The Menstruality Podcast - Menstruality and LGBTQ+ Inclusion, Safety and Belonging (Adele Bates)

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

Today we’re exploring themes that are right at the heart of the emerging menstrality movement; love, belonging and an invitation for each of our experiences to be dignified, and honoured, exactly as we are.  I’m talking with LGBTQ+ inclusion consultant, Adele Bates, whose day job is as an education and behavior specialist - just release her first book “Miss I don’t give a sh*t: engaging with challenging behaviour within schools” - we’re celebrating you Adele! Adele is a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and has been a profound resource as an LGBTQ+ educator in the Red School community. Today we ask how we can move towards more genuine inclusion in our work as Menstruality pioneers, looking at the questions such as:- How is menstrual cycle awareness different when you’re in a same sex relationship?- How can we ensure that non-binary or gender fluid people and trans men feel safe, honoured and a sense of belonging in menstruality work?- How might a trans woman experience menstruality?

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. Today we're exploring themes that are right at the heart of the emerging menstruality movement, love, belonging and an invitation for each of

our experiences to be dignified and honoured exactly as we are. I'm talking with LGBTQ plus inclusion consultant Adele Bates whose day job is actually as an education and behaviour specialist. She's just released her first book Miss I Don't Give a Shit engaging with challenging behaviour within schools. I met Adele when we were both training on the menstruality leadership program. I love you, Adele. I'm celebrating you. Congratulations on the publication of your book. Adele's been an amazing resource as an LGBTQ plus inclusion educator in the Red School community. And today we're looking at how we can move towards more genuine inclusion in our work as menstruality pioneers. How is menstrual cycle awareness different when you're in a same-sex relationship? How can we ensure that non-binary people and trans men feel safe, honoured and have a sense of belonging in

menstruality work? And how might a trans woman experience menstruality? These are big questions, really important to explore and I hope this episode is as illuminating and educating for you as it was for me. So there's a lot that we're going to explore but before we get into that I want to start how we always start which is with a cycle check-in. So Adele could you tell us what day you're on and how it's going for you? Thank you for such a wonderful introduction. I am day 10 and I've just had a very sleepy day 8, day 9. It's the end of school term at time of recording so all educators across the country are a little

bit horizontal right now uh but I did wake up day 10 this morning and thought oh spring so yes I am stepping into the spring in a kind of beautiful way good I'm at the complete opposite end of the spectrum because I'm on day 36. So I'm somewhere in outer space right now. So I'm really grateful to be having this conversation because really what lies at the heart of menstruality is love and belonging. belonging and I think the conversation that we're having today is an extension of this force and pulse that is at the core of menstruality which is that each of us are dignified and honoured exactly as we are and so I'm hoping that today you and me as pioneers and everyone that's listening as pioneers in this emerging movement the menstruality movement can together move towards a more genuine inclusion in this work let's start by just hearing about your experience of menstrual cycle awareness in general so I started off probably like a lot of people with issues with my cycle. I was 25, 26-ish,

and I was starting to get a lot of the symptoms that my mum had had. So pain during ovulation, really heavy bleeds, lots of excessive pain, etc. And I had gone along the traditional route of going to the doctor, which ended in drama and tragedy. As I was told things like there's nothing wrong with me, I bite male, non-menstruating people. And I was prodded and poked. And I went to various specialists and I had a camera put inside me and you know all the fun and games and throughout the whole process I was told there's nothing wrong with you which just made me feel crazy actually and what's quite interesting is since I've done this work I realize how actually how common that story is and that's why I share it. And I remember the moment where I fell upon Red School.

So it was during the Brighton Fringe. I'm based in Brighton. And I was writhing. I love that word. I was writhing on the floor in so much pain. And I picked up the Brighton Fringe brochure which said a menstruality workshop was available with road to school and part of me was going hippie nonsense women's circles and the other part just thought well what else can I do you know the NHS are unable to help me in this situation so I booked that I can remember like over my laptop driving on the floor in pain I booked that session um and that was nine ten ten years ago now and a few weeks later I rock up at this workshop going what am I here but you know obviously that's I didn't know at the time but

that was the other part of my cycle so I was like I'm fine why am I here um but I paid for it so I thought I better go and that's where I was introduced to Red School, Alexandra and Sianae and that's when my process began and just to kind of start to step me into the conversation we're having today um at this point I was straight as well so I had a male partner and um I'd always been straight and so I was really just you know experiencing menstrual cycle awareness in in the kind of majority experience so in an experience that most people um in terms of sexuality and gender will experience it um and then uh later on um i started working with this cycle and i mean i know this isn't the conversation we're going on about but i have to say menstrual cycle awareness has revolutionized my life um my entire diary is set around my menstrual cycle um the the entire way that I work is so menstrually cycle aware

and I use the power of it in each season now I mean just recently I contacted um a publishers that I'm working with not for my book but another one that I'm working with and I mean their inclusion is not good let's put it that way in terms of female representation and it was day 25 and I was like okay it's truth speaker time it's truth speaker time they they've asked to work with me in that case they get what they get and I get them this big truth thing I get them all these stats about how you know how many men are mentioned in the book how many women are mentioned in the book and why and also how many um people of ethnic minorities were being mentioned and why you know and it was just this truth bomb and I am getting after 10 years I am getting stronger at using the different

potentialities in each part of the cycle and it is I mean it makes me now the kind of strength that I've got you know it gives me that strength that I've got um and that strength can be vulnerable and that strength can be resting or it's it's part of my job and it's part of my role and my career and my vocation to also be out in the world you know that's very much where I sit so yeah with that I get mental cycle awareness is like my my framework for how I live. And you said you were straight then so tell us about now. Yes so nine years ago I fell in love with someone who happened to be female shaped and that was quite a surprise to me I wasn't expecting that I was 27 at the time uh I'd never been attracted to women before and it wasn't kind of for I want to say for want of trying but I don't mean that like um I my original career I was in the theater world so I was surrounded by um people in the LGBTQ community um I'd always had friends

uh with within that um minority um so it wasn't like i wasn't aware of it let's put it that way but anyway yes i i met my woman and uh i spent a couple of weeks going oh what's this about um and then i realized that she was somebody i wanted to be with. And I think it's really interesting. I'm going to bring this back around to menstrual cycle awareness because when her and I are in our house with the door closed, the relationship is a relationship. Like we still argue over who does the washing up.

