We shouldn’t call women ‘menstruators’ | Hacker News Reader

We shouldn’t call women ‘menstruators’

thestar.com

People who menstruate need menstrual products. Not all women menstruate, and transmen may menstruate and certainly, by definition, do not identify as women, and that's even before considering those of nonbinary gender identity.

“People who menstruate” (the term actually used) is different from “menstruators” (the latter is reductionist, the former identifies a trait of people without reducing them to that trait, merely identifying it as one of many traits they have that may or may not be central to their identity; the difference is approximately that between “breeders” and “people with children”.)

If you have to change the term used in order to get upset at it, maybe you are trying a little to hard to find an excuse to be upset.

I don’t understand why it has to be bought up. Biological women shouldn’t need attention to be brought to their menstruation.

Post menopausal women do not menstruate. They are women. Not ex-menstruators.

> I don’t understand why it has to be bought up.

It was literally a campaign about menstrual hygiene and making menstrual products available to people who need them. Do you not understand:

(1) Why the campaign was needed, or

(2) Why in the course of conducting the campaign it was necessary to make some reference to the people whose needs the campaign sought to address, or

(3) Why the campaign chose to use a term that accurately identified the group it sought to serve without denying the gender identity of any of them?

If it is the last, you should understand that when one is having a campaign about awareness of and access to menstrual products, an important focus is likely to be transmen [0]. As such, identifying the target beneficiaries as “women” or “women and girls” is counterproductive.

> Post menopausal women do not menstruate. They are women. Not ex-menstruators.

Once again, no one (except the complainer) used the term “menstruator” anywhere in this scenario.

[0] as an illustration of why, https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-men-pain...

Yea. I don’t understand. Having said that, I feel your responses are too aggressive for me to hold an objective discussion. Take care.

Ok. Now I see what you meant. I am late to this as I am catching up at the end of the year. Apologies. I didn’t know the original article was about Covid and menstruation hygiene.

I hope you will accept my apologies for dismissing you. Altho’ I still do think you were a little condescending but that’s ok. You were trying to communicate something I missed.

Thanks. I will check out the links.

lol who calls them that? honestly, my wife would beat the shit out of me.

https://www.shethepeople.tv/lgbtqia/menstruators-a-gender-ne... [..] This history of the word Menstruator actually goes back to the third wave of feminism in the west- almost 30 years ago. Often TERFs – Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists have spoken about the term ‘menstruators’ being erasure of femininity. But, femininity is not biological, so why should it be centred around this. Also, this does not in any way complicate ‘periods’ or ‘feminism’ but instead nuance it. This has been a common critique for the inclusion of any intersectionality in feminism, but intersectionality makes feminism more comprehensive. Another thing to notice is the constant discourse around the ‘body’. It says, transmasculine people still have ‘female bodies’, but using such terminology delegitimises trans people by reducing them to their anatomy. This implicit construction of gender through biological sex leads to violence against trans people, discrimination in availing health care and complete erasure of non-binary folks.[..]

Why can’t transgender people call themselves transgender? If anything we must work towards erasing the taboo around transgender.

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