Reply to How do you handle witnessing a man be “mildly sexist” to his wife?

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[quote=Anonymous]You’re with a hetero couple and the man makes a comment or acts out in a seemingly minor way. Examples:

• he “bought his wife” a new washer and dryer recently
• he doesn’t like his wife’s book collection and is working to find a place to hide the books so they won’t be so unsightly
• his wife has expressed concern that one of them needs to drive home and he is still drinking even though she already is too intoxicated to drive and he promised to be the DD. He dismisses her concerns. (This is in reality probably not an actual safety issue but more about him ignoring her feelings)

Witnessed all three of these recently and am never sure what’s the most [b]effective[/b] way to be of assistance to the woman in question, especially since she is invariably a cool girl who does NOT want to be seen as some kind of stick-in-the-mud feminist.

So far I:

• don’t laugh. These comments are always framed as “jokes” and as I am usually the most “outsider” person there and female, I feel like a laugh from me is extra valuable. Especially since I laugh at literally everything.
• usually give a very neutral, bored, or even mildly disgusted expression

in the last case I did discreetly offer the wife a ride home because I wasn’t sure how concerned she was. But I mostly did it to validate her feelings. I always try to validate the woman if she even pushes back at all even slightly.

However if the wife is playing along and trying to be cool I don’t usually interject because in my experience women hate that. Having been there myself in the past I get it. As Bancroft says, she’s already used to other people making decisions for her and treating her like she’s stupid. So I don’t want to do that.

What do you do?[/quote]

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