You know, like all the usual stuff. It is the moment we step outside of our house that things are different and I think so there's two layers to this with menstrual cycle awareness this social layer is very very different and this is what I experience now I identify as bi bisexual um by meaning two so meaning that I can be attracted to men and or women. I suppose really theoretically I'm actually pansexual, so for those of you who don't know about pansexual, that's when you can be attracted to anybody on the spectrum of gender. So trans people, non-binary people, we'll go into that in a bit later on stage stage but what I've noticed is that as a woman

I identify as a woman as a woman who has a partner who is also a woman um the world treats you differently and there's no two ways about that and it's made me very sad and it's made me very angry and I think almost more than my partner, my partner's gay, she's always been gay, she's a gay gay and it's almost like I feel like I notice the difference more because I know what it's like to be in the majority, I know what it's like to be straight, I know what it's like to be welcomed in basically every space. If you're listening to this I am white, I am cisgender which means I identify with the sex I was born with I'm English speaking I'm educated I live in England so in every other kind of area or characteristic I'm

within the majority the only thing I changed was who I fell in love with right and and yet the difference to my experience of entering spaces, of being in community, of being in society, of the way people treat me, has changed massively. And I think that this is why I've been so excited to start this conversation with you, Sophie. I mean, obviously, Sophie and I have been talking about it for a long time, but to get it on recording. Because I know what it's like to sit in a women's space talking about menstruality as a straight woman and i know what it's like to be in there talking as someone as the lgbtq plus community um and also i'm sure we're going to talk about it later

um i identify myself as a trans ally which means i I'm not trans myself. I don't have that lived experience. And so there's an invitation there. If you're listening and you are, and there's stuff that you want to add on, I know that Red School are doing work on this. I know that they, we, are still learning. So please do feel involved in that conversation. And also, the reason why it's important to have allies is because, and this is something that I'm seeing a lot in menstrual spaces, is that the people in the minority, whatever it is, whether it's a disabled minority or maybe it's menstruators of colour, etc. It's that they're expected to do the work.

And that is not on. I'm sitting here. I've been interviewed and i'm going to be quite open i've also been paid to to to share my experience and to share my expertise in this area i'm choosing to do that and and i am i'm volunteering that if you are holding some kind of menstruality menopausal space and you want to learn about more about the minority because you've got a person in your group who you're aware that is, please do not assume that they are ready to do that.

Not every person in a minority is a teacher. So that would be top tip number one. Thank you. I want to talk more about being an ally towards the end of the conversation and some concrete steps that people can take to move in that direction for now I would love to hear you speak about but one of the things you've said to me or I've heard you say is that in menstrual spaces in women's spaces there's an assumption that the partner is male so if we're talking about cycle

awareness and relationships it's how does your man relate to your cycle rather than how does your partner relate to your cycle yes so this was really striking particularly towards the start of my relationship um because i was so aware of the the sex of my partner in a way that hadn't been before. But also, I have now been menstrual cycle awareness-ing. Now it's become a verb. I've been menstrual cycling for nine years with Red School, and I am still yet to find another same-sex couple who I can have a conversation with. So what that means is every time I step into a menstruality space, I am either having to translate what's going on or I'm having to be the pioneer.

Some days in my summer season, in my spring season, that's fine. Some days when I hate my face because the critic's out, the last thing I want to be doing is being the one who's having to educate others or or having to share bits that and I think this is really important if you are in a minority space you cannot take for granted that you are either welcomed nor safe and I think this is the fundamental thing this becomes even more so if we're talking about our trans friends but what I have learned is that when I was straight a space that said welcome to women I didn't have to think I could just go in there and I could concentrate on whatever it was so whether it's menstrual cycle awareness whether it's my knitting group like whatever it was I

didn't have to think about anything else I could concentrate on the thing when you are in a minority welcome to everyone you cannot take for granted that that means you so I mean a very easy example would be um there are lots of religious spaces that say welcome everyone they don't need me they don't need me when I walk in and explain who my partner is and so what this does for anybody stepping into your space and I'm gonna I'm gonna try and stick now to to women who are in love partnering with women is that you have to have a safety guard on, like you have to have a defence mechanism on. So when we're trying to be soft and vulnerable and sharing

and all the stuff that menstrual cycle awareness holds us and helps us to do, if I'm sitting in your group, I can't do that until I know I'm welcomed in your space. And I can't do that until I know that I won't have to justify my experience and that's another massive thing um so when people are talking about their partners they're all I mean firstly because I'm quite feminine presenting I mean you know talk about stereotypes and patriarchy aside, let's for now, for shorthand, say that I present as fairly feminine. So firstly, it will be assumed that my partner is male. Nearly everybody assumes my partner is male. I mean, hey, hey, I assumed my

partner was going to be male, so I'm not blaming anyone. But she's not. And so because there's that assumption that everybody's partner will be male, the language changes. So when I sit in a space, I have to then start being the one who has to put the hand up and go, actually, no, it's she. Or actually, no, my partner knows a lot about menstruality because she bleeds. And then going back to the first point, which is, I still am so frustrated that I've been in this menstruality space for nine years, and I haven't found another same-sex couple to talk to about what's it like when your romantic partner is in summer and you're in winter? What's it like when your romantic partner is in summer and you're in winter? What's it like when you're both in autumn? What's it like when you're both on day 25? And that is something that I've had to grapple with in my relationship, which, you know, fine.

