If you've never heard of the r/badwomensanatomy subreddit, it's basically a place where people share examples of how incredibly clueless men are about the female body. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's worrying...but it's always worse than you ever could've thought.
Recently, u/PatchTheMedic got straight to the point when they asked in the sub, "What is the wildest thing someone who was miseducated/uneducated on the female body has said to you?" Here are just a few of the very, VERY incorrect things men thought they knew about women's bodies:
1. "A male friend once told me, 'it must be so nice to be able to put in a tampon and get turned on.' I don't know where to start: the blood on your fingers, the dry cotton that you shove into your vagina, or the gross public bathroom? I wonder why this doesn't get me in the mood."
2. "I told a guy I was about to start my period and he asked, 'Can you stop it, or reschedule it to next week?'"
3. "A gay guy friend of mine said, 'it’s a really big deal for a man to cum in another man. We have to deal with it oozing out afterwards. Not like you women, where your body absorbs it and uses it all up to make a baby.' I was very passive at the time and didn’t correct him."
4. "Once had a man tell me that women only have a limited number of orgasms before their nerve endings 'wear out,' so really he was doing them a favor by not focusing on their pleasure. Happy to say I was NOT sleeping with him! But I did laugh for a few minutes and asked which other nerve endings 'wear out.' He sputtered and had no answer."
5. "I told my partner I smelled gas in my apartment, and he asked if it could be the tissue in the trash with menstrual blood that I was smelling. Apparently, after 15 years of menstruating, he thought I still might not have gotten a whiff of it and that it somehow could be mistaken for the smell of fuel, and that women are like sharks and can sniff it out."
6. "A lot of people think women can hold period blood like they can hold their pee. A friend of mine once got mad at me because I started my period in the middle of a movie at the theater, so I got up to go put in a tampon. He asked me why didn't I hold it until the end of the movie?"
7. "One of my managers believed that women couldn’t have baths while they were on their periods because all the blood would come out, and, 'it would be like Jaws down there.' I’m glad I wasn’t alone when I heard that, because I was all goldfish-mouth trying to process it. His reasoning was that he’d never seen his wife in the bath on her period. Luckily, my (male) supervisor corrected him."
8. "I had a married man, age 35, tell me that the clitoris is inside the vagina and that's why women need to be penetrated to enjoy sex."
9. "A friend didn't realize that women went through menopause. He had been married for over 40 years, had a grown daughter and a teenage granddaughter. Plus, he was the only caregiver for his 93-year-old mother. We asked if he really thought his mom still had a period at 93 and he said yes. He was mind-blown about it for the rest of the night. Hilarious."
10. "My ex and I were about to have sex when I told him to grab a condom. He asked why and I told him that I was ovulating (or should be soon). He told me that women didn’t need to ovulate to get pregnant, and that we got pregnant when our energies and auras align with a man's. I was dumbfounded and kept waiting for him to start laughing. He never did."
11. "I had a friend tell me that period pain was entirely psychosomatic, and that Western women only had period cramps because we’d been taught to expect them, and Japanese women weren’t taught that, so they didn’t get cramps. In my house, while I was on my period and in a lot of pain. He got a lecture about how there are Japanese folk remedies for period pain, and they wouldn’t exist if Japanese women didn’t get period pain, so he could shut the eff up before I marshaled the strength to throw a chair at him."
12. "My fiancé and I were discussing his upcoming doctor's appointment for his checkup after he turned 45. My BFF was over and we were teasing him about his prostate exam. He said, 'You turn 45 soon, when is your prostate exam??!' Um, bro."
13. "'Women don't get their periods on deployment. I had a guy tell me this before deployment. His logic was we were not on land, so we don't get periods on [Navy] ship deployments."
14. "Just a few hours ago, a man said in front of me and around five other people that women don’t have bowels, they have ovaries."
15. "A coworker who had a religious family-pushed marriage confessed over drinks that he thought his wife of two years must be cheating, because she was wet and relaxed as opposed to apparently tense and in pain when they had sex."
16. "I work in food service and I've had multiple older male chefs ask me if I'm on my period before letting me make mayonnaise, because they think menstruation breaks emulsions."
17. And finally, "I told a coworker I needed to use the bathroom, and I'd be right back. He asked if everything went okay when I got back. I was confused, and asked what he meant. The dude said that women use gravity to pee, unlike men who push, and was making sure there was enough gravity for me to go. I asked if he thought my uterus was going to fly out when I drove equipment, and he got really flustered. (I know urine doesn't come out of the uterus, but this guy)."
What's the most ridiculous thing you've heard a man say about women's bodies? Share your stories in the comments below.
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.