Youth agency and conceptualizations of menstruation in English education policy 1928–2020

ABSTRACT Through the method of tracing-and-mapping, this paper traces the history of how menstruation has been conceptualized in English education policies since 1928, as well as how such conceptualizations have positioned young people. It explains how education policy in England has conceptualized menstruation as a (cis girls’) biological process; a controllable problem; and a process that can be instructed on and learned. The paper unfolds how such conceptualizations positioned young people as passive non-agents. It also draws on feminist relational materialism, critical menstruation studies and childhood studies to experiment with different articulations of menstruation and agency. It concludes by reimagining menstruation education and young people’s role in addressing menstrual stigma.


Introduction
In 2017, Amika George was 17 years old when she founded the Free Periods campaign in England which called for free menstrual products in schools and for an end to menstrual stigma (Oppenheim 2020).The government in England responded to such youth activism.In 2020, following the Free Periods campaign, the Department for Education (DfE) made period products freely available to all state-funded schools and provided guidance to teachers about how to 'make products available to learners' (DfE 2020, 1).The policy marked the first time that menstrual products were free for school pupils in England.In 2020 and 2021, the government rolled out new statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in England which mandated teachers to instruct pupils about the biological health aspects of menstruation, and to address the stigma associated with health issues (DfE 2019, 31).The RSHE policy updated the previous Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) policy which was introduced over two decades ago (Department for Education and Employment [DfEE] 2000) and was not compulsory (Pilcher 2005).
The Department for Education has described RSHE and the free period products scheme as 'crucial to tackling' menstrual stigma (DfE 2020, 18).These policies might help to address menstrual stigma by making menstruation more visible in schools.
However, by presenting menstruation as a biological process that can be learned about and 'managed' (DfE 2019, 31) with help from teachers, the policies overlook young people's involvement in action regarding menstruation.
Youth-led campaigns around menstrual stigma and period poverty like Free Periods (Oppenheim 2020) demonstrate young people making a difference in the world.Other examples include young people disrupting menstruation discourses that are common in advertising (Agnew and Sandretto 2016), as well as, conversely, young people sometimes reinforcing gendered stereotypes about menstruation through conversations with peers (Allen, Kaestle, and Goldberg 2011).In this article, I argue that through conceptualizing menstruation as a biological process that teachers can provide products for or instruct pupils about, the RSHE and free period products policies centre adult teachers as agents and position young people as passive non-agents.In doing this, these policies overlook the potential for young people to contribute to education initiatives that aim to address menstrual stigma.Here, and throughout this paper, I use the term young people to refer to under-18-year-old school pupils.
Conceptualizations of menstruation in the RSHE (DfE 2019) and free period products policies (DfE 2020) in England, as well as the DfE's interest in tackling menstrual stigma through such policies, led me to wonder: how did government policy in England arrive at this point?Historically, how has menstruation been conceptualized in English education policies related to RSHE and free period products?How are young people positioned within such conceptualizations?How might different conceptualizations of menstruation in education policy position young people?Could different conceptualizations of menstruation lead to different approaches for addressing menstrual stigma?

