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 wonder if he can just hold his snot in until he gets to the bathroom when he has a cold.

I do find it funny to imagine these men showing up to the scene of an accident where some one is bleeding badly and yelling 'just hold it in for Christ sake, your being wasteful, look your getting blood all over the pavement' lol.

Possibly due to my cystocele or something else my tampax is soaked with pee. To the point that it would fall out while I'm on the loo.

Didn't use to be the case.

I have no time for people like that. Even if you’re not explicitly taught, don’t make assumptions. Have some curiosity ffs. Research things, investigate, find out for yourself. I did the same with the intricacies of male anatomy because I wanted to know 🤷🏻‍♀️

As for women who think their period and wee come from the same hole…. well, we don’t need those genetics in the gene pool!!

I’m not disagreeing I just need the next paragraph of where your thoughts were headed. Why do the underwear/ swimsuit photos give them odd ideas?

I'm so confused. How did you get pregnant therefore presumably had an active sex life, without him ever seeing your genitals?

I stopped sports because of this.

I wasn't able to use a tampon until I was much older and had children. They always leaked like crazy. And my periods were on the heavy side. I tried a menstrual cup too, even the smallest size was very uncomfortable. So it was pads for a log time.

So I had a day or two a month when running around with a pad was the last thing I wanted to be doing. And certainly not swimming or wearing a dance leotard. But sitting out wasn't an option in most sports, and at the time the narrative was "girls can do anything, your period should never hold you back, that's an old myth!"

So I just dropped out.

😳

I'm in my 60s now, and was born into a reasonably well-educated family, and went to a grammar school, and had sex education.

Not sure how I got so mixed up, I think it was a mix of (1) all things sex-related being shameful in our family (think: switching channels on TV if there was kissing etc), (2) me feeling guilty about having discovered the joys of masturbation despite (1), and (3) last but not least, it being one thing to know something in theory and quite another to experience it in your own body! I'm still a bit of a hypochondriac and always assume the worst if I discover a blotch on my nose or something!

I guess lights out.

Lights off. Under the covers..
I know a woman who hit 25 and had 2 dc but had never seen a penis...

I've never met a man who has had any confusion about how periods work. I was however once questioned 4 years into a relationship as to why women use paper when they pee. Once I explained, it made sense to him!

I'm trying to let these lessons happen organically with ds. The other day he needed an emergency park wee (he's 4 and the loos were closed). I explained how his little sister wouldn't be able to do standing up wees without a willy, and he was under the impression that we wee through our bottoms. I use period pants so I guess there's not going to be an obvious blood or products conversation opener - wouldn't have occurred to me to explain we can't hold it in either!

I can hold in farts. Not quite as effectively now post second child, and I bother less these days tbh, if we're walking outside or such when no one is really going to hear!

@tachetastic I do apologise if you were joking (I often put 'I'm only joking' or such after I type something as I have quite a warped sense of humour myself, being a lesbian and hanging out with a lot of men regularly).

Unfortunately, I encounter a LOT of men who say that sort of thing in order to excuse themselves for doing/saying things that pertain to being ignorant. Including aforementioned lodger! Very much 'I'm a white male I don't get this stuff' not just about female anatomy but about just about ANYTHING to do with something that wasn't football or perving on women.

You may be right that not many men do blame their 'simple minds' on things, I hope you are! I've encountered many that do. Might say something about me and the circles I've kept but I don't think so, I've just worked in a lot of male-dominated industries in the past, and I socialise with a lot of blokes just due to circumstance.

To be fair I've peed blood and had to tell medical staff at A&E that I wasn't having a period and if they really wanted to get a gynae down to inspect they could but after 20 years of periods I knew this wasn't one.

Yes that’s true actually. Well let’s hope so …

A man I know thought that the sticky side of a pad was to stick to the woman and catch the blood like a bag.
Another man I know (older, all male religious education) thought somehow that women only have periods once every nine months. He was confused by the timescale of pregnancy.

@Calliopespa

Where my thoughts would go next are: we are all now bombarded with completely unrealistic and unrealisable images of 'womanhood'. These images involve being airbrushed and filtered and posed and made up and ... blah-di-blah.

Young women who buy into this stuff might well think it's completely normal to be a caricature of a woman. None of these idealised images (or idealised by contemporary beauty mores) ever suggests that women pee or poo or have periods or, basically, do anything other than exist to be objectified.

Young men looking at these images aren't going to be seeing young women as real, fertile people with normal bodily functions. They're going to see them as fuck fodder. Periods don't figure in that landscape, because (it seems as if) girls are there purely to stick their tits and arses out, which obviously means they're human pneumatic dolls.

I think it's all deeply sad. I am very glad not to have grown up with this, and to have instead navigated the slightly odd but very human world of real people.

In all honesty no. I was stunned, gaslighting myself thinking I must have misheard him, and it isn't hyperbole to say that I was worried at the time that that I would bleed my way into medical shock because I had sudden onset unexplained horrific heavy bleeding (with monstrous clots), and I was struggling to get any GP to take me seriously, particularly my female, women's repro health specialist GP who was treating me appalingly dismissively - I was just grateful he was ordering an ultrasound for me.

One of my friends (who is now in her late 50s) told me that when they were at uni, one of her friends asked, in all seriousness, when a group of them were discussing periods, "But have any of you actually seen 'the egg'" (meaning the one that wasn't fertilised, hence the period) - "because l never have...."
Apparently 'stunned silence' didn't begin to describe it.

https://www.tiktok.com/@christaallen/video/6900354661312630022?lang=en

NASA & 100 Tampons - Says it all really 🙄

DS asked me if having a heavy period was like really needing a wee and if I could hold it in until I got to a toilet. He was 14 at the time though. I felt quite proud of him for asking actually, because a lot of lads that age, and grown men for that matter, are eww about periods.

I’m sorry, @tachetastic…I snickered at the pun anyway 😁.

This is a great comedy video from the guys and gals at College Humour explaining the hymen and how it actually works: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/dAGCxYoj7NCR5hWz/?mibextid=KsPBc6

I don’t think it’s necessarily unreasonable not to know, given how little it’s talked about, but at the same time it’s basic human biology. None of these things are unreasonable not to know, though…if you don’t have periods, how would you know that you can’t hold the blood up unless someone told you?

I don’t have a clue what the prostate really is/looks like. Why do guys have it? What does it do? (Other than get enlarged as you get older). I have a mental image of a walnut-type thing up there but…erm…no idea where I got that from 😂

Fuuuucking hell. How utterly depressing.

Beginning part of the period I can hold until I get to the toilet and always have been able too....but after day one forget it it comes when it comes... strangely since giving birth I can't hold wee during a sneeze like I used too but first part of the period I can... figure that out! I can also feel when alot of blood is coming and need to get to the toilet asap. Hope that's not TMI ..sorry.

It’s a gland, so it produces some kind of hormone (I’m assuming prostatin). Re the hymen - by the way, did anyone else do the Cambridge Latin Course and have to read out the apparently famous wedding song of Ancient Rome “Hymen, hymen, hymen-o, hymen, hymen-eee”? I’m afraid I’m very immature and absolutely corpsed just thinking of that again.

@tachetastic apologies, I did tag you in my PP upthread but it didn't work.