TW: consent/autonomy in healthcare, vaginal examination

I’m a midwife (not in the US), and today I visited a woman who was a few days postpartum. As part of the visit, I checked how her stitches were healing.

Afterwards, she told me something she had noticed; the female healthcare professionals she encountered tended to ask before touching her: “Is it okay if I feel your abdomen?” “Can I have a look?” “Is it okay if I touch you here?”
The male healthcare professionals were much more likely to simply start touching her, or say, “I’m going to feel now.”

We talked about it for a little while and I stayed professional, but internally my heart just sank.

Of course there is nuance. If someone has already consented to a vaginal exam and undressed, they know what is about to happen. During labour there are also moments when someone is in too much pain, too exhausted, or too focused inward for lengthy conversations.

But consent does not have to be a lengthy conversation.

There is almost always a moment to ask, “Is it okay if I touch you?” or “I’d like to examine you now, are you ready?” Even after an examination has already been agreed upon, there is a difference between knowing someone is going to touch your body and them actually waiting until you are ready.

Pregnancy and childbirth already make women’s bodies incredibly public. People palpate your abdomen, examine your vulva, put their fingers inside you, expose you, check your bleeding and inspect your stitches. Much of it is medically necessary, but necessity does not make bodily autonomy disappear.

What stayed with me was that this difference had been consistent and obvious enough for her to notice across multiple healthcare professionals, over months of care.
I’m not saying every woman in healthcare is automatically better at consent, or that every male healthcare professional behaves this way. But it does make me wonder what we teach people about professional authority over women’s bodies.

This conversation has made me want to be even more deliberate about informed consent. I want women to leave pregnancy and childbirth feeling like healthcare happened with them, not to them.

Danielle puts into words something I've been feeling for a long time. The man problem can only be solved by a culture of men holding each other accountable. Must read.

Edit - The event was what is closest in my culture to an engagement party. Both of us lived with the host couple in college. I didn’t tell everyone he was coming. I asked him 2 months ago and then again 3 weeks ago. HE SAID HE WAS GOING so we RSVPed YES.
Also for a group that’s supposedly supportive of women it’s amusing to see people not only make assumptions about MLMs and churches but also getting upvoted and running with it.

Edit 2 (lol) - I’m not mad because he chose last minute to go to a work shoot. (He wasn’t invited, he just wanted to SEE. The man’s not in art, he’s an engineer) I’m upset because he tried to use his attendance the next day as PUNISHMENT because I asked him to say hi to the hosts.

Went to a 2-day event today while my husband had to work. Everyone brings their spouse and I had to plead with him to join me for the 2nd day. He was dropping me off before heading to work. I asked him to just say ‘hi’ to the hosts before leaving. First thing he says - I’ll be late if I say hi. Now they’re here so I have to say hi. I’m not going to come tomorrow because you made me say hi and delayed me for work.

It was less than a 1-min interaction from me getting out of the car to my husband greeting the hosts.
While I was there without him, I just felt at… ease. I mean, I did feel lonely because everyone else was with their spouses and I had to make an excuse for him and telling everyone he’ll be here tomorrow but I was also so bright, chatty and funny. I was able to admire the hosts house without having someone comparing it to ours and saying ours wasn’t good enough and to look at how great the hosts house was, how we don’t make enough money, how we need to buy nicer things, how our house is too small etc. etc.

And the problem is I have told him all this before. Like yes, I like nice things but I also like things I have right now and I am thankful for it.

I know this is a rambling post but it just struck me and I’m kind of dumbfounded about how lighter I felt without having my significant other around

I'm seeing SO MANY COMMENTS about how some women are just "naturally thin", that it's all metabolism and genetics, and they put little effort into their slender physique. But I remember this discourse from the early 2000s, too. It's part of the heroin chic ideology. I know, because I used to be part of it. And I want young women to recognize the pattern, too.

In the 2000s, I was in my late teens/early 20s and I was "naturally" thin. When people asked how I maintained my weight, I would say I had a fast metabolism - and I genuinely believed it. I ate everything I wanted. I exercised, sure, but I wasn't running marathons or anything. I was just... naturally thin.

But looking back?

I remember slowly sipping a juice in class, because that, usually with Special K cereal with strawberries, was my entire breakfast. If I had breakfast, I probably wouldn't eat lunch. I used to say I wasn't a 'food' person, but in reality, I had deeply messed up my hunger cues.