Contributing to the literature
This paper addresses such questions by analysing English education policy documents between 1928-2020 that relate to, and include, RSHE and free period product policies.It explains but also raises questions about how young people are positioned within conceptualizations of menstruation in English education policy documents (legislation as well as statutory and non-statutory governmental guidance to teachers).
In doing so, this paper makes a novel contribution.As Pilcher (2005) argues, the history of RSHE in England has been extensively addressed and has drawn attention to how sex education policies have historically centred cis/heteronormative discourses about relationships (Pilcher 2005) and conceptualized children as innocent but sexually corruptible (Weeks 1989).However, such literature appears to overlook the history of how menstruation has been conceptualized in English sex education policies.Furthermore, whilst there is a growing body of literature about the recent history of free menstrual product policies across the globe, such literature centres countries beyond England such as Kenya, India, Senegal, United States (Alhelou et al. 2022), Scotland (Bildhauer, Røstvik, and Vostral 2022) and Uganda (Nyanzi 2020) and focuses on how local activism (Bildhauer, Røstvik, and Vostral 2022;Nyanzi 2020) and media discourses (Alhelou et al. 2022;Nyanzi 2020) have contributed to menstrual product policies emerging, rather than the way such policies conceptualize menstruation and position young people.
My analysis of conceptualizations of menstruation in English education policy documents is inspired by Lenz Taguchi's (2016) method of tracing-and-mapping.Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic theory, this method involves constructing a 'map' through the dual process of tracing-and-mapping.Tracing involves describing concepts, theories, events, or problems, explaining the philosophical assumptions that underpin them and 'deconstructing their dominant meaning constructions' (Aronsson 2020, 278).Mapping involves experimenting with lines of thinking that 'might make a difference' and wondering 'what if' (Aronsson 2020, 278).
I start this paper with a brief description of the tracing-and-mapping process that I followed.I then introduce the policy documents on my map and set out dominant conceptualizations of menstruation in the documents.I then 'trace' the philosophical assumptions that underpin these conceptualizations and explain how such conceptualizations position young people.In doing this, I draw on theories in feminist relational materialism, and particularly the work of Barad (2007), Braidotti (2019;2022) and Murris (2016).
Here, I define feminist relational materialism as theories that recognize an ontological entanglement between the human and non-human, criticize modernist assumptions about a liberal human (adult) subject and invoke a 'relational ethics of care and solidarity' (Braidotti 2022, 182).I also turn to childhood studies scholars, including Prout and James (1990), Spyrou (2019) and Florian (2016), to consider young people's agency in relation to constructions of menstruation in the policy documents.I finish the paper by experimenting with (or mapping) different concepts to reimagine menstruation education and explore how stigma might be addressed in formal schooling.I draw on Barad's (2007) 'intra-action' and Braidotti/Spinoza's 'potentia' (Braidotti 2019) to imagine what menstruation education might be like if education policies positioned agency as relational.I also consider Kissling's (2020, 865) concept of 'menstruation as narrative' and discuss the potential for young people's stories to contribute to challenging menstrual stigma.

My tracing-and-mapping process
My tracing-and-mapping began 'in the middle of things' (Lenz Taguchi 2013, 712) with Jane Pilcher's (2005) article on the history of sex education in England and Bildhauer, Røstvik, and Vostral's (2022) paper on menstrual politics in Scotland.After searching the Web of Science Core Collection and finding no literature specifically on the history of the free period products policy in England or menstruation in English RSHE, I came across Pilcher (2005) and Bildhauer, Røstvik, and Vostral's (2022) papers.I then scoured their reference lists to find further sources.Thus, I used Pilcher (2005) and Bildhauer, Røstvik, and Vostral (2022) as 'a point of departure that opens up for yet other studies and other lines of thinking' (Boden 2021, 3).Pilcher's (2005) paper led me to handbooks on health education from 1928 to 1977, literature on sex education in the 1980s and 90s (Thomson 1994), as well as the sociology of childhood (Jenks 1996).Bildhauer, Røstvik, and Vostral's (2022) paper led me to Critical Menstruation Studies literature (Bobel and Fahs 2020).From there, I found further policy documents, academic literature and lines of thinking.Overall, I read 82 articles, 27 policy documents and 18 books.I do not reference every source that I read in this paper, but they were nonetheless influential on my tracing-and-mapping.
When reading, I wrote notes about each data source and, in doing so, began to trace the dominant conceptualizations of menstruation in the policy documents.I then drew on the work of relational materialists, including Barad (2007), Murris (2016) and Braidotti (2019;2022), and considered how they might explain the philosophical assumptions underpinning such conceptualizations.I also considered assumptions about young people within articulations of menstruation in the policy documents.As part of my readings, I also paid attention to conceptualizations of menstruation and philosophical assumptions about young people in literature beyond the policy documents.Such literature included childhood studies literature (e.g.Spyrou 2019;Florian 2016) and critical menstruation studies literature (e.g.Kissling 2020).
As well as considering conceptualizations of menstruation, and philosophical assumptions, I also drew on literature about sex education (e.g.Pilcher 2005) to build my understanding of the policy documents on my map and the contexts they emerged in.My map below starts by introducing the education policy documents that I read.

Introducing the policy documents on my map
My introduction to the policy documents on my map aims to explain how such documents were related (or not related) to menstruation and provide some contextual details.I do not intend to provide a comprehensive history of the free period products scheme and RSHE in England.However, I do highlight when the documents on my map were published, as well as some contemporary socio-political events.Detailing the chronology of the documents might seem out of step with my relational materialist approach because relational materialists, like Braidotti (2019, 67), argue that 'there is no linear time, but a thousand plateaus of possible becomings, each following its multidirectional course'.However, I set out the chronology of documents and socio-political events to contextualize the conceptualizations of menstruation that I discuss.By doing so, I hope to provide readers with an understanding of where my experiments with conceptualizations of menstruation have emerged from.
Table 1 includes details about each policy document on my map, including the year of publication, type of document, contemporary socio-political events and whether each document mentioned menstruation.

