To be horrified to learn that there are men .. TMI warning

[Doingtheboxerbeat]

This is not a men bashing thread
There are actual adult men that are unaware that periods can't be controlled like other body fluids and that pads and tampons are there in case of leaks. That we can hold it in until we visit the toilet.

At first I thought bullshit, then I realised, actually how would they know unless someone specifically pointed out the difference. I can't remember ever being told this, because I started in primary school before I learned about it at school.

I discovered this from a Reddit post so probably bs that a single parent man who was probably quite poor and thought that his daughter was wasteful/ too lazy to just not wait to visit the toilet.

I have never in my life met any man that thought this, but then again, I have never asked, but then I think about how many millions of people are uneducated about things that don't really affect them.

This is batshit, right ?

I find that if I pee with a tampon in, the removal string gets soaked with it so I just remove and replace, I don't like the thought of wandering around with piss soaked string in my pants or (I'm not sure this even happens but even so) the tampon then absorbing the pee, grim

Blokes probably don’t give the mechanisms of menstruation much thought to be honest.

"my dear" is so patronising.
Maybe teachers are prepared for a period to start???
Maybe, as happened to me, the sudden onset of a period stains everything and starts dripping down your leg. Are you seriously expecting a young person to sit for 40 mins or more with that happening?

When we had separate boys and girls school lessons about puberty / periods / sex ed etc - our teacher told us that one of the boys (she never named him of course!) believed that once a girl started her period that it never stopped. She just bled continuously for the rest of her life. 🤣

More memories.

My grandmother (born 1905) only had one child and I remember her telling me that she was on the way home from a doctor's appointment at an advanced stage of pregnancy when she decided to ask her mother the question that had been concerning her for a few weeks --- how did the baby get out? Presumably the umbilicus sort of opened up with a drawstring effect? She was utterly horrified to be given the correct answer.

(I think she went on to give birth with "twilight sleep")

But the same grandmother was very clear in telling me from a pre-pubertal age that I definitely SHOULD wash regularly, and especially "down there", when I had a period. Good for her!

I'm a retired GP and I've met many elderly ladies, usually born in the 1920s, who have developed gynae problems but don't know how to describe their anatomy. "Vag - eena" (with a hard G) was incredibly common.

I also met an elderly lady with a prolapse who was astonished to hear that that was the problem - she'd assumed she had piles, and you just pushed your piles back in and carried on.

And when I was about 8, a friend told me that girls laid an egg every month and it came away with some blood. That was the first thing I ever heard of periods. Shortly after that we went on a family holiday in a hotel and I saw brown paper "sanitary bags" in the toilets for the first time, so I "knew" that was where you put the egg. I did genuinely laying envisage a hen's egg. I knew no other sort of egg.

And sadly I've seen several young girls who are utterly stressed out by what they imagine to be the "abnormal" size/shape/colour/hairiness of their vulva. I've had to explain to a mid-teen that what she described as an abnormally large clitoris was actually perfectly normal labia minora.

The gynae consultants here recommended the website "The Great Wall of Vagina" to educate these young girls in what the range of perfectly normal vulvae looks like. Sadly, societal attitudes have a strong hold and I imagine that the ubiquity of porn is to blame. (And women never menstruate in porn do they! Or do they? Actually I expect that is a "niche" interest - but I'm not about to go and look).

Sadly I don't think this is as uncommon as you might think.

I've met a couple of men with this level of ignorance.

Ex BF thought the period came out all in one go only needing one tampon. When i explained that they lasted several days he insisted that i was wrong. He didn't last long

In my class at primary school a boy asked if my friend is not with me because she “went to the toilet to menstruate “ 🙄. So yes it exists but to be fair this boy was around 14 at the time (non UK school system). He got swiftly educated there and then, but from the experience I would say what you read is probably true. Scary.

@Daffodilsandtuplips, my husband is a few years older than me and was a child in the sixties when Dr. Kildare was a popular TV programme. He and his friends were re-enacting this programme in his back garden and his part was that of the good doctor. He did exactly what you did exc it was with his mother’s sanitary towels. She was horrified when she saw him. I would imagine the neighbours had a giggle, though.

Um.... TMI.... but doesn't your urine dribble all over basically everywhere? Unless I lean right forwards, the stream definitely runs over where a tampon string would be. I vividly remember this after childbirth - leaning right forward so as to not wee on stitches, which stings. I always thought the design of toilets is probably optimised for men to poo, because it seems like a really stupid angle for women to wee at. (Or maybe it's just me?)

Also, when I was a child, I seem to remember not realising that there were two holes inside what is labelled here as the "vestibule" (what a weird name!!) I just thought that the labia minora were one big wee tube that opened up. When my mum told me you have a front hole which you wee out of, and a back hole which you poo out of, I knew where they were, but then she said you have a middle hole which is where babies and periods come out of and I could never find it and worried that I might not have one I did not think to look "inside" the part I thought was the wee hole.

So I don't know about you but I have always thought of them as quite close together.

Yes, I don’t enjoy bathing in what looks like a blood bath. It’s just not calming 😁and I don’t have remotely heavy periods at all but still easily enough to colour a bath bright red so i can see why there are lots of women who simply think you don’t do that.

The stuff I'm reading on this thread has shocked me to the core!

I wonder if she used a rubber...

Luckily parents can't remove them from biology lessons. And they teach everything now in biology, of course they only talk about the antomay and mechanics of how things work, but contraception and infertility is talked about.

I have had baths during my period for years, and have never seen a spot of blood. Am I an anomaly?

Probably already been mentioned as I know that this was a common misunderstanding, but an ex of mine asked if I couldnt just "have" my period before we went away for the weekend or after we came back. Like I could schedule it and choose to have it when it suited.

Quite a few of my friends BF's had similar delusions so either it was of its time (late 80's early 90's) or they were all fucking idiots. Looking back, as most of them have done very well academically and financially but totally lack any kind of common sense, so I suspect the latter.

Not all poor people are uneducated,ignorant,gormless,thick,gangsters,shoplifters,junkies,prostitutes,or benefit fraudsters,thank you.

Same for me

Depends on the type of periods you have.

My sister doesnt bath during her period, neither does DD1. Both have horrific flooding due to endo, showers mean that they can just let if flow (as it were) and wash as they go. I flooded badly when I have a copper coil after DC3 and did the same. When I have normal (for me) periods, I rarely lost anything in the bath but occasionally would have the odd burst.

As with all things periods, its unique to each woman. I agree with the PP that not bathing during your period was probably connected to the sharing bath water phenomena.

Really? You are on your period and just… don’t bleed while you’re in the bath? I don’t understand how that works at all!!

Yep. My period seems to stop when I have a bath or shower. I thought that was normal. Clearly not!

Ex BF thought the period came out all in one go only needing one tampon. When i explained that they lasted several days he insisted that i was wrong. He didn't last long

There's literally a saying (that men probably invented because it's horrible) "never trust anything that bleeds for a week and doesn't die" so most of them know, surely?

I think water is supposed to stem bleeding to some extent, but it never worked for me in the shower so now I always wear a tampon in the shower on heavier days and it's so much easier. I'm sure there will be people along to tell me I shouldn't do that though. I hate washing down there, ready to come out and then bleeding and having to wash all again. Doesn't help I take really long showers.

Interesting how the misconceptions men have would make periods easier if they were true (only lasting a day, being able to hold it in). It's they like want to minimise what we go through.

Why has the subject of periods in school suddenly become so controversial, girls have been coping for years without this performance? Everything now seems to be made into a problem.