In what way has sexism manifested in your female-male friendships?
April 18, 2026
In what way has sexism manifested in your female-male friendships?
30 comments
Sometimes I’ll say a fact and then they’ll continue to speculate on it until confirming with a different (male) source. Drives me up the wall
They treat me like I’m made of glass when we play fight
Emotional, non-reciprocal labour.
I had a friend who I played D&D with. A new woman joined our group. Despite having a fiancé, he decided to hit on her and called me ugly (well, “not as cute as her” technically) behind my back in his courting attempt.
Apparently, I unwittingly foiled his plans by mentioning my then upcoming marriage and then said to him, in front of everyone, “oh yeah, aren’t you getting married around the same time?” That caused the new woman to confront him later and it spiraled into him getting ejected from our friend group.
Reflexive disagreement. I say something or make a suggestion and they just automatically disagree in a way they don’t with men.
they often don’t acknowledge sexism that’s not an obvious “i hate you because you’re a woman” even exists when i experience it. “it’s not because you’re a woman, it’s just because _____”. they want to look out for their fellow man in that situation or worry that they do those things and don’t even realize it. or they’re just oblivious, but it’s equally bad.
I am frequently talked over or ignored when in group settings (one-on-one it doesn’t happen).
Because I play games, a lot of my friends are male, and so I get to hear the nastiest sexist shit said by *their* friends (not my friends, to be clear).
I also get treated as though I don’t know what I am talking about even in topics directly related to my job that I have been at for years, they always have to validate it against someone else or looking it up.
Even my friends who are generally feminist as hell will let slip some weird sexist stuff about female characters in media, and depending on the friend they either go “oh crap, that is weird, my bad” or will fight about it when called out.
I have dropped friends for things like talking to each other about what they think my naked body looks like (one of the friends was uncomfortable about it so told me) and then continuing to do so after I asked them not to do that.
I have had friends dismiss my reactions to being assaulted as genuinely pulling the “well what were you wearing?” (obviously dropped them, too)
I have had friends ignore my boundaries because “it sounded like you didn’t mean it”
People assuming we are a couple out and about, because that seems more plausibile to them than an opposite gender friendship.
Men don’t want to be my friend. I can establish long term, fulfilling friendships with women but men always expect it to be something more within a year. I find I’ve only been able be friends with men who have girlfriends (one exception) or gays
Waitstaff assumes we are a couple when we go out
dude the amount of times my opinion got ignored until a guy repeated it is wild
either they casually make sexual jokes at anything i say. they don’t believe anything i say and will need to “fact check”, they also use me for emotional labor. i don’t mind if they want to vent but some of them will literally just trauma dump on me
ok but why are girls called dramatic and guys just passionate lol
I had a formal male friend that always thought I was a potential romantic partner just because I was single, despite making it clear I wasn’t interested on 3 different occasions. The other women in our group were never harassed like this because of course, they had boyfriends. He respected the boyfriends too much to make a move on their girlfriends, but didn’t give me that same respect.
Getting treated like a free therapist, with the assumption that because I’m a woman, I’m available 24/7 to sit and listen while they vent all their feelings at me. And of course to provide endless validation.
Sooner or later, even if I have given no indication of romantic interest, they will eventually try to get with me.
I am only friends with my friend’s boyfriends, or not even really friends. Just friendly. Same goes for my fiancé’s friends. I don’t have male friends and don’t want them because it’s been proven time, after time they don’t actually want to be friends
i noticed the safety difference when going out, where I’m the one thinking about routes, time, and getting home, while male friends don’t really have to carry that mental layer
That despite what was said in the past, there’s still a chance that if they decided they could have me.
When I was younger, it meant that I was constantly getting talked over in my male-majority friend group, like so much so that I could literally be in the middle of telling a story and one of them would just start a new, unrelated story and everyone would turn and listen to him. My emotions were also rarely taken seriously.
As an adult woman in a (different) mostly male friend group, I feel like the guys actually listen to me and sometimes give more weight to my advice than each other’s. It helps that I’m more confident and don’t let myself be talked over, but I’ve also see them grow a lot and several have directly attributed it to me calling them on their shit. Taking me seriously isn’t sexist (obviously), but I think the dynamics of patriarchal society—and their desire to move away from it—do play a part in them being more conscious of how they treat me.
Quite badly. They won’t accept my opinion, try to make me their girlfriend/therapist or some other stupid stuff.
