I think you can't expect or demand anyone to talk to you. For some autistic people, small talk or talking with less known or allistic people can be extremely stressful and even panic inducing. Also some autistic (and non-autistic) people are not able to speak in certain situations or ever. That said, you *can* expect and demand that regardless of how little someone talks to you, they do an equitable amount of labor based on their abilities and the situation. So I think this guy should have done labor to make or provide food and clean up, even if he is not able or comfortable talking to you.
That said, I think you can have boundaries around your interpersonal relationships with people. If people talking to you each time you're in the same space, for more than 5 minutes, with their mouth (and not in writing, for example) is a requirement for your relationships, you can choose to leave relationships where that doesn't happen. It sounds like this specific guy is not in an ongoing relationship with you. I suppose if you're hosting an event you could require that all attendees talk to you for a certain amount of time? You would need to let them know in advance that that's a requirement so they are fully informed when choosing whether to attend.
I completely understand why you're frustrated with how this guy behaved. My comments are just to encourage you to reflect on what might be some ableist assumptions around people talking to you. To reiterate, I do agree that he should have done an equitable amount of labor and he did not.
These insights and taking stock are so valuable. When I tell my daughter the leading cause of death of pregnant women is murder… it says a lot more than my mother could have ever told me. My mother never told me anything.
This is eye-opening and terrifying. The stat about postpartum women being more likely to die by murder than pregnancy complications is... Wow.
Something I have been wondering, and Zawn I am curious if you have any thoughts on this: With the incoming administration and how hostile they are hostile to no-fault divorce, should women kind of...hurry up and start divorce processes if they are in abusive or bad marriages? Get preemptively divorced even if they don't have all their ducks in a row yet? I know you can't give legal advice, but am just wondering what your sense of the urgency of the situation is. Thanks 🙏
Not legal advice, not a lawyer but my sense would be to assume that divorce rights will only become worse over time and also to make sure to have a really good plan informed by a really good lawyer before making an abusive man aware of the impending divorce because he is more likely to become violent as soon as he is aware his wife is trying to leave him.
Thanks for making it easy for me to talk to my daughter about staying away from romanticized marriages. So needed, and honestly wish someone had sat me down to tell me all the stats 20 years ago
Men are the most dangerous to women and these men fall out of the very wombs they abuse, rape, coercive control and murder; power over. The humanity in the male sex will always be seen by women because we do and have the propensity to create their life. By biology we create and carry their life HENCE the threat & terror even by, ‘single’ women. That, ‘threat’ is ALWAYS present. There isn’t, the other way around, OR we are equal. NOPE.
We humanize all human beings while the male sex dehumanizes, exploits and objectifies AND until we get to the meat and the bones of that the cycle will always continue.
The FULL truth will always be obscured because all women’s oppressors drop from their wombs.
Don’t hate the messenger. Hate that, that’s the message to begin with.
To be quite honest, I don’t have all the answers. However, I have been ruminating on these questions since I saw them. What I do know is this: I don’t refer to men or boys as “ours” — not in a collective, possessive sense, as if I’m responsible for them or claim ownership. I’ve never subscribed to that idea. Frankly, I want no part in it. Rarely do I see men taking ownership or accountability for women collectively, and as women — particularly in this society — we are often left to navigate things alone. Even as I type this, I know many will not understand or accept what I’m saying.
Still, I feel compelled to speak. I have the time now, and more importantly, I have something to say.
I have a stepson. He’s 31 years old — closer to me in age than far apart. I’ve watched him grow from a little boy into a man. I’ve witnessed his mother raise him and his younger brother practically on her own, moving from one marriage to the next, perhaps searching for love or a sense of security. It’s no secret that our culture conditions girls to seek love in others before learning to find it within themselves. Many of us only return to self after enduring cycles of loss and disappointment. Perhaps that’s why so many women find solace in pages like this one.
