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40 Very Dumb Statements About Women By Men Who Have No Clue How Women Work, As Shared In This Viral Twitter Thread
Being humble enough to accept when you’ve been wrong, and being curious enough to keep learning new things (even when your ego wants to get in the way) are two very good qualities to have as a human being.
It’s important to know the basics of life on Earth. Sadly, one area of knowledge that seems to be very much neglected is what some men know about women’s bodies and reproduction. In some cases, the misinformation they take as fact is simply staggering. You've been warned.
Sabrina Fonfeder, a development executive, noted that men should not make any decisions about women’s bodies, and gave an example of how little about biology some men know. One of her exes, for example, thought that all women got their period on the 15th of the month. The tweet quickly went viral and other women pitched in with similar horror stories.
Sabrina, who created the viral thread, was kind enough to answer Bored Panda's questions. She believes that men having major misconceptions about women is a problem with education.
"We're not taught anything about women because we're supposed to be these beautiful specimens. Get rid of your body hair, periods are gross, and don't get me started on pregnancy and labor and all the things women aren't taught their own bodies until they've given birth," she told Bored Panda. "There is so much shame about just existing as a woman that we don't ever talk about anything that makes us look like less than a supermodel."
Image credits: Sabrinafon
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In Sabrina's opinion, changing the education system in a meaningful way can definitely be done. "More women in charge would be a good start. But also it's not that hard to look at what other countries do and just do that. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here," she said that there are already great examples out there. All it takes is the courage to follow in their footsteps.
Bored Panda also wanted to get Sabrina's opinion on what grown men can do to educate themselves about basic biology. In her opinion, there's no excuse for ignorance, considering the wealth of information at everyone's fingertips.
"Men can simply... read? There has never been more access to information on any topic, so I'd tell any man to do some googling and they'll get what they're looking for. Otherwise, ask a woman in your life questions and come from a place of humility," she said.
"If you scroll through the replies of my Tweet, many women talk about their male partners being adamant even when they are wrong about basic biology, and then yelling when they're told they're wrong. That's extremely annoying. I don't think they'll face any sort of shame if they ask questions from a place of genuine curiosity and a willingness to learn."
The situation when it comes to knowledge about reproduction is pretty sad in some parts of the United States. According to SIECUS, only 29 states and the District of Columbia actually mandate sex education. Meanwhile, 35 states require schools to focus on abstinence when talking about sex ed.
Shockingly, a whopping 15 states “do not require sex education or HIV/STI instruction to be any of the following: age-appropriate, medically accurate, culturally responsive, or evidence-based/evidence-informed.” What this means is that in some areas of the country, students might be misinformed at the school level.
This isn’t the first time that Bored Panda has written about the misconceptions that men have about women. Earlier, 21-year-old Cataleya Jackson went viral after tackling the topic. She gave us an in-depth look at the reasons behind all the wrong info, cultural stigmas, and sex ed.
"One of my friends had a hilarious misconception about periods and my friends and I had laughed about it. They thought that periods just never end, that we'd be 99 on our death beds and still bleeding out,” she told Bored Panda about the extent to which some people are misinformed.
None of us are going to have faces or palms left by the end of this list
"In my country, we do have sex education at ages 13, 15 and again at 17 (if they've opted to study biology in 11th and 12th grade otherwise it's just at the former 2 ages). It's very scientific and doesn't leave space for questions about things that actually matter, things that happen in real-life,” she said that the education part is pretty sterile and removed from reality.
My ex boyfriend asked did I need winter or summer pads because it was in the spring time he thought bigger pads were for winter and smaller size for summer like the bigger they we're they kept you warm
“Most people don't even learn, they just memorize it to be able to reproduce it during the exams, and then they forget all of it. We need better education, and it has to be more informative and relatable than scientific," Cataleya said.
According to the woman, there’s a lot of stigma surrounding sex ed. And it needs to be erased. She shared an example of what happened when she was in the 6th grade.
