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THis Menopunkapalooza music festival began with the ritual use of an estrogen patch on the back of Built to Spill drummer and Prism Bitch Teresa Esguerra. It ended with violent pioneers Calamity Jane tearing the roof off Portland’s Crystal Ballroom as they played for the first time in 35 years.
What happened in the middle were 750 festival-goers, a dozen Pacific Northwest punk rock acts, and a group of medical professionals who sang, laughed and sometimes raged about a topic that has yet to be mentioned in 2026: women’s health during menopause and menopause, and the promise of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
The three-woman group, Ménage àh Twats, dressed in sparkly nymph outfits, sang Lorde’s Royals: “Night sweats, heat, poor sleep / Dry puss, moustaches, feeling like crazy / We don’t care…” set, before Berzerk’s Joanne Belesiotis crossed the stage carrying deer antlers as her band melted everyone’s faces. Teenagers and octogenarians cheered, “Hormones are medical treatment!” A 10-point hormonal justice Bill of Rights was read aloud as the Portland Cherry Bombs FC mascot looked on.
This was the beginning of a revolution, a movement led by riot-era musicians and X-Men doctors to address how the failure of the government and medical institutions has left middle-aged women in the dark about their medical choices, said Alicia J Rose, founder of Menopunkapalooza. It was also a few nights of fun, electric music on the last weekend of June.
Rose, 56, hosts a podcast called Menopunks and is the director of an upcoming documentary of the same name that includes Pat Benatar, Neko Case, Alice Bag and Peaches, as well as many Portland musicians and doctors, talking about their experiences with the transformation of the body. “I didn’t know anything about the transition, including when I was going through it,” Bratmobile’s Allison Wolfe says in the trailer. “It affected my confidence in my baby,” admits Peaches. The weekend event was dreamed up as a way to raise money and showcase the documentary, which Rose hopes to show at film festivals in the fall.
In the 90s, riot grrrl feminist movementborn in the Pacific Northwest, she empowered young women to speak out about the sexism and abuse they face from men. L7 was created Rock for Choiceseries of demonstrations to raise money and awareness for reproductive rights. Sleater-Kinney he sang against war and inequality. Bikini Kill started the shouting ceremony “Girls in Front” to deal with the hostile, male-dominated punk scene. Many of these groups are still playing. And they are joined by young punk artists who are inspired by the sound and open-mindedness of politics, such as Lambrini girls and Linda Lindaand Olivia RodrigoTheir upcoming Daisy Chain Fields festival features an all-star, all-female cast and will raise money for non-profits that support women and girls.
With the Menopunks, gen X musicians use music to mock, fix events, and the “nonsense giving” wisdom that comes with aging. “We were all over the place in the riots and we were faced with violence and the community. That really inspired us. Now we’re all out of our periods and we’re like, “What the F? That’s sad,” says Calamity Jane’s Gilly Ann Hanner: “But we’re also like, ‘Well, nobody’s going to do it for us. We have to fight.’”
It began three years ago when Rose, who plays accordion, synth and drums with the band Party Witch, began to struggle with crippling fatigue and heatstroke. He was in so much pain that he didn’t need hip surgery, and he was worried that he might not be able to do it again.
“It went from polite to hell-my-life,” Rose told the audience at the event. “I was like, I can’t live like this.” Before long, she found longtime friends like Hanner and Jen Sbragia of the Softies and the All Girl Summer Fun Band were also struggling with symptoms like hers: anxiety, brain fog, joint pain, fatigue, irregular periods, low libido, and other psychological and physical horrors.
Hanner, 59, said he didn’t know: “I was doing kung fu. I was running, I had the best behavior of my life, I was in two groups. But after fighting Covid in 2021, he started experiencing a “waterfall” of symptoms that doctors failed to recognize. “My bones hurt and I couldn’t digest anything and I was weak,” he said. I was 53, 54 years old, and I felt old and weak.
