The Menstruality Podcast - 100. Queering The Cycle (Lottie Randomly & Abi Denyer Bewick)

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Today we’re picking up an important thread we’ve been weaving through the podcast since the beginning - Queer menstruality.I'm back with Red School Leadership Mentor, Abi Denyer-Bewick and this time we're in conversation with the brilliant Lottie Randomly who graduated from the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme in 2012.Lottie is a facilitator, educator, activist, writer and mentor with a background in mental health work and resilience building. They’re also a ceremonialist, with a special interest in funerals, and they’re especially drawn to the inner landscapes that people often fear passing through, such as menstruation and menopause as well as death and grief.In our conversation to day we’re looking to expand the concepts around menstruality to include all people who menstruate - as well as people who don’t - all in the name of belonging, which is at the heart of this work. We explore:- How the practice of menstrual cycle awareness naturally brings up questions and personal exploration around the identities we hold. - How to expand the conversation around menstruality expands to include the experiences of all people with menstrual cycles, including non-binary and gender-expansive folks.- “Menstrunormativity” and the harmful impacts around the unsaid assumptions about the menstrual cycle and menopause.---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyAbi Denyer Bewick @abi.denyer.bewick - https://www.instagram.com/abi.denyer.bewick/Lottie Randomly: @lottie.randomly - https://www.instagram.com/lottie.randomly/

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you're new here and also if you're part of the community who regularly listens, your time is precious and I never take it for granted that you're giving your time to receive these

conversations and I'm just so grateful to have you here. Today we're picking up an important thread that we've been weaving through the podcast since the beginning, queer menstruality. So last year I spoke with Adele Bates about LGBTQ menstruality and what it's like to bleed together as a couple. And actually a couple of weeks ago, we had an episode with Gemma and Sophia exploring going through menopause together as a lesbian couple. And a couple of months ago, I chatted with Abby Denya Buick, who's one of the Red School leadership mentors about menstruating as a person with a queer identity and how we can all work together to create a culture of belonging in the menstruality world and that would actually be a great episode to go back to if you haven't listened to it yet

and you want to explore this topic in more depth. But today Abby and I are back, and this time we're in conversation with the brilliant Lottie Randomly, who graduated from the Red School Menstrual Leadership Program in 2012. They're a facilitator and educator, activist, writer and mentor with a background in mental health work and resilience building. They're also a ceremonialist with a special interest in funerals and they're especially drawn to the inner landscapes that people often fear passing through such as menstruation, menopause as well as death and grief. And today we're looking to expand some of the concepts around menstruality and share some different ways to think about this whole menstrual cycle world which include all people who menstruate or have had a cycle in the past as well as people who don't and it's all in the name of belonging which is right bang at the heart of all of this

menstruality work. So some of the themes we explore include how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness naturally brings up questions and personal exploration around the identities that we're holding, how to expand the conversation around the menstrual cycle to include the experiences of all people with cycles, including non-binary and gender expansive people, and the idea of menstrual normativity and the harmful impacts that it has, particularly around the unsaid assumptions around the menstrual cycle and menopause. And just a quick note before we begin, I use the term cis-het towards the beginning of the conversation, and I wanted to explain what it stands for in case you don't know because it stands for cisgender heterosexual. My gender

identity as a woman corresponds to the identity I was assigned at birth as opposed to transgender or trans which is an umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as or doesn't sit comfortably with the sex they were assigned at birth. So that's what cishet is. All right, let's get started with Abby and Lottie. Hi, Lottie. Hi, Abby. It's great to be with you today. Let's start with a cycle check-in. I've just ovulated and I think I'm probably about day 17. So feeling kind of fizzy and quite high energy, which is great.

It's really nice. It's also aligning with today's full moon which is quite a kind of wild combination but I have a sort of sense of like the anticipation that this is going to drop quite quickly like within the next this this feeling is going to drop in the next couple of days feeling a little bit of apprehension about that yes um how do you know when you've ovulated I can tell from my cervical fluid but it's just a very juicy day and then I know that after that that's yeah and you and I Abby have synced our bleeds with the full moon helpfully I am yeah I'm day five yeah and I am really aware of wanting this kind of, you know, I only bleed for, you know, two days.

