Struggling with a shitload of internalised transphobia and dysphoria while on your period — From an Autistic Trans Guy’s experience
TWs: discussion of human genitalia, periods, wanting to die sometimes, blood, weapons mention, etc.
A/N: When I was reflecting and revising on the rough draft for this article, there was a realisation that is still changing inside me and my overactive mind, such as the fact that me having periods doesn’t make me any less of a man, nor does having a chest that is binarily gendered make me any less of a guy either. Ah yeah, I was also reflecting on this and even revising what I’ve written while I was on my period. Another realisation was this: previous terms that I’ve used were not only hurting myself, but it also made the self-hatred and self-doubt I have over my own genders and myself an inescapable hell I’ve created for myself, so I need to learn to use words like ‘chest’, ‘body’ and ‘periods’ to make shit easier for myself and to be able to escape this self-hatred and self-doubt towards myself. If I’ve ever used previous terms such as ‘parasites on my chest’, ‘moulting season’ (I honestly don’t care if people want to use the term for themselves… and hey, to each their own), along with ‘flesh vessel’, I’d like to formerly apologise. To any human being with the same bodies as mine, I am sorry for using terms that have made you feel uncomfortable, that has made you feel hurt and uncared for, along with feeling uncomfortable towards your own human bodies as I’ve felt this way towards myself. I know that the past terms I’ve used to describe my feelings towards my own dysphoria and body aren’t an excuse to keep using them since I don’t want to make it more difficult for others and myself. Moving forward, I also want to be able to keep using terms that aren’t so self-hating since I want to feel more comfortable with myself, and also the fact that I want others to feel more okay with their own bodies… Because their own bodies don’t make them feel any less of their own genders.
Well… *sighs*… I’m not feeling mentally okay since mentally and emotionally, I’m in shit because I’ve already dug a grave of unwanted self-doubt and self-hatred that I’ve made a hell for myself in. Although I look like I am not struggling on the outside and I look like I have my shit together, I don’t. I am genuinely fucking struggling inside myself because so much of what’s taught about menstruation for people makes me feel like I am less of a guy. Hell, with my brain being a jackass during my moments of self-doubt and self-hatred instances, both it and the internalised transphobia I have sees me as “woman” during my period (you can thank internal and societal cissexist fuckery for that, folks [sarcasm]).
My internal emotions, mental narratives, and process during my period
I’m an Autistic man who’s not only trans and transmasc, but also a multigender person experiencing periods because it reminds me that I wasn’t born a cis guy, and I cannot escape having my own male and multigender body being gendered by cissexist and cisnormative societies that fail to shut the fuck up because they gender periods too much. However, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t subject myself to see a glimpse of ignorant hate comments made by willfully uneducated assholes who’d rather choose to be so stigmatised about periods, and thinking that it’s “only women” {cissexist language/speak for ‘only cis women’} who get periods. Hell, I used to believe that bullshit (and that was a part of my past that I own) from my upbringing growing up, and I admit that I still struggle with trying to reprogram myself into thinking in a more inclusive way.
Seeing hate comments towards menstruating persons who aren’t cis women mentally and emotionally make me feel fragile, but it fucks me up. I genuinely hate how gender-segregated healthcare is because it doesn’t help anyone. Hell, healthcare is still gendered and continues to reduce humans of all genders to their genitalia… which is also another level of fucked up because human genitalia is still gendered, folks still get their medical needs dismissed by medical professionals, there’s also medical racism, cultural insensitivity and medical xenophobia/misia. This includes medical ableism as well.
Let me tell you somethin’, dear reader… I’m also not only motherfuckin’ tired of the ‘women’s health’, ‘women’s healthcare’ and all that gendered bullcrap, but I am also sick and fucking tired of my own body fucking bothering me… Even though it’s always doing its own thing since I was 12.
Whenever I’m bleeding out of my vagina-shaped penis, it just feels like my dick inside has been stabbed with a shitload of senbon needles or even damn knives and swords designed to make me feel fucking dead inside while struggling to see myself as a man on his period.
