If a recent conversation on the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit is any indication, MGTOWs remain baffled by and terrified of the human vagina.
In the midst of one of that subreddit’s typically dreadful discussions, the subject of women in the military comes up. One Reddit MGTOW lets it be known that he “f**king hope[s] women get drafted some day.”
One of his comrades steps in to MGTOWsplain just why he thinks that would be a bad, bad thing:
So … how would that work, exactly?
Either Some_one498 thinks that
- Our enemies have secret squads of vagina-sniffing dogs that can detect the scent of menstrual blood from miles away, or
- Women are so incapacitated by the monthly visit from Aunt Flo that they’ll just lie there and let enemy soldiers capture them
I made Some_one498’s quote into a meme using a still from the Goldie Hawn comedy Private Benjamin, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to catch on.
tl;dr: Vaginas are scary!
http://i60.tinypic.com/e830b5.png
They attract bears!
So don’t send women into battle with Canada! Or Alaska!
OMGads not Aunt Flo! She’d never betray me-*collapses*
So, I’m confused: Are these guys repulsed by our periods, or secretly attracted to them (like sharks)? And also, when ARE they going to just go the fuck AWAY, already?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think these guys have ever been in the military in their lives.
I have quite a few good euphemisms for periods. I used to like ‘Captain Scarlett’, sometimes you get a Mysteron and need a packet of Angel Interceptors. You can guess what they are. Riding the cotton donkey, Mr Blobby and United playing at home are funny ones too. 🙂
I remember when the junior high I attended was being renovated and a new girls’ locker room was being built. There was a rumor that the boys would be moved into the old girls’ locker room, and the boys were, like, “Noooooooo, ewwwwww, girls have had their peeeeeeeeeriods all over that shower room floor!” Did I go to school with future miggy-toads?
I don’t… Nobody is going to bleed all over a communal shower floor, unless they are unfortunate enough to unexpectedly start their period mid-shower.
@Viscaria
Perhaps they thought Carrie was a documentary.
My favorite euphemism for periods is either “shark week” or “communism”.
This would really blow his mind. Or perhaps Sgt Shane Ortega, a trans man. I dare say he would consider him a “bloke in a dress”. These MGTOW guys do struggle with life don’t they. Meanwhile everyone else is just getting on with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/17/transgender-soldier-is-first-female-to-serve-on-the-front-line
Re: period euphemisms, I just say Mama Monthly came to visit and hit me with her big red bag. It’s an accurate description for how it feels for the first 2-3 days. But if I had to flee from an enemy, I’d still be able to do it, just maybe a shitload more exhausted afterwards.
@Paradoxical Intention: I think you might enjoy this.
So, not aware that there are ways to suppress the menstrual cycle are you MGTOWs?
The lack of basic knowledge is astounding. My secret hope is that many of these people are 12 year olds just trying to be “adult” and they’ll grow out of it. Statements like this make me think it might be so.
My favorite euphemism for menstruation is “rooting for ‘Bama.” (One or more of the University of Alabama’s sports teams is named the “Crimson Tide,” and it’s hard to see this mentioned by supporters without seeing their slogan attached— “Roll, Tide, Roll.”)
“More easily captured”? That, alas, is true. To capture the menstruating person, you’ll need to prop a really big box on a forked stick (image search “box trap” or search Bugs Bunny cartoons on Youtube for setup) over a heating pad and a bottle of NSAID’s, but watch out! We’re ornery when the box gets opened and “pacification with cupcakes” is a dangerous myth perpetuated by the stand-up comedy community for their own grisly and sadistic viewing pleasure.
These MGTOW have it all wrong. Premenstrual soldiers are the best soldiers. It’s because we get uncontrollable cravings. We’ll eat the enemy soldiers. You just have to make sure there’s an Olive Garden on base. After all, females expect to eat there daily.
I mean, they just have to offer us bon-bons and we’ll come willingly.
OMG, yes!
This has happened to me more times than I can count.
Get my period.
Get captured by enemy bloodhounds.
They won’t let me go until I scratch them behind the ears and give them treats.
I’ve begun to realize that some men think women are incapacitated by everything. I went to a theatre conference this summer where a young man wrote a play about menopause, which showed women being so incapacitated by menopause they couldn’t do their job, they didn’t know where they were most of the time, and they constantly hallucinated. How anyone could think this was an accurate description of something most women go through at some point in their life, I don’t know.
Not to mention that, with the cultural references he used for her childhood, he must think women go through menopause in their early 30s.