And so the temptation to leap out of kind of inner winter is very, is always very strong. And I don't think it's helped by the full moon. I'm not going to take all the responsibility for like not doing it well I'm going to I'm going to blame the moon that there is this kind of you know intensity and I feel very in contact with that today yeah clocking I feel like I want to work this cycle with micro moments of in a winter each day in some way to really stay tethered and plugged in

because yeah the unraveling is almost too easy. Wow I relate so much to that I've noticed I'm definitely in a momentum of filling every moment because there is always something to do and getting to the end of the day and feeling so spent that I just want to numb because I'm full of feeling but I have no energy to feel it all and to integrate it all and process it all I'm so with you on those mini moments of winter throughout the day um I'm on day three so I'm I'm there with you Abby and I wanted to share actually a tip for anyone that's got, that's looking after little people.

Because I was on day two. No, was it day? I think it was day one and I picked up Artie from nursery. And I thought, I just want a bath. Like, I want a bath. There must be a way to make this happen. So he's two and a half. And so I set him up with a pouring station next to the bath,

which he does love to do. And then I pour myself a really hot bath and for about 45 minutes I managed to pull off being in that bath while he was pouring cold water on me to be fair so it wasn't all bliss it can't be perfect but it was a good tip for how to have a menstrual bath with a little person around amazing yeah it was good and I'm feeling good I had a walk this morning I put my blood into the river and had some time to reflect and like have a bit of actual inner winter receiving time and it was good so I wouldn't mind four more days of it but I'll take what I got it's good I love your bathtub such a good idea very very creative and the place I'd love us to kick off you know there's so much we want to explore here

but a good place to start feels like talking about menstruality and identity it was one of the themes that came up a lot in our conversation and we see it time and time again in the people in our community how as we go deeper with cycle awareness practice it brings up questions about who we are and how we see ourselves in the world and then these different points along the menstruality arc menarche you know puberty motherhood if that's our path menopause you know there are big identity questions at each point so I sort of want to hand hand the mic over to you two and just say yeah how do you see menstruality shaking up our identities and why is that important to explore I mean so full disclosure when I saw this question Sophie I noticed myself feeling quite intimidated by it in that like I wasn't fully sure how I could answer it because it's huge

and it also on a personal level sort of taps into quite a few vulnerable places for me about identity and menstruality and how my own menstruality practice has followed me through really quite big shifts in my own identity and that when I first started to do this work you know I've been tracking my cycle since my mid to late 20s and I'm 40 now and as you both know I trained at Red School in 2012 but I thought of myself as a cis woman I approached myself as a cis woman in those early days of my practice. And then later on, actually during pregnancy, was when I really first started to question my own gender. Pregnancy was like the first time where I really came up sharp against like just how binarised the gender is. And, you know, people coming up to me and asking,

oh, is it a boy or a girl and that kind of stuff. And without kind of going too deep into the story, because it's a kind of big story in its own right, post-pregnancy I really started questioning my own gender and, and actually quietly and secretly, I didn't talk to anybody about this. But when my, when my cycle came back, when my daughter was, I was still breastfeeding, but it was about when I when she was about eight months old, I spent a lot of time, well, I spent many cycles, probably about 18 months worth, just playing with and thinking about gender and thinking about my gender through the lens of the cycle and noticing how my sense of myself changed quite significantly through through through the cycle and not in

predictable ways either not in a kind of like oh rise of oestrogen feel more femme like yeah not not you know not in not in the ways that you might expect and and after this kind of 18 month experiment I realized that I felt so much more comfortable approaching myself as and as someone who was non-binary or I mean I sort of think of myself as gender liminal I've dove in quite deep already but I think um and I really would love to hear Abby Abby's thoughts on this as well like if there's one thing that working with my cycle has taught me, it's about change and it's about how we change. And actually, we are these cyclical beings who are unraveling and unwinding in big and small ways. I don't know if that's really answered your question and also I always remember

