Christmas break 2021, I travelled back to Ireland full of gusto, ready to answer the question ‘What is your PhD about?’ with confidence and clarity. Emboldened by my bumbling and scrambling for an explanation the year before (Christmas break 2020) when the question made me anxious, ‘Periods. Sociology. Scotland’s free period products. Behaviour during our period. Inequality!’ I would exclaim in a panic to answer the question, listing buzzwords while exposing my internal confusion.
Three days before we drove back to Scotland, I sat in my aunt’s house, with her, her husband, their three children and my partner. As we were catching up on the year since we’d seen each other last, my aunt asked: ‘What will you be researching?’. I took a breath and thought ‘go on, you said you wouldn’t shy away from proclaiming your research to anyone’, and in the same breath I recalled talking to my aunt about my work on menstruation a few years previous, which had been met with confusion but mostly understanding. Yet in my response, I stumbled, I faltered, my answer concealed my research topic. Immediately I was disappointed with myself, instead of proclaiming my research on periods, I made it small. As we drove away, my partner mentioned that he hadn’t heard me cover over my research so strangely in a long time – I agreed and for a moment, out of sheer frustration at my failure, I cried. Why had I silenced myself?
Back home in Scotland, I reflected, what had made me say that, why did I feel the need to skirt around my research, who was I avoiding being honest with? I thought ‘at least last year the word period was on repeat, albeit incoherently’. I asked myself why in this one situation did I fail, what made this setting different to the rest? I thought through who was there, my aunt, her husband, their 16-year-old daughter, their 13- and 11-year-old sons, and my partner. I imagined one by one answering the question honestly, proudly. Through this exercise, I realised the who and why: my 16-year-old cousin.
As I thought this through, I positioned my failed answer as avoiding two things, it didn’t dredge up a topic that would make her uncomfortable and by avoiding her discomfort didn’t expose her as a person who has a period. I sat with this thought and asked the same questions again – why, what and who. I realised that in the mental re-enactment of my failure, what was really, honestly, happening. At that moment, sitting with my family, during the breath I had taken before answering ‘What will you be researching?’ my 16-year-old self, projected onto my cousin, anxiously urging for discretion said, ‘Don’t bring THAT up’.
This realisation around my perceived failure, taught me the value of reflection, of sitting in discomfort and asking questions, thinking critically about my own assumptions. But, more importantly, it reminded me of my younger self, the outwardly harsh, internally vulnerable teenager who would have felt exposed if without warning periods were being discussed around the table with my extended family.
So, my failure to be honest, to take up space, to proclaim the importance of removing periods from the shadows, has been an affective experience. As I begin data collection it has reminded me of the previous versions of myself, reminded me that we (mis)remember generously or without generosity at all. It reminded me of my confusion, my want to be independent to be capable of managing my body yet feeling utterly lost as to what to do with independence. At this stage of my research, I continually ask myself, how are my experiences shaping my research, how has my experience brought me to this research? My failure to answer ‘what will you be researching’ has helped to situate my past and present self in the answer to these questions.
Kate Molyneaux is a PhD researcher in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde. Her current research focuses on menstrual experiences in Scotland.
The Postgraduate Gender Research Network of Scotland 