Documents that did not mention menstruation
Some of the policy documents on my map did not mention menstruation but were still important for my tracing-and-mapping because such documents were part of the history of RSHE and the free period products scheme.The oldest policy publications I read were the handbooks on health education from 1928 to 1947, which did not mention menstruation (Board of Education (BoE 1928;1933;1939).These documents were part of a series of non-compulsory publications (1928, 1933, 1939, 1947, 1956, 1968 and 1977) which gave schools suggestions about what to teach regarding general health.Sociologists have argued that these documents (Pilcher 2005), and health/hygiene education more broadly (Thomson 1994), were part of the foundation for sex education in England.Pilcher (2004, 188) explains that, historically, teaching about sex was linked to education about health and suggests that The Handbooks 'represent a unique and important record of official guidance to schools on the teaching of health and sex education' in modern British society.Whilst the earliest versions of The Handbooks did not discuss the reproductive body, The Handbooks from 1956 onwards  1945-1951 (1945-1951) The Even so, there were other policy documents from beyond 1956 on my map that did not mention menstruation.Such documents included the guidance on sex education and the national curriculum from the 1980s and early 1990s.Sex education policy guidance in this period promoted (cisnormative/heteronormative) family life and mainly focussed on teaching about sexuality and sexual morality (Alldred and David 2007).For instance, Circular 11/87 (Department for Education and Science [DfES] 1987, para.22) told local education authorities that sex education should help pupils understand the benefits of 'stable and married life' and warn against 'casual and promiscuous sexual behaviour'.Although there were frequent legislative changes and guidance publications regarding sex education in the 1980s and early 1990s, sexuality education was not compulsory, and parents were able to remove their children from such teaching (Pilcher 2005).However, teaching on the biological aspects of sex education, including reproduction, became mandatory after the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 (Education Reform Act 1988;DfES 1989).The menstrual cycle may have been covered in biology lessons during the late 1980s and early 1990s.However, none of the national curriculum documents that I read from before 1995 mentioned menstruation or the menstrual cycle specifically.In a similar way, whilst most National Curriculum documents on my map from after 1995 did mention menstruation, the 2007 guidance on the Science Programme of Studies for Key Stage 3 referred to teaching about the 'reproductive cycle' but not the menstrual cycle (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority [QCA] 2007a, 211) and the Key Stage 4 guidance (QCA 2007b) did not mention menstruation or reproduction.
Even though such policy documents did not mention menstruation, they are still useful for understanding articulations of menstruation in education policies related to RSHE and free period products.Drawing on Barad (2007), I argue that the absence of menstruation in some of the policy documents affects the way that the documents made menstruation matter, or rather did not make menstruation matter.Barad (2007) uses the concept of agential cuts to explain how exclusions happen in the construction of reality.They argue that phenomena (e.g. a policy document, a person, an object) come into being together through their relationality and refer to this process as 'intra-action' (Barad 2007).In doing so, they suggest that phenomena do not have pre-existing properties or boundaries, rather properties and boundaries emerge after an agential cut has been made.Agential cuts are boundary-making practices which happen through relationality.For instance, the boundary around a policy document might be understood as involving the relationality between the government, public officials, written words, digital hardware and software, and public opinion.Barad (2007) also argues that agential cuts are underpinned by exclusions which have 'constitutive effects' (Barad 2007, 58) on 'what matters and what is excluded in mattering' (Barad 2007, 148).Applied to the documents on my map, I argue that through not mentioning menstruation, some of the policy documents positioned menstruation as mattering less than other areas they did discuss.For instance, the 1933 Handbook of Suggestions on Health Education included a chapter on what to teach 'schoolgirls' about 'mothercare and infant craft' (BoE 1933, 80-85) but did not mention menstruation or any element of the reproductive body.By doing this, the publication made teaching 'schoolgirls' (BoE 1933) how to be mothers matter more than teaching 'schoolgirls' (BoE 1933) about bodies, sex and how babies come to be.As such, the publication appears to reflect the construction of girls and women as mothersin-waiting or mothers, rather than sexual beings, which Pilcher (2007) argues was prevalent in education and health policy in nineteenth-and twentieth-century England.