Abby what you said in the podcast episode with Sophia around you know queerness and belonging where you talked about menstruator as an identity and that really struck a chord for me as well yeah for me and and my understanding of of identity and my personal experience of identity is that it's a kind of emergent thing it's a thing which i think is like is where it kind of intersects with with menstruality and like you just described it's we we are constantly changing we are constantly in life is constantly changing like we you know this universe is in in motion in action so it doesn't feel congruent that identity would be a a one single solid thing um it just it just doesn't sort of make sense in my in my being and I and I think that's where I felt like menstruator landed for me as an identity more than woman I do identify

I think I do as a like that like as a cis woman like that is that is in there I don't not identify as that maybe I'll say it like that but I more solidly identify as a as a menstruator because it directly ties my identity into something that's fluctuating and and changing moving through different phases and and stages and allows for my complexity and the relationality with the rest of the world that you know there is always this mutual transformation going on if I'm not tightly bound to something yeah because my experience of being tightly bound to things is that it keeps me separate from um and if I want to be woven into and if I want to be in the if the menstrual cycle and menstruality weaves me into life and all of life cycles and I want to go with that and use that as my practice then I need to let go into emergent identity wow my mind is dancing with what you're saying here I just want to tease

out some of the things that you both brought and thank you both for sharing your personal experience with this because it's such a gateway in in. I feel like some of the themes that you named there are how menstruality or our connection with our cycles is a gateway to being with the truth of how things are always changing, the truth of how things are always emerging. And it points to why it's such a radical act for us to be turning in and tuning in and and understanding how we're feeling on each day as our cycles are changing in a world that wants to create linear structure and systems that absolutely absolutely might make things organized but they trap people and they box people in and they cause harm often wow so it's this riding off menstruality as a gateway into this more well the more than human world that doesn't box anything into anything because it doesn't

there aren't concepts it's there's life lifing itself yeah where where this is taking me now is to to look at the term queer and queering because it feels like from where I'm sitting which is as a cis het woman and I haven't done a lot of questioning of that identity although these conversations do spark it in me and there's there's churning going on what I notice when I talk with queer folks or about wearing the cycle or queer ecology and all of the all of the fascinating things we talk about is queerness seems very connected to this being with life as it actually is rather than trying to box things and yeah the verb to queer queering things just feels so in in my body it feels just it's so cozy and comfortable and playful I think I just want

to start by saying that queer theory emerged out of post-structuralism and essentially it was around essentially fundamentally it was around challenge queer theory emerged to challenge essentialized views of gender and sexuality but as the years have gone by and theorists have taken it off in different directions it's kind of moved out into lots of different um areas of of life um and for me it's about part of it's about just under undoing those binaries that we kind of sometimes hold ourselves in in lots of different areas of life um and I've talked to you about both both about I've talked to you both about this before but um a really beautiful way of describing it that I've been kind of thinking about and working with recently is and this is not

my terminology this is um I'll say where it's from in a moment but that queering is the it's the sensation of dominance being destabilized oh can you say that again Lottie wearing as the sensation of dominance being destabilized and I just I love that I really love the invitation in that and the curiosity and the playfulness and I want to say that way of describing it I came across in part of this really lovely uh discord server that's run by somebody called Sharon Arnold, who's a brilliant writer and curator. And they run a Discord server called Beyond the Altar. And every month we take a different theme

and do some reading around it. And on the queer month, someone just summarised it like this. And it's just, I just love it. It's just thinking it's sort of, it's just such a neat way of describing the act of queering and the feeling of queering yeah yeah I really get that in a cellular remembering kind of way very much like the menstrual work where it's like oh yeah I didn't know this but I know this and I think my how I like to

