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Being humble enough to accept when you’ve been wrong, and being curious enough to keep learning new things (even when your ego wants to get in the way) are two very good qualities to have as a human being.

It’s important to know the basics of life on Earth. Sadly, one area of knowledge that seems to be very much neglected is what some men know about women’s bodies and reproduction. In some cases, the misinformation they take as fact is simply staggering. You've been warned.

Sabrina Fonfeder, a development executive, noted that men should not make any decisions about women’s bodies, and gave an example of how little about biology some men know. One of her exes, for example, thought that all women got their period on the 15th of the month. The tweet quickly went viral and other women pitched in with similar horror stories.

Sabrina, who created the viral thread, was kind enough to answer Bored Panda's questions. She believes that men having major misconceptions about women is a problem with education.

"We're not taught anything about women because we're supposed to be these beautiful specimens. Get rid of your body hair, periods are gross, and don't get me started on pregnancy and labor and all the things women aren't taught their own bodies until they've given birth," she told Bored Panda. "There is so much shame about just existing as a woman that we don't ever talk about anything that makes us look like less than a supermodel."

Image credits: Sabrinafon

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In Sabrina's opinion, changing the education system in a meaningful way can definitely be done. "More women in charge would be a good start. But also it's not that hard to look at what other countries do and just do that. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here," she said that there are already great examples out there. All it takes is the courage to follow in their footsteps.

Bored Panda also wanted to get Sabrina's opinion on what grown men can do to educate themselves about basic biology. In her opinion, there's no excuse for ignorance, considering the wealth of information at everyone's fingertips.

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"Men can simply... read? There has never been more access to information on any topic, so I'd tell any man to do some googling and they'll get what they're looking for. Otherwise, ask a woman in your life questions and come from a place of humility," she said.

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"If you scroll through the replies of my Tweet, many women talk about their male partners being adamant even when they are wrong about basic biology, and then yelling when they're told they're wrong. That's extremely annoying. I don't think they'll face any sort of shame if they ask questions from a place of genuine curiosity and a willingness to learn."

The situation when it comes to knowledge about reproduction is pretty sad in some parts of the United States. According to SIECUS, only 29 states and the District of Columbia actually mandate sex education. Meanwhile, 35 states require schools to focus on abstinence when talking about sex ed.

Shockingly, a whopping 15 states “do not require sex education or HIV/STI instruction to be any of the following: age-appropriate, medically accurate, culturally responsive, or evidence-based/evidence-informed.” What this means is that in some areas of the country, students might be misinformed at the school level.

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This isn’t the first time that Bored Panda has written about the misconceptions that men have about women. Earlier, 21-year-old Cataleya Jackson went viral after tackling the topic. She gave us an in-depth look at the reasons behind all the wrong info, cultural stigmas, and sex ed.

"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,” she told Bored Panda about the extent to which some people are misinformed.

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"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). It's very scientific and doesn't leave space for questions about things that actually matter, things that happen in real-life,” she said that the education part is pretty sterile and removed from reality.

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LagoonaBlueColleen
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Sex Ed should not be optional that parents can pull their kids from.

Nimues Child
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Okay American male pandas, what did they teach you guys in health class in jr. high when the girls were separated out to learn all about our plumbing and how a period works? It really feels like you were not taught this.

October
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wait, they separate the boys and girls during sex ed?! This explaines a lot.

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Kathryn Baylis
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

How long ago was this? I’m 61, and the first sex ed class I was ever in was in 5th grade, which was back in 1970-1971, so if he’s younger than me, he can’t claim he was never taught anything about it. Of course, teaching that subject in elementary school was relatively new back then. I remember the (female) teachers giggling a lot. The class also left me wondering how sperm manages to get through pajamas. The next year they sent the girls to the auditorium to watch “the movie”. I remember some boys kept trying to get in. You should’ve seen the faces on the (female) teachers, who were practically slamming the doors on their hands. A week later, the boys were sent to the auditorium for their version of “the movie”.

Phill Healey
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Let's not blame the parents. When anyone is so ignorant of such an easily investigated and understood topic when such info is readily available only the idiot themselves are responsible.

Vicky Zar
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Weeeell, if someone he trusts told him "its like this" then he probably never felt the need to investigate. He felt "I trust this person. I don't need to investigate. Why would I?" Soo... I think you can put the blame on the parents/ teachers

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Brooklynn Jackson
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And that, my fellow Pandas, is why we all should be educated about periods and sex and whatnot, because they aren't protecting us, they're making an entire generation of clueless idiots

katekat_1
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Sex ed should be required. Its not anything to be ashamed of, its the way things are by nature.

Zwiebel Suppe
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Maybe, just maybe, mandatory sex ed (and "how does a body work" ed) classes for everyone might be a good idea.

Sky Render
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Once again, getting the impression that not including basic sex ed in the educational curriculum was a mistake...

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“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," Cataleya said.

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According to the woman, there’s a lot of stigma surrounding sex ed. And it needs to be erased. She shared an example of what happened when she 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 said.

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"[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."

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In some cases, the stigma is so deeply-entrenched, that it would take more than a bit of education to change things. "I have friends whose own parents make them sit on mats on the floor when they are on their periods because they are considered impure and should not touch anything in the house," Cataleya told us.

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"Some women aren't allowed to enter the kitchen or the prayer room, they're not allowed to leave the house. A majority of women in my country have no access to pads or tampons and use cloth which causes infection and prevents them from being able to earn a living. I could go on and on about how bad it is here for a lot of women," she said.

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Even though most people hate feeling embarrassed, there’s no shame in admitting that you were wrong about something. "There's no shame in it if you're 30 and have misconceptions about periods. It is sad that you may not have educated yourself about it, but there's absolutely no shame in asking women to educate them or to start reading online themselves. Sex Ed is so important," Cataleya told us.

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