A few weeks ago I started an AMA on the forums of the program I use to track my period. It was supposed to be a small visibility post, just something to fill my time as I knew work was going to be super slow, I was going to be bored and I figured it would give me something to do on break.

It was titled: “(AMA) I’m a Trans Woman and I use Eve to track my cycle. [yes we have those]”

(I have a thing for brackets and parentheses I guess.{see what I mean})

If at this point you are confused about what I mean by Trans / Transgender, I will direct you to the lovely search engine that is Google, or you know, read a book. (This one is excellent.)

If at this point you are confused because “Trans Girl Periods?” You are not alone and this article is intended to let you in on the secret and (apparently for some reason) oddly fascinating world of trans woman periods.

I’m sure you (the imagined reader [God I love these things]) have a few questions. But, fear not there were a ton of questions and I will most likely cover yours. Though if I don’t, that’s your fault for having such a weird question, why would you even ask that?

And when I say there were a lot of questions.

I mean A LOT OF QUESTIONS.



My small visibility post went from a way to fill extra minutes to a constant barrage that ate up the next week of free time. Any time that I had to spare went into answering questions about the most intimate details of my body. It’s a bit irksome. All the time I spend on activism, poetry, writing, speaking, and THIS was the thing to blow up.

Cis Women. Miright?

I’m glad it did blow up though. Education and visibility is important. And it was fun. It was fun in the way I imagine having medical students observe your pap smear would be, which was to say difficult, revealing, a little odd, but the results were good, and it needs to be done. There was even a joke or two.

So maybe not all that fun.

But people were learning and the community was for the most part very welcoming and affirming, which was a good deal better than I hoped. Being a Transgender woman (in my experience), women’s spaces, spaces that should be safe spaces are often not. So the outpouring of support and thankful encouragement was a wonderful relief and if any of you readers are looking for period trackers, fertility trackers, or pregnancy and infancy apps, you should check out GLOW they are some great people.

So anyway, without further elaboration, join me on a journey into my endocrine system.

swelling horn music begins

The Most Asked, Best, or Most Absurd Comments and Questions:

Question: “So wait, you say you have a Period? So you bleed? What comes out?”

Answer: I don’t have a uterus so I don’t bleed, but I take hormones and have a hormonal cycle. At the end of the cycle it gives me the usual PMS symptoms including abdominal cramps, bloating, headache, moodiness, and occasionally breast soreness and increased discharge. These symptoms are what I term my Period. It’s not a “Menstrual Period” because I have no uterine lining to shed, it’s just a period of symptoms. The cramping is caused by the abdominal wall and intestinal muscles seizing, which means I also get period shits when they get bad. Hooray!

Question: “So why track your period if you aren’t going to bleed? I mean you don’t have to worry about ruining your favorite panties or anything?”

Answer: Well, since I inject hormones instead of creating all of them naturally, tracking my period is a way to make sure my hormone levels are cycling at about the same rate. That way I can adjust dosages on the fly if things get out of whack. It’s also nice to know what’s going on with my body, it is nicer living in those rhythms and knowing when things will probably start. Plus this way if I’m really late I tease my Fiance I’m preggo.

Question: “So you can get pregnant then?”

Answer: No that was a joke, I can’t get pregnant. I don’t like to talk about it as it’s a sore spot, but since I don’t have a Uterus I can never carry a child. It sucks. Hard. And while I may know I dont have the capability, my body does not, so I hear the same biological ticking and have the same drive to have a baby as the average 29 year old. Sometimes things just suck, thems the breaks.

Question: “What’s the point of a period then?”

Answer: I ask my body that question every time, she still has yet to answer, the bitch. Though seriously, all people, even cis men, have hormonal cycles. The body is built to have a hormonal cycle, so it works to achieve one.

Question: “If you take the same amount of hormones every day your levels wont fluctuate. So you can’t have a period. It’s all in your head.”

Answer: Ok Junior Scientist, time for learnification.



I take the same amount of progesterone everyday and inject the same amount of Estradiol twice a week . That is true. And while that does allow me to experience a cycle, it is not what causes it, rather it is raising my hormones to a level where my body takes over. While Estradiol (E2) is made mostly in the ovaries (and to a small extent testes and adipose tissue), Estrone (E1) is made about 50% in the adrenal gland, 25% in adipose tissue and 25% in the ovaries. [there is a third form of Estrogen made in the placenta of pregnant women but it isn’t normally present in women who aren’t pregnant] I give my body a steady supply of E2. But E1 and E2 are easily converted into each other while being stored in fat cells (adipose tissue) and so my body can make whichever form of Estrogen it currently needs. E1, E2, and progesterone are also all stored in fat until the body needs them and it is this along with an increase in production in the adrenal gland and adipose tissue that allows the body to produce a regular cycle. This relation of fat cells to estrogen storage and production has been thoroughly studied and is believed to be the cause of first world early maturation in girls.

Question: “ So you were born a boy? Why don’t you just say that instead of being so PC?”

Answer: Ok. I guess I will have to explain a bit more of why this language is so important.

This is me today. (not literally, I’m in bed)

The point is, this is what I look like.

