice but to live my life pretending to be someone I was not.Īlmost one decade later, I finally gathered the strength to come out to the world as trans, and because of the violence and transphobia that I have experienced since coming out, I have committed my life to creating more spaces for folks like me to be celebrated for who we are. But after having been told constantly that periods are about womanhood – by friends, the media, and advertisements – I was crushed when I started bleeding. Before I started menses, I was happily living as an androgynous tomboy who didn’t care about what the world thought of my gender. When I was 15 and looked down at the brown blood spot on my underwear for the very first time, I felt like part of me had died. But in between the jokes about women always having a spare tampon for a friend and calls to help menstruating girls in India, we’re forgetting an important piece of the conversation: Not all people who menstruate are women. From Amy Schumer discussing tampons on 'SNL' to documentaries about periods winning awards at the 2019 Oscars, the topic seems to be leaking into the public consciousness. Periods are being talked about in public more and more.
