Bleeding for the Revolution: A Trans Fertility Journey on Stonewall’s Anniversary
A reflection on trans divinity, fertility journeys, and finding revolution in the midst of pain (I'm on my menstrual cycle (day 2))
Today marks 56 years since the Stonewall uprising began. June 28, 1969: the night when trans women, drag queens, butches, and street kids said enough to the police raids, the harassment, the forced gender checks in bathrooms. The night when Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and countless others whose names we’ll never know decided their dignity was worth more than safety. The night when bricks flew and fires burned and a movement caught spark from the embers of rage and exhaustion.
I’m writing this on the second day of my period, curled around a heating pad, my uterus staging its own riot. Earlier this morning, I laid in bed for twenty minutes after my alarm, negotiating with my body. Just let me stand long enough to go and volunteer, I bargained, as if my uterus were a reasonable entity capable of compromise.
I’d been looking forward to this event for weeks—a celebration of scientists with disabilities, my people, my community. I’d even picked out my outfit the night before: a button-up that makes me feel properly masculine, comfortable shoes for standing and moving around, bright makeup because I love bright colors.
But by the time I managed to sit up, the room spun, my pelvis gushed out, and my abdomen clenched like a fist. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I typed out my apologetic text message to the coordinator, explaining that my disabilities were preventing me from showing up for other disabled people. How many times have I been on the receiving end of these messages? How many times have I nodded knowingly at the gap between what we want to give and what our bodies allow?
Two nights ago, I sat in that Pittsburgh Improv theater watching Alok Vaid-Menon, tears streaming down my face as they spoke truths that felt like they were being pulled directly from my chest. And today, on their Instagram, Alok posted a live spoken word truth:
I’ve come to the conclusion that trans people represent some of the most robust spiritual leadership alive. What is transness but a practice of saying out loud and in public I have faith in something you don’t see yet. I have a knowing in me that is deep and felt and you will spend your entire life disprove this thing that I know precious and vital within me. In fact you’ll try to kill me for it. This belief in my divinity. This practice of my sacredness. and yet trans people make that revolutionary choice to continue showing up which is the ultimate form of love and mercy. We have to go through our own internal baptism. Cry so many tears to realize that actually everything we were taught was wrong and pathological and broken. That’s our godliness.
I, obviously, posted this on my Instagram story, and while I’ve been writing this (lying down in so much pain), one of my friends messaged me saying the video made them cry. It made me cry, too.
The Body as Battlefield, The Body as Temple
There’s something particularly cruel about getting my period again after being on testosterone. Each month, it arrives like a ghost I thought I’d banished—a haunting reminder of the body I was assigned, the fertility I’m now trying to access, and the child who I’ve been waiting for for years who hasn’t come yet. The dysphoria hits in waves, mixing with the physical pain until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
PMDD, endometriosis, PCOS, interstitial cystitis—my body collects diagnoses like badges of dishonor. The pain had me in bed for most of the morning and now has me crashed on the couch now, unable to volunteer at an event I’d been anticipating. I’ve only just been able to shower and get dressed. Sometimes the body demands its own form of protest.
Yesterday and today, I’ve tried everything—stretching, light exercise (which does help, paradoxically), every pain remedy that I know that won’t make things worse. Just me and my heating pad and the profound loneliness of being in this much pain with no one to hold me through it, although friends have reached out digitally. I do truly have so much love in my life.
Two years ago, trapped in the throes of PMDD before I’d even started/stopped testosterone, I wrote about my period as if it were a monster. Looking back at those words now, I see both how far I’ve come and how much remains the same:
The Onslaught of the Crimson Tide
It appeared, draped in black on a hillside. Barely speaking and with a mysterious past.
The townsfolk knew it was coming; they had felt its rumblings for several days.
They sat in non-consensual anticipation… clutching their drinks, holding their babies, huddling with loved ones… as the quakes reverberated through the village dislodging carefully placed artwork and cracking the questionable foundations of all the buildings.
The local seer had predicted the incoming torrential downpour.
