After decades of dismissing and stigmatizing them, our culture is finally coming around to speaking frankly about periods and understanding how debilitating the cramps associated with them can be.
But of course, such changes don’t happen overnight and the old ways of thinking about periods can continue to affect us even after we reject them. In some cases, this is because some holdouts will be hesitant about securing period products for their loved ones due to the belief that they’re ” inappropriate .”
However, a more widespread problem concerns how period education varies from region to region and some boys are categorically not educated about how they work.
And while this can have harmful effects like authority figures believing women can simply hold them in like urine, one story illustrates that the more ridiculous misconceptions can cause their own conundrums.
After a couple of months of dating a man, one woman decided to invite him over to her place.
As she explained in a Reddit post , she let him know she was experiencing her period at the time and so they decided to keep things simple with some takeout dinner and a movie.
And while he was sympathetic about her period, he also caught her off guard by saying how weird it is that women give birth through their vaginas but have periods through their butts.
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At first, the woman thought this was some kind of weird joke, but it soon became clear that the man was serious.
Apparently, a previous girlfriend had often complained about bad “period poops,” which apparently led him to believe they were the main event rather than a side effect.
As the woman outlined in an additional comment, this wasn’t helped by the fact that gender-specific anatomy was taught separately while the 22-year-old man was in school.
But while his misconception stunned the woman, the problems didn’t start until she explained how periods actually work.
In her words, “He looked confused and then a little frustrated and started insisting to me that was wrong and then kept saying ‘are you sure?’ as if I was confused about where it came out of my own body.”
And no matter how detailed the woman’s explanations were, the best she could do was convince him that most women have vaginal periods, but that his ex-girlfriend had it through her butt.
As she put it, “He just could not understand no matter how many times I tried to explain it to him that he had just simply come to the wrong conclusion and misinterpreted his gf’s words.”
At that point, the situation became so absurd that she doubled over and started laughing until she cried. Soon after, he left before they had even selected a movie.
The woman then felt bad for laughing, which was compacted when he said he didn’t want to see her anymore because she laughed at him for “not understanding.”
But when she asked the community if she was too mean, they agreed that the problem was his insistence that he knew more than her about her own period.
As one user said , “You laughed because he couldn’t fathom that he had been wrong on something you were intimately familiar with.”
And while the consensus was that the man was in the wrong, many were also saddened by how badly his education had failed him.
In the words of another commenter, “To have achieved 22 years of age and not understand the basic stuff covered in a 5th grade puberty film is pretty sad.”
h/t: Reddit | throwingawaylateeer