play with the verb to queer and queering and what it means to me to hold a queer identity is again it's a bit similar to the sort of mental identity in that it allows for emergence and it allows for change and it allows for evolution and mainly it allows for curiosity and questioning you know I like this sort of overlap of queering and query thing yeah how they're so sort of it's just like and and it's felt like a comfortable place to land in as someone who just has always questioned everything, you know, to be that kid of just like, yeah, but why? And some of it I recognize is part of my neurodivergent ways of not wanting to do anything in the way that anyone else is doing anything, which is exhausting. And I'm fine and I embrace it as well and I really feel the power of questioning you know not it's not even that things have to be different to queer them it's just to go oh that's curious I wonder why wonder why that is that way that we just get into a process of more exploration and uh and and we don't have to that we ask more questions and we

find answers i'm i'm very grateful for your curiosity and your question asking and i'm aware that it is exhausting and for people who are edge walking here and expanding what's possible, there is a lot of emotional labor that's going on. And I'm incredibly grateful for it. I want to play my part in it, too, because the truth is that people are really hurting. That's what I come back to for me the focus of our menstruality work is to create belonging for each of us to feel like we belong in ourselves we belong here we belong where we are and the truth is that in a lot of the mainstream conversations about menstrual cycles and menopause a lot of people are pushed to the margins because of the language that's used and because there isn't enough of this queering, queering going on.

And it hurts, right? It's hurting people. I feel kind of personally touched of the acknowledgement of the sort of laboring. And to also, yeah, to really acknowledge that there is a mainstream menstruality movement. I don't know, I've got an image of a particular road or a particular kind of container and that if we can ask more questions and include more people, then we get to widen and broaden that. And I think as we talked about in our previous conversation as well, the thing around if belonging is this seed at the heart of this work and the sort of self-intimacy and the trusting and knowing and permission, then that can't be something that is only available to a certain group of people if it's really about belonging then it's it's about everybody um that's what i love about the term belonging there is no awakening or whatever word we want to use without all of us being part

of it and i think that's where menstruality takes me that's where it's taking me this month in my bleed is remembering how completely interconnected I am with everyone and everything and how freaking messy that is you know yeah yeah it's not this like sitting on a meditation cushion version of oneness no I'm deeply connected to people I completely disagree with. And that's uncomfortable and difficult. And what my menstrual cycle is teaching me is how to be with that discomfort and difficulty and trust the belonging that is there because it is there. For sure. I love the way Alok feels into this with their poetry.

Yes. And I'll link to their work in the show notes because every time I see them reciting poetry of any kind we're like yes that's it you're right there you're right there yeah I just also just want to say thank you I really really appreciate the acknowledgement around the the emotional labor of being a bit of an edge walker and and certainly I'm okay with being an edge walker but I also do miss sometimes belonging and I've often felt within the kind of broader menstrual cycle awareness movement that I haven't belonged because I've been quite vocal about including trans and gender non-conforming and non-binary menstruators and also acknowledging intersex folk

who might bleed as well um and and how that you know on occasion has really rubbed people up the wrong way and not really given me a yeah just not always been welcomed so on one level all I'm saying really is just that how just delicious it is to be in conversation with you both and to feel an opening and feel a sense of belonging again because I love this work it just absolutely fascinates me oh you know and I think the other thing that I just also really acutely aware of is just the binary uh people who have a menstrual cycle and how marvelous and delicious and exciting and all the things about that but also not other the people who don't and so in in my work i i really just like to kind of float out the possibility that we're all cyclical beings because we are all engaged in all these bodily processes and external you know internal external

processes that are that are cyclical our very hearts are spirals that actually kind of spin spurt our blood around our body the idea of the heart being like a just traditional pump isn't actually true it's it's a spiral which is just I just find that so exciting too I guess it goes back to like queering and undoing binaries and seeing what's in the in the in between between the two yeah yeah I really I really appreciate you naming that because it it's like in undoing binaries catching ourselves where we create more binaries or we fall into it and like oh but then now there's this and that it's like oh that's the same that's the same patterning you know and recognizing how how kind of internalized um that that sort of way of categorizing or neatening up or you know

that it's very like we're very in cultured in that there's so many layers to this too i'm thinking of a post that you shared a couple of days ago lottie where you had a cup of blood menstrual blood and your message was this is your blood do what you want with it you know there are a lot of people out there with really good intention and we can speak about intention and impact and there the dynamic there but with really good intention saying you know make it a retreat every month with your blood you know paint with it put it on your face do a ritual you know and I was lucky to be able to go and take my blood down to the river this morning and do that and I chose to do that and that was great but you were naming how you know loads of people cannot do that for many many reasons people

