Aunt Flo came to visit me when I was in 5th grade. I remember it well. It was a warm summer night and my family had just returned home from Dairy Queen. My stomach had been bothering me since dinner, but not enough to stop me from finishing my Peanut Buster Parfait.
As the parfait settled, my stomach did not.
A trip to the restroom and I knew something was up.
“MOM!” I yelled from the bathroom.
My mom appeared at the door, concern written all over her face.
“Mom, is this what I think it is?”
Now, I had read Judy Blume. I recalled how tenderly Margaret’s mom had reacted to “the moment.” “MY God! You’ve really got it. My little girl!” And then her eyes filled with tears It was tender. Powerful. I expected all that and more from my mom. Margaret’s mom had set the bar high.
Instead, my mother looked down at me and said simply, “Yup. That’s it, alright.”
Aunt Flo’s first visit was okay, but as the years went by, each monthly visit seemed worse. It wasn’t just that she was inconvenient and arrived at the most inopportune time, requiring preparation and planning…no, all that I could handle. What I suffered with was the pain she never failed to pack. Not painful in a “Oh, my tummy hurts.”
No. Aunt Flo was painful in a “OMG. I’m going to pass out” sort of way. She attacked me every month. My entire body felt her arrival, but my pelvic region all the way around to my back took the brunt. And she started her painful ways a week before she arrived: burning in the belly and migraines in the head. As she walked through the door, it was black out pain and in a time before Advil or Aleve. All I had at my disposal was Tylenol. You know what Tylenol does for screaming cramps?
Nothing. It just sits in your body. I almost think it makes the cramps angrier.
And, while I don’t want to paint you a gross visual picture (spare me any outrage…it IS gross. Even I don’t want to see it) there were so many times I would look at the amount of what was coming out of my body think “Yeah, this can’t be right.”
It was like a crime scene, kids.
I recall my senior trip in high school. We all left on a bus to California at 6am on a June morning. Aunt Flo, not wanting to miss the trip, arrived three hours earlier. I wore heavy jeans as a precaution. I rocked back and forth in my seat, leaning on my friend Jessica when wave of pain made me want to scream. The bus broke down in Needles. 108 degrees. My uterus in a vice. Jessica snarling to the nosy boy in front of us who kept staring through the crack in the seats, “She’s fine. Just TURN AROUND.”
This continued through to adulthood.
Finally, at the insisting of a phenomenal OB/GYN, surgery was performed to find out what in the holy hell was going on down there.
Endometriosis.
And not just a little. In the words of my doctor, it was EVERYWHERE. She even presented me with pictures. COLOR pictures of my pink insides dotted with this monster. I wanted to make it my Christmas card but the DH put his foot down. It was awful, yes, but at least I now knew what I was dealing with. It had a name.
See besides the pain was the fact there was no way to adequately describe this to someone who didn’t have it. ‘Cause I’m sure it felt like me and those like me were just big ol’ period babies. “Take a Midol and shut up about it. It can’t be THAT bad.”
Yes, yes it can.
The DH did the best he could. But try as I might, I could simply not explain the fog that descended upon my brain the week before Aunt Flo arrived; the pain in my lower back that would flare unexpectedly, the migraines; and then the sort of cramps that make you ask out loud: When will death come?
I have met other women since that diagnosis years ago who battle the same pain. They get it. I was in no way unique and they all shared their stories of freaking HATING Aunt Flo and the misery she brought. The endometriosis ruined so much of my life that the age of 30, after completing my family, my dear dear doctor said, and I quote, “Sweetie, if you are done having children, why not just have a hysterectomy and get it over with. You shouldn’t have to go through this every month.”
And that’s exactly what I did. Bye-bye lady parts. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
I share all of this with you not to give you an extra personal glimpse into a weird part of my life, but to provide background for what I am going to say next.
There are organizations designed to help women as they chart this awfulness. Endometriosis South Coast is one such organization. They bill themselves as an “inclusive charity set up to support people who haven’t started their diagnosis journey, are going through the stages, or have been diagnosed with Endometriosis and/or Adenomyosis.”
Support for women is important, cause as I said, the only people who truly understand endometriosis are other women who suffer the same lot.
So, knowing ALL THIS, you can imagine what went through my head when I saw that Endometriosis South Coast announced their new CEO:
a trans woman named Steph.
Accompanying the announcement was a statement next to Steph’s picture that read, wait for it, “Isn’t it ridiculous I’ve got to my 40’s before any medical professionals even mentioned endometriosis?
No, Steph. No it is not ridiculous. YOU DON’T HAVE A UTERUS, Steph. You never had a uterus. You will never have a uterus. You have a penis. A penis is not a uterus. A penis will never be a uterus. You can rid yourself of the penis, but a uterus doesn’t grow back in its place. Not gonna happen, Steph. ‘Cause science.
The more I thought about this the more I heard my uterus screaming in my head. And it said, “What is happening, here? We have lost our freaking minds in the name of diversity. We have tripped over ourselves so much trying to prove how inclusive we are that we have lost all common sense. This is stupid. Steph is an endometriosis fraud. A FRAUD!”
Hey, my uterus may have been removed but even in uterus heaven, it still knows what’s what. I understand my ovaries are equally displeased.
Friends, I know in a world where one can declare a thing and then everyone must say it is so without question, this may come as a BIG surprise, but women issues belong to…wait for it…women. <gasp>
Issues like breastfeeding and endometriosis and menstrual cycles and childbirth all belong to females who share biological physical issues, pains, struggles that are uniquely female. Dudes, you don’t get to have that. Live your best life, sure, but don’t pretend you are me. That you GET female issues.
That we are the same.
Listen, I love you as a human being, but it’s disrespectful.
It’s belittling.
My uterus and I are not a costume you put on. You wouldn’t know a menstrual cramp any more than I would know what having an erection feels like. Or being kicked in the testicles. Or any of the other experiences uniquely male.
Steph is the boy in the bus who kept turning around watching me squirm in pain with no way of understanding what was happening. And even in a dress and long hair and eyeshadow and lipstick, he still wouldn’t know.
Talk about a war on women. Dear Baby Jesus in a manger—we can’t even own reproductive organ issues anymore. Men took that, too.
And now even Endometriosis is woke.
Men. Amirite? This bizarro world universe where “woman face” has become acceptable is beyond me. Place dress up all you want, nobody cares, until you start replacing the un-replaceable. In 500 years, when your skeleton is exhumed by archaeologists, they will find a man wearing a dress. Fact.
Whew! Three forths through your article, I was scratching my head as to subject matter. Finally I got to the real crux of the article! Your sense of the absurd is spot on!!!
Dresses and makeup are today's blackface makeup.