"They called away all the girls from classes, brought us to an auditorium to discuss periods and what they are, why they happen, what we should do, etc. They gave us packets of pads and told us to keep them in our lockers for emergencies. Their heart was in the right place, but by only asking the girls to attend this, they ensured that periods became some sort of mythical and curious event in the minds of all the boys," she said.
periods came before calendars would be a small hint to some on this list
"[The boys] were not educated, they remained ignorant to what should be essential information to them. And of course, we all scrambled to hide our pads because we all thought we would rather be caught dead than holding a packet of them. They teased us about it and we, being only 11, had nothing to say to defend ourselves because the stigma around periods is very strong in my country."
In some cases, the stigma is so deeply-entrenched, that it would take more than a bit of education to change things. "I have friends whose own parents make them sit on mats on the floor when they are on their periods because they are considered impure and should not touch anything in the house," Cataleya told us.
I was aged about 13 or 14 when our general science teacher (not one of the biology teachers) told the mixed class that the pill was something that needed to be taken every day. "If a boy offers you a single pill and tells you that's all you need to be safe, then he's lying." I can't remember how the topic came up (this was back in the early 80's), but it was sound advice.
We like to drag it out so we can be a bit€h longer ! I use to push it all out at once but not anymore sometimes I make it last up to 10 day just so I can be mean for a 3rd of the month ! Good times
"Some women aren't allowed to enter the kitchen or the prayer room, they're not allowed to leave the house. A majority of women in my country have no access to pads or tampons and use cloth which causes infection and prevents them from being able to earn a living. I could go on and on about how bad it is here for a lot of women," she said.
Whenever I see a sex scene in a movie I think of the misinformation men get. I mean, 2 minutes of kissing und then the actual sex, and another two minutes later the woman has the loudest orgasm. No hands were anywhere near the clit. That may work for 1% of all women, I don't know but for most women it doesn't. Stop with the unrealistic sex scenes and stop fakeing orgasms, lol!
It is debatable if this belongs on this list. After all, NASA scientists KNEW she would not use 100 tampons during a two week trip. But if there had been only one or two too few or part of the stock would have been damaged,, there would have been no chance to get a replacement, and it would have posed logistical problems. So they overshot by a huge margin just to be on the safe side (, especially as the costs of a few dollars did not really matter in the grand scheme of a billion dollar space mission).
They may also need to account for enough supplies for a minimum length of time in case a complication leads to the trip being extended.
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And why would they not send? I mean, the weight is not a problem, size also is not an issue, price is definitely not an issue. So it makes sense to send waaay too much now that they can. This way, they won't have to think about redundancy. I bet they were sent in different packages in different compartments too (again redundancy in case one container is damaged etc.). NASA definitely knows hos many she may or may not need. The astronauts have a say in that. CapCom has a say in that. There are physicians going over the list of supplies that know of that. This item does not belong here.
This is partly true. NASA asked Sally if 100 would be enough, but in the end she (and every female astronaut since) stopped her period chemically using birth control pills. The water waste system is designed to handle body fluids, but not blood. And since it recycles the water to become drinking water, it's important that its clean. Therefore, periods in space can be dangerous and are avoided.
Wow. I didn’t know anything about that. That’s interesting.
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Also I don't think they had any idea how zero gravity/being in space could affect her cycle
At least they asked first and they genuinely didn't know how conditions in outer space would affect menstrual bleeding.
Lmao I have a box of 100 tampons in my desk and for a while the mechanics kept stealing them for mechanical jobs until I bought them some cheap paintbrushes (I have no idea what they were actually using the tampons for)
buuuuuuuut: you can use tampon for many repairs in a space station, like every liquid leaks ;)
Hey, perhaps they were hinting the mission might last longer than expected.
In fairness, I could easily get through 100 tampons in 2 weeks when my adenomyosis was at its worst - I could flood through a super tampon and a maxi pad in an hour on some days. (TF I finally had a hysterectomy!)
No one laugh, I thank the god's for my hysterectomy! I gave just shy of a 1 month supply away and they lasted a year for the recipient.
NASA admitted to this fiasco really. And they DID ASK Sally how she would need.
Chances are they gave her an unopened supply box that they got from the Navy-run clinic near Cape Canaveral. I’m not sure that’s really a faux pas. As a military RN, it seems reasonable to believe they just sent the box.
My husband actually brought up a good point about this. He said "what if something went wrong and they had to be in space a lot longer" I honestly don't know if that could actually happen, but he thought they were just trying to cover every possible scenario, which could very well be true.
