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RantMenopause sub going full panic handmaiden: HRT for peri and meno women is NOT the same as "gender affirming" care
The Meno sub has women freaking out that HRT will be going away for everyone re: project 2025/Trump. Here are some highlights:
the attacks on hormones are coming for others and we need to be standing up to them
This argument would hold more weight if menopause HRT had ever been treated with the same urgency and advocacy as gender-affirming care. But it hasn’t. If anything, menopause care has been actively neglected for decades.
I live and work in a conservative area and the middle aged Stepford Wives LOVEEEEEE them some HRT. Had a colleague the other day talking about going back on Progesterone. I’m over here thinking, “TF is that any different from trans people getting HRT to affirm their gender identity?!”
so fundamentally off-base it’s almost impressive. The difference is menopause is not a choice. Women on HRT aren’t trying to affirm a new identity; they’re trying to prevent their bodies from deteriorating because of a biological shutdown they didn’t sign up for.
Comparing menopause HRT to gender-affirming HRT ignores the entire reason menopause even needs treatment—because losing estrogen wrecks cognition, cardiovascular health, bone density, and overall quality of life. It’s not about personal identity; it’s about not falling apart.
Women’s health and gender affirming care (which is what HRT is) are under attack. It’s very likely that these treatments will become harder to obtain.
This take annoys me because it treats women’s health as just another subset of gender politics rather than acknowledging that menopause care has been systematically neglected on its own terms for decades.
Menopause HRT isn’t “gender-affirming care.” It’s basic medical maintenance for a biological inevitability. If access gets restricted, it won’t be because menopause care was ever a priority—it’ll be because it was never prioritized to begin with. And now, instead of fighting for it directly, people are trying to shove it under an umbrella that doesn’t even properly fit, as if that will somehow protect it (it won't).
HRT for menopause is gender-affirming care.
This is so frustrating because menopause care is still under-researched, underfunded, and often dismissed, while gender-affirming care has become a major political and medical talking point. If anything, menopause treatment needs more advocacy, not to be lumped into a completely different category where it risks getting even less attention.
These people who pride themselves on being progressive are effectively saying menopausal women are just trying to “stay feminine” rather than acknowledging that HRT is basic medical care for a massive systemic shift. It’s yet another way menopause gets dismissed or misunderstood. By women in the meno sub!
will also point out if it does get banned those who espouse the "it'll just be transgender people" attitudes may find themselves relying on those very same people for resources on how to access HRT in a country that has restricted it since they've had years and years of experience doing so.
completely ignores the fact that menopausal women have already been forced to navigate medical gatekeeping, misinformation, and lack of access for decades. The idea that they’ll suddenly have to “rely on trans people” as if they’re new to this struggle is both ahistorical and insulting.