Men have periods, too.

Feminist social-justice heroes recently started the hashtag #LiveTweetYourPeriod to reduce the “stigma” that women experience surrounding their periods — only to be criticized by other social-justice heroes for covering it as women’s issue because transgender men have periods too.

Various publications wrote articles supporting the hashtag (such as the Huffington Post’s ”Women Share Their Menstruation Woes With #LiveTweetYourPeriod, Hilarity Ensues” and Marie Claire’s “Women Have Been Live Tweeting Their Periods and It’s Amazing”). The idea, as Jenna Wortham of The New York Times Magazine put it, was that “posting about taboo topics ­in public, right alongside the quotidian details of our lives, helps normalize, desexualize and destigmatize women’s reproductive health — a topic shrouded in shame for far too long.”


But, it turns out, associating women with periods is ignorant. The conservative blog Weasel Zippers posted a tweet from someone with the handle “@feministfists” saying, “Pls remember to be inclusive of our trans sisters, brothers & genderqueer kin when you #LiveTweetYourPeriod. Not only women get their period.”

“@Feministfists” appears to be a private account, but a search of the hashtag reveals that she (to hazard cisnormative guess) is not the only one with that opinion:

https://twitter.com/SHREKFLEX/status/613839942301712384

I have a real problem with the menarchy movement. Not all women have periods, and not all who have periods are women. #LiveTweetYourPeriod — Maddie Miller (@Ahoy_There_Mate) June 24, 2015

https://twitter.com/ihatewhiteboys/status/613030749856473088