Every month, without ceremony or sympathy, roughly half the world’s population puts on pants, goes to work, sits through meetings, makes school lunches, and functions at something approaching normal capacity while their uterus contracts hard enough to make the whole situation feel deeply, personally offensive. Nobody gives them a medal. Nobody even really asks how they’re doing. The assumption, unspoken and universal, is that this is just part of the deal.
And then four men hooked themselves up to a period cramp simulator, and suddenly the conversation changed.
The video – filmed at a public library, which was either an inspired or deeply chaotic choice of venue – circulated across TikTok and beyond until it had collected millions of views and a comment section that could reasonably be described as a mass catharsis event. The men in question did not handle it well. The woman watching them did not hide how funny she found this. And somewhere in the gap between those two reactions lies something real – not just the joke, but the thing underneath it.
What the Simulator Actually Does
A period cramp simulator is a small device that uses TENS technology – transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation – to mimic the contracting, squeezing sensation of menstrual cramps. According to Rescripted, these devices send controlled electrical pulses through pads placed on the abdomen, triggering the muscles to tighten in a way that feels similar to real cramps. They do not replicate the full hormonal experience, the nausea, the lower-back ache radiating down the leg, or the specific indignity of all of that happening on the day you had a big presentation. But they do, apparently, replicate enough.
The devices are designed to mimic the sensation of menstrual cramps through electrical muscle stimulation, delivering controlled shocks that simulate the tightening of the abdominal muscles. Think of it as a rough approximation: a Cliff Notes version of a monthly experience that many women have been told, repeatedly and dismissively, is not really that bad.
A FAQ on the Somedays website – the company that developed one of the more widely tested simulators – notes that while everyone experiences period pain differently, the device has been tested on over 50 people with periods who confirmed it is indeed quite accurate. So when the men in the video described the sensation as sharp, stabbing, and traveling all the way down to their knees, they were not being dramatic. They were being accurate, possibly for the first time.
The Library Was the Right Choice
Paris Kinsey, a 31-year-old college student, decided to take on a challenge that most men would not dare attempt: experiencing the discomfort many women endure every month. His video captured millions of views and over 374,000 likes online. The setting – a quiet library, the kind of place where the social contract requires you to suffer in silence – was not accidental. It is exactly what millions of menstruating people do every single day. They sit in quiet, public spaces and manage.
At first, Kinsey shrugs off the discomfort with only slight grimaces. As the simulated cramps continue, it becomes clear the pain is more intense than he anticipated. He gasps and bites down on his fist, trying to stifle his reaction. Another friend attempts to read a book while hooked up. The sharp jolts of pain break his focus, underscoring the challenge of attempting even simple tasks during a painful menstrual experience.
A book. He couldn’t read a book. Women run corporations and raise toddlers and commute on trains and negotiate salaries and the only concession available is maybe a heating pad, if they’re lucky enough to be at home. The library setting wasn’t incidental. It was the whole point.
The Side-by-Side Moment
The video that has perhaps generated the most collective reaction – not just from this clip, but from the wider genre of men-try-the-simulator content – is the moment when a man and a woman are hooked up to the same device at the same intensity. The period simulator is attached to both of them simultaneously. When the device is turned on, the man is in extreme pain while the woman stands completely still, calmly stating that the sensations the machine creates are “not even as bad as a cramp.” “Yeah, my cramps hurt worse than this,” she adds.
This is the clip that tends to break the internet every time a version of it resurfaces. It is also the clip that most clearly illustrates the gap. Not a gap in tolerance, exactly – but in context. She has been training for this, without choosing to, every month for years. The device, at its maximum setting, is a Tuesday for her. For him, it is an emergency.
According to Newsweek, Kinsey described the experience directly: “The pain was sharp cramps that got worse the longer I wore the period cramp simulator.” He also said that the experience made him even more appreciative of what women go through monthly. Which is kind. And also: this is what it took.