So it wasn’t as if this was unexpected, but its deluge was startling and jarring every single time.
After all, the crimson tide preyed on fear and reveled in it.
It knew that its most distinguishable visual and physical feature (the waves of viscous reddish-brown fluid rushing through the mountains and into the valleys, flooding not just the town but also all the neighboring ones) was the least of anyone’s worries.
Like sure, the stains on the cobblestones were hard to scrub out - the townsfolk did indeed wonder if there was any point in cleaning and/or replacing any of them, but the other towns expected pristine exteriors and the continued denial of the monstrosity of the crimson tide.
It chuckled.
Someone screamed.
And agonizingly with chaotic glee, the crimson tide reached inside of the townsfolks’ bodies, squeezed their hearts dry, and overwhelmed the village for several days and several nights.
—
My periods are awful - they’re absolutely brutal. They always have been. I have several pelvic floor conditions. One of them is our old friend, PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). One of them is endometriosis which deserves its very own post or set of posts. One of them is interstitial cystitis WHICH IS THE BANE OF MY LIFE AND EXISTENCE - more on that later, oh I promise you. And unfortunately, so many other things.
What I will talk about today is my PMDD.
I have had PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) most likely since menarche or close (so since age 10-12). I like to explain it to people by saying it’s the evil twin of PMS (premenstrual syndrome).
My PMDD symptoms start roughly 3-7 days before my period and last about 2-5 days into my period. My particular symptoms include: increased depression, increased risk for suicidal ideation, increased anxiety, increased irritability/anger/frustration, severe insomnia, executive dysfunction, concentration issues, severe fatigue, increased body dysphoria (yay gender/sex shit), crying at the drop of a hat, breast tenderness and pain, swollen feet and hands, increased sensitivity to foods, sometimes blurry vision, A LOTTA CRAMPS (lower abdominal cramps mostly but it radiates out), A LOTTA BACK PAIN, sudden nausea and vomiting (that’s getting better though with stress management), increase in my IBS symptoms, acne/breakouts, itchiness, brain fog, muscle spasms, hot flashes, poor appetite but with food cravings, weight gain, weight loss, and extremely variable sex drive. Sometimes my period lasts for a couple days, sometimes weeks. Sometimes it’s random.
Many of my symptoms are managed by a combination of psychiatric medications (that are treating my depression, anxiety, PTSD, to name a few) and hormonal birth control (I’ve tried so many but currently I’m on a progestin pill). When I’m on a good regimen, my period and my PMDD symptoms are more predictable (happening every month around the same time, reduced severity of symptoms). I also take many supplements, such as B vitamins, magnesium, calcium, iron (although the iron pills just decimate me and my IBS symptoms go out of control so I stopped taking them). Stress management is also so important (quite possibly the most important thing)! I try to manage my diet as best I can but I also allow myself to have “trigger-y” foods (sugar, caffeine, alcohol, acidic foods, etc.) in low quantities or in moderation. I also use anti-inflammatory medications/supplements, but I try not to take NSAIDs anymore since my increased usage of them caused GI bleeds and also they upset my IBS so much.
Non-medicinal approaches to symptom relief include the use of my TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) device, heat packs (I use them EVERY DAY), ice packs, topical creams, supportive seating/sleeping arrangements, taking walks or doing some physical activity (although sometimes the pain does get so severe that I cannot walk or move around), showers, spending time with loved ones, sex (that’s important!) and orgasms, and other stress-relieving/self-care things.
It is clinically recorded that PMDD symptoms can reach such severe levels that it affects performance at work, home life, and relationships. And of course, it did for me - all sectors of my life were and are affected.
That’s why it was so insidious when the abusers of my past blamed my PMDD. It was so easy to gaslight me.
Yes, there was a time when I was going through puberty and through my teen years, where I had very little control over my emotions (despite still masking in all the ways).
