YOU MUST HAVE A UTERUS TO HAVE A PERIOD

I found out last night on Tik Tok that there are some trans women who claim to have periods, and when you tell them, "trans women don't and can't have periods", they call you transphobic. Because according to them, there are many biological women who don't bleed during their periods, so it's OK for trans women to say that they have periods too.

NO, IT IS NOT.

First of all, there is a lot of ignorance surrounding the meaning of period. And I'm not surprised since trans women are biological men: a category of people who usually do not know shit about how a woman's body works.

For those who don't know, biological women have a MENSTRUAL CYCLE, of which the period is only a part.

The cycle goes like this: safe window, premenstrual symptoms (PMS), period, ovulation, and safe window. It's called a cycle because these four events happen CYCLICALLY every a fixed amount of days. Usually between 25 to 30 days.

Ovulation is when the egg is released from one of a woman's two ovaries and starts travelling down the connected fallopian tube.

The safe windows are when the egg has not yet been released or it has been destroyed by the body because it was not fertilized by any spermatozoon.

Premenstrual symptoms are symptoms that precede the bleeding. And they vary for every woman.

And the period is specifically the time of the menstrual cycle in which the uterus sheds its uterine walls because no conception has happened. Sometimes the shedding still happens even when a woman has become pregnant. But usually it stops right after a fertilized egg has implanted itself in the uterus.

The shedding of the uterine walls usually lasts between 3-10 days. The average days for women is 5 days.

So every 25 to 30 days an average biological woman will experience a menstrual cycle which includes a period.

Women start having menstrual cycles from an average age of 13 to an average age of 50.

TRANS MEN who have not undergone a hysterectomy can experience menstrual cycles too.

SO, YOU MUST HAVE A FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM TO HAVE A MENSTRUAL CYCLE.

There are of course women who do not have regular menstrual cycles or who do have one at all. If that be the case, doctors can prescribe medications to help them with the situation. But in order for the treatment to be successful, these women must have a complete female reproductive system.

In conclusion trans women do not have a menstrual cycle because they do not have a female reproductive system. Trans women specifically also don't have periods because they do not have a uterus.

A trans woman can experience a hormonal cycle, which has been proved to happen for men. But that hormonal cycle does not become a menstrual cycle just because a man has transitioned into a woman.

Trans women must understand that there are many aspects of being female that they will NEVER experience. Forcefully appropriating them or attempting to erase them is both pathetic and disrespectful. Just because you are a trans woman does not mean that you cannot be a misogynist.

Learn to live with your trans identity and respect biological women's right to live with theirs.

Period.