If a menstruation app wants to help women avoid headaches maybe they shouldn’t let men use the app.

An app created to help women track their menstrual cycles is under fire after it was revealed biological males were using private chat functions within the app to communicate with women on intimate matters.

Flo is a popular period tracking app that allows women to track their menstrual cycle allowing them to predict their next period, track their fertility, and to better understand their reproductive health. Though it is ranked the #7 most popular health app in the Apple Store, Flo is now sparking backlash after it was learned males who identify as “women” are being welcomed to use the app.

On January 12, a feminist account on Twitter kicked off the upset, calling attention to the fact she had witnessed self-described “trans women” using the app’s forums to communicate with female users about menstruation. 

Flo responded to the user saying: “We aim to support everyone with periods – regardless of gender.”

Despite Flo’s tweet that the app is suitable for “anyone with periods,” screenshots from the apps message boards, known as secret chats, began to circulate showing the app was being used by biological males who were communicating directly with the female users.

On Twitter, women began to rally under Flo’s posts, asserting that males do not have periods and thus should not be accepted on the application where women are discussing intimate details of their reproductive healthcare. Some insisted they would uninstall the app, disappointed with Flo’s response.

“That’s me uninstalling Flo App then. Can’t use an app that gaslights women into thinking men can have periods,” one Twitter user responded. 

“Right. And since males don’t have periods they have no business being in chats with women who do,” stated another.

Faith commentator and influencer Allie Beth Stuckeysimilarly called attention to the ordeal, reporting to her more than 390,000 followers that Flo was allowing men to take part in chats with women discussing intimate healthcare. Stuckey posted screenshots showing she had been blocked by the app’s official social media page after them “‘trans women’ don’t have periods. Women do.”

But Stuckey was just one of dozens of women Flo quickly blocked for issuing criticism of their “all genders get periods” mantra. Reduxx discovered our social media account was preemptively blocked by Flo despite never having interacted with it.

Screenshots rapidly began to circulate from women showing they had been blocked by Flo after pointing out that males do not have a uterus, and thus, do not experience menstruation. 

“Flo App blocked me, a woman who uses their app for my period tracking and fertility, for asking why they allow men on their period app. They allow ‘transwomen’ in their chats,” said one user. 

Reduxx has obtained further screenshots from Flo’s “secret chats” which show men discussing their “periods” and bathroom access with female users.

In some conversations held in the “secret chats,” trans-identified males discussed the possibility of getting uterus transplants. In one post seen by Reduxx, a trans-identified female offered up her womb to a male who was expressing a desire to have a baby.

A common theme amongst the trans-identified males using the app is the insistence they experience the symptoms of menstruation, including “cramps.”

But, according to the National Health Service of England and Wales, the “cramping” commonly associated with menstrual pain is the contraction of the muscular wall of the uterus.

“When the wall of the womb contracts, it compresses the blood vessels lining your womb. This temporarily cuts off the blood supply – and oxygen supply – to your womb. Without oxygen, the tissues in your womb release chemicals that trigger pain,” explains the medical authority.

The revelation that Flo welcomes males onto their app comes at a time where there has been a pointed uptick of males on social media platforms like TikTok claiming they experience “periods” or period-like symptoms as a result of taking cross-sex hormones. Many women have taken issue with this calling it a mockery, appropriation, and fetishization. 

Despite males not having a womb, it has become commonplace on social media for trans-identified males to report having accessed healthcare services to relieve them of their uterine cramping.

According to Flo’s terms of use, “Flo Secret Chats is a special feature of the App that allows users to communicate with each other on a set of different topics related to women’s health and wellbeing.” In the secret chat rules it states that users as young as 13 years old are allowed to participate in the chat community, potentially 

This is not the first time Flo has received backlash in 2021 a lawsuit was filed against the organisation alleging they were disclosing their users intimate data to third-parties. 

