Menopause

Menopause

Is menopause a trans experience?  What about the hormone treatments for some breast cancer patients?

Defeminization is not on the list of menopausal symptoms. Even if ungendering were listed, it would be framed as negative rather than as the rare opportunity it is to finally slip outside the brutal binary system. (Steinke, 2019)

If some women experience menopause as a trans experience, do trans women experience menopause?

Transwomen who stop or lessen hormone therapy can also experience menopausal-like symptoms. (Steinke, 2019)

If there is overlap between trans experience and menopause, could this lead to greater acceptance of trans people?  Is it possible to humanize trans experience by connecting it to the broadly known varieties of hormonally driven experience?  Could such a connection would bring us closer to a multi-gendered, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, pluralistic and egalitarian democracy?

I hold this vision of the future: where trans experiences aren’t marginalized, where everyone connects to their inner tran, where hormonal changes are just part of how we slip between and through genders as we age.  Trans people are the harbingers of this new reality. Trans discourse is where all these curious, unfamiliar and forbidden ideas are known and discussed.

inner harbinger