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UPDATE: Oops. Turns out this dude’s post was satire, posted to a Facebook group mocking mansplainers.
By David Futrelle
More misogynatomy for your misogynatomy files! I don’t quite know how the British tabloids (The Sun, The Mirror, Metro UK) got to this story before I did but STOP THE PRESSES, there’s a weird angry dude on Facebook who thinks cis women get periods because cavewomen didn’t eat meat. No, really.
I was going to try to summarize his, er, logic here but I honestly can’t, so let’s just let him explain.
You got that, vagina-havers? You get periods because WE HUNTED THE MAMMOTH BUT APPARENTLY DIDN’T SHARE ANY WITH YOU.
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H/T — r/BadWomensAnatomy
@Lumipuna
Is Cosmo in other countries different? I would assume it would be the same content translated. Is Finnish Cosmo better in terms of content/feminism?
Yup. At least it’s not as bad as the 50 Shades of Grey special edition, which invited women to try light BDSM on men without consent.
In general, Cosmo tips range from useless/silly at best to dangerous/likely to cause injury at worst.
Come to think of it, Cosmo has a fair amount of misogynatomy in it as part of its usual misogyny. Not to mention that it doesn’t seem to have the highest opinion of men either. Or anyone who isn’t cisgendered and heterosexual.
Welp.
Forget misogyny, this is possibly the most misandrist post I have ever seen. He’s implying that early males were too fucking stupid to feed their partners after a long day of mammoth hunting. And also that we should still be that stupid so that women are less, well, women.
It’s things like this that put me into full support of the “Men Going Their Own Way” movement. I should very much like them to go their own way, as long as it’s reasonably far away from me.
we hunted the mammoth and then didn’t share it, forgetting that all of our male descendants would share 50% of their DNA with those ungrateful harpies anyway
Everything else in his post is spectacularly ignorant, potty and vile, but I do think “slunched” as a combination of “slumped” and “hunched” ought to be a word (albeit I suspect he coined it accidentally).
Hunter-gatherer societies still exist in places. The ones that have been evaluated, the gathering is like 80% of the calories overall. You gonna starve to death without that gathering. Especially now cuz no mammoths left, those greedy Neolithic alphas ate them all and didn’t’ even share, apparently.
This person seems to have a really strong case of extreme squick about bodily functions in general, which I’ve seen in a lot of mysoges as well as extreme orthorexics. I wonder if there’s a link somehow.
So the take away from this is that ancient men and women lived in separate tribes and humans…presumably have a cloaca?
Yeah, let me clear this up as simply as I can for these dolts:
* The vagina is not connected to the digestive tract.
* And the loss of iron from the period and the needs of pregnancy mean women should probably eat more meat and likely consumed their share of it, else humanity wouldn’t have survived.
* Women have long been hunters too, even if some tribes eons later became stationary and decided to divide up the chores. Even still, if you can’t hunt, you starve, esp in winter, so it was an important human skill for all, not just men.
@Weasel-Rah
I’ve noticed that as well. My best guess for the explanation is that they hate women in general, so they don’t take the time to understand said functions, so they find said functions gross.
Or, if you subscribe to the Neo-Freudian feminist psychology of Karen Horney, it could be womb envy.
…I’m a life vegetarian. I have literally NEVER eaten meat. & Just like every vegetarian & vegan cis woman I have ever met, I menstruate.
Check mate, internet weirdo.
You’re telling me that I don’t even need to do all the stuff I do at work? Really? My arm is all messed up, I’m stressed about deadlines, and all for no reason? Why wouldn’t my boss tell me??!
@Not Edward
I’ll admit, it took me a long while to realize that slunched isn’t actually a real word. It sounds like it could be.
Hi David!
The last couple of articles on posts from r/badwomensanatomy sent me on a binge of their top posts and whilst looking I discovered that the post this article was based off was apparently satire: (I hope that linked right.)
(The image in the Reddit post I linked to has the poster’s names censored but not the name of the group it was posted to, that being one where people pretend to mansplain things to women.)
Apologies if you or the commenters were already aware!
I just barely know there is a Finnish edition of Cosmopolitan. Somehow, my local public library was stocking the US edition for while in the mid 00s.
Cliff once briefly noted there was a separate UK edition, with seemingly a bit more sensible style.
Does anyone actually do that? Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman say that.
@Lukas Xavier:
It usually goes like this:
Friends meet.
A: How are you?
B: Cramps.
