Watch out, ladies! And feminism! Because guys are totally onto you and your dirty periods. According to a study cited on the blog What Men Think of Women, men can tell when women are on their periods – just by listening to them talk! Well, some of the time, anyway. From a writeup of the research in the Times of India:
Men can actually tell from a woman’s voice when she is having her period, a new study has claimed.
For the study, conducted by Nathan Pipitone at Adams State College and Gordon Gallup from SUNY-Albany, the researchers asked three groups of men to listen to voice recordings of ten women who counted from one to five at four different points over their menstrual cycle.
According to Popular Science, all four recordings were played in a random order and then the first group of men were asked to guess which were made while the women were on their period. The tests revealed that the men were correct 35 per cent of the time, which was described as a ‘significant’ result.
That’s right, ladies! Men can tell whether or not you’re are on the rag – a third of the time!
I myself have developed a technique that can bring this success rate to well over 50 percent – just by listening to women talk!
All you have to do is to pay attention to subtle audio clues, like her saying:
“I just started my period.”
“My period came early this month.”
“Crap. I’ve got awful craps – because of my period.”
“Aunt Flo is paying her monthly visit.” (Note: this works only if she does not actually have an Aunt Flo.)
“It’s shark week! “ (Note: This works only if it is not actually Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.)
“It’s that time of month again. The time when I use tampons, in my vagina.”
“I have reached that point in my menstrual cycle during which blood leaks from my hoo-ha.”
So what does all this mean? According to Christian J at What Men Are Saying About Women, it means the jig is up, feminists! In a post titled How Men can Decode “Women’s” Menstrual Cycle.. , he writes:
This information is what feminist have been trying to hide, delete and deny for many a decade. They are of the opinion that the menstrual cycle is irrelevant and superfluous to their cause and one can understand why when one looks at the studies on how women are affected by it.
In the worst case scenarios, their behaviour are effected to such a degree as to make them totally dysfunctional and even bedridden for the period(intended) of the cycle. The other side of the argument is ofcourse that it is swept under the carpet and not discussed or taken seriously..
Just some added benefits from feminism, as they live in ignorant, self induced silence..
You might as well pack it in, ladies and manginas – because men know!
A third of the time.
NOTE: I have no idea why Christian J. put the word “women” in quotes in the title of his blog post. Like his now-legendary two-dot ellipses, this is a mystery that may forever remain unsolved. Or you could ask him, I guess.
EDITED TO ADD: This post has now inspired a completely disingenuous “Yahoo Answers” query from an antifeminist concern troll who seems to be pretending that this post was not DRIPPING IN SARCASM. Add your answers, if you want!
Is that what we’ve been doing? I had no idea I was supposed to care if men can guess that blood is pouring out of me. I’m such a terrible feminist.
Where did this idea that feminists are hiding a simple fact of biology to further the aims of feminism come from?
You mean how feminists want birth control covered by insurance companies? No…that has to do with having periods, not not having periods.
I iz confused.
Do these idiots know how stupid they sound?
That is a rhetorical question, I know they are incapable of knowing that.
I use my birth control to not have periods. Am I an evil feminazi, trying to fool the poor menfolk?
It’s misandry to be on your period. It’s super misandry to use birth control to not have periods.
That’s true. I think menstruation is mostly irrelevant to feminism. The only exception is that it’s wrong when misogynistic doctors treat menstrual problems like they’re no big deal.
More like superFLOWus, amiright??!??!?!?!?
I always like to use the phrase “There are Communists in the funhouse.” myself, just to see folks try to figure that one out.
The angels have the phonebox.
I’d have to read the study but there may be something to it but only insofar as subtle sexual readiness indicators. Which of course has fuck all to do with feminism or how evil women are trying to oppress poor beleaguered men with tampon commercials.
It’s almost cute how these guys get all “EWWW COOTIES” about women and their bodies. Reminds me of when I was 7 years old and the neighbor boy was convinced that girls had all manner of cooties and that these said cooties could jump several feet, kind of like fleas.
He turned into a real horn dog in high school. I guess he found a good spray.
What???
I mean, sorry, what???
Someone needs to tell this dude that you can’t just unrelated phrases together and present that as your argument.
*string unrelated phrases together
Blah blah blah. I’m stupid too.
