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Menstruation and the academy

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a reader raised the following query:

Something that I haven't seen a discussion of, which is women's menstruation and its symptoms. I wonder if it is the case that I am one of the few left in academia who are still bothered by them, so few that there is so little discussion on it. My menstruation is not super regular, and when it comes I will feel super fatigue (my energy and sharpness visibly drop). This can be inconvenient because many important occasions can fall into those periods, including job talks. And I never brings this up in any occasion because it doesn't seem to be a thing to bring up. So I want to ask if anyone else has this experience and handles this with grace.

P.S. I tried birth control pills that allegedly can stop menstruation. But what happened to me is that I bleed for three months straight (and still am).

Another reader heartily seconded this request for a thread on this. Do any readers have any helpful tips to share?

Posted in

13 responses to “Menstruation and the academy”

  1. graduate student

    This was a concern for me before I started graduate school, as I had a hard time leaving the house during my heavy cycle, and PMS was so severe it changed my entire personality. However, I did get on birth control that has helped the problems quite a lot. I cannot use birth control to skip periods (I will just bleed a lot unpredictably), so I do pills with a 28-day cycle. It has at least reduced symptoms so that I can function. Sometimes trying out different birth control methods can help to find one that works for you.
    But sometimes things are just really hard when you are menstruating (or going through perimenopause/menopause). There aren’t good solutions that work for everyone. I think giving yourself grace and realizing you are not alone is helpful.

    Reply
  2. Anon

    This is a very important question that is not discussed enough. I suffer from endometriosis, which causes incredible, searing pain that becomes completely debilitating for 3-5 days each month. The only way I had of dealing with this is to plan my work around my cycle, knowing that I would be out of commission for several days each month. Somehow I made it through grad school and landed a job dealing with this persistent issue.
    Society at large conditions women to hide their menstruation from others. (Clare Chambers has a great chapter on this in her new book Intact…she calls the way women hide their menstruation from others “Shametenance”). This issue is heightened in philosophy departments because there are so few women in the discipline. The assumption is that everyone is able bodied and capable of carrying out tasks evenly. This is clearly false. I think issues of women’s health and disability in general need to be taken seriously by the academy and incorporated into education and hiring practices.
    Unfortunately, I don’t have any good advice for you. Hopefully you can find a birth control pill that can help to manage symptoms. I am looking at major surgery to resolve my issues.

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  3. hormone monstress

    First of all, it might still be worth searching out medical interventions. I know some people who discovered it wasn’t so much their menstrual cycle as a B12 deficiency (I think it’s a form of anemia?). Sometimes it is difficult to get doctors to listen to you about “women’s mysteries,” and in a lot of other ways “go to the doctor” is easier said than done. But it may something worth persisting with.
    Second, graduate student is right that sometimes you’re just going to be tired and stupid. Do what you can when you can. I think it doesn’t really matter if you’re at a conference and fail to sparkle. You still have the CV line. The job talk is a tough situation, but again, I think we kind of just have to do what we can. Plus, in my experience, job talks don’t really alter the existing ranking that much. A lackluster job talk from someone who is also kind of a jerk to the department admins – that alters the ranking.
    Third, I have often wondered how people with migraines (but without menstrual cycles) do it. Would any of them care to weigh in? I’ve had at least one colleague with migraine, who hadn’t figured out a good treatment, and they were very successful, I think by just figuring out a cyclical way of working and identifying triggers. Obviously if the trigger is your hormones, you can’t do so much, but maybe there are other insights available.
    Fourth, something that helps me is figuring out what minimal work I can do that means I still make progress. This might be writing for 30 minutes or 300 words – especially if it’s new work, it doesn’t matter if the words are good.
    Finally, as someone who has twice bled through her clothes MINUTES before class began, I want to express solidarity. I recommend keeping a change of underwear and pads or cups in your office and perhaps cultivating a reputation for dropping your water bottle on yourself. Fresh menstrual blood is relatively easy to get out.