HRT – replacement therapy for estradiol, progesterone and testosterone – is considered as more medicine in order to reduce the many symptoms related to the decrease in female hormones. (Research has also shown that HRT can reduce some women’s risk of a heart attack, dementia, osteoporosis and other aging-related diseases.) Rose, Hanner and many of the speakers and performers at Menopunkapalooza shared stories about hormones racing in middle age with doctors who couldn’t connect the dots. They felt like they had to fight for care – for doctors trained to recognize and be prepared to treat menopause symptoms. Even when they found a doctor to prescribe HRT, it took time try the dosethey said.
Misinformation about hormone therapy is another barrier to treatment, according to Dr. Sara Kennedy, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, who spoke at the event. Much of the blame for this can be traced back to a 2002 report by the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research—known as Women’s Health Initiative – which links hormone therapy to postmenopausal women with an increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease. Women who were receiving HRT were told to stop immediately. As subsequent investigations continued to reveal mistakes in the lesson and contradicting his earlier claimsthe decline occurred: the use of hormonal drugs among women who have had their noses removed, from about 30% in 2002 to less than 5% by 2020, according to a Scholarship for 2024 published in Jama Health Forum. Until now, many doctors do not want to prescribe HRT, and patients do not want to ask about the problem, because of the risk of cancer.
Eventually, Hanner found a therapist who diagnosed her symptoms and prescribed HRT. “Isn’t that bad for you?” Hanner asked the nurse, who replied: “Yes, that was the story, but new evidence has come to light, and the benefits of life outweigh the risks.” (Risk of side effects is low and depends on age and level; (Women who have certain medical conditions such as breast cancer or heart disease cannot take HRT.)
Like many of the artists and attendees at Menopunkapalooza, Hanner said hormone therapy was a turning point. Over time, her pain eased and her stomach problems improved. He had the power to sing brutal, haunting Calamity Jane songs like Magdalena and Hang Up.
Although more than 1 million women in the US starting to menstruate every year, they remain understudied and not many trained in medical education, several of the doctors at the festival said. Since the early days of western medicine, male physiology has been used as a standard, and less attention given to women’s bodies beyond their role in reproduction – something that Menopunks want to oppose.
Despite her medical training, Kennedy was completely thrown off guard when she began to experience what she now knows as perimenopause.
“When I went to medical school in the early 2000s, I think I spent an hour learning about perimenopause, menopause care,” Kennedy said Saturday. “An hour for a culture – not a culture, a lifetime – that half the world will experience.”
At the clinics Planned Parenthood runs (which also supported Menopunkapalooza), doctors are trained more in perimenopause and menopause care so they can determine which type of HRT method of birth control – pills, patches, vaginal rings – would be best for the patient and how to change the instructions if needed.
Recently there have been ways to improve care. In November, the FDA announced that it was abandoning its 2003 guidelines on HRT and removing black-box warnings on drugs, and laws has been established in many states and Congress expanding insurance coverage, workplace accommodations and transgender medical education. In pop culture, the period of life that was once called “The Change”, if it was discussed at all, has been performed in a show like. BBC Riot Women and CBC’s Smallest Possible Goals, and a documentary called The Big M with writers Roxane Gay and Cheryl Strayed.
The contagious enthusiasm at the two-day event dedicated to midlife women’s health, happiness and hormonal freedom also seemed like a beautiful moment. Dressed in Menopunks T-shirts and a fashion that is best described as “good looking witch”, the crowd was made up mainly of women “of a certain age”, although they had a good number who were probably closer to their first time than their last. They jumped up and down flashing the “horn signal” to avert disaster. Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney enjoyed the crowds. Bassist Mandy Morgan had a huge smile plastered on her face as she jammed with Berzerk and Calamity Jane, as if she couldn’t believe how much fun she was having. The Crystal Ballroom erupted when he took the mic for a interesting cover of Bikini Kill’s Suck My Left One.
Rose, Hanner and the Menopunks hope that women in other cities and countries will learn from Menopunkapalooza and participate in their own events to encourage women to be empowered when it comes to menopause care. Perhaps the “hormonally optimized” members of the entire X-type female population will be encouraged to meet again.
“I think musicians see other people playing (again) and go, ‘Well, I’m not too old,'” Hanner said. “I mean, maybe I am, but who cares? I’m just playing.”
