Women everywhere breathed a sigh of relief last week after an opinionated man on Facebook announced that he had solved the thorny issue of how many tampons they should buy each year.
“So, the average period is between 10-35 ml of blood, each tampon holds about 5ml, so 7 tampons per cycle,” he began, matter of factly. “Lets be generous and say 10 for those ladies with an extra juicy uterine lining. 9 periods per year = 90 tampons max.
“Cut down on your Starbucks venti frapps and stop whining,” he concluded with a flourish. “This isn’t a first world problem.”
The man was quite rightly lambasted for taking mansplaining to dizzy new heights – but this story is symptomatic of something much greater than yet another brash man telling women what they should do with their bodies online.
The fact is, the vast majority of men are woefully uneducated about periods.
The problem here is as much about education as it is about ignorance. Aside from a few half-hearted diagrams and PowerPoint slides in GSCE biology, boys don’t learn anything about periods in school.
This breeds indifference and, worst of all, a complete lack of empathy.
That’s why we disparagingly ask our sisters, friends or girlfriends if it’s their time of the month whenever they disagree with us. It’s why if a girl is angry we ask if it’s their hormones talking. And it’s why, according to a recent survey, only half the men asked said they would buy period products for their partners.
It is therefore welcome news that the government has announced it will be compulsory to teach children about periods, starting in primary school, by 2020 – though it’s unclear if boys and girls will be taught together.
Promising too is Chancellor Philip Hammond’s pledge to fund a scheme to make free sanitary products available in all English secondary schools, announced in his Spring Statement, in an effort to end period poverty.
It’s long overdue, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. We’ll never be able to completely shut up macho keyboard warriors who think they know best but, with more education and inclusion, we can let everyone else know just how ill-informed they are.
