#pad packaging

I understand that a lot of the way we empower ourselves to embrace our feminity is by drawing strength from what a feat of nature we are. That we can create life. And that the idea of men being able to do the things that we can do can feel like them taking control of yet another thing. Of the patriarchy removing every last ounce of us. Can feel diminishing. But trans people exist at the bottom of that patriarchy. They do not stand for it at all.

This is not what trans people are trying to do. Trans women (people assigned male at birth who now identify as women) were not the ones who asked for the packaging to be changed, yet seem to be the ones being attacked. They are the ones who generally find it endlessly painful that they cannot do all of the things cis womens bodies can do. They are the ones who greave never being able to carry a child. Who would sign up to the monthly pain we all cuss about because they want to be a 'real women'. That they have missed out on the magic. They are the ones denied access to safe spaces because people will not stop viewing them as male, and in that, as a threat. They sit at the bottom because women will not embrace them for fear of attack, or taunt them that they should be glad they'll never know the pain. And men will not embrace them as either male or female but as a thing to attack. Or as a thing to fetishise.

Trans men (assigned female at birth now idenitifying as a man) did ask for the female gender markee to be removed from Always pad packing. Calmly. Nothing else. They have never commented on it being advertised towards men, and they would agree with us that surrounding sanitary products there are bigger fish to fry such as taxation or being more eco friendly or even using red liquid instead of blue. However, this is what the company responded to and agreed to. They simply asked that a symbol be removed that hits them when they are down.

We know how painful periods are, we generally do not want them and complain about them to high heaven, now imagine if you literally do not believe that you should have any of those parts. You are and want to be seen as a man. Removing that tiny symbol helps ease their dysphoria a tiny bit, while affecting no one else in anyway.

What could be the harm in that.

Because they do not want to be able to do these things. They do not want to erase women or stake a claim that these are male things. They want to run away from these things because only people assigned female at birth can do them. But until any surgery they might choose to undergo they are stuck which painful bleeding taunting them monthly that they are in the wrong body. Can you even imagine that added pain.  

Removing a symbol you probably never even noticed does not erase you, it simply helps someone else's day in a deeply important way.

The idea of saying pregnant people or just generally saying people instead of women is not to erase women it is to not assume gender on someone because of their reproductive organs. But no one is forcing you to say it. Not a single soul.

Nobody wants to erase women or take away their strengths. All this pointless war is doing is alienating us from our trans sisters and brothers because of an empty threat we feel. when we could use that strength to help each other. Pulling us away from fights that matter. From taxation. From the shit show that is politics. From rape culture. From global warming. From all of it.