Flo Health allegedly violated users’ privacy by disclosing their information to third parties through software development kits incorporated into its app, despite the company’s privacy policies and “public assurances” that it would not share data, stated the complaint.

By Shay Woulahan Shay is a writer and social media content creator for Reduxx. She is a proud lesbian activist and feminist who lives in Northern Ireland with her partner and their four-legged, fluffy friends.

I’ve lurked on this blog long enough. Now I want to talk about my own story.

For context, I’m a bisexual teenage girl living in a very liberal city. I’ve had Tumblr since middle school and was on board entirely with the “LGBTQIAP” community. However, in the following years, I began questioning their rhetoric more and more. I failed to see queer theorists and liberal feminists be able to define pansexuality, how a medical condition such as intersex qualifies as being part of a community oppressed on the basis of same sex attraction, how queer is a slur, so on and so forth. So, my acronym shortened to LGBT. I wanted to include this portion because people do claim that “saying xyz isn’t part of the LGBT community is TERF rhetoric!” nowadays, and also to show how easily swayed my disposition was to the point where I could include titles with undefinable definitions.

Here’s where the T came in. Two people have medically transitioned in my high school, both males. One was an out and proud gay male for a while, only to transition while he was 16-17. He was known as just “the gay guy” by just about everyone, and his only friends were women. The other one is one I’ll talk more about in detail.

He’s an autogynephile. I initially was supportive of him, even going as far as to assist him in self medication when we were in school. However, more and more of what he said began to unnerve me. First off, he said he had sexual fantasies of being a transgender sex slave that would become a biological girl in the process of intercourse before transition. Another was that he claimed he dated his ex girlfriend post transition, only to break up because “she doesn’t like girls”. My brain struggled to reconcile how anything about him changed except for his vocal fry, hormonal balance, and wardrobe. If he was truly a woman all along like TRA me claimed, didn’t that mean she’s bisexual for dating him pre-transition and that rejecting him is prejudiced? There’s more skinwalking when it came to his identity, as he stole the current name he is going as from a girl he used to like, and outright admitted that he adapted his personality and mannerisms from another girl in our school (for context, she is very short, Asian, wore cute blouses/skirts, had a feminine voice, and a lot of boys liked her). He would ask his friends whether they saw similarities between him and her, and get excited when they said they could see the resemblance. If we were still in high school, I would tell her that nearly 3-4 years after contacting one another, this man is still trying to model himself after her. Skinwalking much? Some side notes are that he enjoys talking about lesbians, lesbian catgirls, and anime lesbian catgirls. When I confronted him about whether he was lesbian or not, he claimed that he’s bisexual but only liked one or two guys ever. Even TRA me was skeptical, having seen gay/lesbian history and experiences co opted by fellow bisexuals, but I let it slide on the basis of “maybe he’s just misguided.” When someone tells you who you are, believe them.

Initially, I discovered a radical feminist Twitter account and began reading, and I pieced everything together. Being East Asian, the transgender community has taken their cultural and racial fetish for Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai BL/GL content way too far. I admit, I have pangs of doubt that some of the stories I’m reading on here are fake or caricaturized when mentioning their lesbian porn & catgirl obsessions, but I know my own life & I have no doubt more of these men exist & form communities together. I just can’t believe that they are a legally protected class & that it’s gotten to this point. Entertain their delusions or get doxxed. The 40-50 something gender critical community on Reddit and Twitter don’t get how harrowing it is for young LGB people to have to sit through being lumped with a community that is destroying the definition of woman and all sex based protections that come with it.

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

the TERF i saw last night that was posting in the "conservation" tag had this post on their blog

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the blog was a side-blog of a popular terf blog, it was called "eco feminism" something I forget but they were trying to...connect with other terfs in the biological sciences?

...except they're not in the biological sciences, they're trying to "how do you do fellow STEM" with elementary school biology concepts that have been outdated for 50 years.

"how and why biological classifications are formed" is one of the thorniest, most complicated and debated topics in biology with many open unsolved problems.