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  4. menstruating man

    As a (trans) man who used to menstruate, I sympathize with the OP. Finding a way to navigate menstruation while using men’s restrooms added a layer of complexity to my personal situation.
    I have tried to normalize mention of and consideration for periods, for the sake of colleagues and students who have to navigate it, since it is a regular health issue that half of the human population deals with regularly.
    Students who have periods may need to be absent from class but not have a medical excuse or want to tell their professor why. Bathroom breaks should be built into job interviews for this reason as well–it shouldn’t be up to the candidate to ensure they can attend to these needs. And it wouldn’t hurt to have menstrual supplies available in all bathrooms–not only for trans men who have periods, but also for any man who might want to get some supplies to help a friend or colleague.

    Reply
  5. Periods

    I think that it’s important to treat this as a social issue and a social justice issue. This means: those of us who menstruate and are in positions of power should talk about it, both just to normalize talking about it and also to talk about how hard it is. And those of us who don’t menstruate should especially talk about it! The shame culture about it makes people act like it’s an individualistic personal problem. And sexism and misogyny have made so little medical research attention. Of course this doesn’t help anyone’s problems in the short term but it’s very wrong that this is something we are supposed to suffer in silence as much as possible.

    Reply
  6. Root problems

    I don’t have this menstrual issue, but have had similar symptoms that affected my cycle, which were ultimately determined to be gastro problems (candida, leaky gut, SIBO, etc). An OB recommended birth control nonetheless since my period was irregular, which made everything worse. Each specialist I saw (and they were legion) recommended their specialty’s standard pills. But there were root problems none were addressing. I know women who have had issues like yours and have found relief through alternative medicines. So, if you feel you’ve exhausted all conventional options, I would encourage you to visit a naturopath. I would also stress that it’s important to do your own research into alternative explanations, so that you’re prepared to ferret out the quacks. My best results have been from places that have both conventional and naturopathic doctors/nurse practitioners on staff–I think partly because these groups appreciate that there is wisdom in both conventional and alternative medicines.

    Reply
  7. root problems

    Ps. I just saw hormone monstress’ request for people with migraines to weigh in. I had these, very severely, and continue to struggle with brain fog and duller but constant headaches. This has been going on for 15 years. All the while, I have been doing philosophy. These cognitive issues don’t prevent me from working full stop, but they do make everything move slower for me. So, to get by I have learned that I need to plan accordingly. I rely on memory aids a lot because my once stellar recall is shot. I also organize my life fairly minutely, setting daily, weekly, semestered, and yearly goals for what I think I can reasonably accomplish if I work slowly but steadily. I think this has been successful for me (by which I mean that I have remained productive in research and successful on the market) partly because organization makes me have less to think about. That is, I have less decision fatigue. It also gives me structure, and through that I feel more comfortable giving myself some grace when I need it.
    Unlike migraines that kind strike at any time and last for varying periods, menstruation is relatively predictable in terms of symptoms, rough duration, etc.–even if its actual timing is irregular. So even though you can’t always guess when an important job talk will take place, you can plan to be more productive during the times when you’re not menstruating to make up for the ground you lose taking it easy during your period.

    Reply
  8. migraine wizard

    I’m glad that horomone monstress mentioned migraines because that is exactly what occurred to me when reading op’s post.
    For me, I’ve structured my work life (most of my life, really) around minimizing triggers. Practically speaking, that means trying to stick to a routine but also prioritizing tasks that I know will be hard/impossible when a migraine sets in. Academic philosophy is really good in this respect because most of the work can be scheduled around your health.
    In my experience, most philosophers try to be accommodating even if they don’t fully “get it”. My guess, then, is that most philosophers would try to accommodate OP and I encourage them to try. For my migraines, I find it helpful to focus on the symptoms I am experiencing and describe them in a matter-of-fact way: “hey, sorry, I need to reschedule this meeting because everything in my visual field has suddenly become blurry.”

