Daily Dose: 114

Feminism in 3D: Defy, Disobey, Disrupt

Logo: Sheyam Ghieth

Menopause is the hardest thing that has ever happened to me. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever gone through. Menopause is shit. Menopause is amazing. I worry sometimes when I say stuff like that. I come from a generation of cisgender women who were socialized to leave everything that made us cis women at home, under the mattress, in the bathroom cabinet, somewhere not too obvious, so that we could “make it” in the cis man’s world. Because if those things began to poke out from underneath the mattress, spill out from the bathroom cabinet, or become so obvious that they signaled we were not cis men, then we were not up to the privilege of being allowed entry into that cis man’s world, let alone “succeed” in it. For nonbinary, trans masc, and gender expansive people going through menopause, those questions are compounded and further complicated by the silence and bigotry that renders their menopausal experience truly invisible. They are not invisible; bigotry has rendered their experience invisible.