By David Futrelle
Attention vagina people! Turns out your regular vagina processes are disrupting the efficiency and well-being of everyone you work with, in that every time Aunt Shark Week stops by for a visit you get all crabby and start fights with everyone else.
That is, in any case, the worry of one Reddit dude — who has, happily for us, provided a solution to this problem: Have working women (sorry, “females”) wear some sort of LED device to warn everyone else they’re on the rag! Or maybe, like, a red necklace?
Foadsf, well aware that his idea probably wouldn’t go over too well with anyone, not just the “females,” posted it in the Unpopular Opinion subreddit, where it proved so unpopular with the subreddit’s mods that it was quickly deleted. (I found a screenshot in the NotHowGirlsWork subreddit and tracked down the original.)
I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt made to express my solidarity. I mean, as a cis dude I don’t get periods, but there are certainly days when I’m in a terrible mood. A t-shirt with some helpful slogan like “I’ve got a case of the grumpies,” or “Havin’ a cranky one!” could do wonders for office morale here at the Mammoth Institute, or at least it could if my co-workers weren’t just a couple of cats who cannot, as far as I can tell, read.
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Monsieur Foadsf might find that, because of his ‘winning’ personality, his feeeeeemale coworkers would have their LED light up whenever they’re around him.
*shakes head*
I’ll just wear a red light permanently, regardless of where I am in my cycle if it’ll keep misogynists away.
However, since men like to tell us how angry and dare I say, emotional sexual frustration makes them, I propose that in the interest of fairness, men should have to wear lights if they gotten laid recently.
Perhaps we can have a device attached to straight cis men so that when they’re getting a little horny in the office we’ll know to avoid them as that affects their otherwise impeccably logical and reasonable selves?
“As a male human being” is absolutely not what an alien would say to convince us he’s really one of us.
How do you do, fellow male human beings!
Hell a little alarm should go off with the male when it tells us their horny. Lord knows that’s a lot more dangerous then a period. Men murder when their horny of course and use it at an excuse. I’ve never seen a woman murder someone and claim it was because her period. Well not in real life anyways, saw an episode of law & order svu where some girl did that.
Speaking of periods and shark attacks, turns out sharks aren’t particularly attracted to period blood. Or any kind of human blood, at that matter.
https://www.popsci.com/surfer-period-blood-shark-attack/
So there’s that worry dealt with.
Number of times I’ve got into an argument with a feeemale co-worker because of a visit from Auntie Flo: zero.
Dude, if you’re frequently getting into fights with women, maybe it’s you?
@Moggie
Of course not, then he would have to take responsibility for his actions like an adult.
How’s this going to work for trans people? As a trans bloke, will I be obliged to wear a menstrual indicator, or can I safely be around people when Uncle Flo comes calling? And will trans women just designate their most stressful week their period so they don’t stand out? (I don’t think these blokes have enough awareness to realise some women never light up red, but why take the risk?)
I bet this genius idea would totally solve the problem though. No one would ever accuse women of tampering with their lights if they got in an argument during the off weeks. They would just be all “hmm, well, you are not on your period so you must be thinking with only cold logic, and I am probably in the wrong.” That’s definitely what would happen. 100%.
Well now I’ll have Laurie Anderson stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
How does one avoid picking fights with female colleagues during the red alert period? I mean, other than not being an asshole generally?
I know there are more violating things, but this feels so violating. No one deserves to know the *interior, private workings* of someone else’s body. No one.
And doesn’t PMS usually happen *before* the period starts? ‘PRE-menstrual-symptoms’, I believe?
I’m sure the symptoms continue throughout for people, our bodies are never the same, but like… This idea is just bad, except in using hindsight, I guess?
Also… If anything a womz says while she has her period indicator light on is basically disregarded as ‘illogical’ and ’emotional’, do womz now get paid to stay home? If they can’t contribute at all during that week?
(Note: Not a good solution. Having half of your workforce taking a week off would put them as ‘lesser’ in your workforce. You wouldn’t assign anything important to them, and it would just be bad all around. But what else would you do, where women are incapable of doing anything during their period?)
The idea that heightened emotions make one incapable of thoughts or expressing opinions is just terrifying. PMS doesn’t create conflict or emotions out of nothing, it just heightens what is already there.
If you’re getting into fights, OP, it’s becuase you’re a shit head and the people you’re dealing with have less patience with you than they normally would.
And blaming their reactions on their raging hormones just sort of proves the point.
Speaking as a person with a uterus, sometimes I’ve had bad moods that are connected to it being Shark Week. Sometimes the bad moods are connected to it being the week before Shark Week. Sometimes the bad moods are because people are being idjits.
Most of the time I’ve been able to hang on and wait to vent with a sympathetic person. What I’d really like is a button that could make other people respect boundaries – not just mine, but everybody’s. I’d probably break several bones ‘cos I’d hit that button so hard.
After all this time, I am still taken by surprise at how bizarrely squicked some men are by menstruation.
I worked in an office for twenty four years, and I don’t recall ever wondering if any of the women I worked with were menstruating or not.
I’m moody on my period because I get really horrible cramps and or migraines that make want to throw up.
Women keep getting mad at me! It must be their irrational hormones and not the fact that I’m the kind of guy who would suggest that everyone who menstruates be forced to wear a sign to tell me about what’s currently coming out of their bodies.
Thank you, Great Nagus. We’re always happy to hear the “human male” perspective.
Now as for giving every FEEEEEEmale a literal flood-light (I am not sorry for that one), can’t we just… you know… always be respectful and maybe, when there is a bit of aggression in the posture, ask why and be supportive and all that nice stuff that would be good for both genders?
Let’s now hear it from our Klingon ambassador….
@TheKND
“… as a male human being I am all respectful for that.”
Yeah, you’re so “respectful” of the monthly burden of a menstrual cycle that you didn’t suggest something to alleviate it like, say, more medical research into menstruation and conditions like endometriosis. No suggestions for ways to make these things more bearable for the overwhelming amount of people who have to deal with a lot of agony every month around their body’s functioning, and therefore may have a shorter fuse because of the pain.
No, that isn’t respectful enough, clearly. The MOST respectful idea is making women and transmen wear literal blinking signs that misogynists will use to justify taking them even LESS seriously than they do normally. Fabulous.
Also, hi. I’m new-ish. Lurker for years. I THINK I might have posted before a long time ago, but I don’t remember for sure. *thumbs-up*
“PMS is that time during a woman’s menstrual cycle during which she behaves the way men behave all the time.”
Robert A. Heinlein
@Otrame
Cute quote, but Heinlein is a misogynist. And benevolent sexism is still sexism. 🙂
I am surprised he didn’t suggest a little scarlet M or P.
*was* — he’s 30 years dead. He had a literary “sense” of THINGS that was as big as the universe, and a literary “sense” of LIFE too small to be described by quantum physics. His “aliens” were always human(oid), and his humans were always American. He had many, many very strong female characters, but they were all drawn the literary equivalent of “superheroines in bikini armor”…. Such a talented storyteller, but as far as socially prescribed gender expression goes, he just didn’t “GET IT”….
STOP that!! … shit catches on, we won’t even have any more trumpanzees….