But I’ve been incredibly diligent about my health. I have made my health the #1 focus of my life, and while, I slip up and make mistakes, I am aware of what’s going on. I’m getting better at articulating and advocating for myself EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I manage my PMDD. I really do. I still have many symptoms - they suck. The pain sucks. Insomnia sucks. Fatigue sucks. Not being able to perform academically sucks. All of it sucks. But it’s not that debilitating as long as I can figure out my accommodations. And I really don’t blow up at people (I’m naturally this intense! Hah!).
I want to try GnRH agonists and potentially have a hysterectomy after I give birth (hopefully one day, I will give birth) for so many trans-related and body-dysphoric-related reasons… but I can’t wait to see my PMDD finally be gone (fingers crossed) when it happens. I mean, of course, I’ll plunge into full-blown menopause unless I’m on hormone replacement… but ugh, I’ll figure all my options out later.
Baby first, more gender and medical relief later.
I wrote those words on January 26, 2023, back when I was still delaying HRT because I didn’t want to compromise my fertility. I was trying to capture the sheer monstrosity of what PMDD feels like—the way it doesn’t just arrive but preys on us, reveling in our fear. Back then, I was still trying to name the villain, to give shape to something that felt too enormous and cruel to be coming from inside my own body.
But what I understand now, lying here on this Stonewall anniversary, is that my body isn’t the enemy. The crimson tide isn’t a separate monster terrorizing the village of my self. It’s more like my body is both the village and the tide, the frightened townspeople and the force they fear. We contain multitudes, even when those multitudes are at war with each other.
Stonewall in the Body
What Alok said about trans people going through our own “internal baptism” feels especially resonant today. Because what is a fertility journey as a trans person but another kind of faith practice? I stopped taking the testosterone that made me feel at home in my body, invited back the periods that make me dysphoric, all for the possibility of creating life. It’s its own kind of revolution—choosing to endure what hurts in service of what might be.
The activists at Stonewall fought for the right to exist as themselves in public. But some of us are still fighting that battle in the privacy of our own bodies. Every month when I bleed, I’m reminded that my body has its own agenda, its own riots and rebellions. The cramps feel like internal police raids, my hormones like cops checking papers, demanding I prove which side of the binary I belong on.
And yet, like those brave souls 56 years ago who refused to disperse when ordered, I keep showing up. I keep taking my temperature, tracking my cycle, hoping. This is my “revolutionary choice to continue showing up,” as Alok puts it—my own form of love and mercy, directed both inward and toward the future child I’m trying to call into being.
The Sacredness of Staying
There’s a particular grief in bleeding when you’re trying to conceive. Each period is a small death, a month’s worth of hope expelled from the body. Add gender dysphoria to that grief, and it becomes almost unbearable. The blood reminds me simultaneously that I’m not pregnant and that I’m in a body that doesn’t always feel like mine. It’s a double loss, a double haunting.
But Alok’s words about trans divinity offer a different frame. What if this, too, is a form of spiritual leadership? What if enduring these periods—despite the dysphoria, despite the pain, despite the loneliness—is its own practice of faith? I have faith in something you don’t see yet: the child I’m trying to bring forth, the parent I’m becoming through this painful process, the person who can hold seemingly contradictory truths in one body.
The police at Stonewall tried to force people into rigid categories—checking genitals in bathrooms, arresting people for wearing the “wrong” clothes. My body, off testosterone, sometimes feels like it’s forcing me back into a category I fought so hard to expand beyond. But maybe the revolution isn’t in the absence of pain or contradiction. Maybe it’s in staying present with what is, even when what is hurts like hell.
Mercy in the Midst
I got up to stretch earlier, my body protesting every movement. Light exercise, despite how counterintuitive it seems when you’re in pain. I think about those protesters in 1969, how their bodies must have ached after nights of confrontation with police. How they kept showing up anyway, night after night, because the alternative—going back to hiding—was no longer bearable.
My fertility journey has me in my own kind of visibility struggle. To try to conceive, I’ve had to make my body legible to medical systems in ways that feel like betrayal. I use the word “female” in fertility clinics even when it scrapes against my sense of self.