Honestly, I have cut off most of them and now only left with 2 male friends now (cutting them off too soon). Finally I would be left with female friends and that would be much better. I already feel the difference.
You ladies should try it too (from what I read in this thread)
My friend group is pretty split evenly between men and women and I’ve noticed a tendency to offload mental labour on the women. Like say we wanna go on a trip, it often ends up with the women doing all the organizing. Or if we need a group present for a birthday or wedding or whatever it’ll be the women who take care of it.
All of these are so true and such a bummer. Makes me even more wary about dating men. I like em but they make it so difficult with all this lack of empathy and endless doubt..
honestly the shift that happens when a guy friend realizes you won’t date him is wild. like suddenly all that “genuine friendship” evaporates and you find out the whole thing was conditional.
Thankfully it doesn’t happen as much anymore, but I remember in the 2010’s I had male friends who would say “No I’m not a feminist, I’m an equalist” and like… I got into so many fucking fights amount the semantics of “feminist” vs “equalist”
This was also pre MeToo, but thankfully nowadays all my guy friends know the difference and either have changed for the better or has left my friendship sphere
intense infantilization, either that they just assume i’m really dumb or they treat me like a genuine child because of my height. i had this one male friend call me “defenseless” all the time even though i am pretty scrappy and genuinely can put up a fight.
[removed]
Their opinions are always more “logical” than mine no matter what.
They think because they came to a conclusion in a way that makes sense to them, it’s logical. They don’t understand that they have a personal perception based on their emotional reactions to their life experience. Them getting angry and making reactive decisions isn’t irrational. They’re just having the logical response by being logically angry. Any logically sound person would logically agree.
It’s exhausting.
Especially when what they really mean is that they don’t show the “weak” emotions because they don’t cry.
Automatically being the therapist mommy friend, but when I needed a shoulder to cry on for once it was crickets…
He does not think non-attractive women are real. Like… they just aren’t women to him. Beauty and woman are synonymous. I remember we looked at these weight loss before and afters and he just said “She’s pretty but I don’t think I could date someone knowing they used to look like that.” I feel like so many men think of “ugly” (natural) women as level with deformed humans or something, like they feel justified in obvious dehumanization of them. We were fifteen at the time, and he’s matured a lot since then, but I still think about it cuz there’s fully grown men who haven’t changed at all..
30 comments
Sometimes I’ll say a fact and then they’ll continue to speculate on it until confirming with a different (male) source. Drives me up the wall
They treat me like I’m made of glass when we play fight
Emotional, non-reciprocal labour.
I had a friend who I played D&D with. A new woman joined our group. Despite having a fiancé, he decided to hit on her and called me ugly (well, “not as cute as her” technically) behind my back in his courting attempt.
Apparently, I unwittingly foiled his plans by mentioning my then upcoming marriage and then said to him, in front of everyone, “oh yeah, aren’t you getting married around the same time?” That caused the new woman to confront him later and it spiraled into him getting ejected from our friend group.
Reflexive disagreement. I say something or make a suggestion and they just automatically disagree in a way they don’t with men.
they often don’t acknowledge sexism that’s not an obvious “i hate you because you’re a woman” even exists when i experience it. “it’s not because you’re a woman, it’s just because _____”. they want to look out for their fellow man in that situation or worry that they do those things and don’t even realize it. or they’re just oblivious, but it’s equally bad.
I am frequently talked over or ignored when in group settings (one-on-one it doesn’t happen).
Because I play games, a lot of my friends are male, and so I get to hear the nastiest sexist shit said by *their* friends (not my friends, to be clear).
I also get treated as though I don’t know what I am talking about even in topics directly related to my job that I have been at for years, they always have to validate it against someone else or looking it up.
Even my friends who are generally feminist as hell will let slip some weird sexist stuff about female characters in media, and depending on the friend they either go “oh crap, that is weird, my bad” or will fight about it when called out.
I have dropped friends for things like talking to each other about what they think my naked body looks like (one of the friends was uncomfortable about it so told me) and then continuing to do so after I asked them not to do that.
I have had friends dismiss my reactions to being assaulted as genuinely pulling the “well what were you wearing?” (obviously dropped them, too)
I have had friends ignore my boundaries because “it sounded like you didn’t mean it”
People assuming we are a couple out and about, because that seems more plausibile to them than an opposite gender friendship.
