this is a question that i feel like has a lot of honscience behind it but my gut feeling from my general understanding of HRT and periods says that trans women cannot typically experience periods, despite some anecdotal evidence
for example: my hormone cycle is literally my weekly injection of 5mg Een. there would not be any hormone spikes akin to a period unless i were to inject more than 5mg for a week. but the thing is, i have injected up to about 10mg for a week and experienced no cramps, and no additional emotional effects(i mean i tend to kinda be unstable most of the time anyway, so trying to decide if i was particularly unstable during this time is kind of impossible.)
so why is there so many trans women claiming to have periods?? if it were just like one or two, i could definitely assume that they had just changed their hrt dosage, meaning they got emotion effects, and maybe cramps.
and also, this doesn’t even bring up the fact that “”“”“”“amab”“”“”“” bodies dont have uterine muscles, and in their place they have pelvic floor muscles, which are supposedly similar, but they definitely have differing functions
i could see how maybe muscle atrophy while on e could cause pelvic floor muscles to potentially hurt(which might cause a feeling like cramps) but that wouldn’t be on a monthly cycle, and it would likely stop over time. my pelvic floor muscles did weaken on hrt, but maybe they were just already pretty weak so i didnt get the pain/soreness. this is all just one big guess though
and then if having periods is something trans women get, would this not be vital to understanding how hrt changes us?? At least, it’s valuable information. biologically, hormones are used for sexual functions(among other things), but when we inject hormones, we are trying to maximize feminization. that’s the reason why having stable levels is better(imo).
idk. i’m trying not to be cynical about it, because truthfully, i would rather get periods then not, even if they’re fake and gay. maybe it’s just additional cope bc i cannot have children.
if we inject less frequently, we do have emotional cycles linked to hormones. if you define that as being a period, great. anything more is confirmation bias.
the biggest evidence against anything other than that is that if you actually listen to the trans women who think they’re having other period symptoms, the symptoms they describe are all different from one another with no clustering. if we got period symptoms other than emotional cycles linked to injecting hormones less frequently, then u’d expect everyone who reports having said symptoms to report having the same or very similar patterns, but that’s not what you see when you aggregate anecdotes.
i probably should have clarified that i don’t doubt emotional cycles are real, but honestly ur probably right. i havent seen too much consensus on what period symptoms are actually like for trans women, besides people just outright claiming to get cramps, but it would not surprise me if symptoms vary widely
now im no gynecologist so i could be wrong, but arent the cramps from periods caused by the menstruation itself? in which case yeah, trans women cant have periods.
hormonal fluctuations if on an inconsistent dose can probably cause mood swings and irritability that some people associate with periods and placebo themselves with possibly. idk.
is there any actually research that’s gone into trans women–
No. Unless it’s used to remove more of our rights.
Unless you have a womb it isn’t a period