The emotions and mental narratives I go through during my period varies based on my mental health (at this time), how I am feeling, and also how much battery/fuel (any term that personally works for you, really) I have.
There are some days where I feel more calm on the outside, more quiet on the inside and outside, and days where there’s a tornado of emotions on the inside. Some days, I genuinely feel fragile where I want to feel like a kid/baby again (it feels a bit fucked up of me to say, I know, but I don’t want to silence nor censor my honest thoughts on this to some extent) in terms of doing shit for myself and wanting to have more reassurance from others than usual… Because… I, as a man, have a tendency to bottle my own emotions up and to put aside my own discomfort since my emotions and discomfort were invalidated in the past. Hell, even my mental health got invalidated with the ‘there are people who are suffering, without any shelter, and have lost limbs and they’re still happy with what they have’ card (among more similar shit like that) in the past. Listen, I get verbal cards like this that weaponise gratitude, but that doesn’t mean that one’s pain/suffering is worse or easier than others because suffering, of any form, is relative. There’s also some bullshit I don’t want to overshare about since I am open, but also not at the same time… Yeah, this is me showing you that I am a walking contradiction [as I see myself at times], I know, but this isn’t the main point right now.
Sometimes, I even have difficulty in being compassionate towards myself because reassurance is something that doesn’t stick as easily as fucked up shit people say about you does. The fucked up shit that people say to you stick a lot more than the good shit, and that’s the sad, but also fucked-as-hell reality no one feels comfortable enough to talk about.
There are also days during my period where I feel fragile and not want to do shit for myself, but also feeling like I don’t want to take care of myself.
But… There are days during my period that I wish I was dead so that I wouldn’t have to deal with misgendering and deadnaming from family, nor would I have to worry about about being clocked as the dead persona enforced onto me at my birth when I came into the world without a voice of my own.
I still struggle with seeing my own body as a man’s body because that’s where the self misgendering, self deadnaming come in from instances of being misgendered and deadnamed/misnamed by people around me.
There are times that I struggle with ignoring intrusive thoughts based on my internalised bigotries, and morbid scenarios based on people who’ve wronged or harmed me in the past while I am on my period.
Hell, I don’t even remind myself to stay away from the comments section of any website because of the fact that I am a curious bastard at times.
While my period is here each month, I overthink and overworry, and I tend to stay inside my head, which isn’t a good sign, because me staying inside my head means that it’s a bad idea to listen to whatever bullshit my brain concocts of… But I do the best I can to typically manage it by scrolling through YouTube, listening to scary stories, talking to my support system (who don’t misgender me, deadname me, and who aren’t healtheir-than-thou), and sometimes I genuinely can’t or don’t even want to.
Besides all of this, it’s genuinely fucking hard to navigate anything that helps with periods as an Autistic dude struggling to see himself as a man of his own genders because periods are universalised as this experience for gender-conforming cis women, while conversations surrounding periods alienates people of all genders who have periods. I also find it disheartening when even medical institutions segregate health (as I’ve ranted/vented about earlier) based on the bullshit and colonialist gender and sex binaries, while relying on gendering the conversations surrounding periods, and gendering something that should be seen as what it actually is… periods being genderless (because it’s not meant to be gendered in the first place).
That shit internally pisses me off. Aren’t we, as a society, supposed to move past this or even be past that? Apparently not in accordance to folks who’d rather be stuck in their own ways and who’d rather keep relying on whatever the fuck they were taught while growing up. Whatever, it’s the loss of ignorant assholes who’d rather be miserable and willfully uneducated, not mine.
But… There’s also other emotions I have that are related to me being on my period. For example, sometimes I fucking hate my body and the normal shit it’s doing instead of not having periods because I damn wish that my body didn’t personally feel wrong to me or that I didn’t have breasts at all.