Documents that mentioned menstruation
Some documents on my map did discuss menstruation in relation to reproduction.All the national curriculum documents that mentioned menstruation told teachers to instruct pupils about the menstrual cycle in relation to teaching human reproduction.For example, both the 1995 and 1999 versions of Science in the National Curriculum stated that pupils should learn about 'the human reproductive system, including the menstrual cycle and fertilisation' (DfE 1995, 17;DfEE 1999, 30).Drawing on a survey of sex education in schools and youth organizations, the 1943 report on Sex Education in Schools and Youth Organisations (BoE 1943) made suggestions to teachers about how they could improve sex education.It suggested that girls' schools should teach about menstruation in relation to reproduction, rather than just hygiene: There are many excellent courses in hygiene in girls' schools but often they fail to relate, for example, the subject of menstruation to motherhood.(BoE 1943, 10) However, other documents that mentioned menstruation placed more emphasis on understanding and responding to menarche during puberty.The later versions of the handbooks on health education (1956,1968,1977) emphasized that teachers should prepare 'the girl' (MoE 1956, 58) for menses by teaching them knowledge about the biological aspects of menstruation.For example, the 1956 handbook (MoE 1956, 58) highlighted that menstruation is 'necessary for reproduction', but told teachers: it is for the teacher to make sure that the girl is emotionally prepared, explaining that menstruation is a normal physiological process.
In a similar way, the Sex and Relationships Education guidance (SRE) (DfEE 2000), and the current RSHE guidance, stressed that school curriculums should include 'preparation for menstruation' (DfEE 2000, 15).The SRE and RSHE documents, as well as the free period products guidance (DfE 2020) and The Handbook from 1956 (MoE 1956), also discussed 'girls' needing access to 'menstrual products' (DfE 2019, 31) to stem menstrual bleeding.

Conceptualizations of menstruation
The documents that discussed access to menstrual products, as well as other aspects of menstruation, appear to have conceptualized menstruation in different ways.In what follows, I explain the dominant articulations of menstruation within the policy documents that I have included in my tracing-and-mapping.

Menstruation as a (cis girls') biological process
All the documents on my map that mentioned menstruation conceptualized it as a 'natural' biological 'process' (MoE 1956, 58;DfES 1968, 99) and most referred to it in the context of girls' bodies.In doing so, such documents discussed menstruation only in relation to cisgender girls' bodies, even though the word cisgender was never used in the policy documents.No documents referred to girls who do not menstruate (e.g.trans girls) and almost no documents mentioned menstruating people who are not girls (e.g.trans boys, non-binary people).The only documents that did not discuss menstruation in the context of cis girls' bodies were guidance on free period products (DfE 2020) and the National Science Curriculum documents that mentioned menstruation (DfE 1995(DfE , 2013;;DfEE 1999;2004).The former mostly referred to girls and women menstruating but acknowledged that 'learners who identify as non-binary or transgender' may also have periods (DfE 2020, 3).The latter discussed the menstrual cycle or menstruation but did not relate these terms to girls or other gendered groups.
Where the policy documents did mention girls in relation to menstruation, they often positioned menstruation as something that marks cis girls as different from cis boys.For instance, the 1943 Sex Education in Schools and Youth Organisations and the 1956 handbook used 'he,' 'his,' 'him,' and 'himself' as standard pronouns to discuss the child or children, but the only gendered groups in descriptions of menstruation education were 'girls' and 'the girl' (BoE 1943, 7;MoE 1956, 58).In doing this, the policy documents appear to have conceptualized menstruation as a cis girls' bodily process that differentiates them from the neutral (cis male) child.More recent government guidance on SRE (DfEE 2000) also presented menstruation as a biological process that separates cis girls from cis boys.The document emphasized that 'both boys and girls need to know about puberty' but placed emphasis on improving (cisgender) 'girls' knowledge about menstruation in response to 'research [which] shows that about a third of girls are not told about periods by their parents' (DfEE 2000, 15).