But what I'm saying is, if my partner were male, I would have all sorts of support. I would have an extra layer of support and shared experience and oh it's like this for me and I was like and I have to tell you there's this kind of uh general legend that all women synchronize I've been with my partner nine years we have synchronized once and I tell you that our vaginas could not be closer. So that is really frustrating when well-intentioned, well-meaning people go, oh, I bet you're synchronized. No, fuck off. That's not what it's like.

Actually, the most challenging things are when we're on the opposite side of the cycle. And yet it can be wonderful. It can be absolutely amazing. And then put sex on top. You know, I want to talk to ever to ever same-sex couples about menstrual cycle awareness and sex how do you navigate it how do you navigate sex when one of you's in summer and one of you's in autumn and the only answers i've got are the answers that i keep experimenting with with my partner and you know we're kind of working that out as we go along and then don't even get me

started on the menopause conversation. I mean, how do we do that? If you are listeners, if you know that, please call in and let me know. If you're listening and you want to hear more about, especially about people who are in same-sex relationships and menstruality, Adele actually wrote a blog for us where she talks about lots of different aspects of this so I'm going to link to that in the show notes if you want to expand your understanding and awareness thanks thank you for sharing what you've shared Adele it's you're opening a window into something that possibly a lot of people haven't even thought

about in this community and you know I recognize that there are maybe people listening who are new to this conversation about the LGBTQ plus community and I think it would be good if we could clarify what some of these terms are so could you break it down for us of course and I would also like to um invite you to do a very quick thing with me which one of my idols Sean Delenti who I do fangirl and he um shared this with me in one of his trainings so if you are um somebody who wants to know more about this who wants to support people in your group around inclusion and things, then sing along, say it with me.

Because actually, there are some people that I have seen in spaces who don't even use the words. And if we can't use the words, then we're going to struggle to do anything else. So sing along. Imagine it's one of those Disney things with a bouncing Mickey Mouse head. So L stands for lesbian everybody say it lesbian a lesbian person is someone who identifies as female and is in love with someone or romantically attracted to someone who is female bisexual i think i've explained that is how I identify so somebody who can be attracted to men or and women and um with bisexual there's no there's no rule you don't have to be 50 50

it might you know I know some people who've always always always always dated men and then they they're attracted to one woman there are some some bisexuals who they'll only have relationships with women but then might sleep with men. There's all sorts of variety in this as well. G is for gay, obviously historically meaning happy and it tends to nowadays relate to men who are attracted to men but you can also say gay woman as well. So lesbians, gays, bisexuals. Repeat after me. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals. And then trans. So trans, let's just take this down etymologically. So trans means to change. Think of transport, translocation, which is a term in science I had to teach as a supply teacher one day. That's awful. Felly, mae'n golygu newid. Ystyried transport, lleoliad,

sy'n ddyn o'r cyfnod yn y gwyddon, roeddwn i'n ei ddysgu fel athro cyflog, un dydd, mae hynny'n orfod. Felly, mae'r gwrthymau trans yn newid. Felly, gadewch i ni fynd i mewn i hyn, os nad ydych chi wedi bod yn cyflwyno hyn o'r blaen. Pan fyddwn ni'n dod o'r marn, yn biologaidd, mae'r rhan fwyaf ohonom,

a byddaf am ddod i'r afael â hynny, mae'r rhan fwyaf ohonom yn dod o'r marn gyda'r gwaith ddysgu hwyloedol historically most of us i'm going to get onto that most of us are born with reproductive equipment for either being male or female so somebody who is trans is somebody who changes from that in the way that they experience their life how they feel inside how they identify how society places them so you may think of someone like a trans woman, for example, would be somebody who was born biologically as male and at some point feels, decides, discovers that they are female and they will identify as that as that gender so sex is the biology and gender is the the identification the expression so a trans

man is the opposite of that so we have somebody who was biologically born female and at some point in their lives discovered, explored, identified as being male. Have I said that the right way around? I'm confusing my head now. Yeah, cool. Okay. Then we have people who identify as non-binary. Now to understand this, I'm going to take you back to Mozart. So in Mozart's time, it was in high society, in upper classes, it was the fashion, it was the society's idea that men, it was really good for them to powder their faces, wear wigs and wear tights. Okay, that was the gender expression of a man at that time. Whereas nowadays, we tend to think of those things as being a female attribute, which shows us

that gender, I'm not talking about sex right now, remember sex is biology, gender is on a spectrum, and it is movable. And you may have heard before the idea that gender is a social construct so this is what i'm talking about here we can we can see uh from the you know this is just one example the 1700s in europe there are examples all over the world that the idea of gender and the way that gender is expressed is not a fixed thing. Otherwise, it would be the same across the world, and it would never have changed in history. But we know that's not the case. We know men wear skirts. We know men wear makeup. We know that women play football, even more so. So we can see that gender is a social construct. It's something that we have created ourselves. So going back to non-binary

people, non-binary people do not identify particularly with either of the male or female camps, as it were, that have been set up by society. Maybe they feel in between, maybe they have a male body, but they feel a bit female inside, but they kind of feel that they are a mixture of that. So just to be really clear, gender is not binary. It's on a spectrum. And once you kind of start planting that picture in your head, everything else gets a bit easier to understand. Another way to think of it is perhaps with race. So we have black people, we have white people, but there's not only black and white people. There's people of all different skin colors in between. And this is kind of similar. And we know this ourselves, you know, I'm not, I'm not telling anybody anything new here, but I'm perhaps just framing

it in a slightly different way. We all know men who are slightly effeminate. We all know women who are slightly masculine and anything in between. So queer originally was a term in the English language that was used as a slur, usually at gay men because women were invisible, which again, we noticed the shadow of invisibility in gay women and bisexual women even now but queer was originally used as an insult towards mainly gay men and it was reclaimed I believe the pioneers around the 80s 90s ish started reclaiming that and nowadays it's become very common to be used that somebody's queer and usually what people mean when they say they're queer is that they are somewhere in and

around the LGBTQ, LGBT part of it, okay, so they might identify as gay, they might not really identify as gay, they might identify as bi. And this is where somebody who's not experienced in this kind of lived experience or in this world can get a bit confused and go, oh, there's loads of acronyms and switch off. But actually, let's just think about it a second. We're all very complex creatures. How would it be that we can just tick one box and that's it? And it always stays like that.

