Endo affects our trans siblings, too.

This year during Endometriosis Awareness Month, I would like to see people reprogram their use of gender-specifics. I would like us to remove the words ‘women’, ‘girl’, ‘ladies’, ‘female’, etc from our speech when we talk about Endometriosis.

Replace with generic ‘people’ in order to respect our endo siblings in the trans community.

In times past, our trans community may have felt too ashamed to talk about their struggles with endometriosis, or they may have felt it futile to start a conversation in such a heavily female-minded / single-binary-minded community… but in the past two years, I have started witnessing people come out in droves, ready to share their stories, and they EXPECT us to catch up to the times ASAP.

I myself am gender-fluid, but I had long upheld the gender binary in my own blog for the reasons I just noted above. I felt it would be futile, especially when I didn’t see anyone else taking up the conversation. I see now that I could have been part of a revolution in the endo community by removing gender-specifics from my speech on my blog long ago.

I apologise for not having done that until now.

This year, I have been going through my blog to correct as much as possible. While I can correct what I have written, most of my content on the blog is copy-pasta from the Internet of news articles and op-ed pieces…and those still make heavy use of gender-specifics.

So what I am asking all of you to do is help me put a stop to gender-specific language. Everyone can work together NOW to reprogram our language to be more inclusive of our trans endo siblings.

We did something similar years ago when our community came together to correct as many news outlets as possible to the fact that endometriosis is NOT endometrial tissue – it’s endometrial-like, and eventually many news outlets got it. We can do this again with gender-specifics.

Ask news outlets to remove the words ‘women’, ‘girl’, ‘ladies’, ‘female’, etc from their speech when they talk about Endometriosis. Tell them to replace those words with generic ‘people’ or ‘endo sibling’ in order to respect our endo siblings in the trans community. Thank you.

See also For transgender men, pain of menstruation is more than just physical and Treating Endometriosis as a Women’s Disease Hurts Patients of All Genders.