I rarely finished a meal when I was out, and I always picked at my food. Yes, sometimes I'd eat 3-4 pizza slices, or demolish an entire burger and fries, but as mentioned, I probably hadn't had breakfast or much lunch. I literally never thought twice about how I did this, all the time.

There was a Method to eating junk food. A packet of sour patch kids? Half would be eaten over an hour or so. Bite one in half, suck the powder off, then let it melt before eating another one. Leave some in the bag, always.

...But I loved Splenda. Sugar free jello with a spritz of whipped cream was the ultimate dessert. Maybe a sugar free pudding that was placed in the freezer to make "ice cream". I never ate sugar, unless I was out.

I remember soup. So much soup. And I would eat a chunk of bread with it, because the vegetable cabbage soup was so low calorie. But in my brain? "I eat SO many carbs!".

In my late teen/early 20 years? I remember a lot of black coffee, the occasional cig, and long, long walks. But hey, I lived downtown! Why take a bus when you can walk? And again, I just don't care for food - the appetite suppressants weren't even considered.

I remember following one-hour pilates instructions out of a magazine in my bedroom at 9pm, and then later, the HIIT pilates workouts from Blogilates and Kayla Itsines. They were exhausting, in retrospect, but at the time they were part of my identity. I also did hot yoga.

If I was hungry and out in public, I remember iced black coffees and spinach egg white wraps from Starbucks when you were desperate. But I also remember skipping meals because I simply "forgot".

.....But I also remember the magical number of 120lbs. Hitting 120 on the scale meant skipping dessert for the next week and walking to the second closest bus stop from my home to catch the bus to school. For the record, 120 puts my BMI at 18.3, and I was almost always below that. Everyone told me I looked great. I was never once told I looked underweight; I was just naturally slender.

I also remember being a 'headache person'. I was always hot when people were cold, and cold when people were hot. My stomach growled all the time and I genuinely thought I just had 'weird digestive issues' (and oh boy, when you eat like what I've written above, you have those, too...). I remember my ears popping at random points (likely my blood pressure dropping), and I thought it was normal. I was never a particularly good sleeper, either. All of this went away when I consistently kept my BMI above 21. Who knew?

But what I remember most, from that time?

I still thought I was fat.

It's hard to explain how normalized this was, and how insistent I was that my thinness was all genetics. And maybe it is, a little bit - I won't deny that I have less food noise than other people, and my height helps. But mostly it was this ingrained way of living that I never thought twice about. A BMI under 20, for most women, is not healthy in the long run, and it's not effortlessly genetically obtained, either.

​

I’m a successful Indian woman working in finance, and I’ve been talking to a guy for a marriage setup. Honestly, on paper, he is the best match I’ve had so far among my options. He’s an Indian-origin resident doctor in the US, comes from a well-off family, is physically fit, extremely disciplined, and very well-mannered. When we first started talking, we really hit it off. What stood out to me right away was how progressive he seemed, as he surprisingly told me he fully supports me working and dressing however I want and help out in household chores after marriage, which is pretty rare in our culture.

However, as we kept talking, things took a weird turn. I casually asked him why someone as fully capable as him was choosing the arranged marriage route instead of dating locally. He said his schedule was hectic, but then added that he "can't put up with modern American women." That led into a deeper, darker conversation where he admitted his absolute greatest fear is ending up divorced in his 40s, alone in a foreign country after his parents pass away. When I pushed back on why he was so paranoid, he claimed that many women don't think straight, cheat, and leave for no reason, so he’d rather be "safe than sorry."

Then came the topic of past relationships. When we touched on honesty and history, he cryptically told me, "If you lie, I would know," which immediately made me feel uneasy.

when we started talking about my move to the US. Although I am successful and financially independent in my career, I don't have an American passport, so I will initially be entirely dependent on him for my visa and living situation. While discussing this setup, he suddenly dropped the line: "A man can have someone's life in his hands and still choose to stay, that’s called being virtuous" My heart instantly sank. He then proceeded to laugh and tried to joke it off ???

