In December, a video of a trans-identifying man hunched over in pain from “menstrual cramps” started making the rounds on TikTok.
“Trans girl experiences first intense period after HRT,” the text on the video said while showing the user grimacing in pain, then sprawled on a bed with a heating pad. “Why?” the subject asks at one point. “I swear to God if anyone says welcome to womanhood, I will lose my s***,” the TikTok user continued.
Both conservatives and feminists mocked the video, calling it a “farce” and saying it represented a “new type of misogyny.”
“Notice the slight smirk as he leans on the bed — he knows he is mocking women and NO we don’t have to tolerate this insult,” one person replied.
“I think people tend to look at things like this and think ‘surely now people will see the absurdity here,’” another person observed. “But this line of thought *began* with an absurdity. If we can be pressured to pretend up until now, we can be pressured to pretend some more.”
Meanwhile, activists used the incident as a teaching experience for the less enlightened. They argued that men taking HRT (hormone replacement therapy) could indeed experience symptoms similar to PMS, including cramping, because of the drugs they were taking.
However, the question that just about any menstruating woman may want to ask is: why? Why do they want this?
Trans activism has become the hot new social cause de rigueur. And while breast implants, heavy makeup, and frilly dresses are common enough for trans women, the current goal seems to reach even beyond these external adornments.
Members of this group don’t just want to look like women; they want to replicate the female experience up to and including menstruation and childbirth. This is just the beginning.
Trans TikTok user Dylan Mulvaney also caught heat for posting several videos featuring Tampax tampons. When questioned about needing this very specific menstrual product, Mulvaney reacted with outrage, claiming that trans women keeping a stock of tampons were just trying to be nice.
“I just sometimes carry [a tampon] in case anyone needs it,” Mulvaney said in a video. “And that seems to have just set the world on fire in some pretty nasty ways.”
“The bigger problem at hand is that you feel me carrying a tampon around is a threat to you and your womanhood,” Mulvaney continued. “How is someone doing something nice so repulsive to you?”
“It’s not because I’m misogynistic, it’s because you’re transphobic,” the TikTok influencer concluded.
Other trans women admit that carrying tampons and reacting to “menstrual cramps” comes from deep-seated feelings of jealousy. These individuals want to experience all the facets of womanhood down to complex, messy, and even painful biological processes including getting periods and birthing babies.
“I had a real fixation prior to coming out and realizing that I was trans about being able to have kids and therefore have a period as symbolic of that,” a trans woman said while speaking with Aisle, a reusable period product company.
“It was this thing I was endlessly curious about and endlessly fascinated about. I thought it would be nice to have that cycle.”
The association between trans women and menstruation is going mainstream. These days, it’s become increasingly common to find pad and tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms, including in schools.
Logical thinkers probably realize that these products are intended for trans men, also known as women who identify as men and therefore might find themselves in a men’s room while menstruating. However, the push to attribute pads and tampons to both genders is also laying the groundwork for the next phase of this social experiment.
If men can menstruate, and trans men carry tampons, then why can’t men have babies, too?
That idea is already gaining traction in the medical community. Proponents point to previous successful uterine transplants which resulted in live births. So far, the procedure hasn’t worked for a man. But the hope is there.
In May 2022, Alicyn Simpson, who works with the Pittsburgh children’s hospital’s pediatric Gender and Sexual Development Program, brought these ideas to the public stage. Simpson believes live uterine transplants could be the key to successful male pregnancy.
“One area that had not been looked at before in any serious way was could the donors be live donors?” Simpson said during a presentation on fertility in the LGBTQIA+ community. “Live donation has been something the [transgender] community has talked about for decades, it was really thought about as magical thinking.”
“Well I have these parts, but I don’t want them. You want them, you need them. So what if I gave them to you? How would that work?’ And apparently, based on their research this is actually viable,” Simpson, who came out as transgender 30-years-ago, said. The hospital employee also said trans women “would choose to have female physiological experiences” such as menstruation and pregnancy, with the aid of a “vaginal transplant” and “uterine transplant.”
“One of the main reasons I do the work that I do, is the desire to push us in that direction,” Simpson said.
A clip of the talk started circulating on Twitter and received a fair amount of backlash. However, with menstruation being promoted as a gender-neutral event, it was only a matter of time before the idea of actual men having babies stopped being a punchline and became a real topic of conversation.
Dr. Narendra Kaushik runs a gender reassignment clinic in New Delhi. In May 2022, he announced his intentions to attempt a uterine transplant into a male patient, claiming he was “very, very optimistic” about the outcome.
“Every transgender woman wants to be as female as possible — and that includes being a mother,” Dr. Kaushik said, per The Daily Mail.
“The way towards this is with a uterine transplant, the same as a kidney or any other transplant. This is the future. We cannot predict exactly when this will happen but it will happen very soon.”
The publication notes that this procedure was attempted once in known history when a 48-year-old trans-identifying artist named Lili Elbe had the operation in 1931. The Danish citizen headed to Germany for the transplant.
Elbe developed a post-surgery infection, however, and died from cardiac arrest three months later. Elbe never conceived with the new uterus.