And queer gives us that umbrella, essentially, to say, I know that I'm not straight, heterosexual, or I know that I don't quite really identify with the biological sex of me or the gender expression of it that society gives me. So you may remember I've been talking about sex is biology so that's what you're born with and I hope I haven't slipped up on this. I've been really careful to say that we are born female or male. We are not born a man or a woman. Those are adult tuts, okay? Intersex people are people who are born biologically,

absolutely 100% scientifically biologically, by whichever creator you think that may or may not be, with a mixture of reproductive organs and genitalia. And what always amazes me is one in every 1,000 people are born intersex. And as a teacher and as an educator, that means when I'm stood in front of the average secondary school, there's at least one and a half if not two intersex people in front of me in that room when I'm doing that assembly nearly all of us are connected to around a thousand people I'm not saying they're all your best friends you know some of them are social you know virtual people but most of us if we start thinking about who we go to the tennis club with or who's in our menstrual cycles or who we talk to online

most of us are connected to around a thousand people which means statistically you know an intersex person or a person who was born intersex currently in britain the law allows the doctor and or the parents of the baby to perform an invasive operation at the child's birth to force a binary onto the sex of that child. So this is the law in Britain at the moment, and it's something that the intersex community are bringing awareness about and fighting for. Because what we are doing is we are taking a small baby, we're putting them through a dangerous operation in order to make them that binary that I was talking about before, male or female. And a lot of those people don't even know that they are intersex until they get to their teenagehood years when puberty starts. And what's even more incredible is that a lot of people who are trans, who identify as trans, quite a few of them, you know, one in every thousand, will discover that actually they were

born intersex. Which, for me, just says that the biology that we are born with is so intertwined with whatever you want to call it, our identity, our spirit, our soul, whatever it is. And so LGBTQI is another thing you might see. And then the queer section is an overall umbrella term. And originally queer was used as a slur usually towards gay men um in Europe and then it was reclaimed I think around the 80s from the pioneers of that time it was reclaimed and it's now something that's used a lot and usually it's a general umbrella term if somebody does not identify as um straight heterosexual or if they don't identify as cis. So cis being what I am,

I was born biologically female, I identify as female, I identify with my biological sex, I am a cis woman, whereas some people are trans women. And there's a latin root to that oh go on go on basically that trans and cis are yeah cis because trans is latin for movement whereas cis means on the same side so that's where because some people hear cisgender and they go what does that mean what do you mean i'm cisgender that means it's on you're on the same side as you're assigned at birth whereas trans is there's movement thank you I knew the trans I didn't know this is thank you so I've learned something I just thought there's another one um there's a asexual um which is somebody who um does not uh this again there's variety within this um so i want to make sure i i do this as as much justice as i can as as i understand it's somebody who does not necessarily have sexual

feelings or needs to be with anybody sexually and sometimes that's romantically as well as a romantic so a romantic would be somebody who doesn't feel the need to's romantically as well so aromantic so aromantic would be somebody who doesn't feel the need to be romantically involved with anyone asexual is somebody who doesn't feel the need to be sexual with anyone again there are varieties within that and I think that brings us to something that I know often it is it's a closing off point for people when they go oh there's too many acronyms. There's too many letters now. I can't do it. Why can't everybody just be normal?

You know, I do hear that. And but let's actually just look at that question. OK, why can't everybody be normal? Why are there too many acronyms? As I experience being human, there are lots of facets to it. there are lots of ways that I can live there are lots of ways that I can express I'm not one person I'm not one thing in every situation and if the language helps me to communicate that with others I'm not sure that that really needs to hinder anything. Does it make me any less normal? To me normal is just we all have our own ideas of normal so what's normal in my head is going

to be different to what Norman Soap said and then this idea that normal is anything outside of me that I can impose my normal on anybody else well that's just absurd surely I think what you're pointing to about the nuances and the complexities that exist within well all aspects of our human experience and especially gender and sex and sexuality I'm thinking of a resource that I'd like to point people to which is a recent podcast by Glennon Doyle she has a podcast called we can do hard things and it's called queer freedom and she speaks really beautifully to a question that she received when she was at a speaking event recently,

which was an elderly woman who said, you know, my niece is now my nephew. And my my other niece has just come out as as gay, as a lesbian. She said, why is everyone so gay all of a sudden? And the whole room just went, you know she said the thing that and um and glennon's response is really funny so it's really worth listening to for that but she speaks to how we try and put um put something as complex and beautiful and vast and interesting as our sexuality as who we are in our essence in these boxes and what we're seeing now with all the letters is that these boxes are too small and that there's something more actually more interesting and complex happening I'll drop it in the show notes definitely do and I think also it's

like trans people have already always existed gay people have always existed and Shakespeare was bisexual how many people learned that at school you know um and it it can feel like it's all of a sudden happened in the last 10 to 20 years if you are not part of that world but actually we've always existed and in different points in different points of history have we been safe, allowed, welcomed, to be included. And so nothing new is happening here. And I think it's also very interesting to note, for example, in Native America, I know that traditionally they had five genders and it wasn't until the white Europeans went over and invaded that that was no longer allowed and we enforced our binary our social construct of gender and sexuality on the Native Americans who had five and we only had two and so suddenly that was no longer allowed