Nowadays, organisms are classified into groups almost exclusively according to the information their genetics provides about their most recent common ancestors. Phenotypic traits that can provide information about the evolutionary history of a group are called character states, and they can be considered to "diagnose" or define a clade, but character states are used to support the grouping of organisms into a single clade, NOT the other way around.

For example, lactation has been recognized as evidence that all living mammals share a common ancestor that is not the ancestor of any other living animal (that is, mammals are more closely related to each other than to anything else). However, the definition of "mammal" is not "animal that lactates." A non-mammal could convergently evolve lactation (arguably, several already have) and would still not belong to "mammals," and a mammal could evolve to not lactate anymore and would still belong to "mammals."

This is why a shared trait is not by itself considered diagnostic of a clade, and taxonomists have to use a great deal of caution because their interpretation of organisms as belonging to a group will affect how they interpret those organisms' traits.

Today's taxonomic system does not just group organisms by similar traits. Traits often are lost or evolve several times separately.

"Biological classification" does not actually mean anything except "organism #1 and organism #2 have a more recent common ancestor than #1 and #3 do." Two organisms being classified as more closely related than another doesn't mean they share more phenotypic characteristics. This has been the dominant approach for decades.

Now, for my favorite part of this post:

I struggled to grasp what was meant by "that ridiculous argument they have about fish not being real" for a a solid few seconds before I realized that "they" doesn't refer to scientists, it refers to trans people.

this person thinks "fish aren't real" was made up by trans activists

!!!!!!

Terfs really pull the “you’re not a real scientist if you don’t agree with me exactly” card at the drop of a hat huh

TERFs can fucking die and go to hell mad about it!

Fuck them!

It’s not their future!

Soooo, I generally DON'T get political or divisive in the strip... buuuuttt... it's PRIDE and, like with last week’s strip, I am kinda burnt out with seeing the same asinine arguments online over and over. Why do I have to defend my legal right to exist with people who learned biology from "Kindergarten Cop"?

HOW does an author making mean tweets and funding charities for a specific demographic "put your friends and families safety at risk"? Y'all are the ones stalking, harassing, and threatening to rape and murder feminists. Radfems don't want trans people dead but y'all sure love fantasising about killing us.

you mean an author funding charities and backing policies and politicians that wish trans people were dead and doesn't even recognize them as people, might make me angry bc I have trans family members and friends and the world is constantly trying to take their rights away from them? Besides being a basic human being lol. Also sorry to break it to you but radfems are not feminists. Neither are terfs, you either believe gender essentialism is shit or you're a little patriarchy soldier sista

Isn't it weird that amongst all mammals, females make up a major part of the population and the males compete with each other to attract female attention. Almost all animals have long courting rituals and mating calls. Male animals tend to be colourful and decorate themselves to ensue sex appeal due to which they are hunted more than their female counterparts leading to an even lower sex ratio. It's funny that the opposite is true for humans. In today's world, the sex ratio skews towards men. It's against nature, against evolution, against our future and against us women.

Breastfeeding isn’t gender inclusive enough .....but the term father’s milk is ok? 

A guidance from the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is making the rounds on social media after evolutionary biologist Colin Wright noticed it was recommending the term “father’s milk” as a gender affirming alternative to “breast milk.”

The US-based Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) is a top organization of medical doctors providing support and guidance to healthcare practitioners around the world. But on July 26, evolutionary biologist and journalist Colin Wright called attention to a position statement form the organization in which it issued a guideline on ‘gender inclusive language.’ 

The guidance, titled Infant Feeding and Lactation-Related Language and Gender, was published in the 16th volume of the Academy’s official Journal, which was issued in August of 2021.

“We affirm that language has power. This is demonstrated in linguistic relativity and determinism, both theories explaining how the structure of a language impacts thought and behavior,” the introduction to the guidance reads, continuing that it supports the United Nation’s mission to end discrimination against LGBTI people, and “To this end, the ABM is committed to working with communities to identify additional inclusive language and behaviors to attain these goals.”

