By David Futrelle
What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than with a mansplaination of the menstrual cycle from a (presumably) young man on Tumblr who doesn’t seem to have ever seen a vagina in real life?
Although he assures us he has felt their pain.
Welllllllllllllll periods suck(trust me, I was emotionally close with a woman, in fact close enough to feel her goddamn periods. Fuck I fucking hated it, men, don’t get that attached. Be supportive, feed her ice cream and whatever else she asks for, but don’t get attached enough to feel them. It’s not worth it.
So far, so good: Don’t get yourself surgically attached to a woman so that you literally feel what she feels.
Anyway, I hate to be callous but that’s just your body telling you to hurry up and get pregnant.
Wait, what? Dude, cis girls typically get their first periods when they’re, like, 12, and can get them as young as 7 or 8. Their bodies aren’t telling them to “hurry up” and get pregnant.
Also, are you aware that pregnancy tends to be a lot more uncomfortable than having a period once a month? And that’s not even counting the nightmare that is childbirth. If pain and discomfort were a reliable guide to what your body does or does not “want,” wouldn’t the pain of pregnancy and childbirth be an indication that no one should ever have kids?
Of course birth control also makes them not as bad, depending on what kind.
Uh, some forms of birth control have an effect on, ah never mind. I doubt this guy could tell the difference between birth control and, oh, I don’t know, motor oil.
Of course you find out that there’s more kinds of birth control than there are types of oil, which is a pain.
WAIT WHAT
There are more period blood containment things(yes, tht includes tampons, pads, cups, etc.) than there are types of oil according to my dad who actually knows his shit about the oil,saying there’s like 4 types.(Yes, talking about motor oil here)
WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT MOTOR OIL
WHERE AM I
WHAT IS GOING ON
So ladies, find what’s right for you. Ask a doctor. Test some different period things out. It’s for your own good
Definitely ask a doctor. Ask a friend. Ask Alexa. Ask random women on the street. Ask pretty much anyone but this dude. Or his dad, who will probably tell you to pour some Valvoline SynPower 0W-20 up in there, get everything running nice and smoothly.
In case you’re wondering, Mr. Motor Oil Menstruation Man doesn’t seem to be trolling, if his earnest responses to various, er, critics of his advice are any indication.
One anonymous commenter, for example, took offense at his notion that periods are basically just your body telling you to get pregnant.
Maybe don’t encourage minors to get pregnant cuz they have periods? Wtf is wrong with you I literally started my periods at like 11.
He responded:
Not encouraging it, I was half exhausted at the time but what I meant was it seems like your body is holding you hostage like, “hey bitch, I’mma do this again next month if you aren’t pregnant k bye” doesn’t it?
No, no it doesn’t, dude. Because in order to stave off your monthly periods you would have to remain more or less continuously pregnant or lactating from your first period until … menopause, which tends to hit around age 50. Unless you die before then from HAVING TWENTY BABIES.
Dudes, at least spend a minute or two thinking these things through before exposing your ass on the internet.
And please don’t ever offer your thoughts on the correct usage of “vagina” vs “vulva,” because we’ve already been through that. Twice.
H/T — This post has been making the rounds on Tumblr. I ran across it thanks to @babypizzagaga on Twitter, who is funny, and quite expert at finding this sort of thing, and who also has a very nice cat.
Everyone knows “seems like” is codeword for “I’m going to launch my assfax into society and demand to not be held accountable for the fallout”.
This assnugget wouldn’t last ONE MINUTE bleeding from his genitals.
BRB, gotta go to the shops and buy some period blood containment things.
I don’t mean to alarm you folks, but I think this guy might be a cyborg.
@S. P.:
I CONCUR FELLOW HUMAN, THIS ENTITY DOES NOT DISPLAY BELIEVABLE HUMAN NORMALCY.
(/had to)
As a woman who had her first period at 10 then many years later had a daughter who had her first period at 10 and as a teacher’s assistant in the school system who saw more than one 3rd grader get her first period younger than the age of 10 I say – Dude, STFU and DO NOT give your ignorant ass opinions on what a FUCKING menstrual cycle is trying to say to ANY OF OUR BODIES!! Seriously, fuck the fuck off! Gawd! It is NOT our uteri trying to tell us to get pregnant! It’s just puberty, sometimes earlier than we’d like, but that is IT! Every body is different and develops at a different rate. What if boys were judged about the time frame in which they started producing sperm in their ejaculate? Would women be judging them and expecting them to start getting women pregnant because now they produced mature and healthy sperm cells – at age 10 or younger? Fuck this douchebag!
I ignored all the “hurry up and get pregnant” messages. Or rather, I took them to be “just ride this out until you hit menopause, and then breathe a sigh of relief” messages.
Worked great. I’m now in the process of breathing a sigh of relief.
(Not least because this idiotic dude is not in MY life.)
Also, shhh…don’t anybody tell him this, but there’s a way around this that doesn’t involve ever getting pregnant. You can simply take birth control pills back to back, without any breaks, and do away with periods altogether. I didn’t do that routinely, but I can confirm that being on the Pill does put you in control of when you get your period, and if there’s ever a time when you need to skip one (eg. while travelling), you can.
And provided that you don’t suffer any adverse side effects from the Pill you’re taking, you can do this as often as you want, for as long as you want.
Hell, hormone replacement therapy for perimenopausal women actually got its start with them staying on the Pill well beyond their fertile years, so as to stave off the symptoms of the Change…
I hope all of you had a better international womens day then I did.
@Bina
Sadly, this did not work for my girlfriend. Two kids on hormonal birth control, never missed a pill, and wildly inconsistent periods. Fuck PCOS
I know that I’ve seen before some jokey references along the lines of:
“Uterus – Look, I furnished everything for the baby!