with disabilities or people who are working several jobs to be able to put food on the table you know it's just not available and to embrace everyone in our narratives is very important there yeah I feel just very strongly about opening up these conversations and just challenging anywhere where I start to see any dogma and you know there's a sort of naughty sort of slightly trickster bit of me that just loves just it's destabilizing the dominance again it's when I see a dominant narrative and particularly I think that that post emerged out of some seeing some accounts with very very big followerships making quite bold claims about ritualizing using your blood and not acknowledging any of the privilege of being able to do that just

as a start and so I just can't help but want to challenge that and question it a bit and just open it up for other other folks as well and but I also don't you know don't want to create another binary of like me in that you know me and them or that way and this way just make more space for everyone. I think that you're very skillful in doing that I think the way that you bring those things are it's just inviting an opening and and it kind of links back to this belonging thing if if menstruality is really a disruptive technology for our time yeah and what's needed which kind of connects with the the queering then it needs to be disrupting norms and it needs to be disrupting binaries

and it needs to be disrupting solidity and certainty. And so with the blood, this is what happens when you bleed and as ever to not lose nuance, which is the great work of this time and how menstruality kind of fits with that I love this disruptive technology of our time I think it is absolutely that and I also think that when I think about querying the cycle reimagining the cycle beyond just its kind of function in a sort of reproductive arc and sort of reimagining it beyond its kind of gynocentricity in a technology a tool that we use

to disrupt the status quo that for me is another aspect of queering. It's reimagining its status in the world and its utility. Yeah, yeah. I love the way you phrased that, Abby. Lottie, you said that you just want more space for everyone. This isn't about setting up more binaries. Yeah. Some people write to us and say, I feel I don't want to be called a person with a womb. I want to be called a woman. I don't want to be called a person with a womb I

want to be called a woman I don't want to be called a menstruator this identity of woman is really important to me and I feel othered by this conversation yeah I feel really sad when I hear women feeling like that. And I don't think I have a neat answer or response. One of the angles that I think sometimes gets forgotten in this conversation is that people, women sometimes think that we're just then kind of just centering the attention on trans and non-binary and gender non-conforming menstruators. And so kind of erasing the term woman and starting to use these gender neutral terms.

But the flip side of it is, and I really like to remind people of, is that there are lots of cis women who don't menstruate and actually the the kind of the sort of just teasing apart menstruation from the identity of womanhood is also useful for them as well for them as well you know there are women who don't menstruate for a myriad of reasons you know how you know health chronic illnesses they've had a hysterectomy we don't think of them as any less woman and on the flip side and I think this is the bit that's sometimes a bit difficult for people to hear is that this just dismantling menstruation from womanhood brings trans women in and acknowledges that trans women are also women and that piece is difficult for people because there's a lot of very politicized

rhetoric particularly about trans women at the moment but I'm really of the of the feeling that trans folk need protecting um they are right up at the kind of hilt of lots of abuse and violence and we should do what we can to protect them and make space for them and I personally don't think that's about an erasure of womanhood I think that's about an expansion of our understanding of what it means to be human and menstruation occurs in people of lots of different identities that doesn't mean that you can't be a woman who menstruates and that be part of your identity anyway I'm sure there'll be the people listening who'll think that's an inadequate response and there's lots more to say but I feel like

those are the kind of keystone things that I think about when I'm in that, when I hear that conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Lottie. It's also when you widen's kind of bringing it back to like you talked earlier about the binary of menstruators and non-menstruators and shutting them out of cyclical life it's like we're widening the lens on on what it is to be human and what it is to hold evolving identities and complexity and to be these like wow who are you and what are you about and who are you and what are you about and