Menstruation as problem
As well as presenting it as a process belonging to cis girls, the policy documents often positioned menstruation as a biological process that is a problem for cis girls.For instance, guidance on SRE and RSHE, as well as the Handbooks on Health Education associated menstruation with 'alarm' (DfE 2019; DfEE 2000), 'shock' (MoE 1956) and 'distress' (DfES 1968;1977).The 1977 Handbook on Health Education in Schools also emphasized that menstruation caused problems for (cisgender) girls, which (cisgender) boys would not experience or understand: Boys in particular should come to realise that for girls there are times connected with menstrual periods or episodes in their emotional development when they may be distressed or tired through no fault of their own and that both [boys and girls] should realise that the emission of semen is abundant, and sometimes uncontrollable.(Department of Education and Science 1977, 116) The distinction here between abundant semen and unavoidable menstrual distress is typical of the tendency for policy documents on my map to present menstruation not only as a problem for cis girls, but also as the problem of cis girls and their bodies.

Menstruation as controllable
Some policy documents problematized menstruating girls' bodies by foregrounding strategies teachers could take to help cis girls 'manage' their monthly menses (DfE 2019, 31).
Management strategies included the provision of menstrual products.For example, the 1956 Health Education handbook and the 2000 government guidance on SRE emphasized that 'girls' would need 'sanitary towels' and 'sanitary protection' (MoE 1956;DfEE 2000, my emphasis) to manage their menstrual bleeding.By linking products which hide menstrual blood to notions of hygiene, the documents appear to have problematized menstruating girls' bodies as intrinsically unclean.
This was not the only way policies discussing menstrual management and products problematized menstruating bodies.The current free period product guidance tells schools how they can obtain free menstrual products for menstruating girls, trans and non-binary pupils.It argues that products, which hide menstrual bleeding, are important because 'having periods should not be a barrier to education for anyone' and 'making girls and women aware of the scheme is vital' for reducing 'the stigma around periods' (DfE 2020, 3).By justifying free products on these grounds rather than framing the policy another way (e.g. as a response to poverty), the guidance inadvertently problematizes the 'natural bodily process' (DfE 2020, 20) of menstruation as an inherent barrier to education and source of stigma.At the same time, by presenting free products as addressing such issues, the guidance conceptualizes menstruation as a problem that can be controlled.
Strategies for controlling the problem of menstruation also included instruction on the biological health aspects of menstruation as a management strategy.Sometimes, such education was positioned as helping menstruating girls with cleanliness.For example, Sex Education in Schools and Youth Organisations reported schools delivering education on menstruation as part of 'courses in hygiene in girls' schools' (BoE 1943, 10).This document, as well as the 1956 Handbook on Health Education (MoE 1956), also presented instruction on the 'facts of life' (BoE 1943, 7) and the biological naturalness of menstruation as a strategy for countering myths about the harm of 'bathing at such a time' (MoE 1956, 58).In other places, documents emphasized that education on the biological aspects of menstruation would 'help girls prepare' (DfE 2019, 31) for menstruation and prevent them experiencing menstruation-related alarm and distress (MoE 1956;DfES 1968;1977, DfEE 2000, DfE 2019).For example, the 1968 Handbook of Health Education advised that, Children commonly suffer anxiety about the changes associated with puberty … It is at this stage that children require further information.To mention only two examples: for a girl to begin menstruating without previous knowledge of the process, or for a boy to experience seminal emission unprepared, can cause much distress.(DfES 1968, 98 and 99) In other words, the documents suggested that cis girls lacked menstrual knowledge and that by improving it, schools could help to control their bleeding bodies and feelings of stress.

Menstruation as a process that can be instructed on and learned
In the policy documents, education for improving pupils' biology knowledge was not always linked to strategies for menstrual management and control.The National Curriculum documents on my map set out what menstrual knowledge teachers should impart to pupils in science lessons but did not discuss menstrual management.On my map, most guidance on the National Science Curriculum since 1995 instructed schools to teach pupils in Key Stage Three (11-to 14-year-olds) about menstruation and the menstrual cycle, as part of biology education on 'reproduction' (DfE 2013, 33) and 'life processes' (DfE 1995;DfEE 1999;2004).For instance, the current National Science Curriculum tells schools that 'pupils should be taught about': reproduction in humans (as an example of a mammal), including the structure and function of the male and female reproductive systems, menstrual cycle (without details of hormones), gametes, fertilisation, gestation and birth.(DfE 2013, 204).
The National Science Curriculum documents were thereby concerned with the knowledge teachers were expected to impart to pupils about the biological aspects of the menstrual cycle.They did not discuss approaches to teaching, which might include collaborative methods such as teachers and pupils debating ideas about menstruation (Agnew and Sandretto 2016) or pupils, teachers, and non-human others co-producing knowledge (Murris 2016).By strictly focussing on the information about menstruation and biology that schools must give to pupils, the National Curriculum documents appear to conceptualize menstruation as a biological process that teachers can instruct on, and pupils can learn.