A/N: Originally, I wanted to say what I used to type, but it’s going to make myself and folks who want a chest and different parts feel worse. As for having breasts on my body, they feel uncomfortable to me, but they’re a part of my body so I need to deal with them until I get a chest reduction to mitigate chest dysphoria, to make shit easier for my back, and to help me manage my hereditary thyroid issues. Sometimes I even wish that I was dead so that I wouldn’t feel like a fucking burden to my conservative family nor to people I deeply trust, and to not have to worry about periods, large breasts and about having my lower half of my own body feeling like nothing is there anyway.
There are times that I genuinely hate myself as a person. I feel fucking weak about not doing shit for myself because of the fact that I’m not always the most strongest person. Shit, I’m emotionally and mentally fragile during some days (while menstruating) because that’s where my internalised transphobia and dysphoria often gets very strong and I struggle more with them (even with my own self-identity at times) than usual because at times it feels like I am just feeling fucking emotional while also being dead/numb inside. I’m also not always the most strongest person either.
I also worry that maybe that I am probably lying about myself for attention or even being an attention seeker about my mental health and dysphoria to want people to feel bad for myself (and wanting people to feel bad for me is just as fucked up as actively being a shitty person). I sometimes worry that maybe I am just lying about my family and I’m just destroying whatever relationship I had with them as well.
Sometimes, I feel like I shouldn’t ever be trusted and sometimes I wish that I didn’t even exist anymore because I didn’t ask to be born nor to exist, nor did I ask to be misgendered, deadnamed, seeing my deadname and dead gender on legal documents, nor did I also ask to still deal with invalidation over my genders as of quarantine (when it was pointed out to me and also when I realised that I was wrong about being cishetfem).
I’m also going to share some harsh honesty to narrow-minded people (who love to use invalidating bullshit against dysphoric and non-dysphoric trans persons) reading this:
For those who preach ‘love yourself’ and ‘love your body’ to dysphoric and non-dysphoric trans persons… You’re doing no one any fucking favours, because y’all are only serving your own bullshit you’re lying to yourselves with. You need to deal with the reality that you cannot always like yourself all the time because sometimes you genuinely hate yourself and that is a part of life. Besides, you cannot always love/accept yourself and your own body all the damn time, because then that wouldn’t be realistic nor would it be truthful. I am not saying that self-acceptance is bad at all because it actually isn’t and saves your own ass a lot. I am saying that you can’t realistically love/accept yourself all the damn time nor love/accept your own body either. Sometimes you genuinely hate your own body (any term that personally helps you) and that’s more than okay. This is a part of the uncertainty and messy shit humans deal with in life. Why use the ‘love yourself’ and ‘love your body’ bullshit to tell dysphoric and non-dysphoric trans persons this shit? You don’t even speak for them (nor do I speak for them either because I can only speak for myself and they’re the experts of their own experiences) damn it! Why even lie to yourselves with this sort of crap when even you don’t always feel that way about yourselves at times?
For transphobic assholes who continue to tell dysphoric and non-dysphoric trans persons how they should and shouldn’t feel, consider yourselves genuinely fortunate that you’re gender-conforming, that you don’t have to deal with worrying about hate crimes against trans persons, that you don’t have to worry about getting killed for being trans, being rejected by family and peers for being yourself, being kicked out, and also the fact that you don’t have to think twice about your own gender while moving on with your days. Also, the ‘love yourself’ and ‘love your body’ crap is tone-deaf as hell, I’m not going to lie. So dear transphobic assholes, please fuck off and have at least some genuine compassion for yourselves, or better yet, listen to where people are coming from when they express discomfort and dysphoria with their own bodies.
I’ve said enough on this, but I’ll need to keep writing this as it feels like I’m getting more sidetracked (as I have a tendency to get sidetracked and go off topic while sharing and infodumping).
