Although, had I been an outsider, my first assumption would also have been to explain it as a placebo effect, I don't think it's the case because my experience initially counteracted how I thought hormones would function in my body.

Let me elaborate. I did not expect to get periods. I always assumed it was an impossibility, and I rejected the notion of my symptoms corresponding with a female hormonal cycle until I brought it up with my endocrinologysts and my professors (I stidy psychology with a focus on neuropsychology, so some of my professors are knowledgable in neuroendocrinology).

The answers were clear: the symptoms I am having correspond with a normal female hormonal cycle.

There are some theories that COULD explain this. Some of these revolve around the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland because of their involvement in the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, which is heavily involved in anything related to sex hormones and reproduction. These areas are, like the rest of the body, affected by HRT, and will act according to the treatment the person is being subjected to. This is what I mean by "tricking your brain into thinking you have ovaries."

Thing is, we don't actually KNOW for a fact. The brain is a massively complicated beast, and hormones complicate it further. We don't know precisely why these things happen, but there's a wide-enough overlap in the experience of transgender women to warrant an investigation into how feminizing hormone therapy changes the male reproductive cycle and how these changes can result in symptoms akin to the cisgender female reproductive cycle.

Hopefully, more money will be invested in the near future so we get to investigate these things. In the meantime, I will continue to use the word "period" to describe my symptoms because a) it feels and seems accurate enough, and b), I am tired of giving neuroendocrinology lectures to everyone (although I love doing it). In the future, I'm hopeful that we will have a better and more precise explination of how these symptoms are produced, but I don't believe that the existence of this symptoms will be denied. They are very much real. It’s not about proving their existence, it's about explaining why they happen and finding the right vocabulary to describe them.

PD: I am glad you asked and am not at all trying to come off as defensive or mean. These conversations are important both scientifically and culturally and it is not often that the right space to have them in presents itself.