They're freaking useful, anyway. Tampons were originally invented to plug bullet wounds, not for women to use during their periods. Not sure how useful this is in space, but they also make good fire starters, nosebleed plugs, cotton swab, water filter in the neck of a bottle, and you can use the string in a pinch. Seriously, everybody should keep a couple tampons in their car/wilderness/camping kits.
girls get their periods for like 2 weeks, but was she even on her period then too?
Even though most people hate feeling embarrassed, there’s no shame in admitting that you were wrong about something. "There's no shame in it if you're 30 and have misconceptions about periods. It is sad that you may not have educated yourself about it, but there's absolutely no shame in asking women to educate them or to start reading online themselves. Sex Ed is so important," Cataleya told us.
Note: this post originally had 89 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
Although this list is a horror story of ignorance and societal failings, I AM please to see that many started out with "My ex -...." or "I once had..." Good on ya, ladies.
I think that these shameful examples are more of an indictment of your education system than they are of men in general. Maybe if you were given a more modern and comprehensive sex ed these could be avoided. You need to become less prudish and more practical about sex ed and biology and I am sorry to say ladies that you are often just as much to blame as the guys are. If you don't talk about things like periods and your bodies to your sons, brothers and partners and they aren't taught about it at school, how are they going to learn?
Then guys need to stop grossing out about talking about it. I had no problem talking about sex, but my daughter was a lot more nervous about it with her son, but she did it anyway. Although periods didn't bother her to talk about. And the fundies won't let the schools really educate kids about sex. You'd think guys would be dying to get the most information about the place where their d**k spends the most free time. But, hey, it's always the women's fault.
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Y'know it is okay to be ignorant on some things. In fact it is natural to not know things depending on your upbringing, access to material et cetera. But being adamant and indignant to defend their own versions of truth is what makes these men idiots.
I don't understand people who, when called out, don't even THINK about looking it up before they argue their point. No wonder they're so sick of being humiliated. GOOGLE!
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I'm shocked. Like most of this stuff was taught to me when I was in school. Jesus!
Did these people never get educated or told where babies come from??? 😳
I have had multiple conversations with different men where I find myself having to explain that to me, my chest area is just my chest. Like, if I fall asleep with my hand on my sternum, it doesn't mean I'm feeling myself up. Another time, I told my (50-ish) friend that I'd pulled a chest muscle over the weekend. He said he couldn't relate, because he was a guy. I guess he thought breasts were made of muscle. I don't know
I had a 29 year old guy friend who said morning after pills are the same as abortions.
To be fair, this is a talking point a lot of "pro-life" groups actively push. "Using any form of birth control at all is murdering babies!!!"
Load More Replies... Had a good friend of mine whose wife begged me to talk to him. Their daughter had just started her period & he grounded her. She couldn’t get thru to him about this. So I asked him why he grounded their daughter. Y’all ready for this? Because it will make all the males in the neighborhood come around bc they can smell the blood & will want to have sex with her. WTF? I told him he was thinking of animals in heat & to pull his head out of his a*s. Daughter was then ungrounded. I told him that his wife & daughters know how their bodies work & to just listen. May want to have a talk with his sons as well so they don’t do stupid s**t like this as adults. Dumbass.
Man that's mental. Like had the guy not noticed over the course of his entire life how he wasn't smelling all the women on their periods!?
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I wonder why 90% of these stories refer to EX- boyfriends or EX- husbands 🤔
wow there sure are a lot of men out there who are under educated about this stuff.
I blame the republicans. I bet eric trump believes this whole list.
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the hymen is not a walk. there are holes or a whole or a slit depending on the woman. the point is, you don't pop a cherry. it will hurt most times but it's not like you're going into a wall. how do people think women get periods?
Not surprising considering all the parents protesting a kids movie that mentioned period products. My son has known about menstruation since at about age 5. Its not that hard to share age appropriate info about a thing that will affect roughly half the population every 28 days or so.
I'm starting to wonder if these are the reasons we keep seeing "ex-boyfriend"/"ex-husband" on this post... men just don't think
"Make sex ed optional!" they said. "Parents will teach their kids!" they said. Well, Boomers, are you still convinced that it was a good idea to deny Gen X and the Millennials a proper education on the reproductive systems?