The whole point of this is that it sucks to deal with internalised transphobia, internalised bigotries plus bouts of self-doubt and self-hatred while on your period and while being trans and Autistic (and also with dealing with additional racism for BIPOC trans and/or queer while on your period for BIPOC trans and queer folks [if you ever feel comfortable sharing your experiences {if not, that’s also okay as well}, I fully invite you to do so since I want to listen to the experiences of people and to learn from people as well). Not every experience of being your period while dealing with a lot of shit will be the same, because I am only sharing my own experiences with this as well.
Some tips I’ve used for myself that have personally helped my Autistic, transmasc and multigender self
Sometimes, I genuinely wish that the entire world stops stigmatising periods (and even pointlessly gendering them) and lobbing them off as a universal experience only cis, white, NT, able-bodied, thin, gender-conforming, etc. women experience. The way that society’s currently headed and the way it treats people of all genders with periods not only irks me, but also fucking disgusts and angers me internally. Hell, it still treats mental health during periods as something to be moralised, which also internally pisses me off and annoys the living shit out of me.
However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to take care of myself during my period because I’ve got some ways to be able to help myself during those times.
Taking comfort baths in the dark to cheer myself up and also as a way to mitigate dysphoria around periods (or around some, most or all [varies from person to person] aspects); also to help myself during those shit times
Here is the thing, comfort baths are a damned rainbowsend/Godsend because not only does it feel like most of the weight you carry inside yourself feel freeing, but you’re also feeling temporarily okay as your mental health is a lifelong thing that needs to be managed as much as possible. It may help with self-hatred, but it only helps temporarily with it as it’s another painful thing to manage as best as you can.
Here’s the trick (it’s optional) to making them a lot more comfortable and also a lot more healing: If it’s possible, take a bath in the dark to mitigate dysphoria (make sure to have your phone’s flashlight or even a source of light to make it a bit easier/manageable for yourself) and to have anything you’d like with you, such as stuffed companions, a power bank and/or your phone, thermoses of tea and/or coffee, some energy drinks are also fine, and anything that helps as well, whether it’s a book, your journal, or anything else.
There’s also another trick that is also optional as well: if it’s possible/attainable to have bath bombs and/or body washes (depending on their pricing because bath bombs and body washes can be expensive) that matches your perception of your gender(s), use them to make the experience not only more comforting and sensory-friendly, but also make it more of a temporary relief from having to mask as a dead personae you aren’t.
There’s a saying that has somewhat helped me:
If you feel like the world hates you, sleep. If you feel like you hate everyone, eat. If you feel like you hate yourself, bathe.
Napping and/or staying up to do chores that don’t make too much noise
Sometimes napping can temporarily help, but it doesn’t do too much except to let my body rest. Staying up can sometimes feel tiring since I personally want to sleep or not actually do shit, or even feel like I have low battery than usual to do shit, but have enough battery to recharge/refuel my battery/fuel while in bed.
But… Here’s the thing. Sometimes your sleep can become fucked while on your period (again, only if this applies to you while you’re on your period because not everyone’s sleep is shit on theirs, and some folks actually sleep better), and sometimes, you only sleep when you actually feel your body becoming a lot more tired. Sometimes your period can really fuck with you and your sleep, depending on your experiences with it and also depending on your mental health (since mental health isn’t a static thing).
Needing to avoid cissexist language that further adds on to an inescapable self-hatred, including taking steps to avoid using detrimental language against yourself and your own body during periods
Let me be honest. I am just as guilty of using detrimental language about my own body and the way it typically functions for periods because of me struggling with self-acceptance and self-compassion towards my own body, because not only does it make me feel worse about myself, it also makes folks with the same bodies as mine feel like genuine shit about theirs and about themselves (and I feel genuinely bad about it and I want to do better for both myself and for others).
So… I just need to be able to take baby steps to use language that doesn’t make me feel alienated from my body, nor to make others feel like shit about theirs. For example, using body, chest (if not breasts because it’s understandable if some folks genuinely feel uncomfortable about using this word and would rather use different terms or flowery/creative language, or any language they prefer to use that help them feel comfortable inside themselves, and to name it for themselves, not for anyone else) and periods to not only feel better about myself, but also to make things easier for folks with bodies (similar to mine) to feel more comfortable with themselves.