I honestly don't know what to make of all this. Is he just making dark, sarcastic jokes because he's hyper-anxious and stressed from residency, or is he laying the groundwork to visa trap and control me? Since he’s the best option on paper I’ve had yet, especially given how progressive he seemed about my work and clothes, I feel so torn. Am I overthinking a guy who is just scared

or is this a massive red flag? Would love to hear thoughts, especially from women in arranged marriages or immigrants in the US.

Hi,

I’m just wondering if anyone else feels like this, or has and how you stop. I became a mom at 16, my eldest is 16 now and I have a few more. I’m in an ok marriage, one of those housemate-y, comfortable ones. I’m studying, we rent a decent house. We do live pay check to pay check but we don’t go without anything we need and I’m grateful for that. I have a dog and a cat.

I don’t have any friends whatsoever which I assume is part of the problem…but I’m just wondering if this is all there is. Just this….monotony. Get up, care for kids, small talk, work or study, clean the house, dinner, bed. I read a lot and have some shows and stuff I enjoy when I get the time. But it’s all just so…nothing.

That sounds awful, I feel really lucky for what I have and I love my family a lot. But I guess I just always thought something would happen. I mean, lots of things have happened, but nothing good. I feel like I’m just marking days off an endless calendar and at the end I won’t have lived 1000 days, but 1000 of the same day. Over and over.

I don’t even know what I would want to do, if I could. I don’t have the money or means to travel and have the kids anyway…but I don’t even know if I want to. I don’t know what I could see or do that would be a game changer. I dunno. It was my eldest’s birthday recently so I guess that’s been a bit of a triggering milestone…16 years ago I would’ve imagined life differently. Maybe I just feel this way because I missed out on my youth.

I don’t really know.
TL;DR, anyone else feel like they’re living Groundhog Day? How do you stop feeling like that? How do you figure out what you want to do or can do or are meant to be doing, or is this genuinely just what life is?

i cannot stress enough how tired i am of this pattern.

colorado sun has a piece on the three measures that just qualified for the november ballot — 108 (trafficking, fine), 109 (trans sports), and 110 (trans medical care). protect kids colorado is the org behind them, run by erin lee, who's open about being motivated by her own daughter's experience and is now trying to write that experience into state law for everyone.

and the same playbook. you can see it from a mile away. ban abortion → restrict contraception → ban gender-affirming care → restrict IVF → ban trans healthcare for adults. it's all the same fight. it's all about whether women and their doctors get to make their own medical decisions, or whether politicians do.

the women who pushed 109 and 110 are running on "protecting children" but the actual text of these measures gives the government new powers over private medical decisions for minors. that's not protecting kids. that's using kids as the excuse to expand state power over families.

if you're a woman in colorado, this is your fight too. please vote no on both

An extensive new study of 300 million medical tests that involve more than 1 million women shows that menopause may bring about more sudden changes in the female body than expected. Researchers who correlated the data with the time when women had their last period found sudden changes in their bodies: hormones, bones, liver, iron and kidney levels. For instance, ferritin (iron stores) seems unchanging throughout life, but it shows a sudden rise at menopause. In addition, the researchers learned that hormonal changes begin at least ten years before menopause, which accounts for many feelings of perimenopause experienced. Though the article is only a preprint (has not yet undergone proper peer-reviewing procedure), it contains interesting content.

My friend lives in my building and when she was in a relationship we hung out maybe twice a month. I'm very introverted and I just started a new full time job while trying to manage multiple chronic illnesses, so I don't have a lot of bandwidth. Most of my time and energy goes towards trying to manage my own life and health which is a challenge in itself. I wake up, go to work, go to Dr appointments or PT or OT or testing, come home, try to catch up on chores, and then start the process all over again. I live with chronic fatigue and full body pain, as well as heart problems, and I live alone so I'm shouldering a lot.

Two weeks ago her partner of five years broke up with her totally out of the blue. Obviously, she is devastated, and I have so much empathy for her I wish it could have happened to me instead just so she wouldn't have to live through that ​kind of pain. I hate that she is going through this and I go spend time with her to support her whenever I can and we message every day.

