Do you remember “freebleeding,” that phony “radical feminist movement” protesting the tyranny of maxipads and the joy of free-flowing menstrual blood that 4chan tried their hardest to convince feminists was a totes real thing they should all sign up for right away?
While a tiny number of real feminists were discussing the idea before 4chan got hold of it, 4chan tried to turn a protest of sorts against menstrual shaming into a fun fad that involved pretty much bleeding on anything and everything one could possibly bleed upon.
The irony, of course, was that the only people gullible enough to fall for the hoax hook line and tampon weren’t feminists but antifeminists, always ready to believe the worst about a movement they really don’t understand very well at all.
I ran across what I think is my favorite example of this amazing gullibility while poking around Facebook recently in search of inadvertently hilarious Men’s Rights memes. I found the following screenshot posted on an energetically antifeminist Facebook page called the Anti White Knight Coalition.
Be warned: this is a bit gross.
I have to give some credit to whoever came up with this; it’s an amazing mixture of hilarious and disgusting.
But no one could possibly have taken it seriously, right? No one literally believes that feminists are making and eating period blood popsicles, right? That they think are “really heathy” and “overall good” except for a “little … fishy smell,” right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Here’s how the Anti White Knight Coalition’s fans responded to this obvious prank pic.
These are literally all of the responses to that post, except for one that contained a not-particularly relevant NSFW pic. Only one of the commenters is sure it’s a fake.
Everyone else is like, yeah, you could totally make popsicles out of menstrual blood and they’d totally look like regular popsicles and yeah that’s something feminists would totally do.
@Kupo:
I’m curious about what dangers you’re referring to. Unless it’s toxic shock, which is definitely a potential danger of misuse, but one I’m willing to accept so I don’t have to stop exercising 4 days out of every month.
The pictured popsicles are clearly commercial raspberry ones. I have bought frozen liver, kidneys, and hearts from time to time, and I know what frozen blood looks like. Also, unless it comes from a fish, it doesn’t smell fishy.
Female vaginal discharges do not smell fishy, either, whether bloody or not, in the absence of a trichomonas infection. A rank odor of any kind calls for medical intervention.
@EJ
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/avd.gif
It’s funny if you want to grow up knowing the people you’re suppose to trust most in your life are just jerking you along for no real reason but shits and giggles.
Calm down, MRAs. It’s a fake photo. Women aren’t going around eating their menses. Sheesh.
sorry, for having to ask about this, especially when there are probably places I could research this, but I feel a bit more comfortable asking people about it, again sorry. Do you guys know how I could help women who due to whatever reason don’t have access to tampon/pads/sanitary things, get access to those things? is there a charity for this sort of thing? or should I just get information? or something else? again sorry.
Overly Long Name: Locally, nationally, or globally?
Local & national, whatever charities that handle food and essential supplies (such as diapers) to impoverished families. You should contact them directly, and ask about helping on that front. Possibly check women’s health clinics too?
Globally, check the article I linked earlier in this thread, it lists some sanitation/menstrual hygiene orgs.
(And I can’t sleep, oh joy.)
@OLN
Here’s a few organizations that distribute feminine hygiene products to women and girls. You can also contact your local homeless shelter to see if they need any donations of said item.
http://www.distributingdignity.org/
http://lunapads.com/pads4girls?geoip_country=US
http://www.daysforgirls.org/
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ when I saw that picture; it’s a much more pleasant thought than the arseholes who actually think period blood ice lollies are a real thing.
I think that this talk about “free bleeding”– with a credulous manosphere ignoring the fact that most women wouldn’t want to bleed all over their clothes, sofas, and so on, and also ignoring the fact that they themselves have probably never seen menstrual blood on anyone’s clothing or sofa–is just a symbol of the fact that many, many, many men don’t know much about women and our bodies.
My anecdotal evidence:
My friend’s 24-year-old boyfriend had never heard of menstruation. And when she told him about it, he didn’t believe her until he checked with his sister. Oh, did I mention that this guy was a PhD student at a very prestigious university?
Another friend’s early-20s fiance who, when she told him she’d bought an off-white wedding gown, said quite seriously, “Does this mean everyone will know?” (Meaning, Does this mean that everyone will know we’ve been having sex.) Did I mention that this guy was a graduate of a fine college?
Another ex-boyfriend who told me that when he was a teenager, he thought that women “lost their minds” when they menstruated. I pointed out that he had a sister and a mother who didn’t “go crazy” when they menstruated. He hadn’t thought of that.
My takeaway? Many men don’t know much about our bodies because we’re unimportant (unlike, say, their football team or beer or cheese doodles). Also, our bodies are somehow shameful. Yeah, we’re hot–but it’s better not to find out any more about our bodies than that.
My school system did teach the basic mechanics of both sexes, but sex ed is notoriously poor in large parts of the US because people somehow got the idea that not teaching it means teenagers won’t have sex, and this can have very little relationship to general educational quality. So it could also mean that they didn’t want to walk up to random women and ask them about it.
Odds are actually pretty good they found out how penises work by personal experience or their dad telling them what he thought they needed to know, generally not very much.
If that right there is not a cogent case for comprehensive sex ed, in which ALL bodily functions are explained to all genders…I don’t know what is.
Also, you can now buy wedding dresses in whatever color(s) you like! No virginity required! In fact, white wedding dresses are a relatively recent development anyhow, so this expansion of the color spectrum is really just a return to old times, when brides wore whatever dress of theirs was newest and/or prettiest on them.
Bina:
If I had a need for a wedding dress (already tied the knot, in fab red, gold, black) and had the money to get it customized, I’d go for a human version of Rainbow Dash’s Grand Galloping Gala outfit. Seriously. 😀 It is that gorgeous. (Or Twilight Sparkle’s. Now I’m torn. Rainbows vs stars, how can I choooooose?)
