Menstrual taboos are as old as time and found across cultures. They’ve been used to separate women from men physically. Menstrual huts are still a thing, and socially, by creating the perception that a natural bodily function is a sign of weakness. Even in today’s world, women are deemed unfit for positions of power because some men actually believe they won’t be able to handle stressful situations while menstruating.
“Menstruation is an opening for attack: a mark of shame, a sign of weakness, an argument to keep women out of positions of power,” Colin Schultz wrote in Popular Science in 2014. The big problem with menstrual taboos is the way that males are (or are not) educated on the subject leaves them with a patchwork of ideas that don’t necessarily add up to the whole picture. First, there’s the information they get from growing up with women in the house.
Then, there are the cryptic descriptions of menstruation seen in advertising and the cold, scientific way the topic is taught in sex education.
Why are men so clueless about periods?
“Boys’ early learning about menstruation is haphazard,” a 2011 study published in the Journal of Family Issues reads. “The mysterious nature of what happens to girls contributes to a gap in boys’ knowledge about female bodies and to some negative views about girls.” Over a decade on from the study, and not much has changed. Men are still woefully undereducated on women’s health and periods specifically, and though there’s acknowledgment that they deserve more information and education, little progress has been made. In fact, boys’ and men’s misunderstanding, or total lack of understanding surrounding menstruation, is often played for laughs.
Unfortunately, the gaps in the average man’s understanding of a complex female health issue can put women in a difficult position, whether it’s denying them positions of power or a failure to understand their discomfort and their medical, physical, and emotional needs.
That’s why it’s so important for men to become better educated about menstruation.
The Boyfriend Challenge went viral for a reason
Back in 2022, a group of women on TikTok decided to help the men in their lives better understand the subject by showing them how tampons work on the inside of their bodies. They called it the “Boyfriend Challenge”. Some of the guys’ reactions are clearly over-the-top, but it’s also obvious that many of them have no idea how tampons function.
A video by the Demery family went viral first, attracting nearly eight million views. It’s fun to watch, but it also shows men how tampons function and what women go through during their monthly cycle.
It’s a bit of a facepalm moment that her man thought he had to “compete” with a tampon after he’s shown how it works, but that’s neither here nor there…
In another video, Rachel’s man just uttered the phrase “vagina parachute.” Sure, why not.
This guy was in utter shock.
The laughs are funny. The problem isn’t.
Four years on, moments like the “Boyfriend Challenge” still land because the underlying issue hasn’t changed much. While more states and countries have begun treating menstrual products as essential (making them freely available in schools, shelters, and prisons), education around menstruation, especially for boys and men, remains deeply uneven. Many of the shocked reactions in these videos aren’t really a display of immaturity; they’re the result of sex education that separates students by gender, vague advertising that never shows how period products actually work, and a long-standing cultural discomfort with openly explaining female anatomy. Until menstruation is taught clearly and inclusively, misunderstandings will continue to be played for laughs…and women will keep carrying the burden of explaining their own bodies.
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.
