That One Place

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!

keep in mind i am not a biologist in any way but my understanding of it basically goes

the period is all hormones. if you have the hormones but not the uterus you can still get everything except the bleeding from the uterus. yknow because your body can't detect that one peripheral but the rest of the program still works

the actual cramps and pain aren't from the uterus they're from the muscles around the uterus squeezing it, which you have even if you don't have a uterus

so if you're a trans girl you can't shed the uterine lining obviously but you can still get things like fatigue, cravings, mood swings, back cramps, and breast tenderness

So not only do you not need a working uterus to have periods, you can have a working, fertile set of ovaries and a uterus, but without estrogen, they still won't do periods, even if they're doing all the stuff required to actually get pregnant. And we know they do this because trans men on T get pregnant all the time.

If you put these two experiences together, it becomes clear. What you were taught in school was wrong. Having a period is not caused by having a functional uterus, functional ovaries, or the ability to become pregnant; it's caused by having an estrogen-dominant system. Lots of people, including but not limited to trans men, have all three of those things, but their bodies are testosterone-dominant, and so they don't get periods. Meanwhile, lots of people, including but not limited to trans women, don't have one or all of those things and yet still do get periods, because their bodies are estrogen-dominant and that's what actually triggers periods. Sure, fertility is the purpose of a period, for lack of a better term, but that isn't actually the biological thing that triggers that set of symptoms. Estrogen is. That's why trans people without uteruses still get monthly menstrual symptoms, and that's why other trans people who haven't had periods in years can and do still get pregnant.

this is what I mean about how right now in the united states (won't speak for elsewhere but feel free to lmk in the notes if you'd like) a lot of us trans adults who are able to access transition care can only do so at the direct expense of trans minors. this clinic would not have opened if they held the line and offered equal access to healthcare to trans minors.

"Martin announced the direct-care clinic, calling it “one of the first times a public health department has ever taken that step.” But when Cabán pushed back, pointing out that trans youth are the ones most under attack right now—noting that there are “almost no providers” left for youth the entire city—Martin indicated the clinic would not serve youth, citing the need to “strike a balance” between providing care and avoiding “clawbacks from the federal government.” This morning, EITM can directly confirm that the age cutoff is 19—matching the Trump administration’s executive order threshold, not the standard legal age of adulthood in New York."

a lot of the structural transphobia we are experiencing is hitting minors even worse. their care gets banned first. if you want a preview of what access to healthcare will look like for us trans adults in 2 years, look at what access looks like for legal minors right now.