Despite being raised by a woman who provided and protected, my stepson still grew up disrespecting women. His language was riddled with derogatory terms like “bitches.” He expressed beliefs that women only wanted men for their money — that women didn’t want to work for anything — which we both know couldn’t be further from the truth. I had to remove myself from those conversations and let my husband know: this is not acceptable. While efforts were made to correct his thinking, he often reverted to that same toxic language — excusing it as “slang” or just how he talks. He viewed his mother as an exception, not realizing that to another man, she would be just another “bitch” in his vocabulary.
At the root of this, I believe, is a deep cultural sickness.
Boys grow up revering other men. Culture — particularly one that glorifies misogyny, violence, and the mass consumption of pornography — shapes their worldview. This isn’t just about individual choices; we are witnessing a crisis. Women and girls bear the brunt of it. Few people acknowledge this, and even fewer seem to care. Misogyny is not the exception — it is the rule. Male supremacy is the dominant ideology, and women are often punished for not submitting to it. The moment you resist, the pushback is relentless. I consider it a miracle I survive each day — even though, truthfully, I don’t go unscathed.
What’s more painful is that some of the damage is perpetuated by women themselves.
His mother, like many women, doesn’t see other women as sisters or allies. She sees them as rivals — especially when it comes to the very sons some other woman helped indirectly raise. This isn’t an attempt to mother-blame — I say “indirectly” because so much of what shapes a boy is beyond any one woman’s control. But when a woman hasn’t tapped into certain levels of conscious and critical thought, she often passes down internalized misogyny — knowingly or unknowingly. She may teach her daughters to compete with other women and raise sons who believe that woman-hate is normal. In a world already hostile to women, this internalized self-hate gives boys all the ammunition they need to double down on toxic behavior — and feel justified while doing it.
If we’re serious about change, we have to name this. We have to see how deeply global sexism is embedded — in our homes, in our relationships, in our language, in our silence. And above all, we have to unlearn what we’ve been taught — and do better.
I read Zawn's page because she has hope. I even think me commenting means I still have some too, but barely :)
I think you can't expect or demand anyone to talk to you. For some autistic people, small talk or talking with less known or allistic people can be extremely stressful and even panic inducing. Also some autistic (and non-autistic) people are not able to speak in certain situations or ever. That said, you *can* expect and demand that regardless of how little someone talks to you, they do an equitable amount of labor based on their abilities and the situation. So I think this guy should have done labor to make or provide food and clean up, even if he is not able or comfortable talking to you.
That said, I think you can have boundaries around your interpersonal relationships with people. If people talking to you each time you're in the same space, for more than 5 minutes, with their mouth (and not in writing, for example) is a requirement for your relationships, you can choose to leave relationships where that doesn't happen. It sounds like this specific guy is not in an ongoing relationship with you. I suppose if you're hosting an event you could require that all attendees talk to you for a certain amount of time? You would need to let them know in advance that that's a requirement so they are fully informed when choosing whether to attend.
I completely understand why you're frustrated with how this guy behaved. My comments are just to encourage you to reflect on what might be some ableist assumptions around people talking to you. To reiterate, I do agree that he should have done an equitable amount of labor and he did not.
These insights and taking stock are so valuable. When I tell my daughter the leading cause of death of pregnant women is murder… it says a lot more than my mother could have ever told me. My mother never told me anything.
Thank you so much for this article. It is very validating. And sad but realistic.
I love this article and also the rope picture chosen for it is super funny to me 😂
Love the picture chosen as well!
Sadly, I think what Zawn writes is true. I wish I had realized this much earlier than my late 40s.
This is eye-opening and terrifying. The stat about postpartum women being more likely to die by murder than pregnancy complications is... Wow.
Something I have been wondering, and Zawn I am curious if you have any thoughts on this: With the incoming administration and how hostile they are hostile to no-fault divorce, should women kind of...hurry up and start divorce processes if they are in abusive or bad marriages? Get preemptively divorced even if they don't have all their ducks in a row yet? I know you can't give legal advice, but am just wondering what your sense of the urgency of the situation is. Thanks 🙏
Not legal advice, not a lawyer but my sense would be to assume that divorce rights will only become worse over time and also to make sure to have a really good plan informed by a really good lawyer before making an abusive man aware of the impending divorce because he is more likely to become violent as soon as he is aware his wife is trying to leave him.