I’m fond of “Ms. Scarlett has returned to Tara” and “dishonorable discharge from the uterine navy”.
I think Tampax ads should start depicting SERE training camps instead of gauzy beaches. Gauzy SERE training camps, though.
Fallen to the communists is a good euphemism.
My personal term is “the Red Sea”.
And if the enemy offer me some decent cramp relief, I’m defecting. 😉
“Captain, the enemy is attacking from south-west with their division of angry sharks!” – “Oh, crap. It’s… You know… Seargent Feeble Feemale is on her… I mean it’s that time of the… You know what I mean, Major Miggs, don’t you?”
Major Miggs: “harglbrmffft!” (Explodes in humble silence)
Seargent Feemale: “All this war and stuff REALLY gets on my NERVES!!! Can somebody just shoot us all and give me some bon-bons already?”
Angry Shark: “Hello Mylady, happy to oblige!” (Chaos, darkness, apocalypse, alpha sharks ruling the world. The end)
@kupo, I am a military brat and have been in fairly serious relationships with many soldiers, and can confirm unequivocally that pretty much any soldier will come willingly when offered bon-bons. I recommend the ones known as “Martha Washingtons” if your backyard POW camp has been looking anemic.
Am I alone here in not liking period euphemisms, even the funny ones? If I need to menion being on my period, I just use the word “period”.
Or I might mention something like “menstrual cramps”, which to be honest has a pretty nice ring to it (it’s the trocheic dimeter, I suppose; then again, “period cramps” is a trocheic dimeter as well and less pleasing to the ear, so I might need to think about this some more). The cramps themselves are annoying as hell, of course, I’m just talking about the phrase.
At any rate, I don’t feel a need to hide the word, or something. It’s just a period.
(Not meant to disparage anyone here who does enjoy funny euphemisms, though! They are pretty fun.)
It’s true! This is how Cú Chulainn defeated queen Medb.
@PI. One of my best friends uses that and always says it like Jen from the IT Crowd “I’ve fallen to the communists”
ETA: @AW with the video evidence!
I’m trying to figure out the part just glossed over “women would just get in the way which would just cause more casualties”…huh? How? What? They do know they train people before putting them in combat, right? They are aware of how the Army works, right? Actually, no, I don’t think they do.
It’s like everything these fools yap on about – no first hand experience, just their ego-tinted I-could-do-that-because-MAN fantasy. Because they imagine the military as accurately as they do women’s physiology and psychology.
Why do these guys always talk about women in the military like it’s hypothetical? In the U.S., women have served in the military as soldiers for over 70 years (my grandma was a WAC), and as nurses and other front-line support roles since at least the Civil War. It’s not wacky new thing. In all that time, there have been, oh, zero cases of a woman being captured because she was incapacitated by her period, so I think we’re going to be okay.
This came up in another recent thread, but I’m always darkly amused by the MRA notion that military service consists entirely of running around with guns, either chasing or being chased by bad guys, like kids playing G.I. Joe.
I’m not amused at all by their insistence on pretending that servicewomen don’t exist at all. It’s disgusting to treat the women who defend them with such contempt.
Sure, but Medb almost won because the rest of the men of Cooley were under a curse causing them to undergo labor pains for a month out of every year (they’d been cursed, of course, for forcing a pregnant woman to run a horse race–not ride a horse, actually run with the horses–and she won but then gave birth and died at the finish line, but that’s another story). Cú Chulainn was recruited from outside so he could singlehandedly hold off Medb’s army while the men were incapacitated by labor.
There is, however, a river whose Irish name translates to “Medb’s Foulness” because Medb supposedly created it on her way to Cooley by menstruating a flood.
Oh man, Irish epics are the best.
That’s not how anything works. If I’d been painfully bleeding from my genitals once a month since, like, 12, why would I give up now? In the middle of an ongoing firefight? I’m sure there’ll be time to lie down when the bullets aren’t whizzing right by my head. Do they think people just shut down like fembots as soon as it turns midnight on the 7th? Jackasses
@iknklast
But women cease to exist after 25. 30 is fuckin generous /s
@Penny
Uhm… isn’t ‘period’… also a euph-… nevermind, I have no idea what I’m talking about
I wondered the same thing when the discussion was taking place in the US about allowing queer people to serve openly in the military. “If we allow gays in our military, they’ll all be too busy having sex with each other to do their jobs!” “Teh gayz can’t handle the rigours of conflict.” “Who’s to say if gay soldiers will get along with the normal soldiers?” Dudes, there are, and always have been, queer people in the military.
