If you start with a lie, you end with a convoluted, impossible-to-resolve reality.

Only women experience menopause. Only women have ovaries, a uterus and a cervix.

Gender ideologues try to promote the lie that women can become men. They can’t. 

No amount of drugs or surgery changes reality. It may mask it somewhat, but it doesn’t change it. Female bodies experience menstruation and menopause regardless of how they identify.

But that doesn’t seem to deter crazy “academics” who want to insist men can experience menopause. No, they can’t. They may be women with short hairstyles, beards, who have had their breasts cut off, or even had a hysterectomy, but they are still women. 

It also doesn’t stop media outlets from platforming this nonsense. The Australian has a full article dedicated to an academic who wants us all to “reimagine menopause’’ for the sake of trans or gender diverse people.

Kerryn Drysdale, a senior research fellow at the University of NSW Centre for Social Research in Health, will host an online seminar next month to ensure trans people are not left out of the “contemporary menopause moment’’.

“The way we’ve framed menopause historically has been something that affects cisgender women in midlife,’’ she told The Australian.

“The fact is that all people with ovaries will experience a form of menopause throughout the life course. We’re at a tipping point where menopause could take on various social-cultural meanings.

“Menopause isn’t just happening clinically or medically or as part of women’s health.

“It’s actually becoming a bit of a media moment … it’s really hard to disentangle the medical from the social-cultural.’

No, it is not. This is complete nonsense and ought to be ridiculed for the stupidity it embraces. It is also immensely cruel to tell vulnerable women they can be male. They can’t.

Forcing society to embrace this ideology creates far more problems than anything else. 

Dr Drysdale said people with medically induced menopause – such as those with hysterectomies, prescribed oestrogen blockers to treat breast cancer, or taking hormones for gender transitioning – might not relate to the mainstream discussion of menopause.

“For a person who affirms their gender as a man, who was recorded female at birth, or a person with ovaries, any hormonal fluctuation that causes the cessation of menstruation is likely to result in menopause,’’ she said.

“Or if they commence gender-affirming hormonal therapies … that will signal a decline in oestrogen, which will put them into a type of menopause.

“It’s exactly the same kind of medical condition and yet we treat them very differently.’’

Dr Drysdale said that for some trans people experiencing menopause, “having the same condition that is very similar in their mind to the experience of menopausal mothers can be quite confronting’’.

“How do we approach that without sending a trans person off to a women’s health service, for example, and expecting them to sit in the waiting room?’’ she said.

Academics like Drysdale end up in a mess. No human can change sex, and it is unbelievably cruel to reinforce the false narrative that they can. 

These women need support.

These women need to be given care and tools that equip them to deal with their autism, trauma, eating disorder or other issues that caused the gender distress in the first place. Instead of reinforcing gendered stereotypes, they need to work on allowing everyone to express themselves how they like without forcing culture to lie and adapt to the lie.

Young women who have been placed on harmful chemical concoctions to reinforce the lie end up experiencing early menopause, which can leave irreversible and harmful side effects. It is cruel beyond measure.

It is time to reimagine the ‘gender narrative’, not the reality of menopause.