and you know to have this like alive engagement yeah it just feels like it makes a world that's more that's way more colorful that we that we value so many different people's experience of being here and that somehow that brings us into much closer contact with nature with more than human with complexity in the kind of ecological yeah sense of it because there's something about human centric kind of dominance as another pattern of dominance and how that kind of comes into the menstrual normativity work as well that it's like yeah this is this is what humans do this is what human women do it's like everything's getting like tighter and tighter and tighter and it's like can we just kind of open all of it into humans to nature to interweaving as if on cue my dog just entered the room I am here more than human

okay I'm going to pause this conversation just for a moment to invite you to join us for a free online gathering that alexandra and sharni are hosting in september called your big bold thing and it's in the run-up to the start of our brand new online course which explores the power of cycle aware creativity it's called your creative power so the course itself is going to offer a step-by-step map to navigate the inevitable twists and turns of creative living, to manage your inner critic, to return from imposter syndrome to grounded confidence, and to keep coming back to what Alexandra and Sharni call your big bold thing, your unique contribution in the world, your calling. So to get a taste of the depth of the processes and the teachings that Alexandra and Sharni will guide you through

in your creative power, we'd love you to join us for this free event called Your Big Bold Thing. And it's designed to be a kind of visioning sanctuary to bring you closer to your calling and to root you in the deep why that drives your desire to create everything that you're creating in your life. All in the name of unleashing the energy and the creative power you need to bring your unique genius to the world. So your Big Bold Thing is free and it's happening on September the 7th and we'd love to have you with us. You can take your seat for free at redschool.net forward slash big. That's redschool.net forward slash big. one of the things that is so wonderful about social media which is often a very difficult place to hold nuance basically verging on impossible social media is furthering this

polarization dramatically isn't it and one of the great things about social media is is there are so many generous trans folks who are sharing their experiences online and I'd say seven years ago I would have been one of the people concerned about the erasure of women I was really I was working for an organization which was focused on environmental restoration and the empowerment of women. But my understanding of women was cis women. And I was very, I was in that dominant narrative totally. And then when conversations started to open up to me to me I thought just be quiet we're doing something important here yeah because I felt that what we were doing was more important than a few people quote unquote and what I've come to learn I'm so grateful for all the people I've learned from

what I've come to see is as we've mentioned many times there's no doing this work without all of us doing this work and without radical inclusion of everyone in every voice and my point with the social media pieces for anyone who's in a place of I don't understand this one of the things that can be so great to do is go and follow some people who are generously sharing their experience from their edge walking life you know as trans people and I would we have in our episode Abbey we put a link of several different people who are doing this but I'll drop some some links and so for people to explore and understand and actually have human to human I mean it's not because it's through social media but as as close as we can get human to human moments with people yeah yeah I mean my even before I started really questioning my approach to my identity I was hanging out with queer and trans

friends who were just doing this in live time. And I'm just eternally grateful to them for being generous enough to just listening to my queries and quandaries and trying to figure it all out for myself. And I think that's why it's been easy for me to drop into this expansion, other than it being, you know, my own personal approach to my identity,

because I'm surrounded by those people on a day-to-day basis. And if you're not, it's different, isn't it? Those folks do seem like other. But I also really hear what you're saying Sophie and I you know in terms of that that feeling years and years ago that you described of like can you just not complicate things we're doing this work and it's really important that's exactly it yeah and people said that to me people I mean and I remember it well and and I I really understand it because there are radical feminists who have done really really important work for us in terms of

challenging patriarchy and creating new grounding for all of us to have equity and and and rights and I understand why that older generation of feminists feel like we're kind of diluting diluting things or complexifying things in a way that feels unnecessary I I do have compassion for that I was thinking about this yesterday actually a real importance of of acknowledging that lineage yeah of feminism and where it's the enormous changes that it brought before or in our early lifetimes yeah and I feel like I've seen content you know gen z content or millennial content that doesn't it doesn't hold a historical context and I do think that that is really that's really important because I think it creates that binary of old world, new world,

like modern thinking, old fashioned thinking or something. And it's like, no, actually, like there's a lineage. But if we allow, again, for things to not be set in stone, that feminism brought us to here and now what? And now another opening into, and that's where the kind of intersectional feminism is is kind of significant or the like decolonial feminism is yeah important or womanism as a as a as a subject yeah feels more like okay now and now we're taking this path and that's just a natural like yeah we don't we don't get