Given how little these dudebros think of taking a shower or of wiping their own asses, no wonder they think that women’s period stank will call in Charlie from five miles away. To them, the concept of ‘hygiene’ is a greeting.
@Axe
No, it’s short for menstrual period. It’s not the same as a euphemism, which is where you allude to something because it’s too embarrassing to say the actual thing.
@Penny
I’m with you. It makes me really uncomfortable and the cuter the euphemism the more uncomfortable it makes me feel. I’m not sure why because other euphemisms don’t bother me, like all the ones for sex. Maybe because of all the stigma around it? Like we can’t even say it because it’s considered gross, and on top of that it’s constantly held up as this reason why people who menstruate are so inferior to those who don’t.
@kupo
Ah! Knew I had no idea what I was talking about. Thanks 🙂
How do they know so little about history and biology? How? Who miseducated these poor suckers?
I prefer “shark week” and “the cardinal has flown”.
I’m stealing “routing for ‘bama”.
Even if we think of it as a sort-of euphemism, it’s one that has become so widespread it just replaces the original word, with all its euphemism-requiring meanings (and thus necessitates the creation of a new euphemism). Language often works that way; it can be equally neat and exasperating.
And kupo, I think you made a good point, on the reason it seems uncomfortable. This attitude about periods in general.
I’m with Penny and Kupo. I like to be pretty open about my period and not use any cutesy euphemisms. I’m not embarrassed to menstruate and I think menstruation could really stand to be demystified. If cis men can watch or play media with violence and gore in it, I really don’t think they’re too fragile and delicate to hear about a completely normal and healthy bodily function. Shielding cis men from the existence of menstruation leads to exactly the kind of bullshit in the OP. Our culture treats the uterus, the vagina and all their functions as some sort of bizarre and alien thing and I think it enables a lot of misogyny.
Btw, MGTOWs, I’m menstruating right now. Feel free to avoid me.
@ kupo & Penny I hate them, too. Will never use them. Comes from a childhood where everything ‘taboo’ was explained in baby talk, or never explained at all once we ‘outgrew’ it. Maybe we got a book given to us, but never a conversation.
I do think some are funny, though. 🙂
Heh. I once got a book ‘explaining’ where babies came from. It mentioned the sperm and egg, but never mentioned how the sperm got to the egg. Just had arrows pointing from the man figure to the woman figure. LOL!
A friend of mine used to refer to it as “surfin’ the crimson wave.” I’ve always rather liked that. It sounded much more fun than what’s actually happening!
I don’t really think anyone over about high-school age uses euphemisms unless they’re talking in front of young children, older family members who may be offended, or the egregiously Christian, but I do find it funny and a way to bond with women with whom I might otherwise have little in common. One of my favorite stories by Connie Willis, “Even the Queen,” is written on the theme of (in my opinion) how the minor suffering and inconvenience of periods bring women together, how we will lose a little as a culture when we move on from that norm, and how will very gratefully move on from that loss.
@Penny
Great point!
As if it matters (and it doesn’t), most of the euphemisms are hilarious. I wouldn’t use em, but I’ll laugh at em. On the rare occasions that I’d need to refer to mestruation, I just call it menstruation. Everything but the most clinical terms either makes me grin like a middle schooler in health class (Bama) or gives me a major case of the cringe (Time of the Month)…
No, I’m not 2 preteen boys in a trench coat. Why do you ask? 😀
“Period” isn’t really a euphemism, it’s more like a nickname, short for “menstrual period”.
Oops. WAY ninja’d.
You just want to be captured with bon-bons. Fair enough, I’ve read some of the culinary digressions that occur here. We can be assured that they will at least be quality bon-bons.
@kupo
No, no, that’s The Thing Whose Name Must Not Be Mentioned!
Plants wilt.
Souffles fall.
Men weep.
Look what you’ve done!
Guys. Stop. Even Freud would say you’re being too Freudian.
@Imaginary Petal, the discomfort that resulted from my awkward body’s response to that surprise laugh was well worth the laugh. (In Earth-human terms, I snorted tea out my nose.) Thanks.
Menstrual capture bonbons would have to be red velvet cake bonbons, right?
https://lh4.ggpht.com/5Xd0t2rEAbRFkjyWIgEY-7QApO2JPrYvVYi6IJSJq8AtM_oCOQ8zV5GbMXQ1GLPqqvLHO1FwNFaP5evUjagGW9DScudU=s535-c
Don’t think the image will embed because it’s not jpeg, but they look pretty good to me.