Queering Menstruation and Research in General

The literature surrounding the intersection of WaSH and menstruation in Africa follows a backward and harmful mainstream discourse, driven in many ways by the marketing of menstrual products and the broader healthcare arena that fails to recognise that not all people who menstruate are women and not all women menstruate. I see critiquing the cisgendering of menstruation as extremely important and a reflection of feminist research paradigms and of Binyavanga Wainaina's call to represent the spectrum of people that exist in Africa (highlighted this in my first blog) (Frank, 2020). Menarche can be an alarming time for transgender adolescents, and to ignore their experience anywhere in the world is hardly in keeping with the humanitarian inclination that development is supposed to have (though I realise this has not been a reality in many cases). 

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When referring to menstruation, in the development landscape or otherwise, research cannot hope to be valid or related to a real world problem if it continues to only refer to women and girls. Undoubtedly, much of this is born out of a faulty ontology that equates being cisgender with being natural. However, if the narrative is to change we must all begin to speak, write and research in ways that reflect out reality, one in which people menstruate, not just women and girls. 

If the academy considers itself a leader in thought and knowledge it has a responsibility to make sure that said knowledge is reflective of the world we live in. I use menstruation here as an example but we must recognise that research has the ability to inform popular discourses and policy decisions on many topics. As inclusion, queering and decolonisation movements begin to (very slowly) gather momentum in the academy we must make a concerted effort to interrogate the ways that the pedagogies and epistemologies we continue to use have long foregrounded the knowledge of a select group of people in our society. More importantly still, blindly holding onto ideas that only women and girls menstruate excludes and impinges on trans men and non-binary people. Queering menstruation research is just a part of making sure that our research reflects our world, but more importantly, it is a part of making sure that all who inhabit it feel valued and included.