obviously there were lots of other things we suppressed as well and that was one of them I also know that in Africa in some of the communities and tribes there that gender and sexuality traditionally was a lot more fluid until again the white western people went over colonized and obviously we enforced a religion upon them um and and also these things so these things have always been there is what i'm saying like we we found poetry and evidence and all sorts in the ancient greeks and in all walks of life across the globe there is evidence of what we now call trans people gay people lesbian people queer people but at different points of history whoever is ruling at the time has decided whether that is going to be one of the things we accept or not and i think if you

are listening as a cis woman you might recognize this story that in different parts of history, the feminine, the power of the woman has been revered in some cultures and religions, and in some completely suppressed. It's exactly the same pattern. And I think also, I remember when I first told my parents that I'd fallen in love with a woman. And one of the questions that my parents had was around but hang on it's not in the animal kingdom so it's it's not you know it's like a human thing again that's absolutely rubbish um to paraphrase a quote from the brilliant Stephen Fry please go and find the original um but I heard him speak once and he said, look, there are hundreds of species in which homosexual activity is evident. And there's only one species in which homophobia is present.

Guess which species that is. And so I then researched this. And it turned out that in that Victorian time, I'm talking in the West, yn ystod y dydd Fictoriaidd, rwy'n siarad yn y Lles, pan oedd y gwyddonwyr a'r ysbrydolwyr yn mynd allan i ystyried y gwartheg, chi'n gwybod, yn eu gategorio, o, edrych, beth rydyn ni'n ei wneud eto, yn rhoi pethau i mewn categoriaethau, gweld y ffattrwydd, ond pan oeddent yn gwneud llawer o'r ymchwil a'r gwyddonwyr sydd wedi taught us a lot and really evolved our scientific discoveries, those scientists did see animals that were fluid with their gender, that had sex with both sexes, all this kind of stuff. And of course, though, who was funding those scientists to be out there? Somebody was funding them. Somebody had the power to say say don't include that bit in your research and so we get to the present day when we think that the animal kingdom is built up of heterosexual

couples and it's really really not and I'm really it kind of makes me laugh at just how many stories I hear now about the latest one I heard you know when giraffes do that thing with their necks and apparently they're fighting two male giraffes so for those of you who are listening Adele's got two fingers and she's sort of like curling them around each other so this is something that you have to imagine that giraffes do with their necks yeah yeah giraffes do the next and it's always been assumed that that was males fighting. And I have read very recently that scientists have discovered that actually it's more likely to be foreplay. And that there are a very high number of male giraffes who partner with other males and they have sex with other males and then what they do is maybe once or twice in their lifetime they'll impregnate a woman so that that bit's done and the rest of the time they are with their male partner and they are doing their male foreplay with their necks

so again it's it's something that up until recently we have imposed our gender social construct onto the animal world we have seen it through our own eyes which of course you know that's that's part of the human condition i believe um but what what i'm coming back down to here is when when people are concerned if something's not natural or as if it's new and there's too many new things and like the lady um with glennon said you know why is everybody going now? It's not that it's always been there. It's just that, thankfully, it's becoming a bit safer for some LGBTQ people to be talking about it. Thank you. Can we look now at what menstruality might feel like for some of the people that we're talking about on this spectrum for example what could it be like for a trans man who's menstruating okay so just to recap a trans man

is somebody who was born biologically female and identifies as male or has discovered or etc. So first of all to unpick that we really have to think of the different permeations of what a trans man might be and this is okay we can do this lots of people call themselves mum or mother and there's all different permeations of what mum and mother are so we can do the same for trans men. Some trans men may dress as men, they may identify as men, they may have taken a man's name, a traditional kind of man's name and they may you know walk in life as what we identify as a man. That might be it. Biologically, they may well still be female, and therefore will be menstruated. There are other trans men who may take hormone replacement therapy, so that is often testosterone. So that will alter things in the body, of course, in that hormonal way.

For some, that may affect their menstrual cycles. For some, it may not. And so trans men can get pregnant if they are still ovulating. And then kind of going further along, some trans men may decide to have what they call top surgery, which is to remove the breast tissue. And some trans men may decide to have other surgery with their genitalia as well. So we've got, you know, within that, we've got a whole range of different experiences of what it might be like to live in the world as a trans man and i think the bit that would be useful for people holding menstruality groups to know is that trans men some of them can menstruate and so this is where perhaps you may have heard the term menstruators or menstruating people

as opposed to women which makes complete sense because we have somebody who is male, identifies as male, and yet they may still be ovulating, they may still be having the cycles that we recognize. And now let's think of the support or the education or the knowledge that is available to these people. So if I want to know about menstrual cycle awareness, I go to something like Red School or a Red Tent or a menstrual Red Doodah. And the vast majority, in fact, I haven't found one that excludes it yet, is a very feminine space. And understandably, of course, the majority of people who menstruate are women. And it makes sense that that space would become a very female space. And yet,

I, as Sophie said in the introduction, I am a teacher by trade and I support young people and I have had several young people come out to me as trans. And when that teenager has been born biologically female and they are a teenager and they have discovered or exploring their gender and they identify as male. I feel it is my duty as an educator, particularly as a menstruator educator, to be able to support this young person with their menstrual cycle. And the way they identify with their gender is actually irrelevant

because they are still menstruating and they still deserve the education that a cis woman would or a cis teenager and even let's think about this even wider than that surely if you're listening to this I hope you share the belief that I do that mental mental cycle awareness has the power to positively impact the world the more people who know about it the better so if we've got somebody who's menstruating, it doesn't matter what shape they are, what their name is, where they live. If we can support menstrual cycle awareness more, we know that it does good in the world. So if you're struggling to get on board with any of the