Unfolding menstruation in the policy documents
In what follows, I unfold and explain the philosophical assumptions that underpin the idea that menstruation can be instructed on and learned, as well as the other conceptualizations of menstruation that I have traced on my map.I also discuss how these conceptualizations position young people.

Menstruation as a biological process that can be instructed on and learned
Above, I argue that the policy documents on my map commonly conceptualized menstruation as a biological process that could be taught by teachers and learned by pupils.I hold that the documents thereby suggested a separation between the menstruating body and the thinking mind.Mehta (2011) asserts that the mind/body dualism, commonly attributed to Rene Descartes' work from the seventeenth century, supplied the foundation for Western medicine and positivist research (empirical enquiries based on unbiased observation).She suggests that by positioning the immaterial mind and the material body as separate entities, Descartes paved the way for people to study the mechanical laws of human anatomy and physiology.Murris (2016) explains that Descartes's dictum cogito ergo sum ('I think therefore I am') presented the human subject as a thinking substance that could learn about and manipulate the object of the body.
I argue that by advising teachers what to teach about menstruation, the documents appear to have framed teachers as thinking subjects.For instance, the 1943 report on Sex Education in Schools and Youth Organisations (BoE 1943) reported on how teachers and youth workers were teaching about menstruation and menstrual hygiene.Handbooks on health education (MoE 1956;DfES 1968;1977), as well as the guidance on SRE (DfEE 2000), RSHE (DfE 2019) and free period products (DfE 2020) discussed teachers taking action to impart menstrual knowledge or support pupils to manage their menstrual bleeding (e.g. with products).The National Curriculum documents also set out the information on menstruation that teachers should impart to pupils.I suggest that by framing teachers as menstrual-knowledge-givers, the documents assumed that teachers are active thinkers who can teach about the inert bodily object of menstruation.
Such subject/object and mind/body dualisms also help to explain how young people are positioned within the conceptualization of menstruation as a process that can be instructed on and learned.Barad (2007) argues that separating the mind from the body, or subject from object, implies that knowledge of an inert outside world is gathered on the inside of the subject.They hold that such inside/outside thinking in Western philosophy has led to the dominance of representationalism, or the idea that the subject utilizes human-made language to represent pre-existing things (including nature).They also suggest that representationalism has led to a nature/culture binary where human-made culture is assumed to be able to represent and act upon nature.Murris (2016, 70) posits that such a nature/culture dichotomy 'has, and continues to, shape our imageries of child and childhood'.She asserts that in modern schooling across the world, adults assume that 'the child's mind (nature) has to be 'filled' by culture (e.g.knowledge and information) … or allowed to unfold … or interacted with' (Murris 2016, 81).Kromidas (2014) and Murris (2016) suggest that in thinking this way, educators and other adults' position children as lacking by their nature.From Murris (2016) perspective, the things children are assumed to lack include knowledge, maturity, responsibility or social norms and values.I argue that the idea of young people as lacking appears within the conceptualization of menstruation as a biological process that can be instructed on and learned.For instance, by centring teachers as thinking subjects who can fill pupils' minds (nature) with information about menstruation (culture), the National Curriculum documents on my map suggest that young people lack knowledge.Such documents thereby overlook young people's menstrual experiences and their role in contributing to menstrual knowledge, which might include young people sharing personal stories about menstruation through social media (Davies et al. 2022) or menstruating girls working with pencils, paper, and their experiences to design menstruation-friendly toilets (Schmitt et al. 2022).In invoking a nature/culture binary, the documents also appear to position unknowing pupils as different from the knowing (adult) teacher who can impart menstrual knowledge.
The split between adult teachers and child pupils has implications for how agency (i.e.acting and having material affects) and agentic actors are framed in the policy documents.As Hitlin and Elder (2007) argue, agency is understood in different ways.Barad (2007) criticizes dualistic thinking which assumes (some) humans have agency and non-humans do not.Rather, they argue that agency emerges through the relationality between humans and non-humans.Within childhood studies, Florian (2016) has taken a similar approach and suggested that children's agency is an 'effect of social relationships' and produced by humans and non-humans (Florian 2016, 51, my emphasis).Spyrou (2019, 317) has also highlighted arguments about agency being 'networked and dependent' and has called for a de-centring of the individual child agent.Prout and James (1990), on the other hand, posited that agency is something individuals (including young people) have, evidenced by their involvement in the 'creative production' of social life (Prout and James 1990, 27-28).Based on such a perspective about agency, Prout and James (1990) criticized developmental psychologists for constructing childhood as a journey to becoming an agentic adult.I argue that like the psychologists Prout and James (1990) critique, the documents on my map appear to position adults as agentic and young people as passive.This is because by framing knowledge-receiving pupils as different from knowledge-giving teachers, the policy documents imply that teachers possess agency to produce and impart menstrual knowledge, but young people do not.Peters (2004, 14) holds that dualistic thinking like this has, 'developed as an instrument for "othering" ' and Braidotti (2022, 23) argues that binaries construct some groups as 'not fully human' by positioning them as 'different-from' the agentic human subject.Building on these arguments, I suggest that by invoking an agentic-knowing-teacher/non-agenticunknowing-pupil dichotomy, the documents appear to be adultist and to have framed children as not-yet (adult) humans.