A: Sucks.
Which is short hand for this:
A: How are you?
B: I have cramps, and am in a crappy mood. So I might bite your head off.
A: Oh, yeah, totally understand. We’ve all been there. No worries, I won’t take it personally if you snap at me!
I think my friends have brought up their period about twice – family and coworkers, not at all. If I didn’t go out of my way to read blogs such as WHTM, I’d hardly know anything about menstruation beyond what textbooks say.
I haven’t dated women – stereotypically, isn’t that when men get properly acquainted with Aunt Flo? The guy quoted in OP seems to be talking just about his coworkers. Now, I don’t know if he really has a job, but clearly he shouldn’t try to endure women’s company any more than is strictly necessary.
Knitting Cat Lady said
This was one thing I had to train Husbeast out of because it bugged the living crap out of me.
He used to tell people that he was allergic to soy. When we moved in together, I told him that he was not allergic to soy which made him a bit salty. So I gathered all of his favorite snack foods and pointed out that each and every one of them contained Lecithin. When he said “So?” I told him that Lecithin IS* soy; one of the packages even said ‘soy lecithin.’ He quit going on about his food “allergies” after that. We even eat a lot of soyrizo (soy based chorizo sausage) nowadays.
I think he got this from his mother (who lives with us now) because she “can’t” eat so many foods. I’d certainly prefer it if she’d just say she doesn’t like something but she never will.
*It’s the cheapest and most common source in the US. anyway
I do wonder if some people resort to claiming an allergy because they have friends or relatives who won’t take “No thanks, I just don’t like that food” for an answer.
@moon cluster
Yes. Yes to all. They don’t understands ny whole “if the texture is weird it will make me gag and I might actually vomit” thing. They think im just making it up but I have food triggers in a way and so many people wont accept that so i have to lie some times.
The Ceryneian Hind, thanks for letting us know. I corrected the post. In my defense, the undeniably sincere stuff featured on f/badwomensanatomy often gets this weird.
According to the Reddit thread, some incels agreed with it still.
@Moon_custafer
I was literally about to write that exact same thing.
Occasionally, if I have a bad cramp-and-nausea day, then I’ll tell my coworkers that I need to leave/take a sick day because of “the curse”. Though it isn’t as though I’ll trumpet it from the rooftops.
And with my friends, we’ll discuss our periods in explicit detail. But that’s a communal sharing of our grievances.
Food allergies
I never say I’m allergic to melon. I just say I don’t like it. That often leads to “… even watermelon, even honeydew? Well, you haven’t tried…”
The thing is, it’s not a case of not preferring it or even not liking it. It disgusts me, it makes me want to hurl. And no I can’t just pick it out. I can smell/ taste the tiniest bit of it. Lately, I can’t even be near it. I had to leave the house when my partner and his kids were eating some. Which surprised me, because I haven’t had that experience before.
I could see why someone who has a food aversion like mine would lie.
People who grew up in times of food scarcity (like my in-laws or grandparents) find it genuinely offensive if you turn down food just because you don’t like it. If you don’t want to cause offense, you lie. If you don’t want an argument, sometimes you have to lie. I choose not to lie, because I think not liking is enough – but I understand why people do.
Talking about periods
I have heard many women I know say something discretely to a friend/female colleague/ family member if they’re having a bad period. But usually in single-gender company. And why shouldn’t they?
I have heard a few badly behaved women blame their crappy behaviour on menstrual symptoms, but usually these people are looking for an excuse to be inconsiderate jerks anyway. It’s always someone or something else’s fault kinda people.
What is more likely to happen – or at least what I used to experience/witness a lot when I was younger – is a woman takes some male colleague to task for his crappy behaviour and he says something about her being on the rag – either to her face or behind her back.
I often say I have an allergy because people either assume I’m a fad dieter or that small quantities are okay if I say I can’t have gluten. They often don’t understand that an intolerance is actually a medical issue and that it can make me very ill, and while most people understand coeliac these days, no one knows about the other autoimmune disorders that can result in an intolerance. I don’t want to dredge up my medical history every time I want someone to take my refusals seriously, and “allergy” is a word that gets across both the severity and level of sensitivity without needing more explanation.
@Kupo
My good friend is like that. One time a waiter at olive garden didn’t take her seriously either when she asked for gluten free. She told me she saw him roll his eyes and when she got her meal it tasted fine but about an hour later she was so sick. we had to take her to the emergency room.