Woman – What baby? There’s no baby.
Uterus – WHAT *throws tantrum, rips everything*”
But to take something that’s a silly joke and phrase it as advice, like this guy did, that’s… just… just no, dude. What the hell.
Typical biological determinism perspective so many men hold on to when they think they’re super rational logical emotionless smarty-pantses.
@Penny Psmith: Given that the placenta is a HUGE VAMPIRE SUCKER DISC organ designed to leach nutrients from the mother, the endometrial lining is more like a barricade erected by the survivors of a zombie apocalypse and then torn down in relief because the invader isn’t coming. But people don’t like my analogy because CHILDBIWTH IS NATUWAL OWO OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ?
I grew up in a household with the females, always thought that mensuration is nature’s way to tell you it really really sucks to be woman.
On the subject of the menstruation oil guy. Dickwads like himself should be subjected to two years of simulated periods. Meaning that they are randomly each 3rd, 4th or 5th week subjected to chemically induced constipation for whole week, to get the real feel of the cramps. And to for the last 3 or 4 days of those weeks to be kicked in their balls once, in random intervals between 3 and 30 minutes. Also they should be inserted buttplugs which would start dripping some fluid whenever they move more than 200 yards from their home, if they wear light colour trousers dripping should be increased to leaking. Their underwear should always be equipped with at least two extra thick pads. Once during this course in womanhood above described routine should be replaced by whole week off daily visits by a guy in dr’s coat. He should spend 5-10 minutes looking at their junk with worried expression while shaking his head and not saying a word. Just to simulate the “I’m late, please not be the pregnancy” fright.
@David F.
And this, in a nutshell, is the manosphere.
Minus the “thinking these things through,” of course.
I’m sure these guys are busy people who just don’t have a minute or two to spend on sober, dispassionate consideration of an issue.
Oh hey, man with opinions, thanks a lot for this advice. Very sensible.
You know what I hate? Liars.
Hetneo, although I thought your suggestions for Dickwad Oil Dude were funny, something about this opening line, well…rubbed me the wrong way. I’m assuming you were commenting in good faith and not intending to be offensive, but…
I have a daughter who is almost old enough to get her period. Although I’d never want to minimize how bad it can be (I get awful cramps myself, and my sister found it downright debilitating), I also don’t want my daughter or any woman* to get the sense that female biological processes = sucks to be a woman.
There’s a long history of men telling women that our bodies are, basically, substandard models. Ever notice how many ads for menstrual pads are predicated on the idea that NO ONE SHOULD KNOW OMG!!!!! that you have your period? We’re outright taught to be ashamed of what our bodies do. This is NOT THE SAME AS being realistic about how these processes can impact us negatively.
Periods can hurt and be REALLY inconvenient, especially for women with PCOS. But messages implying that women’s bodies are somehow telling us that being female sucks… again, this has been done. A lot. And it’s never good. It gives us the impression that we are less than men; that we have to apologize for or be ashamed of our bodies; that we should try to be unobtrusive and not make a fuss. It is this “women’s bodies are just flawed substandard men’s bodies” idea that leads to things like this: https://www.care2.com/causes/the-male-designed-world-is-dangerous-for-women.html
I mean, I hear spontaneous erections are a thing for young men, often happening at embarassing or inappropriate times, and I’m sure that sucks; however, I hope no one would say that’s “nature’s way of telling you it really really sucks to be a man”.
Also, “the females”? Please don’t phrase it that way. It’s dehumanizing.
*Since Hetneo seems to have meant cis women, I am replying in that way for the purpose of him understanding me.
Dear mansplainy dudes: The internet is not an assfax containment thing.
WHAT?!?!?! Manospherean heads implode…
Happy IWD, everyone! It’s actually Saturday night here, so I feel like I’ve had a two-day IWD, which is lovely 🙂
Seconding @Bookworm in hijab; I agree that @hetneo’s post was in good faith, but no, it doesn’t suck to be a woman, and that kind of sentiment can indeed feed into ideas about women as lesser models of ‘human’.
Periods can indeed cause all kinds of problems for cis-women; for others, they’re no big deal. It can be a tricky balancing act, recognising these problems while not framing menstruation as an illness per se, but it’s a necessary one, for so many reasons.
This whole bit was brilliant 🙂
@ Mish,
I cracked up reading that!
Yeah– indeed, when @Mish’s mocking post was put up I remember thinking “Never really had a problem with cramps myself…”
There are clearly a lot of head-scratching statements there but I keep coming back to the first one:
Like many men, I have been female-adjacent most of my life and never suffered from this. A number of male friends only have daughters and their main complaint about being the only man about the house is that they don’t get long enough on the toilet. Perhaps it is like sympathetic pregnancy, but I am sceptical he is that familiar with the concept of sympathy. Or emotional closeness, now I think about it.
All that before getting onto the bit where he recommends walking the razor edge between being emotional attached enough to a woman that you feed her ice cream but not close enough to suffer from her periods. Is that why they make those long-handled spoons which I’d, foolishly, assumed were for eating sundaes? Or does he wander the streets forcing ice cream on random strangers? If so, I can’t see that ending well.
I feel like sitting him down and telling that I don’t know what he’s doing but, whatever it is, he is doing it wrong.
Is this realy that bad? What he actually *tries to tell* women is:
1). there are many types of menstral period products, and that they should choose the one that’s right for them, perhaps consulting with a physician first.
2). periods every month are no fun, and he sympathizes.
The problem is, he *states* both claims in a cringe-inducing awkward manner. But when judging people, their intentions manner, and I don’t think he intended to be insulting.