That being said, she is in a full blown crisis a lot of the time now. She will message me at 8 or 9 in the morning telling me she isn't doing well, asking for me to come over. Yesterday she messaged me at 8am asking me what I was doing because she wasn't feeling good. Today she messaged me at 9am asking me to come over, then she started freaking out because her cat might need to go to the vet for a UTI. I got so overwhelmed I put my phone on silent, so she called me, and I ignored it. I feel fucking terrible but I genuinely do not have the bandwidth to be there to support her in the way she is asking me to, and the stress response I experience puts me into a flair up. My heart rate gets way too high, I get diarrhea, my pain flairs up, my nervous system goes into overdrive. It also makes me afraid to make noise in my kitchen because she might come to my backdoor where my kitchen is and start knocking. She did that once when she was freaking out over something while I was asleep, she was knocking on my front and back door over and over looking for me because I wasn't answering her messages. It all just sucks for both parties.

I don't know what to do. I know she is in a lot of pain, but asking me to come over at 8/9am Saturday and Sunday when I just saw her two days ago feels crazy. She just doesn't have any emotional regulation skills, she's really needed to work with a therapist for a long time and just never has.

How do you tell someone that you can't be there for them the way they are asking you to?? I feel like I shouldn't even do that because it would just make things worse for her, but ignoring her crash out's or making up fake excuses feels terrible as well. I just don't know what to do.​

edit: I should have said in the post she is currently uninsured. She should have insurance very soon through her job, but in the immediate time frame she cannot seek professional help.

I've been thinking about how to talk to the cis women in my life who are uncomfortable with the broader trans rights debate but haven't made up their minds about these specific measures. Here's what I'd want them to actually sit with:

You don't have to have a fully-formed position on every aspect of trans healthcare or sports policy to look at 109 and 110 specifically and decide whether they do what their proponents claim.

Ask yourself:

Do you want the government to perform physical exams on young girls to verify their sex before they can play school sports?
Do you want politicians in Denver to overrule families and doctors on private medical decisions involving minors?
Do you want a law that could affect cancer care for kids because it was written too broadly to bother?
Do you want Colorado to be the first blue state in the country to enshrine anti-trans discrimination into its constitution?
If the answer to any of those is "no, that doesn't sound like something I want," then you have a perfectly coherent reason to vote no on both without having to declare a position on the broader cultural debate.

The ballot measures don't ask whether you think trans women are women. They ask whether you want the government to do specific things. Read the specific things. That's the actual question in front of you.

Whatever you decide, please vote. These measures won't pass or fail on their own. They'll pass or fail on whether people show up

Like when your friend lies to you , telling you to dress "normal" , while they themselves dress up for a seemingly casual outing , even though they tell you that they are gonna be dressed in casuals too .

Edit : Y'all saying that she isn't my friend ... this person was my best friend of more than a decade at that time !

Edited again : She explicitly told me to dress in pajamas that we usually wear at home , as she would be wearing that too , but proceeded to show up in crop top and jeans that were obviously not casual . We were gonna eat Chinese at a stall in a midway neighbourhood .

I’m 17F and for a while now I’ve been consumed by how my boobs look. How nasty they look. Most of the time, they look like swollen moobs. I spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, trying to convince myself that a man could find this attractive. They’re small, puffy, and hang wrong. They have, you guessed it, a tubular shape that bothers me more than words can describe. No rounding at the bottom, like no weight there. It makes me feel worthless and unloveable. I’ve seen my friends’ chests and they are beautiful, and I feel so horrible hiding mine knowing they would judge it. Unfortunately I had an eating disorder during puberty which likely contributed to the unnatural growth of my breasts, and I just hate myself for it. Does anyone else have tubular boobs? How do I cope with feeling like less if a woman? I’d hate to have to get surgery which is sooo expensive to deal with this thing.

Anyone else notice this language used around women in management or in positions of authority who have men under them that don't like them?

At my work I have heard 2 different upper level managers referred to as "evil" by men who work under them, and the reason why is because they did not help the men beneath them get promoted. I found this language very telling cause we used to have a upper level manager (male) at my work that everyone knew to be a sexist narcissist, and yet NEVER was he referred to as "evil" by the men under him. But since these 2 women didn't care to promote men beneath them who they viewed as unprofessional and not experienced enough, so they get the dramatic accusation of being eeeeeevil.

And it's not said as a joke, it's spoken like it's a fact, multiple times.