LGBT area, if that is putting you off, if that's still something that you need to spend time with, fine. Think about it this way. The more people who are supported with menstrual cycle awareness, the more good we can do with that. So that's the trans-male experience within menstruality. And I think, as we understand right now, you know, I've said I'm a trans ally I'm not saying I'm an expert on this and I think the space if you are ready for it if you're listening to this and you're like okay I'm on board with this I've got this what can I do next let's start looking at how we can make these spaces safer for trans men how can we make them more inclusive? And of course, how can we also be having a space for our cis women? Some of whom may have challenges with men,

may find it uncomfortable to have a man in their space. So we do have a balance here. And there isn't, of course, there isn't a solid solution. Because if there was, we wouldn't be having the conversation. But let's start exploring. Let's start welcoming's start asking let's start including let's start even hands up daring to get it wrong i'm i knew obviously i was going to be interviewed by soap today and you know i've had to prepare in my head that i could definitely say something today that somebody rings in and goes ring me in that's very 90s isn't it emails in messages in whatsapps in and says she was really

out of order she shouldn't have said that and it might be that I have to apologize for stuff because I haven't got it right either but what we're doing is we're starting the conversation we're having that that conversation and I think particularly for trans men they are very isolated in the menstruality experience from the research I've done Sophie I'm wondering if there's anything you've come across from the research I've done there's so little material for trans men to learn about their menstruality and as a cis woman I know how much it's helped my life to know about menstruality how many questions it's answered how much support it's given me and now I'm trying to imagine looking for that support whilst identifying as male and the prejudice and the judgment the barriers that are going to stop me

getting to menstrual cycle awareness. There's a brilliant group which one of our leadership mentors abby denya buick shared with me they're called bleeding thunder they're a gender queer menstruation menstruality support community and they offer support circles so if there are any trans men listening who are looking for support bleeding thunder could be a really powerful resource. They have a great Instagram account. And if there's a coach or someone listening who's working with trans men and is looking for a resource, they're also a really good place to send someone. I'll link to them in the show notes. Brilliant, thank you. And also, if you are approached by somebody who wants to be a part of your community,

wants to be a part of your space, who is a trans man, and you kind of go, ah, I don't know. I've never been one. I don't think I know anyone. By the way, statistically, you do. You just don't know it. Then it is totally okay to say, yes, I want to welcome you into my space. And I don't know if I'm equipped to do it if you are able to give me feedback I'm willing to be open I'm willing to learn that's okay too okay so most of the trans community

realize they're in a minority and that not yet our space is designed for them to always be inclusive but openness and honesty of like I'm going to do my best please feel free to give me feedback is a really is a really useful place to start um and actually a much more healthy place to start than um yes and then panic you know even for yourself you're learning too we're learning um as will as will everybody be okay let's look at what an experience of menstruality might be like for a trans woman okay so to recap a trans woman is someone who is born biologically fel dyn a byddwn yn ei ddysgu fel femail nawr. Ac i ddod i'r cyntaf, mae transwomain, yn enwedig transwomau gwledig, yn y demograffiaeth o bobl sy'n profi'r mwyaf o ddysgu amddiffynol,

ddysgu yn wyro, a chymryd. Mae llawer o ystadegau ar hynny. violent abuse, murder. There are lots of statistics on that if you are the kind of person who needs numbers please go and look it up. I can bring some stats in there Adele. One survey I found from 2015 said that one in 10 trans women had been physically attacked in the last year and 50% had been verbally attacked. So just to give a wider context that being a trans woman in itself makes you very very vulnerable and puts you in danger. Now not to say that you can't have a positive experience as a trans woman. I know trans women who have very full, very wonderful lives.

And they have to always, even more so, be thinking, am I safe? Am I safe? So a trans woman, if we bring it to menstruality, is a woman who biologically will not be bleeding. And this is a question that some menstruating educators ask about, and some people find it a bit challenging. But what we can do is think that's not special. We have many women in our circles who are not biologically bleeding. Women who have been through in our circles who are not biologically bleeding women who have been through the menopause are not biologically bleeding women who have just had a child are not bleeding um i know as well that sophie please correct me if i'm wrong but if we're on the pill the contraceptive pill that the bleed we're having is not even a true bleed it's not a true cycle is that correct yeah yeah that's true and i mean i know a friend of mine who were on the contraceptive pill and didn't have a bleed for 10 years that is not a reason for me to not invite my friend into that

menstruality space and so the idea or the thing that sometimes trips us up of like, oh, but they're not having a biological bleed. Well, that's not new. That's not about trans women. That's about lots of women. And again, if we believe that menstrual cycle awareness has the power to make a positive social impact in this world, the more people we can support with it, the more people who know about it, the better. So in general, again, similar to trans men, there's a whole spectrum of biologically what a trans woman may look and be like biologically. They may have had some operations, they may be taking some hormones, they may not have. Again, this is completely individual. But more than likely, they identify as a woman because there's something about the feminine experience or the place of women within that society that they identify with, that they feel is them. And a lot of trans women are

on hormones that give them a cycle. In fact, there was a man that I know who, a cis man, who had to have this cycle because of, of cancer that he had and the hormones that they were giving him created the estrogen cycle and so he started practicing menstrual cycle awareness not because he felt like a woman not because that was his thing but because of the treatment he was having for cancer was giving him the cycle that we would recognize as the menstrual cycle so once again when we're thinking about who do we allow into our space, if somebody identifies with being related to the menstrual cycle in some way, how about we support them? And knowing particularly with trans women that they