Constructions of menstruation related to gender
Such binary thinking also appears to underpin the conceptualizations of menstruation on my map that relate to girls (or rather cisgender girls) specifically, as opposed to all child pupils.Above, I argued that some policy documents framed menstruation as something that marked cis girls as different; as something that problematized cis girls' menstruating bodies and as a cis girls' problem that could be managed with help from teachers.Where the policy documents mentioned menstruation education only in relation to preparing cis girls for puberty (DfEE 2000;MoE 1956;1943), and where they problematized menstruation as a cause of distress for cis girls (DfES 1977), they appear to have positioned cis girls and their bodies as non-agentic objects.This is because, within the conceptualizations of menstruation that relate to cis girls, the bodies of menstruating girls were framed as needing 'special attention' (MoE 1956, 58) from agentic teachers who could provide knowledge and/or menstrual products (MoE 1956;DfEE 2000;DfE 2019;2020).I suggest that in doing this, such documents positioned cis girls as passive and different from agentic teachers.Such a framing bares similarities to the positioning of all pupils as different from teachers within conceptualizations of menstruation as a teachable and learnable biological process.
However, by also conceptualizing menstruation as something that marks cis girls as different from cis boys, some documents on my map emphasized cis girls' 'otherness'.For example, when Health Education (MoE 1956, 58) used male pronouns for the neutral child, but only mentioned 'girls' or 'the girl' learning about menstruation from teachers, it presented cis girls as 'other than' both cis boys and agentic knowledge-providing teachers.Intersectional feminists like Taefi (2009, 346) might explain this as an example of multiple identities (age, gender) crossing over with one another to position the 'girl-child' as other.Feminist materialists like Puar (2012) might also argue that this is an example of non-human policy documents playing an active role in the constitution and stabilization of dualistic boundaries between girl/boy/teacher.Puar (2012, 58) argues that assemblages (arrangements of human and non-human heterogeneous entities) encompass 'the forces that continue to mandate and enforce' identity categories.Building on this argument, I suggest that through relationality with other non-humans and humans (e.g.schools, teachers, policymakers), the policy documents on my map and their conceptualizations of menstruation may shape understandings of what it means to be a girl, a boy or a teacher.
It is important to note that the current free period products guidance (DfE 2020) mentions trans and non-binary young people menstruating and, in so doing, might disrupt binary gender categories.Even so, the document centres menstruating 'girls and women' (DfE 2020, 3) and does not always refer to trans and non-binary people when discussing people who might use free period products.The guidance also appears to invoke Cartesian dualisms when it talks about teachers and schools providing young people 'who identify as trans and non-binary' (and 'girls') with 'access to products' and menstrual knowledge (DfE 2020, 3).The free period products guidance thereby appears to position trans and non-binary young people as passive menstrual knowledge and product consumers in the same way that the guidance, and many of the other policy documents on my map, frames cis girls.