Later in the guidance, the ABM states that it “recognizes that not all people who give birth and lactate identify as female, and that some of these individuals identify as neither female nor male.”

Wright posted a screenshot from the third page of the article, highlighting where the Academy suggests “father’s milk” as a “gender-inclusive” alternative to breast milk. “Parent’s milk” and “human milk” were also listed, to be used where patients desired “affirmation.”

While the article initially states that “male” and “female” are biological terms which refer to sex, it repeatedly states that “nonfemale” people could be included in birth- and feeding-related language.

Reacting to the post, Wright’s followers immediately took issue with the suggested terminology, with multiple users even noting that the Spanish translation for “father’s milk” referred to male ejaculate.

According to the WayBack Machine, the Academy only recently changed the About page on its website to include a reference to “human milk feeding.” 

As of July 2021, the Mission Statement read that it was dedicated to the “promotion, protection, and support of breastfeeding.” But the most recent iteration of the page states that the organization exists to “support and manage breastfeeding, lactation, and human milk feeding.”

Researchers have found that women view these terms as dehumanising. A collaborative research paper led by Australian academic Karlene Gribble and included the work of 10 prominent women’s health researchers concluded that so called “inclusive language” had “serious implications for women and children.”

“Desexing the language of female reproduction has been done with a view to being sensitive to individual needs and as beneficial, kind, and inclusive,” they wrote in the paper. “Yet, this kindness has delivered unintended consequences that have serious implications for women and children.”

Gribble and her team assert that neutralizing the language around motherhood, including “disembodying and undermining breastfeeding,” would result in “reducing protection of the mother-infant [bond]” and dehumanize women.

While “father’s milk” is likely in reference to females who identify as transgender men, reports of trans-identified males seeking support from lactation consultants have also increased. On social media, many new and breast feeding mothers have also stated they’ve noticed an uptick in males attending breast-feeding groups.

In 2018, an endocrinologist from Boston Medical Center claimed that breast feeding was an important method of validating a trans-identified male’s gender identity.  

In an interview with The New Scientist, Dr. Joshua Safer said: “Many transgender women are looking to have as many of the experiences of non-transgender women as they can, so I can see this will be extremely popular.”

Earlier this year, photos uploaded to Reddit of a trans-identified male breastfeeding a newborn baby went viral after sparking widespread outrage. Speaking to Reduxx at the time, retired physician Dr. Maja Bowen said she had “several concerns” about the practice of males breastfeeding children.

“What comes out of a man’s nipple is not mother’s milk, but a watery substance devoid of antibodies and nutrients that are found in mother’s milk, the composition of which changes as the baby grows up.”

By Jennifer Seiland Jennifer is a founding member of the Reduxx team, writing with a focus on crimes against women and sex-based rights rights advocacy. She is located in the American south where she is a passionate animal welfare advocate and avid coffee drinker.

Father’s milk...

Where is the lie? 💅🏼✌🏻

i joined a lesbian library today it was so cute 😭😭😭 lots of lezzies my age but also realised it was my first time ever speaking to old lady dykes. soooo cute. and got to converse heaps on my queer history hyperfixation over coffee and biscuits yayay

guess this is a first for me. someone i’ve been sort of friends with and talked to on tumblr and has helped me with crochet patterns and invited me to their crochet server turns out to be a terf so i had to block her 😭

transphobia?? in this year of our lord 2024?? grow the fuck up

BLOCK ME IF YOU DO NOT RESPECT TRANS PEOPLE. DO ME A FAVOR I AM SO TIRED OF PEOPLE BEING ASSHOLES BECAUSE THEY DONT UNDERSTAND SOMETHING THATS NOT MEANT FOR THEM

also you don’t need to understand something to not be a dick about it. just mind your own goddamn business and leave people alone

i’m sorry I guess I just needed to rant a little