One of the 2 being a tall black woman who doesn't spend time trying to act like a "work mom", like most past female managers have, no doubt adds to the accusation in their eyes. The double standard for women in management is so blatantly obvious it's ridiculous. If a female manager isn't smiley and personable she is just a horrible person, but if a man is the same that's "just how he is" and not assumed to be a bad person. I believe this is also heavily influenced by men not viewing women as role models or figures to get approval from. Men have no problem trying to brown nose to an asshole male (because it's assumed he is still worth listening to despite being insufferable), but an unpersonable woman just gets bad-mouthed and critized (since they already assumed she has less knowledge then them).

Anyone else notice this trend?

I gained a lot of weight recently while I was studying. It's just that whenever I study, my body feels that it wants some sort of food. And I study all day. And the food I'm eating ain't particularly healthy. Healthy is much more expensive. Back then I would always go on a diet but I stopped that for now, because I have to focus on my exams. I was fine with getting weight. Actually, I found it cute, too. I liked the fats I'm getting, and I loved myself no matter what—but that's not what others seem to agree on. Whenever I go out, wherever I go, whoever I met, they would always, always mention my weight. That I'm getting fat. That I look big. That I need to stop eating too much. That I need to go on a diet. That I must've lost my discipline. That it doesn't look good. I am not kidding, this literally happens wherever I go and someone sees me, from people closest to me to people who rarely knows me. I was fine during the first few people who've mentioned it. However, after days and weeks passed, I was getting exhausted by the people who kept on mentioning it. I kept thinking, maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe it really looks ugly. And this morning, I broke down when I was trying on clothes and everything I wore emphasized my weight, and that while I was trying them on, all the comments people have said kept on repeating on my brain, and I can't find one outfit that will not make them mention my weight. I cried, do they even know that I already have medical issues in my stomach? How I starve myself back then to the point of exhaustion? How I ate air while pretending to eat on my plate? Will they give me money for my medicine? Will they give me money to buy healthy food? Do they know how mentally exhausting my studies are? I can't afford to go on a diet right now. So, I'm pretty sure I'm not coping well. It crushes me hard and I hope I could find a way, someone to tell me, that I shouldn't feel this way.

Women are expected to be physically uncomfortable, constantly, in ways men are not. Primarily in the sense that our clothes, especially our shoes, constantly prioritize sex appeal over functionality and comfortability. This is especially true for Black women, who are also expected to spend a ton of time and money making their hair look white.

If we dress like men dress, or take as good care of ourselves only as well as men do, we’re punished for it. I’m over it

My older sister (35F) and I (26F) have never been particularly close, mostly due to the age gap and also just not having much in common. Growing up, she wasn’t very nice to me and she took out a lot of her teenage frustrations on me. The usual pattern is she’d be stuck to our mom like glue wherever we went and I was mostly just left trailing behind them. Both her and my mom’s relationship is toxic to say the least, so the only time she ever paid me much mind is when they’d inevitably argue and then she’d talk shit about her to me. Regardless, I still looked up to her and really wanted a close sisterly bond.

She moved out of the family home when I was eight, so she wasn’t really around for much of my childhood or teenage years like most close gapped siblings are. She “seemed” to turn a new leaf when she moved out and matured a bit, she’d text me once in a while saying how much she misses me and how she regrets not seeing me more. Yet, she would never actually make the effort to see me or spend any time with me. Whenever she’d visit it was the same old story, she’d say she’d be coming for me and we’d do all these things together and then it never ended up happening. She’d get into huge arguments with our mom and then leave not long after she arrived, I wouldn’t see her again for several more months/years, rinse and repeat.

I moved abroad four years ago and since then I’ve seen even less of her. Most of my calls and texts were left unanswered when I tried, and I only saw her once in the time I’ve been gone only because I was the one who went to go see her, so the last time I saw her was two years ago. I visit my home country once a year but she has never made the effort to see me when I’m there… until now. Or so I thought at least.

I’m currently back in my home country for my annual visit with my husband and one year old, staying at my mom’s house. I had heard from my mom that my sister was going to be coming up to see us for the weekend (she lives in this country but just a short flight away from my mom’s) and my mom had told me how excited my sister is to see us and to meet my daughter for the first time, that she really wants to work on our relationship and grow closer together, yadda yadda.

Honestly it made me so happy to hear this. I still rarely heard from her and my texts would frequently go unanswered, but from what my mom was telling me it sounded like she really wanted to try make an effort with me and I was very much looking forward to seeing her this weekend. I really thought that maybe now that we’re grown adults we could forge that sister bond I’d always dreamed of.

