Thread by @monaeltahawy

It’s the writer’s job to tell society what it pretends it doesn’t know. And as a perimenopausal writer, my determination to dismantle that pretense is especially heightened these days.
Art installation: Jenny Holzer for Pen America.
📷 @rerutled

One of the saddest and most enraging things I’ve heard about menopause was a cis woman who said “How am I supposed to compete against the men when I can’t sleep?”

The simple answer of course is you are not. You never were meant to. That’s exactly the whole fucking point of it.

And given that the majority of us are not able-bodied, wealthy cis het (white) men, how the actual fuck has this been allowed to go on this long?

More in my next essay #ThisIs55: On Unbecoming.

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feministgiant.com

I come from a generation of cis women who were socialized to leave everything that made us cis women at home, under the mattress, in the bathroom closet, 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 mattress, spill out from the bathroom closet, 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.

And this is where, as I keep saying, menopause is shit and menopause is amazing. Because the clarity!

It has undone me and kicked my fucking ass. This October will mark 12 months since my last period.

Keep unbecoming, Mona! Welcome emerging Mona!

I don’t remember what I used to be and I don’t know who I am becoming.

I am unbecoming and I am unlearning.

Is that not how we become free? By undoing all that made us unfree?

feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-me…

How many of us are ready for perimenopause? I am a feminist and until shamefully recently, I thought menopause would take a few months or so during which my period would sort of peter out and boom I’m done.

Wow, have I learned. feministgiant.com/p/essay-bloody…

As a feminist of colour who often must write what she wants to read, I know what it’s like to rarely see yourself. Too often when feminism takes that brave dive into deep end of a taboo, e.g. menopause, it takes along just a select few: white, wealthy, cis het, able-bodied women.

Transphobes and “gender critical” types get upside down bananas when those of us who insist on being trans inclusive and who recognise a gender expansive world use phrases like “those of us who are non-men.”

That phrase accurately captures what it’s like for so many of us who make it through the world at a distinct disadvantage because we are not cis men–specifically able-bodied, wealthy, cis het, white men.

And that's why I am editing this anthology.
unbound.com/books/bloody-h…

I don’t remember what I used to be and I don’t know who I am becoming.

But I welcome her! I have been turning, fading, swirling, coming into focus and oops-there-I-blur again, as menopause kicks my fucking ass.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-fallin…

And I have been wrestling and finessing this essay all summer.

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feministgiant.com

Until my unbecoming clarifies how I emerge: I am learning, much to my thrill and awe, that one of the greatest gifts of the transition known as menopause is shamelessness.

feministgiant.com/p/moisturize-y…

I am not known as one easily shamed nor is modesty one of my virtues. Still, I gasp at the heights of audacity that I like to think come monthly in lieu of my increasingly AWOL menstrual cycle.

It is as if instead of shedding the lining of my uterus, I am shedding the lining of patriarchal fuckery that I was socialized into.

feministgiant.com/p/moisturize-y…