That right there is a woman.

But even if I looked nothing like that, even if I looked like the “man in a skirt” that people wrongly assume trans people are, I would still be a woman.

I would be a woman because that is my gender.

About two months(9-13 weeks) into gestation the genitalia of the fetus is determined. The gender differentiation of the brain doesn’t occur for another five months. We like to think that genetics or chromosomes determine everything. But a lot of your DNA is switched on and off by environmental factors. This layer of factors above genetics is called epigenetics.

The most up to date science we have now says that transgender people are the result of both a genetic proclivity and epigenetic factors. It’s one of the reasons we are rare.

These factors can switch at anytime between 9-13 weeks and 5 months later, and so you will have some people that develop almost exclusively towards traditional feminine bodily structures or some that look more like what you may term masculine.

And sometimes the hormonal fluctuations or other epigenetic factors happened multiple times over the course of the pregnancy. And you end up with a mix of attributes.

Other times the genetics are even more muddy. You can end up with XX men and XY women who have no idea.

Then you throw puberty into the mix and, if you are trans, possibly a second puberty.

The point I’m making here is there is no real way of knowing whether someone is male or female until they are old enough to tell you.

Since most people develop along a similar path most of western society has always held that there were only two genders and assigned people one at birth.

But that’s all it was.

A best guess that was usually right.

Even though science now tells us that most people actually exist somewhere between what could be termed “pure male” or “pure female” as en utero hormonal fluctuations affect most fetuses, most people are comfortable identifying on one side of the spectrum or the other.



This is why it’s important to me to say assigned at birth.

It is an acknowledgement that gender is not clear.

That is why I do not say that I was male or born male.

You could argue that I was born Trans, but definitely not male.

This is the reality I knew when I was four years old.

I was born female.

I had a penis, (never wanted it but it was there).

These are not contradictory statements.

Trans women are not men who decided to become women, we are women who were forced to live as men until we could find a way to express the truth of who we are.



I don’t understand men, or know what it’s like to really be one.

Because I always knew I wasn’t.

To be forced to live a lie knowing if you tell the truth you will lose everything is torture. That’s the reason 41% of us have attempted suicide, usually before coming out, myself included.

We know that we will be hated and judged and called perverts because of a medical condition we have had since birth.

It takes enormous strength to push through that.

I’m saying this not to make myself look good, or talk about how strong I am.

I’m saying this so that when you meet a trans person who doesn’t look like me, who didn’t have the genetic benefits I do, you will treat them like the man or the woman they say they are.

Because that is the truth, it doesn’t matter if they are handsome or pretty, or can blend in with cis people.

We are who we say we are.

Genetics are complicated, and genitalia is just one expression of that.

Hell it’s possible you reading this could be XY if you’ve never been tested.

Unlikely but possible.

So I will ask all of you to think about this.

And try to understand that we are all just trying to live a normal life with the people we love.

Question: “You are still a guy tho.”

Answer: Fuck You

Question: “Your eyeliner is perfect. HOW?”

Answer: r/Makeup Addiction. Live by it.

Question: “I just wanted to say you are so pretty I would have never known you are trans!”

Answer: While I sincerely appreciate the compliment. For future reference please don’t tell trans people we don’t look trans and expect us to be flattered.

1. I am trans, this is what I look like, hence this is what a trans woman looks like.

2. If I say to you “You are really smart for a girl” you would be rightly pissed. Because the assumptions in that statement would be obvious. The assumption that trans people aren’t attractive is really very awful and offensive.

Question: “Great name! How did you choose it? And how long have you known you were Trans?”

Answer: Thanks! I actually choose my middle name Kailyn first. It is a modified version of Kalonymus. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus was a 14th century Trans Woman, Poet, Philosopher and Physician who could not live her truth due to her circumstance. I choose that name to honor her and to give a chance for her legacy to live on in me. If you would like to read one of her poems, you can find a translation here http://www.on1foot.org/text/even-bochan-kalonymus-ben-kalonymus

I choose my first name off of what fit me, the meaning, and what sounded right with my middle name.

As for the second part of the question, I’ve known I was a girl since I was 4, though I couldn’t tell my parents. They were and still are super conservative fundamentalists and even at four you can tell some things aren’t safe to talk about. That experience of the religious world keeping me from living my truth is one of the reasons I empathise so much with Kalonymus and oddly enough one of the reasons I became a minister.

Question: “So do all Transgender Women get them? And when do they start?

Answer: Actually it varies between every girl. Some have them but its barely noticeable, some of us, like me, get pretty much everything but the blood. As far as time goes, that just depends on how long it takes your body to reach proper hormone levels. That said there is a phrase the community uses all the time, YMMV (Your Milage May Vary). Everyone has different genetics and different bodies.

Oh yeah, and there was one more question that got asked A LOT.

I really don’t think I have to say which.

My answer for that, it’s none of your business, and we get really tired of talking about it.

Seriously though, please just don’t even ask. If there’s one way to let a trans person know that you only see them as an oddity and not a person, it’s to ask that.

Thanks for taking the time to read and learn about this

If there are more questions. Please feel free to ask in the comments!

Unless its that.