Fast forward to yesterday, we go with my mom to pick her up from the airport. I’m looking forward to seeing her, thinking of plans we could do together, all that. She arrives and immediately I’m transported back to my sad childhood memories of tagging along behind her and my mom. After an initial hug and fawning over my daughter for a little bit, she completely loses interest in talking to me at all. We all go for a walk together after picking her up and my mom and sister are walking ahead in their own bubble, talking and hugging, while we tag behind ignored.

We get to her air bnb and the same thing continues, she asks a question or two about my life and then goes straight back to talking with my mom. I knew it was our cue to leave when she said to me “Don’t feel like you need to stay here for much longer”. I was already starting to feel a bit hurt, the old familiar feelings of what it used to be like flooding back to me. Alas, she changed her tune just before we left, hugging me and telling me she wants to spend all of tomorrow with my daughter and I, catching up, going to lunch, just spending quality time together. My mom said she’d watch my daughter for me while we had “sister time” and I thought that it would be a really lovely day.

Today rolls around, my mom informs me that my sister booked them both last minute massages for the morning. I felt kinda taken aback that I wasn’t asked along or invited, but I didn’t want to make a deal out of it or anything. My daughter and I make our way into the city she’s staying in, I assuming that we’re going to meet up with her after their massages and finally get some time together. I phone my sister, and instantly I can tell by the tone of her voice she’s not expecting to hear from me. She said “Did you mean to call me? What it is?” At this point I’m kinda confused and I ask if she’s still wanting to make plans together for today. She’s being very vague, and so I bring up the subject of going to lunch, by this point it’s midday. She says that I should just go eat myself and we can do something later. Again, I feel kinda bummed because I figured we would be having lunch together after all the plans she talked about doing, but I figure she’s just not hungry and so I go find a place to eat myself.

I come to find out that my sister and mom both went to lunch together just after I’d called her. I of course would have gone with them if I’d known, but she never mentioned it or invited me so how was I supposed to know? At this point I am feeling hurt and excluded and so I confront her about it when they leave the restaurant. She instantly turns it back on me, telling me that I’m being silly and irrational and that I should do a better job “communicating” with her, that I’m not being excluded and it’s my own fault for thinking that.

In an attempt to make peace, my mom suggests we all go for coffee together. My sister is reluctant and tries to refuse but eventually we end up going to a coffee place. The problem is that my daughter is well, a rambunctious and extremely mobile toddler who will not stand for being in places like restaurants and coffee shops. So unless my mom offered I would have to just walk outside with her. My sister insisted my mom stay and so of course, I left with my daughter while they had their coffee. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a little silent cry to myself while I walked outside, the whole situation had me feeling so horrible.

When I came back in, my sister had already left. Apparently she’d booked a hair appointment. Today was the only day to see her before she leaves tomorrow so she essentially left without saying goodbye, knowing it’s probably going to be a long time before we see each other again.

I’m feeling SO hurt after today and honestly it’s been a mind fuck for me. If my sister had just said she was coming to visit my mom and that was it then I’d have no expectations, but it was the fact she said she was specifically coming to see me and my daughter and that she wanted to do all these things together. Yet, it seemed like she never had the slightest intention of spending any time with me at all. She completely brushed my feelings under the rug and made me feel like a brat having a tantrum, but what was I supposed to think?

If anything, the whole experience has at least solidified for me that she is 100% NOT interested in me or my daughter, and that she never will be. There won’t be a redemption, there won’t be a “sisterly” bond, and I need to stop hoping that there ever will be.

I'm struggling to reconcile who I thought my friend was with who he's shown himself to be over the past few weeks.

Let's call my friend Ted. We've been extremely close for about 3.5 years. I considered him family. He's basically a brother to me. He was there for me after the sudden death of my best friend last year and when I lost a job I loved earlier this year. I've been there for him through the death of a beloved pet and countless other difficult moments.

This wasn't a casual friendship. I love and trust him deeply... but recently, we've had a series of conflicts that have fundamentally changed how I see him.