As for cissexist ads and language surrounding periods… Yeah I better avoid them (because that shit already adds onto my {feels inescapable} self hatred) along with comments section of any website (YouTube as well) that’s going to be filled with a mix of transphobia/misia and cissexism.
Same with avoiding any interactions with unsupportive people you still live with as much as you can (sometimes it can get hard, so hang in there). As I admit it and want to because I need to hold myself accountable for my past shit I pulled with myself and other people, I hate feeling like I am a monster towards myself (even though intellectually that’s not even true, it’s just emotions and my brain being both pinfuckasses about it). I also hate feeling like absolute shit about myself when it comes to shit that’s been heavily and pointlessly gendered (like having periods).
Eat food that genuinely helps you feel good about yourself and for yourself (diet and wellness cultures can go fuck themselves because these two forms of classist, racist, fatmisic, etc. and white-washing bullshit can gladly yeet their privileged asses off a damn cliff, and hey, what works for someone else may not work for everyone)
To be honest with you, eating food that benefits or nourishes the human body won’t look the same for anyone else. A known fact is that organic or even nutrient-dense, beneficial food can be expensive motherfuckers that only folks of middle to high income can afford, and isn’t attainable for every single person. Organic food should be made to be affordable, not costly, and accessible for everyone, not for white, thin, rich, etc. privileged bastards to only be able to afford because most of the time in videos pertaining to diet culture, wellness culture and to fuckin’, uh’, self-help bullshit [because it only helps some people, not everyone].
I unfortunately don’t have much to say, but I’ll say this.
Eat what personally helps you feel more at home within your own body.
Create a dysphoria playlist or listen to a playlist(s) that actually helps you stay afloat
I have my transmasc dysphoria playlist I listen to on Spotify, but it’s there for me whenever I don’t want to burden or bother anyone, even though I theoretically know that I am not a burden to anyone (but it can feel hard or difficult to not feel like one sometimes), and that I can always talk to anyone if I ever feel like shit about myself (still working on this on and off for myself as I am still introverted and more reserved/quiet in nature at times).
A dysphoria playlist is also there to help me manage my own self hatred, self doubt, dysphoria, internalised transphobia and transandrophobia around periods and the typical things my body does. It also may be helpful for some folks, but not for everyone because it only mitigates the dysphoria to some extent.
Finding relatable memes (uplifting and vent related) that also not only help you feel less alone, but also call you out on shit you may need to work on managing, including dysphoria-related memes (dysphoria loves to rear its ass at points in your life)
It can be genuinely hard to stay away from memes that relate to the experiences of trans dudes, transmasc persons, and to enbymasc persons who want to feel at home with their own bodies, but struggle in doing so.
At certain times, you don’t always feel at home within your own body and you may sometimes feel like your own body doesn’t feel at home to you anymore [and it’s a shitty feeling to deal with and struggle with].
Conclusion
There’s one final thing I want to say because this is something that needs to be heard, not theorised by people.
I need to learn that I cannot work on myself alone, nor can I teach myself how to accept myself, because then, that can and will result in feeling more disconnected from myself, feeling more lonely inside myself, and that will make escaping from an emotionally inescapable self-hatred a lot more hard to come out of. I also cannot do that because I still struggle with and continue to fight against the mindsets of ‘I wish I was a cis guy’, ‘I don’t feel trans enough because I have a DFAB (designated female at birth) body that is pointlessly gendered as something it isn’t by people and society surrounding me’, and ‘[insert something that every human body does that’s completely common] doesn’t feel right for me and I genuinely feel ashamed of what’s happening to me’. In order for me to be able to accept, have care for and to be compassionate towards myself, I need to surround myself with genuinely supportive and accepting people (regardless if online or in real life), not with hateful assholes who shit on others and have narrow-minded/conservative mindsets.
Thanks for listening.
