A male teacher has revealed that a female colleague told him that she believes it is "weird" that he supplies his students with sanitary products.
Redditor 'Lowthrowaway22' recently took to the website's 'Am I the A**hole?' forum to ask whether or not he was wrong to provide a box of sanitary products in his classroom, Bored Panda reports.
The teacher began the post - which has been upvoted 21.6K times - by revealing that he is a 38-year-old father of two daughters who works in a California high school. At the beginning of the year, he realized that some of his students were having trouble accessing sanitary products when they needed them.
He wrote: "As a father myself, I understand that those are essentials for [women]. So [I did the] same thing [that] I do with my daughters.
"I bought a bunch of tampons/pads and placed [them] in a basket in our class so our female students can grab one at any time and it's convenient for them.
"The whole class loves it. Nobody says anything and overall it's helpful for our students."
However, despite creating the basket with the best of intentions, the teacher explained that his female colleague next door, Susan, believes that it's weird that a man is providing people with periods the products they need.
"She thinks it's inappropriate that I have that for my female students and she told me it's weird because I'm a male. I don't find it weird or anything," he wrote.
"Cause there isn't anything weird about it? What's wrong with a period or so nothing. It's natural and it happens. To make it convenient for my students I made the basket and they love it and I also refill the basket on a constant basis [sic]."
Thankfully, the teacher was met with widespread praise on social media for his thoughtful gesture toward his students.
Reacting to the post, one Reddit user informed the teacher that he was not the a**hole, writing: "NTA. I think it is really sweet. And it gives them the message that it is totally normal and nothing to be hidden and ashamed of. I wish you would have been one of my teachers. Every time I saw that basket, I would have felt love and acceptance pouring out of it."
A second agreed, writing: "NTA. It's thoughtful and if you wanna blow Susan's mind - point out that it's not just girls and women who menstruate. Various non-binary and transgender people also menstruate. It's both true and given emergencies in these age ranges are pretty common along with poverty often making things less accessible for some people. I think it's great."
A third wrote: "NTA - You are normalizing treating women's needs as an ordinary part of life. Susan is the one behaving inappropriately - by trying to create a problem where none exists."
Hats off to this teacher! Hopefully, his thoughtfulness will inspire others too.
