#1
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.
#2
#3
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."
#4
#5
#6
The stigmas surrounding periods go even deeper. "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 said.
"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 revealed to Bored Panda.
Cataleya believes that it's always best to own up to a misconception about women and have it corrected than continue staying ignorant. "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," she said.
#7
#9
Owning up to our mistakes might be difficult, but it makes others like us more. When we show that we’re embarrassed by our slip-ups, instead of running away from them, people tend to empathize with us more. That’s great news for anyone who has any blind spots regarding gender or any other topic.
"We spend a lot of time and effort presenting an ideal version of ourselves to other people. When something happens that contrasts with the image we’ve been projecting—when we say or do something that shows we actually aren’t as graceful or as smart as we’d like people to believe—we feel embarrassed," Vanessa Bohns, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University, told me what happens when people are confronted with the fact that they’ve made a mistake, during an earlier interview with Bored Panda.
#10
#11
#12
"Discovering you were wrong about something most everyone else around you has long known to be true is one of those moments. In that moment we learn, 'Wait a minute, maybe I haven’t been presenting the image of being smart or worldly that I thought I was presenting all this time,' which is embarrassing,” Vanessa explained to Bored Panda.
“One thing that’s interesting about embarrassment is that, for as much as we might experience it as painful in the moment, it’s actually very socially adaptive. Being embarrassed signals to other people that you care about what they think. And that actually draws people in to you,” the expert said.
#13
#14
#15
“So blushing, burying your head in your hands, laughing, acknowledging how embarrassing something was, are all totally healthy ways to react,” Vanessa suggested that admitting to our mistakes and being honest about our feelings is the mature thing to do. Hiding our embarrassment that we’ve made a blunder, however, is unhealthy.
“The unhealthy way to react is to pretend you’re not embarrassed, that you didn’t make a mistake, or to get angry. Those things undo the positive effect of embarrassment typically has on other people by conveying insincerity and pushing people away rather than drawing them in,” she explained.
#16
#17
#18