Thanks for making it easy for me to talk to my daughter about staying away from romanticized marriages. So needed, and honestly wish someone had sat me down to tell me all the stats 20 years ago
If you look at the historical data, rates of men's violence remain remarkably consistent.
Men are the most dangerous to women and these men fall out of the very wombs they abuse, rape, coercive control and murder; power over. The humanity in the male sex will always be seen by women because we do and have the propensity to create their life. By biology we create and carry their life HENCE the threat & terror even by, ‘single’ women. That, ‘threat’ is ALWAYS present. There isn’t, the other way around, OR we are equal. NOPE.
We humanize all human beings while the male sex dehumanizes, exploits and objectifies AND until we get to the meat and the bones of that the cycle will always continue.
The FULL truth will always be obscured because all women’s oppressors drop from their wombs.
Don’t hate the messenger. Hate that, that’s the message to begin with.
How do we raise our boys? What can we do?
To be quite honest, I don’t have all the answers. However, I have been ruminating on these questions since I saw them. What I do know is this: I don’t refer to men or boys as “ours” — not in a collective, possessive sense, as if I’m responsible for them or claim ownership. I’ve never subscribed to that idea. Frankly, I want no part in it. Rarely do I see men taking ownership or accountability for women collectively, and as women — particularly in this society — we are often left to navigate things alone. Even as I type this, I know many will not understand or accept what I’m saying.
Still, I feel compelled to speak. I have the time now, and more importantly, I have something to say.
I have a stepson. He’s 31 years old — closer to me in age than far apart. I’ve watched him grow from a little boy into a man. I’ve witnessed his mother raise him and his younger brother practically on her own, moving from one marriage to the next, perhaps searching for love or a sense of security. It’s no secret that our culture conditions girls to seek love in others before learning to find it within themselves. Many of us only return to self after enduring cycles of loss and disappointment. Perhaps that’s why so many women find solace in pages like this one.
Despite being raised by a woman who provided and protected, my stepson still grew up disrespecting women. His language was riddled with derogatory terms like “bitches.” He expressed beliefs that women only wanted men for their money — that women didn’t want to work for anything — which we both know couldn’t be further from the truth. I had to remove myself from those conversations and let my husband know: this is not acceptable. While efforts were made to correct his thinking, he often reverted to that same toxic language — excusing it as “slang” or just how he talks. He viewed his mother as an exception, not realizing that to another man, she would be just another “bitch” in his vocabulary.
At the root of this, I believe, is a deep cultural sickness.
Boys grow up revering other men. Culture — particularly one that glorifies misogyny, violence, and the mass consumption of pornography — shapes their worldview. This isn’t just about individual choices; we are witnessing a crisis. Women and girls bear the brunt of it. Few people acknowledge this, and even fewer seem to care. Misogyny is not the exception — it is the rule. Male supremacy is the dominant ideology, and women are often punished for not submitting to it. The moment you resist, the pushback is relentless. I consider it a miracle I survive each day — even though, truthfully, I don’t go unscathed.
What’s more painful is that some of the damage is perpetuated by women themselves.
His mother, like many women, doesn’t see other women as sisters or allies. She sees them as rivals — especially when it comes to the very sons some other woman helped indirectly raise. This isn’t an attempt to mother-blame — I say “indirectly” because so much of what shapes a boy is beyond any one woman’s control. But when a woman hasn’t tapped into certain levels of conscious and critical thought, she often passes down internalized misogyny — knowingly or unknowingly. She may teach her daughters to compete with other women and raise sons who believe that woman-hate is normal. In a world already hostile to women, this internalized self-hate gives boys all the ammunition they need to double down on toxic behavior — and feel justified while doing it.
If we’re serious about change, we have to name this. We have to see how deeply global sexism is embedded — in our homes, in our relationships, in our language, in our silence. And above all, we have to unlearn what we’ve been taught — and do better.
I read Zawn's page because she has hope. I even think me commenting means I still have some too, but barely :)