A lot of boomers wanted it, but conservatives have made the rules for the last 50 years. The think if we don't teach them about sex, they won't know how to have it.
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I think the education system fails us all when it comes to women's reproductive health. I STRONGLY recommend a book by Natalie Angier called "Woman- An Intimate Geography." One of my favorite all-time books...powerful, educational, and beautifully written. Taught me to love my body on a whole nother level. 💗
It’s genuinely shocking how ignorant some men are about women’s bodies. Hopefully this thread could have educated some men.
I understand that it's kinda funny to blame the guys but it's the education system that should be held accountable. Also I'd love to know where in the world all of these posts came from.
The education system isn't responsible for the sheer arrogance of men believing they're right ... Especially when arguing with those whose bodies actually experience/experienced periods...
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Also, I had an emergency c-section, so I guess my kid is a figment of my imagination? And my period got so bad that I needed surgery. Don't get me started on the horrors of birth control side effects.
The same men that whine pERsoNaL fReEDumS about having to wear masks at private businesses are the same ones policing women's bodies.
Thats unbelieveable, but as a biology teacher myself (in germany, and we have good sex ed at least twice between 5th and 10th grade), i have to say that many boys just stop listening when i teach about period and pregnancy because "its not there buisness, there are no women". You can catch some of them if you tell them as long as they heterosexual and want a female partner in theire lives, its there god damn buisness too and they better know when to buy pads/tampons and chocolate 😁
I am amazed these guys are still walking upright and their own stupidity hasn't killed them. It's a shame to know that these types have donated sperm to the gene pool!😂
Hello men! I don't wanna hear sh!t about this "not all nen" thing, because this implies to EVERYONE! You should need a license to have kids, and definitely to have sex! I'd you can't answer easy questions about women's basic biology, you don't get to have sex!
I don't usually comment on these, but as a man, there isn't one thing on here I did not know. Not bragging. I'm genuinely shocked at that, because I truly believed this was all common knowledge. And the fact that some men are in medical related professions and still don't know, makes me nervous for my daughters.
Reading these makes me shake my head. Did something happen in the schools system? i went to highschool in the early 70s and we had sex education as part of our health classes. It was all explained. How the genders were different, how and why periods worked, what STDs were, how babies happened etc.
Do these men not get sex education at school or biology? This was a regular topic in my high school in several years.
They're the ones who had someone else do their homework & cheated on tests.
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Although this list is a horror story of ignorance and societal failings, I AM please to see that many started out with "My ex -...." or "I once had..." Good on ya, ladies.
I think that these shameful examples are more of an indictment of your education system than they are of men in general. Maybe if you were given a more modern and comprehensive sex ed these could be avoided. You need to become less prudish and more practical about sex ed and biology and I am sorry to say ladies that you are often just as much to blame as the guys are. If you don't talk about things like periods and your bodies to your sons, brothers and partners and they aren't taught about it at school, how are they going to learn?
Then guys need to stop grossing out about talking about it. I had no problem talking about sex, but my daughter was a lot more nervous about it with her son, but she did it anyway. Although periods didn't bother her to talk about. And the fundies won't let the schools really educate kids about sex. You'd think guys would be dying to get the most information about the place where their d**k spends the most free time. But, hey, it's always the women's fault.
Load More Replies... Y'know it is okay to be ignorant on some things. In fact it is natural to not know things depending on your upbringing, access to material et cetera. But being adamant and indignant to defend their own versions of truth is what makes these men idiots.
I don't understand people who, when called out, don't even THINK about looking it up before they argue their point. No wonder they're so sick of being humiliated. GOOGLE!
Load More Replies... I'm shocked. Like most of this stuff was taught to me when I was in school. Jesus!
Did these people never get educated or told where babies come from??? 😳
I have had multiple conversations with different men where I find myself having to explain that to me, my chest area is just my chest. Like, if I fall asleep with my hand on my sternum, it doesn't mean I'm feeling myself up. Another time, I told my (50-ish) friend that I'd pulled a chest muscle over the weekend. He said he couldn't relate, because he was a guy. I guess he thought breasts were made of muscle. I don't know
I had a 29 year old guy friend who said morning after pills are the same as abortions.
