NBC News highlighted the pain that transgender men reportedly feel when going through menstruation and the struggle trans men face when trying to obtain menstrual hygiene products.
The publication posted a story Saturday titled “For transgender men, pain of menstruation is more than just physical,” which features transgender model and activist Kenny Ethan Jones’s struggles with menstruation and finding menstrual products that Jones can identify with as a trans man.
Jones did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“I didn’t believe that having periods would be a part of my lived experience,” Jones told NBC. “I felt isolated; everything about periods was tailored to girls, yet me, a boy, was experiencing this and nothing in the world documented that.”
A transgender man is a person who was born a biological woman but now identifies as a man, according to Planned Parenthood. The organization did not respond to a request for clarification on whether trans men’s hormone therapy would cause the cessation of menstrual cycles.
“These identities can also refer to someone who was surgically assigned female at birth, in the case of intersex people, but whose gender identity is male,” Planned Parenthood stated on its website. “Many trans men identify simply as men.” (RELATED: High School Girl Chokes Up As Trans Student Rejoices Over Unrestricted Access To Bathrooms: ‘My Privacy Is Being Invaded’)
Jones struggles with “getting his hands on menstrual hygiene products” since these products are usually marketed to women and are often “pretty and pink,” as Jones pointed out to NBC.
“Having a period already causes me a lot of [gender] dysphoria, but this dysphoria becomes heightened when I have to shop for a product that is labeled as ‘women’s health’ and in most cases, is pretty and pink,” Jones said.
The transgender model and activist said there has been a “positive shift” in the way society discusses women and periods, but Jones said there is still a stigma toward “transmen, nonbinary and intersex individuals having them.”
“People are still reluctant to the idea that it’s not only women that experience periods.”
NBC News did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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