Experimenting with articulations
In this section, I return to some of my questions from the start of the article: How might different conceptualizations of menstruation in education policy position young people?Could different conceptualizations of menstruation lead to different approaches for addressing menstrual stigma?To answer, I experiment with relational ideas about agency and different conceptualizations of menstruation to reimagine menstruation education policy.My purpose in doing this is to spark debates and raise questions about young people's role in menstruation education initiativesincluding RSHE and free period productsthat aim to address menstrual stigma.
To experiment with the idea of young people as contributors to menstruation education initiatives, I turn to notions of agency from feminist relational materialism and particularly draw on the work of Barad (2007) and Braidotti (2013;2022 ).Barad (2007, 33) invokes a relational ontology and argues that distinct phenomena, subjectivities and 'agencies do not precede, but rather emerge' together through their relationality or 'intra-action'.Braidotti also takes a relational ontological approach when she draws on Spinozian concepts to argue that 'an ethically empowering relation to others aims at increasing one's potential or empowering force' rather than potestas (entrapping force) (Braidotti 2013, 343).In other words, for Braidotti, relationality can lead to collective action and the world becoming something new.Applied to young people's role in addressing menstrual stigma in school, I suggest that Barad's intra-action and Braidotti's interpretation of potentia provide a framework for understanding young people's agency as networked.To clarify, rather than invoking an agentic-teacher/non-agentic-pupil or human/non-human dichotomy, intra-action offers a way to understand the identities and agencies of teachers, pupils and non-humans as mutually dependent.Furthermore, potentia draws attention to how relationality between teachers, pupils and non-humans might lead to collective action for change.Building on this, I argue that potentia and intra-action might provide a toolkit for thinking about how menstruation education policies could invite young people, along with other humans and non-humans, to contribute to addressing menstrual stigma.
Such ideas about relationality will have implications for conceptualizing menstruation.If agency is relational, then it does not follow that menstruation is a biological process that active teachers teach, and inert young people learn.This is because relational ontologies call into question the 'Cartesian belief in the inherent distinction between subject and object', as well as nature and culture (Barad 2007, 138).In other words, from a relational perspective, teachers/pupils/menstruation and their agencies do not pre-exist in their intra-action.One conceptualization of menstruation that might provide a framework for understanding agency and subjectivity as relational is Kissling's (2020, 865) 'menstruation as narrative'.Kissling (2020, 865) argues that menstruation has a narrative aspect because stories about menstruation are part of human culture.Kissling (2020, 865) also posits that 'stories make the world' and menstrual narratives shape, and are part of, people's actions regarding menstruation.Rosiek andSnyder (2020, 1160) also talk about stories shaping people's actions but go further and posit that stories are non-human agents through their 'intra-actions with other agential culturalmaterial processes'.They suggest that stories can have affects beyond 'any particular person's intention' (Rosiek andSnyder 2020, 1159).To experiment with conceptualizations of menstruation, I build on Rosiek and Snyder's (2020) assertion, as well as Kissling's (2020, 865) 'menstruation as narrative'.I suggest that positioning menstruation as narrative could open opportunities for young people to share stories about their experiences with menstruation and stigma, as part of education initiatives that aim to address menstrual prejudice.Such stories might include different aspects of young people's menstrual experiences, such as trans and non-binary people facing discrimination within menstrual healthcare (Lane et al. 2021) or cis boys feeling unknowledgeable about menstruation (Allen, Kaestle, and Goldberg 2011).I argue that through their intra-action with material-discursive contexts, young people and their menstruation stories might lead to discussions within schools about menstrual stigma.In turn, young people and their stories may contribute to collective action (or what Braidotti calls potentia) that challenges stigma.

Conclusions
There may be concepts other than intra-action, potentia and menstruation as narrative that can help to reimagine menstruation education and young people's role in addressing menstrual stigma.At the start of this tracing-and-mapping paper, I wondered how menstruation had been conceptualized in English education policies that are historically related to RSHE and free period products (i.e.current education policies that aim to address menstrual stigma), as well as how else menstruation could be conceptualized.In doing so, I aimed to inspire different ways of thinking about menstruation and addressing stigma in education policy.I am in alignment with Aronsson (2020, 278) who suggests that the affordances of the tracing-and-mapping method include connecting 'concepts and lines of thinking so that new narratives or realities can emerge'.I do not categorize the concepts I experimented with as the correct way to think about menstruation or youth agency.Instead, I invite readers to map (i.e.experiment with) different ideas about menstruation.I suggest that such mapping processes might inspire a multiplicity of new approaches for addressing menstrual stigma within formal schooling and education policy.As Deleuze and Guattari (1987:, 12-13) argue a map 'can be torn, reversed, adapted … A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back "to the same"'.

Table 1 .
Policy documents on my map.
1939 Suggestions on Health Education (Board of Education 1939) was republished (Pilcher 2005).Y did, and included advice on guiding 'girls' through 'the onset of menstruation' (Ministry of Education (MoE) 1956, 58).