somewhere and stop like that that isn't that isn't life that you know there isn't a naturalness to that but but we all come from somewhere and have benefited in lots of ways to have a platform now to say oh yeah hang on what what about this because we have a louder voice and we have a space and so that does feel important to be compassionate to that. Back to what menstruality teaches us here the word honoring that you used then Abby feels so important that my menstrual cycle teaches me to honor me. I don't do it, but to honor myself every day, no matter how I'm showing up. I shouldn't. I mean, I say I don't do it as a throwaway thing.

I'm trying, you know, trying to love my very grumpy day 23 self. I'm trying to love my really anxious like baby dear day seven self it's hard but the process of turning turning towards myself and honoring myself and all my different flavors is hopefully growing this muscle of honoring growing my capacity to honor others which includes those who've come before and those who are right in front of us now and we can do both yeah when you're talking there about you know how cycle awareness brings us into contact with the different facets of ourselves or different aspects of ourselves we really embrace a changing nature and how you kind of talked about yeah that building a muscle in you to embrace

others it's like that in itself can be work of we're meeting the others within us you know we can think of it in a kind of parts work sort of sort of thing it's like oh I'd really I'd really oh I don't like that you know day 21 self like I'd rather put them over there in a box which you know might be something we're doing to other people in the world who we don't understand or we're not the same as or you know but it's like oh how can I how can I include you how can I bring you in you know how can I create belonging for this part of myself so we get to you know and i think this is you know why menstrual cycle awareness is a is a practice because we get to put into practice in this practice place with ourselves these skills that we want to develop to be more engaged and inclusive and respectful and honoring in in the world so but when we get

to like work work the muscle in this like you know it doesn't really matter like I might do a really bad job and just hate my day 21 self for the entire day and it's like it's okay no one's like really harmed harmed but and then I get another cycle to do it again but it's like yeah we we kind of can embrace the others within ourselves to learn how to embrace others in in the world so I think that's one aspect of its powerful sort of radical nature as a practice so there's this word that I'd really like us to explore which you brought to me Lottie well to us in our conversation before this which is menstrual normativity yeah can we unpack that one yeah so it's a term that I first came across in an article written by um a researcher called Josephine Josephine Pearsdottosephine i'm sorry if i'm

pronouncing your surname wrong uh and that uh that essay is in the um palgrave critical book of critical menstrual studies um which we should put a link to because it's um it's free it's available online it's free it's massive it's amazing um but josephine talks about menstrual normativity as the kind of entwined social medical and statistical norms that we um apply to being someone who menstruates into um and josephine frames it as like there's this idea of like the menstrual normate the menstrual normate i don't really like that term but you know there's this there's this ideal menstrual menstrual person and they are they are um they're a cis woman and they have a 28 day cycle um and what else what are the other norms that we might think of in terms of menstrual norms like they feel great in the first half of their cycle and then they get pms and it's really hard and then they bleed

yeah yeah and they have it you know and they have a typical amount of blood and they bleed for the right amount of time um and there's no pain there's no fibroids there's no endometriosis yeah yeah um and and everyone else is a menstrual monster but what persdottir says basically is that that the menstrual normate doesn't exist like none of us actually fit into that those those men those like that menstrual normativity and but what I think is really interesting about her I'm assuming actually I don't don't want to assume Josephine's pronouns. I don't actually know what they are. Josephine talks about how menstrual normativity is riddled with paradox and conflict in that, on the one hand, being someone who menstruates in a capitalist patriarchy, there's all these messages around, you must hide your blood.

