"What I’ve personally not heard mentioned as much, is the crippling anxiety you can get with the peri menopause...A kind of irrational anxiety that makes no sense whatsoever! You feel like you’ve lost your own damn mind!" Martine McCutcheon
uk.style.yahoo.com/martine-mccutc… Anxiety, out of the blue, was one of the hardest impacts of perimenoapuse for me.

I've had bouts of depression when I was younger, but never anxiety.

So I'm always grateful when celebrities and actors with platforms like Martine share their experience.
feministgiant.com/p/essay-menopa…

Ireland just had its first Menopause Summit rte.ie/lifestyle/livi… And I'm calling this the Oprah Menopause Summit oprahdaily.com/life/health/a4…

"it is the language of people who very much believe that they are engaged in a holy war.”

The white Christian zealots whose danger for too long has been underplayed because they're white and Christian, which are considered the norm and default in the U.S.

https://twitter.com/SChenHayes/status/1638290855642517504

As I have said again and again: it is easy to see zealots and fascists when they don't look like you

feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-ha…

It's #MothersDay in the UK today, so here's my essay Unmothering

open.substack.com/pub/feministgi… My paternal grandmother had eight children. My maternal grandmother had 11 children (she was pregnant 14 times).

My mother is the eldest of those children and she has three children of her own.

I am the eldest of those children and I am glad to have none of my own.

Sydney, I am about to start my journey towards you! On Wednesday, I’m giving a talk at @UNSW for #InternationalWomensDay and then having a conversation with Senator @MehreenFaruqi about feminism around the world

unsw.to/MonaEltahawy

Labour Party says it will urge UK firms to publish menopause action plan

"Menopausal women could be offered paid time off and working environments with temperature-controlled areas under Labour plans to support the wellbeing of women in the workplace."

theguardian.com/society/2023/f… About one in 10 women aged 45-55 left their jobs last year due to their symptoms and ultimately the lack of workplace support, according to research supported by the Fawcett Society.

peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/175496…

The magnificent Nina Simone would have been 90 years old today. My love for her is boundless. Throughout the day I will share some of my favourite things that #NinaSaid for my annual appreciation and respect 💜✊🏽❤️ (Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear!” #NinaSaid

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1230878772917874690/vid

According to the Menopause Foundation of Canada, one in 10 women will leave the workforce because of their menopause symptoms.

thestar.com/life/2023/02/2… "For most of us, it will happen when we need to be firing on all cylinders at work.

'There’s a real overlap between when menopause tends to happen and the moment when a lot of women are poised for leadership positions that could take their careers to the next level...'

I launched my newsletter FEMINIST GIANT to highlight global feminist resistance to patriarchal fuckery. Such resistance includes the fight vs transphobia, which contributors Inaara Merani and Samiha Hossain highlight in their weekly Global Roundups.

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1626682810072289281

Love and solidarity to trans and gender expansive friends around the world.

Zero tolerance for transphobia.

feministgiant.com

I am 55yo and childfree by choice, happily so. And you know what has made that choice possible? My two abortions. feministgiant.com/p/abortion-is-… #Childfree

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1626224522667130880

In 1996, I had an “illegal” abortion in Egypt and in 2000, I had a “legal” abortion in the US.

I use inverted commas because the State can fuck off with its opinions about what I can and can’t do with my uterus.

That control belongs to me.

feministgiant.com/p/abortion-is-… #Childfree

It is good to see articles about being childfree by choice. This one features mostly white people bbc.com/worklife/artic… h/t @rerutled #Childfree I wrote this essay on being childfree by choice because we need to hear from more women of colour and women from different cultural and faith backgrounds as well as trans men and non-binary people who choose to be childfree. I have my own book planned. feministgiant.com/p/unmothering

Researchers found that more than half of Republicans believe the U.S. should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%). h/t @inpoco npr.org/2023/02/14/115… According to the survey half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly 4 in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader in order to keep these Christian values in society

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon is resigning
nytimes.com/live/2023/02/1… h/t @rerutled Nicola Sturgeon is not the first woman to lead a country. But it is telling that the only other cis woman leader that she can compare her experience of the menopause transition with is fictional. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-po…

Romance is an uprising in the name of your humanity.

It is imperative that we write our own stories of love so that we are not objects of geopolitical hypocrisies but instead subjects of our own romances.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-life-l… #ValentinesDay Who is considered worthy of love, who is allowed to want it?

Who is considered worthy of freedom and who is allowed to want to be free?

The answer to those questions is also the answer to who is worthy of living and who is allowed to live. #ValentinesDay

I usually ignore Valentine’s Day and I rarely talk or write about love. But much like with religion, if you don’t claim your right to shape, critique and make demands of love... ...if you don’t stake a claim, even if you don’t practice–you cede the ground to the absurd, the foolish, and the nonsensical.

So here I am, staking my claim to love, as a feminist in love and in my 50s.

i.e. I am both practicing and preaching.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-a-femi…

The word "finally" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Finally.

What happens during menopause? Science is finally piecing it together. nationalgeographic.com/magazine/artic… via @NatGeoMag #menopause Humans and killer whales (and the short finned pilot whale) are the only species who go through menopause.

And we really don’t know why. Yes, really.
feministgiant.com/p/postmenopaus…

Was any other major issue given as little time as abortion and the overturning of #RoeVWade in #Biden’s #sotu2023?

Fucking outrageous.

If you thought “Where’s the sense of urgency?!” now you know.

It doesn’t exist. It’s as if nothing happened just a few months ago.

It’s bad enough that Republicans won the House just 5 months after the Supreme Court overturned #RoeVWade and now the president gives it what—3 or 4 sentences?!

Wow

So I’m told this is the Blue Plate Special.

See those blue weight plates? I’ve had my eyes on them for weeks.

45+45=135lbs!

I did it!

I lifted 135lbs (61.2kg) in deadlifts in training with Jeana today!

So excited! And Jeana was so excited! Our excitement was exhilarating! My glutes aka butt is not so excited but wow!

After our session, I walk two subways so that I can ease my muscles out and also to relish my accomplishment.

With reverence and humility—working with the weights!

And this is yesterday’s 75lb squats. Working on more depth.

My most popular essay on menopause.

When you are shameless, you can't be shamed.

Few things are surrounded by more shame & silence than a cis woman who's no longer young, her vagina which is no longer wet, and her sex drive which isn't supposed to exist feministgiant.com/p/moisturize-y… If I thought I needed to be brave to write about my 2 abortions, it's next level courage to admit to being that cis woman who's no longer young,whose vagina is no longer wet,and whose sex drive isn't supposed to exist.

So here I am looking shame in the eye, daring it to test me

Feb. 6 is International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting.

In #Egypt, my country of birth, 87% of girls and women aged 15-49 years have undergone FGM/C. feministgiant.com/p/endfgm #EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM With a population of 100 million, that horrific percentage means that Egypt has the greatest number of women and girls who have experienced FGM/C of any country in the world.

#EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

I've been training with Jeana Fanelli for three months now and I'm at the stage where I think about deadlifts at random times, pretty much all the time--ways to improve my form, feeling them in my upper "hammies" (notice the lingo haha!) and glutes, etc. This is 131lbs (59.4kg) There is a moment when you’re learning to deadlift that background moves into foreground, like those paintings full of dots that required you to look beyond the foreground into the background, so that the picture becomes apparent.