How Bad Is It, Actually
The comment sections of these videos do what the medical establishment has historically failed to do, which is take the question seriously. And the numbers, when you actually look them up, are not gentle. According to a 2026 report from National Geographic, dysmenorrhea – the clinical term for painful periods – affects up to 91 percent of individuals of reproductive age, with 29 percent experiencing pain they describe as severe.
For many of those people, it is not just an uncomfortable two days a month. A 2024 review published in PMC found that painful menstrual cramps are often written off as a normal part of the menstrual cycle, something all menstruating people are simply expected to live with. This normalization has resulted in delays in diagnosis of conditions like endometriosis – and studies show that patients who internalize the idea that severe period pain is normal are less likely to seek medical help, while physicians are less inclined to search for other underlying causes.
The dismissal has been so thorough and so systematic that it now has its own literature. Researchers have written philosophical reviews about why menstrual pain specifically gets ignored. The word they use is “normalized.” The effect that word has had is that generations of women have sat in doctor’s offices and been told, essentially, that what they were describing was just what a uterus does.
What the Comments Actually Said
One of the most popular comments on the viral video came from a commenter who wrote that when one of the men asked “it’s stabbing me, what do I do?” – the honest answer was: “You go to work, clean the house and continue on.”
Another commenter went further, listing what the simulator leaves out. The additions: headaches, period poops, bloating, the sensation of blood leaving the body, and nausea. The simulator, in other words, is the highlights reel. A highly condensed version of an experience that comes with a full supporting cast of symptoms and no day off.
That comment – and the thousands like it – functions as its own form of testimony. These are not women complaining. They are women who have been describing their physical experience accurately for years and been met with skepticism, and who are watching four men on a phone screen finally, finally feel something approximate to it and react the way anyone would react to pain that bad. The validation is loud because the dismissal was so long.
Women who menstruate have more to say about the full picture than any simulator could ever capture – the full catalog of workarounds and calculations and small indignities that make up a week every month for decades. The simulator gets the muscle contractions. It does not get the rest of it.
The Male Gynecologist Moment
Among the many versions of this video genre, one that stands out involves a male gynecologist – someone who has spent his entire career in women’s health – hooking himself up to the device for the first time. As documented by Rescripted, within moments he is wide-eyed and breathless, blurting out, “You go through this every month?” It is both funny and deeply validating, especially coming from someone who works in women’s health every single day but has never felt menstrual pain firsthand.
There is something revealing about that. A man can spend decades treating the condition, reading the literature, and prescribing the ibuprofen without ever having a visceral understanding of what he is treating. A simulator changes that in about forty-five seconds.
The reactions from men trying these simulators for the first time are consistently a mix of surprise, disbelief, and respect. Many express shock at the intensity of the sensations even at lower settings. The phrase “I had no idea it was this bad” appears often enough to qualify as a pattern. And every time it does, somewhere a woman nods slowly at her phone and thinks: yes. We know. We have been telling you.
The Joke and the Weight of It
The thing about these videos is that they are genuinely funny. The fist-biting in the library, the man who felt pain in his kneecaps, the woman standing next to the writhing man with the calm energy of someone waiting for a bus – all of it is funny in a way that requires no setup and no explanation. The humor is structural. It lives in the gap between what was expected and what happened.
But the reason these videos travel so far, and collect the comment sections they do, is not purely comedy. The concept allows individuals who don’t menstruate – particularly men – to experience a simulation of period cramps. It is not just about watching guys squirm on TikTok; it is about fostering understanding, awareness, and a deeper appreciation for what many women endure each month.
That is doing a lot of work for a small electrical device that costs less than a dinner out. The simulator is not a cure, and it is not a policy change, and it is not the same as a doctor actually taking a woman’s pain report seriously in a clinical setting. What it is, is evidence. Visceral, immediate, impossible-to-dismiss evidence that the pain is real and it is significant and four men in a library could not handle fifteen minutes of a simulation of it.
You can hold both things at once: the image of a grown man biting his fist to stop himself from yelling in a quiet study space, and the knowledge that millions of people do a version of that suppression every month, invisibly, without fanfare, while someone nearby asks if they can maybe just take an ibuprofen. The joke is funny. The thing underneath it has been there a long time.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.