There’s nothing at all embarrassing about having a few blind spots in our knowledge base—we can’t know everything about everything, after all. However! There are certain things that any school-educated adult with at least a dollop of common sense should know. Like the fact that the Earth is not flat, that 5G does not cause Covid, and… that women cannot control their periods.
Reddit users shared the most bizarre, funny, and downright confusing misconceptions that they’ve heard men have about women, and we’ve collected the best comments for you to read, dear Pandas. It’s a wild ride, caused as much by a lack of proper education as by myths perpetuated by women, so make sure you’re ready for truly peculiar beliefs. When you’re done reading the article, let us know in the comments about the strangest misconceptions about any gender that you’ve personally heard.
I reached out to the author of the thread, redditor u/CataleyaJackson, and she was very happy to share her opinion about the misconceptions that men have about women. 21-year-old Cataleya told me that she’s a big fan of Bored Panda and has been reading the online magazine for the past 8 years.
“One of my friends had a hilarious misconception about periods and my friends and I had laughed about it. They thought that periods just never end, that we’d be 99 on our death beds and still bleeding out. It inspired me to want to ask people about other misconceptions they had faced,” she told Bored Panda in an interview. Scroll down for her insights about the problems with sex education, cultural stigmas, and how nobody should feel ashamed to learn something new, whatever age they might be.
Really religious guy at work said periods last a 3 weeks so his wife could only share a bed one week a month. Sis I will take your secret to the grave
The author of the post, u/CataleyaJackson, believes that it’s certainly a lack of education that leads to misinformation and misconceptions about women. “In my country, we do have sex education at ages 13, 15 and again at 17 (if they’ve opted to study biology in 11th and 12th grade otherwise it’s just at the former 2 ages),” she shared.
“It’s very scientific and doesn’t leave space for questions about things that actually matter, things that happen in real-life. Most people don’t even learn, they just memorize it to be able to reproduce it during the exams, and then they forget all of it. We need better education, and it has to be more informative and relatable than scientific,” she told Bored Panda that there has to be more meaning to education than just passing tests and exams.
Men. Sweet, summer children. We have three holes. The urethra is between the clit and the v**ina. It goes a-hole, rectovaginal septum (perenium) , vagina (introitus), vestibule, urethra, clit. We don’t pee from our vaginas. We pee from the urethra. Which – again – is a different hole. We can control whether we pee. We cannot control whether we bleed. Sneezing, coughing, etc, can shoot forth an amount of blood. Our uturine lining is shedding, and it happens whether we like it or not (hint: we don’t). Just because your brother’s girlfriend had mild cramps and said that women were overreacting doesn’t mean that is true. For some fortunate souls, their cramps are light and barely noticeable. For others, it is truly debilitating. You cannot imagine. There is no good comparison. That said, there are cramp simulation units. Keep in mind when you’re using those that it’s only one aspect of the full picture. If you find any of this too gross to contemplate, you are not mature enough for sex.
Went on a date with a guy whilst on my period. We ended up kissing on the date and he asked if we could do the deed. I told him that I was on my period and didn’t really feel up to it. He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Can’t you just hold it in? I promise it’s worth it.” I didn’t have any words, just left.
According to Cataleya, there’s a stigma surrounding sex education that needs to be erased. She shared an example of how ridiculous things can get. This particular scene happened while the redditor was in the 6th grade.
“They called away all the girls from classes, brought us to an auditorium to discuss periods and what they are, why they happen, what we should do, etc. They gave us packets of pads and told us to keep them in our lockers for emergencies. Their heart was in the right place, but by only asking the girls to attend this, they ensured that periods became some sort of mythical and curious event in the minds of all the boys,” she pointed out where the problem lies.
“[The boys] were not educated, they remained ignorant to what should be essential information to them. And of course, we all scrambled to hide our pads because we all thought we would rather be caught dead than holding a packet of them. They teased us about it and we, being only 11, had nothing to say to defend ourselves because the stigma around periods is very strong in my country.”
He said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” – Todd Akin, Republican, 2012.
When I was 17, I needed to ask my dad for money to buy period products. He just said: “You needed money for this reason the previous month, it’s not like you have your period every month” I just stood there in chock, and borrowed some money from a friend until my mom got back the next week. It’s not like he and my mom had been married for almost 20 years, and the fact that he was 56 lol