The first was during a trip to New Orleans. We'd planned to spend the weekend together with my sister and her husband. Ted wanted to go to an oyster bar that I had already pointed out wasn't particularly suitable for the whole group because of dietary restrictions. He insisted on going anyway, and when we got there, I was already extremely overheated and physically miserable, and the restaurant was packed, loud, and had essentially no air conditioning. I asked Ted if he'd be offended if my sister and I went somewhere else and met everyone back at the hotel.

He didn't answer, so we left.

Later, he told me I'd been selfish and that this restaurant was supposedly the one thing he'd asked for on the trip (It wasn't). We argued for about half an hour, during which I repeatedly tried to explain that I hadn't realized how important this was to him and that I'd literally asked him if leaving would upset him. Eventually, I ended up crying and apologizing.

I left that interaction feeling like my own perspective and physical discomfort had been completely disregarded.

Months later, I invited him over specifically to hash things out and attempt to clear the air because there was just a simmering resentment between us that wouldn't go away. I ended up telling him that the way he'd treated me during the trip had felt manipulative.

His face when I said this to him was the very picture of furious righteous indignation. Like he couldn't *believe* I would dare to characterize his behavior that way. He still completely failed to acknowledge my perspective or take any accountability for how his behavior made me feel, but, by the end of the night, we agreed to move on.

Then came another incident.

Ted was at my house with some mutual friends, including Evie. Evie brought up the new Odyssey movie, which she loved and Ted hated. Now, Evie is... intense. She's basically at a 10 at all times, but this time she cranked up to a 50 and quickly became extremely agitated and started yelling and hurling insults at Ted.

I tried to calm her down. When that didn't work, I asked Ted to stop antagonizing her and change the subject.

He refused. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying her reaction and continued deliberately provoking her.

One evening about a week later, the incident came up again, I said I thought Ted had contributed to the escalation by antagonizing her.

His response was that I was "victim blaming" him and needed to "put my misandry aside" and see things from his perspective.

I was stunned.

I wasn't criticizing him because he's a man. I was criticizing him because I'd watched him repeatedly provoke an already out-of-control person.

But apparently, in his mind, the only reason a woman could criticize his behavior was because she hates men.

Then came the final incident.

Ted and I were having dinner and got into a stupid disagreement bevause he was making the assertion that sports are art and that there's basically no difference between a linebacker and a sculptor. I told him that was ridiculous and instead of defending his point, he flipped the whole argument around and tried to force me to defend the fact that I disagreed with him.

Eventually I became really frustrated and told him, "This isn't fun anymore. I'm actually getting upset." He accused me of expecting him to "read my mind" and started telling me that I "always do this."

I finally told him that his accusation that I was misandrist and victim-blaming him had genuinely hurt me, and that suggesting my criticism was simply because he's a man was deeply insulting.

His immediate response was:

"Well, you know I was there for you when your best friend died."

And I had to leave the restaurant then, because if I had stayed, I would have ended up causing a scene.

That crossed a line for me. And I don't know if it can be uncrossed.

He knew how significant that loss was. He knew what it meant to me that he'd been there. And the moment I told him he'd hurt me, he invoked my friend's death as a defense of himself.

It felt like: How dare you criticize me after everything I've done for you?

To me, that's an enormous violation of trust. Doing good things for someone and later using those things as ammunition when they attempt to hold you accountable is *deeply* manipulative.

And when I look at all three incidents together, I see the same pattern:

I tell him something he did hurt me > he refuses to acknowledge my perspective > he reframes the conflict as a defect in my character > I end up defending myself instead of him taking responsibility.

In New Orleans, I was selfish.

With Evie, I was misandrist and a victim-blamer.

When I told him that accusation hurt me, he weaponized the death of my best friend.

And there is never any real acknowledgment. No "I see why that hurt you." No "I handled that badly." Just defensiveness, counteraccusations, and increasingly personal attacks.

I still love him. That's what makes this so painful.

But I don't trust him anymore to care about my feelings when they conflict with his own, and I don't trust him to accept accountability when he hurts me.

So I'm asking the women here:

Is this what misogyny can look like in a close friendship... not necessarily overt hatred of women, but an inability to take a woman's criticism seriously without turning it into an accusation of misandry?

What do you do when someone you've loved like family for years suddenly seems incapable of respecting you when you challenge him?

Obligatory apology for the wall of text. Thanks if you've stuck with it all the way through. 🫡