    Reply
  9. period period

    Thanks! I find the above comments very helpful. I am also happy to hear experience of those who only experience mild symptoms and those who do not experience it at all (but still menstruate) if there is anything worth sharing.
    (Given my career stage and fields of specialty, pressure of looking smart feels pretty high. Everyone else that I know who have serious PMS or other analogous issues is not in academia…so I am not sure how many who I don’t know survived. The comments helped.)

    Reply
  10. historygrrrl

    Hi! I have garbage periods. It’s been this way forever.
    My solutions are not the ones that anybody wants, but I will share them in the hope that people might start taking the issue more seriously.
    My PMS is not nice. In particular, I begin to feel intense hatred toward all people and things. The only cure for this has been time; I can now recognise when I’m about to bleed, know that the problem is caused by hormones and not actual events, and keep my mouth shut. Exercise helps with the anger if it is bad (though it never helped with the physical issues I list below, even when I was severely underweight).
    Until probably my early 30s, I used to get insanely horrible cramps for about 3 days each month. My momma taught me that if you take 800mg ibuprofen and 1000mg Tylenol at the same time, it will help. So I did that. I’m still alive.
    Once the cramp situation got a bit better, my usual heavy bleeding became, well, even heavier. I got the biggest tampons they make, bled through in an hour, and was on my way to needing new clothes in about 90 minutes. This does not work if you have a 90 minute class, nor does it work if you encounter the usual long queue for the women’s toilet and need to choose between cleaning the mess and being late for your next class. The only thing that solved this issue was switching to a cup – a really big one.
    One easy solution to help heavy bleeders is to incorporate regular – and long enough – toilet breaks into class and conference schedules. When I organise conferences, I absolutely insist on at least 15 if not 20 minutes between sessions – I like to think of it as a kind of toilet justice. People who never had to wait in a long queue while covered in blood do not get this.
    I do not have really good solutions to the PMS and pain problems. Talking about PMS (and the peri fog, for us who are a bit older) would be a good start. For intense pain, accommodations would seem to be in order, just like for any other chronic condition.

    Reply
  11. Prof L

    There are so many chronic issues that people deal with: migraines, IBS symptoms or Crohn’s, heavy or painful periods, pregnancy (especially those early invisible months when women tend to be ill), prolapse, incontinence, menopause, diabetes, chronic pain due to an injury, so many other possibilities, etc. Women deal with these things more than men, but you never really know what people are dealing with.
    Contra ‘periods’, I see no need to normalize talk of periods. There is no need to talk about intimate bodily functions with professional colleagues… frankly, it’s private. I think that we can spare people the gory details and just trust that when people say they are unwell we can take them at their word. I don’t need to know about someone’s chronic diarrhea or heavy bleeding to believe them when they say they need to frequent breaks or may need to step out due to a chronic condition.

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  12. OP

    @Prof L I never meant to suggest telling gory details. The thought is that it seems to me even harder to talk about periods than other chronic conditions. Perhaps I am wrong. If you have migraine for example, at some point of your career you will let your colleague(s) know. But I never have heard about periods from colleagues. Also, in practice, I very rarely say to people “I am unwell” just because of period fatigue. Maybe part of the reason is that I thought many people experienced the same thing and didn’t say anything so I have to just deal with it. And part of the reason is that if I say it often enough people will start to wonder why. (It is not that people don’t believe, but just but). Also, even in my own mind, I don’t categorize it as some chronic condition because for 25 days of a month I am perfectly fine.

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  13. bodies betray us all

    I’m with Prof L. I am a woman and I know of course that bad social forces make painful menstruation hard to talk about, but it’s not clear to me what follows. IBS, Crohns, chronic pain, long covid, colostomy bags, all sorts of things plague our colleagues. As long as folks can get the accommodations they need (and I take us to be a long way from achieving this ideal) it’s not clear to me that menstrual pain deserves a special category in the academy

    Reply

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