It’s also important to realize that if the men in the study had no idea which one was the correct, they still would have gotten 25% correct.
I don’t have much training in statistics, but 35% of the time makes an upper-bound estimate, while 13% (10/75) makes for a lower-bound estimate. A statistician could narrow that down a lot, but for the simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, it’s actually the range 13-35%. A third of the time is being generous.
I actually have a sister who has menstrual issues to the degree where she is sometimes bedridden, I don’t see what that has to do with anything else. It doesn’t make her any less competent or valuable…
See, I think that’s one of the central mistakes they are making. Feminists don’t deny that women who menstruate sometimes are affected by mestruation, they deny that it makes women incompetent, their opinions less worth respect, their lives and labor worth less, etc.
Sexists don’t really want to do discuss menstrual issues, what they want is to be able to dismiss anything a woman says or does in disagreement with them as “she’s on her period” without actually having to address her claims.
“A woman’s voice changes during certain times in her cycle”, okay, assuming for the moment that is true, why would that have anything to do with anything other than perhaps estrogen levels effecting voice pitch and such?
Maybe he’s trying to be inclusive of menstruating non-women? (Probably not XD) But not every woman menstruates, and not every one who menstruates is a woman in any case.
I totally don’t know your sister’s situation, and I know that easy access to hormonal birth control is a privilege that I have and many other menstruating people don’t. That said, issues like this are why I take pills continuously, and only have a period every 3 or 4 months.
She might know all about that already, I just bring it up because I didn’t realize it was possible until my physiotherapist told me about it last year, and I’ve been talking to medical professionals about my problems for much longer than that.
There doesn’t seem to be a single comment on that website on any article posted. Is he just talking to himself over there?
Since there’s no link to the actual study, I have no idea how many participants there were so no way to judge what the standard errors would be, but pure chance would indicate they should get the right answer 25 percent of the time. So that extra 10 percent, how significant is it? Significant at the 99 percent level? Okay. Significant at the 90 percent level or lower? Meh. This 35 percent could still just be noise and randomness.
@Crumbelievable: I found 2 posts with 1 comment each. So clearly, he has a HUGE audience. 🙂
Also, found this lovely quote from him:
“I have on my Google reader a site named “What Black Men Think”, having been pointed in that direction quite a few years a go and keeping an interest in my coloured brothers has always been there as I have met many and have a very good personal friend as well..”
What a gem he is.
Yes. Actually being female is proof positive that you are an evil feminazi-it really seems to require no more than that.
I’ll have to go tell that womyn’s spirituality crowd my mother hangs out with that they are Doing Feminism Wrong. Because they’re always ready to give me shit about how OMG!TRAGIC! it is that I hit menopause super-early and thus have forever lost the joys of cycling with the Sacred Earth/Moon/Crab-Nebula Mother. Also, I will never squeeze a small person out of my vagina, thus dooming me for all eternity to some kind of pale imitation of True Wymynhyyd. *eyeroll*
I never took statistics but…
35% is a lousy percentage. That’s less than the 50/50 average you would expect just from guessing.
To paraphse Anchorman, “Thirty-five percent of the time, it works every time.”
paraphrase*
Also from Anchorman
Brick Tamland: I read somewhere their periods attract bears. Bears can smell the menstruation.
Brian Fantana: Well, that’s just great. You hear that, Ed? Bears. Now you’re putting the whole station in jeopardy.
Ever since I went off the Pill, I’ve had less than 35% accuracy in predicting my own periods. Why have men been keeping these detection methods secret?
I’ll have to go tell that womyn’s spirituality crowd my mother hangs out with that they are Doing Feminism Wrong. Because they’re always ready to give me shit about how OMG!TRAGIC! it is that I hit menopause super-early and thus have forever lost the joys of cycling with the Sacred Earth/Moon/Crab-Nebula Mother. Also, I will never squeeze a small person out of my vagina, thus dooming me for all eternity to some kind of pale imitation of True Wymynhyyd. *eyeroll*
To be fair, it does kinda sound like they’ve been doing it wrong.
Their reaction to this study can be boiled down to three words: women, hormones, bitches. It’s seriously no more complicated than that. They delight in anything that seems to support their belief that all women are bitches.