You must be silent about menstruation. That's what the menstrual normate does um and on the on the flip side that there's a sort of feminist ideology about it's natural to bleed let's talk about this um and all of us are existing within this these this dual normativities all of all of the time and just how complicated that is oh and then you know and then there's also that women who don't menstruate are also considered menstrual monsters because they're not performing correctly under um under menstrual normativity and then trans and gender non-conforming folk are also menstrual monsters because they're not performing the the menstrual you know the menstrual narratives that we're expected of i guess one of the things that I think is really interesting about this idea and I'm really

looking forward to kind of playing with it and working with it more is that like all of us are othered like we are all othered by this paradox and one of the things that I'm excited by is that I wonder how perhaps for cis women who menstruate grappling with menstrual normativity and the ways in which they are othered by these these narratives could be a route into compassion for the other menstrual monsters amongst us and I'm really interested in that and kind of what I have to say about it at the moment but I want to talk about it more with people and I the other the just the other piece to this is that I think we must be very very careful within menstrual in the menstrual cycle awareness

movement to not build in menstrual normative menstrual normativities and I see that happening quite a lot um but you usually it's it's not you know it's not intended to harm and it's not intentional but you know we love certainty and we want something to cling to but as Abby has so beautifully described throughout this podcast, like life is fluid and complicated and messy and, and so are our menstrual cycles. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it, it brings you back to, I think about people moving through the menstruality leadership program and

more and more and it's definitely like been a thing as the years have gone on more and more people come in now and want to get it perfect think there is a thing to get perfect so that this is a this is a model and bleeding should be like this and my rest should look like this and then I should have these great like visions and then I should know exactly what I'm doing and then my summer should feel amazing and you know all the time we're always bringing them back to that you know it's written in capital letters in wild power of like the the big red rule it's like your cycle experience is is unique and and belongs to you and and I and I think it's kind of yeah it's really important to to always come back to that and to broaden oh and your menstrual experience as a trans man is your

unique experience and your is yours as a non-binary person is it you know that is a unique experience and yours with fibroids or a chronic health condition or a disability or um you know whatever whatever like it's so they're all different so like you say this whole notion and these these paradoxes completely trip us up so I think it's a brilliant um uh route into more discussion around the um but that erases women like like you're you're actually as a as a assist women holding tightly to their identity you're already being um like challenged and othered so shall we just talk about how these funny ideas of this like dominant culture are othering all of us in in one way or another and then we

work together to to disrupt that so yeah I think it's a brilliant way and really exciting concept yeah it's such an exciting concept wow I feel like we've driven around a wonderful landscape and looked in caves and it dove into the lake and walked through the dark forest and it's still at the top of the mountain like I feel like we've been we've traveled so far in this conversation we really have and the themes I'm really present to as we draw to a close is how our menstrual cycle awareness is an invitation to embrace change on multiple levels and to work to create belonging on multiple levels within us and within our world and this inquiry around menstrual normativity and how we're being othered is such a potent doorway into yeah into these explorations

thank you you too um thank you both ah it's been really great really really enjoyed this um yeah just thank you so much for like being such great just companions in exploring these landscapes together i just loved it i just yeah it's very exciting to me to be having these conversations feels like there's more to be said there's definitely um you know I really hope we can come back and explore some of the angles that I know we wanted to talk about, we haven't had time for. And I also think that's just honour that we've covered a lot of ground, as Sophie said. And for all our listeners, perhaps that's enough for today.

It's enough to digest. Yeah, and I would love to hear hear listeners your your thoughts about this your questions how this lands with you and you can always write to me at sophie at redschool.net I'd love to hear from you I'd love to carry on the conversation yeah and we'll carry on this conversation to be continued yes yeah thanks you too well thank you thank you so much for joining us today i'd love to hear how this conversation landed with you any questions that you have that lottie and abby and i could respond to in a follow-up conversation anything it stirs for you please let me know sophie at redschool.net and i want to repeat the invitation from earlier in the podcast for you to join us on our free event on september the 7th called your big bold thing this visioning sanctuary

designed to help to bring you closer to your calling and root you into the deep why that's driving your desire to create all the things you're creating in your world whether that's a family, a garden, a business, a book, works of art, whatever it is that you're building and pouring your creative energy into and you can join us at redschool.net forward slash big. We're gathering on September the 7th. Okay, that's it for this week. I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life

according to your own brilliant rhythm.