Men don’t want to be my friend. I can establish long term, fulfilling friendships with women but men always expect it to be something more within a year. I find I’ve only been able be friends with men who have girlfriends (one exception) or gays
Waitstaff assumes we are a couple when we go out
dude the amount of times my opinion got ignored until a guy repeated it is wild
either they casually make sexual jokes at anything i say. they don’t believe anything i say and will need to “fact check”, they also use me for emotional labor. i don’t mind if they want to vent but some of them will literally just trauma dump on me
ok but why are girls called dramatic and guys just passionate lol
I had a formal male friend that always thought I was a potential romantic partner just because I was single, despite making it clear I wasn’t interested on 3 different occasions. The other women in our group were never harassed like this because of course, they had boyfriends. He respected the boyfriends too much to make a move on their girlfriends, but didn’t give me that same respect.
Getting treated like a free therapist, with the assumption that because I’m a woman, I’m available 24/7 to sit and listen while they vent all their feelings at me. And of course to provide endless validation.
Sooner or later, even if I have given no indication of romantic interest, they will eventually try to get with me.
I am only friends with my friend’s boyfriends, or not even really friends. Just friendly. Same goes for my fiancé’s friends. I don’t have male friends and don’t want them because it’s been proven time, after time they don’t actually want to be friends
i noticed the safety difference when going out, where I’m the one thinking about routes, time, and getting home, while male friends don’t really have to carry that mental layer
That despite what was said in the past, there’s still a chance that if they decided they could have me.
When I was younger, it meant that I was constantly getting talked over in my male-majority friend group, like so much so that I could literally be in the middle of telling a story and one of them would just start a new, unrelated story and everyone would turn and listen to him. My emotions were also rarely taken seriously.
As an adult woman in a (different) mostly male friend group, I feel like the guys actually listen to me and sometimes give more weight to my advice than each other’s. It helps that I’m more confident and don’t let myself be talked over, but I’ve also see them grow a lot and several have directly attributed it to me calling them on their shit. Taking me seriously isn’t sexist (obviously), but I think the dynamics of patriarchal society—and their desire to move away from it—do play a part in them being more conscious of how they treat me.
Quite badly. They won’t accept my opinion, try to make me their girlfriend/therapist or some other stupid stuff.
Honestly, I have cut off most of them and now only left with 2 male friends now (cutting them off too soon). Finally I would be left with female friends and that would be much better. I already feel the difference.
You ladies should try it too (from what I read in this thread)
My friend group is pretty split evenly between men and women and I’ve noticed a tendency to offload mental labour on the women. Like say we wanna go on a trip, it often ends up with the women doing all the organizing. Or if we need a group present for a birthday or wedding or whatever it’ll be the women who take care of it.
All of these are so true and such a bummer. Makes me even more wary about dating men. I like em but they make it so difficult with all this lack of empathy and endless doubt..
honestly the shift that happens when a guy friend realizes you won’t date him is wild. like suddenly all that “genuine friendship” evaporates and you find out the whole thing was conditional.
Thankfully it doesn’t happen as much anymore, but I remember in the 2010’s I had male friends who would say “No I’m not a feminist, I’m an equalist” and like… I got into so many fucking fights amount the semantics of “feminist” vs “equalist”
This was also pre MeToo, but thankfully nowadays all my guy friends know the difference and either have changed for the better or has left my friendship sphere
intense infantilization, either that they just assume i’m really dumb or they treat me like a genuine child because of my height. i had this one male friend call me “defenseless” all the time even though i am pretty scrappy and genuinely can put up a fight.
[removed]
Their opinions are always more “logical” than mine no matter what.
They think because they came to a conclusion in a way that makes sense to them, it’s logical. They don’t understand that they have a personal perception based on their emotional reactions to their life experience. Them getting angry and making reactive decisions isn’t irrational. They’re just having the logical response by being logically angry. Any logically sound person would logically agree.
It’s exhausting.
Especially when what they really mean is that they don’t show the “weak” emotions because they don’t cry.
Automatically being the therapist mommy friend, but when I needed a shoulder to cry on for once it was crickets…
He does not think non-attractive women are real. Like… they just aren’t women to him. Beauty and woman are synonymous. I remember we looked at these weight loss before and afters and he just said “She’s pretty but I don’t think I could date someone knowing they used to look like that.” I feel like so many men think of “ugly” (natural) women as level with deformed humans or something, like they feel justified in obvious dehumanization of them. We were fifteen at the time, and he’s matured a lot since then, but I still think about it cuz there’s fully grown men who haven’t changed at all..