Sorry folks, but Lindy West already won wedding dresses forever
http://assets.feministing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/West.jpeg
Edit: I forgot how to embed, again.
@ Bina
I think that the major issue is that the last required sex ed class is right around 14… And they promptly forget about what they learned. Same thing goes with home economics. Personal finance is kind of in the same boat, but it’s often not a mandatory class in high school (which is absurd), and perhaps the mandatory lessons were in 5th grade or so and that was it.
Education just needs an overhaul in general. I remember when I was in high school–which wasn’t too long ago–that the average high schooler *and* adult gets a D or a C- on the basic economics test. You know, what should be common sense answers. It’s ridiculous!
Oh, and a few supposedly highly educated people in their 20s and 30s that I knew didn’t know what testosterone or estrogen were. *facepalm*
For the umpteenth time – ‘fishy’ smell is associated with stale semen. I am a woman who has had sex with a number of women, none of whom smelt fishy.
Those ice lollies just look like red ice lollies – it is just really fucking obvious!
Maybe this exists because of the vaginal fluid bread thing – I have actually read the blog of the woman who has claimed to have done this and it appears to be genuine. Personally I find it stomach churning – lack of body shame is one thing…
@Skiriki and Hippie Lady
Thank you
@Discusion about sex ed and education
I can say, that as an ignoramus, I would very much appreciate better sex education classes.
Also what exactly does white have to do with wedding dresses is it a sign the person isn’t a virgin?
Also also, just a thing to remember being smart in one area doesn’t mean your smart in other ways or even know some common knowledge
also also also I’m a mansplaining bastard who deserves a boot to the face (that was mansplaining right? I still haven’t fully grasped that concept)
@Kat
I had a classmate in medical school (medical! school!) who discovered that women do not pee out of their vaginas during gross anatomy. Now, he did learn he was wrong in great gory detail as we did a pretty thorough dissection, but it amazed me someone could have gotten that far not knowing that fact.
Back when LiveJournal was a thing I subscribed to a group that collected the worst threads from homemaking/lifestyle groups, and freebleeders showed up on there from time to time. They were much less common than, say, people who didn’t believe in diapering their babies.
@loquora
Yeah, I’m referring to TSS.
Fishy smell: it happens when someone has a Gardnerella infection. About 1/4 women are carriers but keep the bacteria under control. When something comes up and disturbs the flora, it can proliferate and emit enough of its characteristic smell to be noticed.
I think it’s one of those dead unicorns that lots of people talk about but no one actually does.
I always thought the fishy smell was supposed to be due to an infection, but personally I noticed a mild fishy odour the day after eating certain kinds of fish. So I just assumed it used the same proteins from the fish rather than manufacturing them from scratch. Since my hysterectomy I’ve not noticed any smell after eating fish, though. Maybe it affects some women and not others.
I did notice that my period smelled bad after having my second baby. This worried me so much I thought I must have an infection, but a friend told me she found the same problem and it was just ‘ageing’. Maybe we do all smell more as we get older but frequent showering means we just don’t notice. Babies smell good enough to eat!
As for wedding dresses, when people used to wear their ‘Sunday best’ to church, women usually just wore that for their wedding. The white symbolising virginity is a relatively new thing.
I find it astounding that anyone with Internet access can be ignorant of these things. When I was a kid in the 70s, we learnt about the basics of sex from a page of a Ladybird book called ‘The Body’. School libraries are helpful. I guess most kids are sheltered from it because of modern life, women no longer having 15 babies and discreet feminine hygiene products, and not witnessing animals reproducing either.
I bought my two teenage daughters some ‘Thinx’ underwear. Seemed like a good idea. I tried cups myself, but didn’t get on with them. (Instead was unreliable and the mooncup was too difficult to remove. Both seemed too messy)
Wearing a pad meant that my youngest daughter saw my menstrual blood on a pad when we were in a public toilet. She then proceeded to tell people that ‘mummy has red poo’. Education should be that easy.
Ooh, an above post reminded me- when you are donating for a food drive feel free to throw in packs of pads and tampons. When you live in poverty those things are usually not in the budget, especially when they are so damned expensive in the first place. I’ve heard sad stories about women and teens using facecloths and sponges hoping like hell no one finds out because of the shame.
@Overly Long Name
I never had a sex ed class until I went to college. Books are where I gained most of my basic sex education. These books are equally available to boys and men, but many of them don’t seem to be interested. Access to female bodies seems to be important to them; knowledge about them doesn’t. This is a societal issue.
The white color of a wedding dress is supposed to symbolize virginity. But there is no Bridal Oversight Committee to enforce this notion. So plenty of women who aren’t virgins wear white at their weddings. Fact.
I agree that being smart in one area doesn’t make you smart in other areas. What I’m talking about is a pervasive pattern.
“A boot in the face” for mansplaining? Did you know that there’s a book called Men Explain Things to Me? Author Rebecca Solnit can lay out her case for you. No physical attack involved.
Again, it’s quite possible that those books were in fact equally available to boys and girls in those regions. Namely, not available at all.
While Cracked has some issues with its writers, it also does a solid series of personal experience articles; here’s one from a woman raised in the Quiverfull movement. Now, as you may gather from the article, that movement is very patriarchal, but teenage boys in it are not provided with particularly better sex ed than the girls and don’t have unmonitored internet access. And while it’s an extreme example, it is part of a general trend in American Christian movements. Sex ed is patchy in the US and if the parents don’t want their kids to learn it they won’t learn it; even in my state where there were school sex ed classes parents could opt their children out of it.