are coming from that statistical place of the people who are the most likely to be experiencing negativity from society to a very very high extreme and so then when we welcome them into our spaces it can be challenging and again we've got this mixture of there may be some other people in the circle who have challenges with that um who maybe incorrectly um understand what a trans woman is um who may expect the trans woman to do all the explaining or they may say to the trans woman oh you don't really have a bleed you know you've got to justify your experience now we would not say that to a woman who's just had given birth oh you're not bleeding you need to justify why you're in this circle we wouldn't say that and so it's again there's no right or wrong and I can't tell

you here's the formula to um including trans women in our experience whilst everybody else being happy I can't I can't offer you that formula but what I can offer you is a starting point of how to make spaces inclusive. Again, we're talking about our language. We're talking about the way that we don't assume that everybody's had the same lived experience. Statistically, you know a trans woman, even if you don't think you do. Statistically you know trans people. Some trans people are what they call passable. Okay, for some trans people this is important, for some it's not. Passable means that that trans woman you wouldn't know that they're trans. If you met them you'd

just think they were a cis woman. So what I'm saying by that is there's nothing scary here. Yes it's different but we are all different and there's lots of different ways we're different with our menstrual cycles so the more we can include them in our spaces then the more positive impact we can have there's a great resource here that I want to suggest which is a documentary which was produced by Laverne Cox who's an amazing trans activist who has an incredible podcast as well it's called Disclosure I'll drop the link in the show notes and to Laverne Cox's podcast which is very inspiring and informative okay let's move now to talk about the lesbian experience of

menstruality how could someone's cycle experience their experience of menstruality be different if they are a lesbian this is a really good question i had this question recently um well why is a lesbian's menstrual cycle experience different from a straight woman's um so as far as i know there's nothing biologically different about a lesbian's womb compared to a straight woman's womb. And yet we know as menstrual practices that the social context of how we are placed in the world, how society treats us, affects our menstrual cycle. We know that. We know that issues around historical trauma, issues around historical abuse come up in certain times of our cycle. If you are in Western Europe, Eastern Europe is still different, if you're in Western

Europe, it could be thought that being lesbian or bisexual, or being in the same sex relationship with another woman, is like more or less equal now. Yeah, we've got equal marriage, so that's fine. I have to tell you, as someone who's lived on both sides of being straight and in the LGBT community, it's not. Only, I'm going to say last year, it may not have been last year, it's COVID, who knows when it was, but in my recent history of my mind, myself and my partner were verbally and physically attacked for walking down the street. We were in London. We were surrounded by people and nobody stepped in.

When you get these messages from society all the time, that there might be something wrong with you, or there's something bad about you, guess what kind of things come up when you're going around your menstrual cycle? And then we go to other places, and historically as well in Britain, but other places even to this day, where being a gay woman or lesbian or bi is dangerous. There are some countries today, I think it's 11, where being gay means you get the death penalty. If somebody finds out I'm bisexual and the risk is the death penalty, I am highly unlikely to go for that checkup in my vagina. There are also countries that regularly use, and I'm not just saying countries, I'm using this as a war weapon, corrective rape. Lesbians and disocial people, in some contexts, are raped because it is believed, raped by a man, it is believed that this will correct them into being

straight. It also happens through some conversion therapy camps and some religious places. This has only just become illegal in the UK. And so if you are speaking to anybody who is older than like 16 now, who's lesbian or bi their experience of their place in society the safety of whether to get um reproductive um health care it can't be taken for granted and so what happens even today the the the smallest hang on let me get this right the smallest percentage of people who go to their smear test is lesbians even today because of this history of it and then we talk i'm going to go uk-centric now but um up until the 90s there was Section 28 in schools. Section 28 was created by Margaret Thatcher, which made it illegal to talk about LGBTQ anything. It was classless promotion.

This is very similar to the law that is in Russia right now. We look over there and think, oh, horrific. But actually, it wasn't long ago that it was here. In my lifetime, I did not get any sex education about LGBT awareness. Did you? Unless you are probably, I don't know, oldest, 21, 22, you probably didn't either. So again, what does that say about the value of your womb compared to the value of my womb? What I learned at school was that wombs were all about reproduction and therefore all about men and

all about babies and that is the paramount so I wasn't gay then but if I'm sitting there as a lesbian or a bisexual girl thinking well then what's my womb worth oh I don't need to bother with it i don't need to bother about caring for it there's nothing to do with me here again and again and again so you can kind of see by the time that an adult now will come to your menstruality space the barriers of them getting there are going to be much greater and then on top of that we have this um other issue which is very complex, I'm just going to touch on it a little bit. So a lot, not all, but a lot of lesbian women do identify as more masculine. So I'm thinking about my partner, my partner, I think she looks

like Peter Pan. She's, she identifies very much as the masculine side of the spectrum, right? She's a woman, and yet she identifies quite masculine. She would never in a million years come to one of my menstrual talks, ever. She thinks we sit there rubbing vagina cushions all the time and singing. And I know we do that sometimes, but we don't do it all the time, do we? But what I'm saying from that is, if you identify as someone who's quite masculine, and again, you can see how this tips now into the spectrum of trans men as well, you do not feel welcomed in a feminine space.