To be fair, this is a talking point a lot of "pro-life" groups actively push. "Using any form of birth control at all is murdering babies!!!"
Load More Replies... Had a good friend of mine whose wife begged me to talk to him. Their daughter had just started her period & he grounded her. She couldn’t get thru to him about this. So I asked him why he grounded their daughter. Y’all ready for this? Because it will make all the males in the neighborhood come around bc they can smell the blood & will want to have sex with her. WTF? I told him he was thinking of animals in heat & to pull his head out of his a*s. Daughter was then ungrounded. I told him that his wife & daughters know how their bodies work & to just listen. May want to have a talk with his sons as well so they don’t do stupid s**t like this as adults. Dumbass.
Man that's mental. Like had the guy not noticed over the course of his entire life how he wasn't smelling all the women on their periods!?
Load More Replies... I wonder why 90% of these stories refer to EX- boyfriends or EX- husbands 🤔
wow there sure are a lot of men out there who are under educated about this stuff.
I blame the republicans. I bet eric trump believes this whole list.
Load More Replies... the hymen is not a walk. there are holes or a whole or a slit depending on the woman. the point is, you don't pop a cherry. it will hurt most times but it's not like you're going into a wall. how do people think women get periods?
Not surprising considering all the parents protesting a kids movie that mentioned period products. My son has known about menstruation since at about age 5. Its not that hard to share age appropriate info about a thing that will affect roughly half the population every 28 days or so.
I'm starting to wonder if these are the reasons we keep seeing "ex-boyfriend"/"ex-husband" on this post... men just don't think
"Make sex ed optional!" they said. "Parents will teach their kids!" they said. Well, Boomers, are you still convinced that it was a good idea to deny Gen X and the Millennials a proper education on the reproductive systems?
A lot of boomers wanted it, but conservatives have made the rules for the last 50 years. The think if we don't teach them about sex, they won't know how to have it.
Load More Replies... I think the education system fails us all when it comes to women's reproductive health. I STRONGLY recommend a book by Natalie Angier called "Woman- An Intimate Geography." One of my favorite all-time books...powerful, educational, and beautifully written. Taught me to love my body on a whole nother level. 💗
It’s genuinely shocking how ignorant some men are about women’s bodies. Hopefully this thread could have educated some men.
I understand that it's kinda funny to blame the guys but it's the education system that should be held accountable. Also I'd love to know where in the world all of these posts came from.
The education system isn't responsible for the sheer arrogance of men believing they're right ... Especially when arguing with those whose bodies actually experience/experienced periods...
Load More Replies... I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Also, I had an emergency c-section, so I guess my kid is a figment of my imagination? And my period got so bad that I needed surgery. Don't get me started on the horrors of birth control side effects.
The same men that whine pERsoNaL fReEDumS about having to wear masks at private businesses are the same ones policing women's bodies.
Thats unbelieveable, but as a biology teacher myself (in germany, and we have good sex ed at least twice between 5th and 10th grade), i have to say that many boys just stop listening when i teach about period and pregnancy because "its not there buisness, there are no women". You can catch some of them if you tell them as long as they heterosexual and want a female partner in theire lives, its there god damn buisness too and they better know when to buy pads/tampons and chocolate 😁
I am amazed these guys are still walking upright and their own stupidity hasn't killed them. It's a shame to know that these types have donated sperm to the gene pool!😂
Hello men! I don't wanna hear sh!t about this "not all nen" thing, because this implies to EVERYONE! You should need a license to have kids, and definitely to have sex! I'd you can't answer easy questions about women's basic biology, you don't get to have sex!
I don't usually comment on these, but as a man, there isn't one thing on here I did not know. Not bragging. I'm genuinely shocked at that, because I truly believed this was all common knowledge. And the fact that some men are in medical related professions and still don't know, makes me nervous for my daughters.
Reading these makes me shake my head. Did something happen in the schools system? i went to highschool in the early 70s and we had sex education as part of our health classes. It was all explained. How the genders were different, how and why periods worked, what STDs were, how babies happened etc.
Do these men not get sex education at school or biology? This was a regular topic in my high school in several years.
They're the ones who had someone else do their homework & cheated on tests.
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