In all of my medical appointments, I watch the nurse or another healthcare professional scan paperwork, see the moment their eyes catch on my pronouns, watch the mental recalibration happen in real-time. “Ms.—I mean, uh…” they stumble, and I have to decide: Do I correct this person again? Do I have the energy to be today’s teaching moment about trans inclusive language? My title is “Dr.” anyway, but I don’t want to sound conceited.
Sometimes I do correct them, my voice patient and educational even as my insides twist. Sometimes I let it slide, too exhausted to fight this particular battle when I’m already fighting my body. Each misgendering lands like a small stone in my shoe—not enough to stop walking, but enough to make every step aware of the discomfort. They mean well, I know. They’ve attended the trainings, they’ve updated their forms. But meaning well doesn’t erase the sting of being reminded, again and again, that my body makes me illegible to the very systems I need to navigate to create life.
I let them reduce me to ovaries and uterus and hormone levels, all for managing my healthcare… and now, for the chance at creating life.
“This belief in my divinity. This practice of my sacredness.” Alok’s words feel like permission to find holiness in this mess. Because what is more sacred than creation? What is more divine than saying yes to pain in service of possibility?
The Ongoingness of Revolution
Stonewall wasn’t just one night. It was six days of uprising, and then it was decades of organizing, of pride parades, of fighting for rights and recognition. Revolution isn’t a moment; it’s a practice.
My revolution today looks like getting up from the couch to make myself eat, even though the pain makes me nauseous. It looks like crying from the physical pain and the emotional weight of another month without pregnancy. It looks like writing these words, finding meaning in the calendar’s coincidence—that I’m bleeding and grieving on the anniversary of when my transcestors bled and grieved and fought back.
There’s no one here to physically hold me through these cramps, to witness this monthly dying and becoming. But I think of Marsha and Sylvia and all the others who held each other through police violence and social rejection. I think of Leslie Feinberg, who wrote about bodies that refuse easy categorization while struggling with chronic illness. Of Lou Sullivan, who fought to be recognized as a gay trans man while dying of AIDS, proving that trans men could be part of gay male community. Of all the unnamed ones who bled monthly while living as men, who bound their chests while raising children, who found ways to be whole in a world that insisted they were fragments.
These transcestors knew something about holding contradictions in the body. They may not have the language or resources we have now—“non-binary,” “genderfluid,” “dysphoria”—but they had the same bones and blood and refusal to be diminished. When my body feels like a battleground, I remember: I’m not the first to fight this war. I’m not the first to bleed while trans, to want children while masculine (and feminine! And many things other than that! I’m literally a femboy!!), to seek medical care while refusing medical categories.
I think of Alok on that stage two nights ago, and on tour across the continent, holding space for all of us who know ourselves beyond what others can see. I think of you, reader, who might be in your own pain, your own fertility journey, your own gender rebellion.
We are, none of us, alone in this ongoingness.
This Thing That I Know Precious and Vital
What I know precious and vital within me: That I can be trans and trying to conceive. That I can hate these periods and still show up for them. That I can be in unbearable pain and still find meaning in it. That my body can be a site of dysphoria and a potential site of creation. That all of these contradictions can coexist, painfully, sacredly, within one cramping form.
The world might try to kill us for these knowings—literally, as they did to Marsha and so many others; figuratively, as they do every time they deny our complexity. But we keep showing up. We keep bleeding. We keep trying. We keep writing our truths in Substacks and other social media, in our bodies and in the streets.
Today, 56 years after Stonewall, I’m my own riot. My body is protesting its monthly protocol, and I’m protesting its protest by staying present with the pain. By believing that this suffering serves something larger. By having faith in what you can’t see yet—the child I might carry, the person I’m becoming through this journey, the world where people like me can exist in all our painful, sacred contradiction.
“Everything we were taught was wrong and pathological and broken.” Yes. And here we are anyway, finding god in the breaking, revolution in the bleeding, mercy in continuing to show up.
Happy Stonewall anniversary. May we all find our own ways to riot toward freedom, even when—especially when—the battlefield is our own bodies.