You do not feel welcomed into that space of women talking about very, very female women's things. And again, we have this pocket of people who are then missed out in the menstrual cycle education which is the same reason why a high percentage of lesbians don't go for their smear so biologically not that I know of are women's lesbians and bisexual women's wombs any different but again the social context and the danger factor, the safety factor, the welcoming factor, the discrimination factor is completely, completely different. Again, I cannot assume when I come into a menstrual space that I am welcomed, unless there's some kind of thing that lets me know that I am. From a personal personal level what I end up doing is becoming the teacher and okay I am a

teacher that's allowed but hang on a minute my menstrual space is also for me I need to drink from that well as well and I can't always be in teacher mode yeah yeah we hinted at this earlier when we expect people to educate us there's actually a lot going on there there's a lot of privilege there's an abuse of power really and there's emotional labor that we're asking someone to do on our behalf and that's one reason why we did this interview created this podcast and we've covered so much ground which has been amazing so that people can use this as a resource. So for people who want to step forward as LGBTQ plus allies would you be able to share maybe three actions that people could take to become stronger allies for the people in the LGBTQ

plus communities? So the first thing I always advise with people who are working with me around this level of inclusion is to check where your stories are coming from. Where are you being influenced and by whom? So check your social media links, check your friends, check which films you're watching, which books you're reading. Wherever you get input of stories, of experience, of lives, have a look. I dare you. I double dare you now. Get your phone out. Check who you're following on Facebook. How many of those people have a different experience to you. So if we're particularly talking about the LGBTQ community, how many LGBTQ menstruators are you following? If we're talking about films, how many films do you watch where the narrative,

the main story, not just the token gay best friend, but the main story is about somebody from a different community to you and you can do this for you know whatever minority um but I'm going to try and focus on LGBTQ right now so that would be my first tip where are you getting your stories from and I know that Sophie who is a fantastic ally has been collecting lots of resources and things. I'm sure they'll be on the show notes. There's a really good place to start. And then start following those people on Instagram, following those people on Twitter, et cetera. So that just daily, drip by drip, you are starting to get, oh, this is what life could be like from a different lens, from a different lived experience to mine. That is the first thing.

The second thing is to invite, if you are able, to start having conversations. Now this is, it is tricky because some people really don't want to talk about it, right? So it's not a coincidence that I'm here talking and my partner's not. She can't be bothered with any of it. She doesn't want to talk to anyone about it. She just wants to get on with her life.

And she has the right to do that. As much as I try to persuade her otherwise. She has the right to do that. But if there are people who you know or people you can contact, and this is why you do your social media thing first or your influence first, you might find someone, they've written an article go and read that article start having the conversation start trying to find where your holes are and start trying to fill them up so you might have sat through all this going hang on I want to know more about trans women you know we give a very very

brief introduction go and talk to some trans women. There are organisations out there who specifically want to talk to you too. It may be that you have a friend who's very close and maybe who's non-binary, how about you just start up the menstruality conversation? You know, there's kind of two ways around that. And it is always just checking, you know, is this okay with you? Is this something you want to talk about? A brilliant example of this actually recently was particularly around the Black Lives Matter movement. I know a colleague of mine was talking to her colleague of colour, and that colleague of colour actually just turned around to her and said, you know what, I'm loving it that you want to learn. But I can't be that person right now, because everybody's

asking me. Please go and talk to your white friends. Please talk to your white friends who work around inclusion and then come back to me. So people are allowed to say that to you, but if you can start having those conversations and look for those organisations, those advocates, I mean, like you mentioned, the phone calls. And then I would say the third thing to do is to start making a change in the way that you work and find support to do that. So it might be that someone does an audit of your website or your services or your copy or your I'm thinking particularly of people who are holding groups um and and looks for your blind spots we've all got blind spots and we can't spot our own blind spots that's the whole point yeah um so look at how you can make small um changes into making your um practice and your um your communication with with different people

as welcoming and as safe as possible. So that if you are feeling that you want to have this naturality conversation on a wider scale, not just in your bubble of people who think and look like you, but you want to bring other people in, then you can start very,

you know, it doesn't have to be anything massive straight away. It can be quite small. I know that I've worked with Red School quite a lot. They get emails from me often saying, check this language, check this inclusivity bit. You're missing these people out and starting to make those changes. And you can work with people to do that. And there are also guides out there and kind of inclusion toolkits and audits and all sorts you

can do for that yeah I'll drop a couple in the show notes Adele can you talk about your offer for our community yes I will so it's interesting you'll notice in my introduction this isn't my day job okay so I'm a behavioural education specialist so i uh in general i'm working around inclusion um around young people and young people excluded from schools um however with the red school community within the menstrual community i have several times now been brought in to work around this area because as i as i talked about earlier there seems like there's such a small amount of people right now talking about this and able to have this conversation so what I offer to the Red School community is a one-to-one session in which we do what I was talking about we look through your

resources we look through your course content or your website so you know you choose which area and we have a one-to-one session in which we unpick that and it could be that there are things there are specific questions you need to ask yourself that actually you're not sure about actually hands up you've got prejudice about or um you're scared about so we can have those conversations in a one-to-one way and then work out how we then um bring that and incorporate that into your practice with menstruality and then how we communicate it to others as well so those are one-to-one sessions i'm sure soph will add the link in as i said they are only for people within the Red School community. This is not my day job. So you will be taken to a page that says one-to-one behaviour session, okay, because usually these sessions are for me supporting school leaders with behaviour and inclusion. But this is menstruality and inclusion, and I love it.

Thank you so much, Adele. You've shared so generously today. We've covered an amazing amount of ground. It's been really illuminating. It's been really fascinating. I've learned a lot. I hope everyone listening has learned a lot. I really appreciate the vitality that you bring. I know you've had these conversations a lot and you're so full of life. I deeply appreciate you. Is there anything you'd like to share in closing as a kind of distillation or a golden nugget from the conversation today? It's that point that if you are feeling scared or tight about this area of menstruality education or unsure how to approach, just go back to that topic that I've brought up a couple of times. What do we really want from menstrual cycle awareness? And if it is that more people know about it so that more people can benefit from it, then this work is worth doing because it enables the message to go wider

thank you so much for being with us today and listening to the menstruality podcast from red school please subscribe and follow wherever you listen to podcasts and it'll really help us to reach more people if you could leave us a review. And if you'd like to explore how to activate your unique form of leadership through menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause you can visit menstrualityleadership.com. All right see you next week and until then keep living life by your own brilliant rhythm.