When man conquered fire, he no longer feared the dark. When man created weapons, he no longer feared the beasts. But man has always been confounded and terrified by vaginas. But vaginophobia isn't limited to our ancient past. Men's colossal failure to understand the female anatomy bleeds into many aspects of our supposedly modern world.

4 We Are Dangerously Stupid About Period Stuff

As you've probably noticed by now, close to half of the population bleeds out of their vaginas about 20 percent of the time. That's a lot of vaginal blood. While this is a necessary and regular fact of life, everything that comes out of women's nether regions has something of an ick factor. Luckily, our bathrooms come well-equipped to deal with our many biohazards ... well, except the one kind that helps the human race continue to reproduce.

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Keep in mind, women have had to deal with their metaphorical indoor pluming way longer than we've had literal indoor plumbing.

Any menstruating person who's ever had a job, or even left their house, can tell you about the coy dance of slipping a tampon or pad into one's sleeve before scurrying to the restroom. In a pinch, we resort to panhandling hygiene products off of anyone who seems like they might have a uterus of childbearing age. Sometimes (rarely) there will be a vending machine, but no one gets asked to insert two quarters for a few sheets of toilet paper and some running water.

Adding insult to likely abrasion, they seem to only ever stock baroque contraptions made of equal parts asbestos and splinters. Yet your period is an equally important involuntary bodily function as defecation, and dealing with it in a civilized way is an equally important public health issue.

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For some people ...

The full extent of obstacles to menstrual hygiene access is something that researchers have only just started looking into. Turns out, it's a huge problem. Young people in the U.S. end up missing school because they don't have access to tampons and would prefer their desks not look like the scene of a massacre. In poorer countries, many girls drop out altogether or even resort to prostitution, trading sex for pads or the money to buy them.