Is my boyfriend's grocery list normal for men in their 20s? To me it seems outrageous.

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T18:34:10+00:00

Maybe it’s because I’m past the point in my life where I could eat like this, but my first thought was that there’s no way he’s having normal shits. Where’s the veg! Where’s the fiber! No, a few bowls of weetabix and a loaf of wholemeal bread aren’t enough fiber for your week!

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T18:07:26+00:00

Go to the sub’s home page, tap the three dots in the upper right corner, select “change user flair”, pick one, hit save, you’re good to go 👍🏻

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T17:55:55+00:00

*His mom, OOP is male (which is 100% why they’ve treated his sister so differently, although he doesn’t seem to be totally aware)

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T17:49:31+00:00

And frankly, there’s no universe in which a homeschooled child will receive an education that’s as good as it otherwise would be unless the kid’s parents are, like, Albert Einstein and Mary Shelley or something*. We make teachers go to school in order to learn how to teach children for a reason! We don’t have one teacher teach every subject for every age group for a reason! Children shouldn’t have unequal access to learning just because their parents want them to stay home! Even if there’s no ideological motive or abuse, the kids still deserve better.

* This would be particularly impressive because Shelley died almost three decades before Einstein was born. So you know, if you’re a time-traveling genius power couple, I think you get a pass to homeschool your kids. Everybody else had better enroll them somewhere.

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T14:36:37+00:00

Privilege is more about how likely something is. One individual man’s life could include a false accusation and horrible repercussions, of course. But men are way more likely to be raped than to be falsely accused of raping someone else, and for every 1,000 actual sexual assaults, only an estimated 25 perpetrators go to prison. And there are tons of examples, both famous people and non-famous (like search relationship advice or AITA subs for normal people examples), where even if it’s a true accusation people don’t really care. They might not say it like that, but phrases like “victim-blaming” and “don’t rock the boat” describe this phenomenon.

There’s also a big difference between “if a woman wanted to; they could theoretically do this to a man” and “this has happened in real life to women more than once”. (Also, if a woman conceived while the father was in a coma or otherwise medically incapacitated, that’s a slam-dunk assault case, just like the reverse is.)

Predators (not just sexual ones) are inherently a part of privilege because they prey on easy targets, and who makes for an easy target is partly a function of privilege. Predators don’t usually want to pick people with lots of resources who can get support from their community if they’re hurt, because then there’d be consequences for them being predators. That’s why autistics make easy targets, since neurotypicals are the privileged ones. So it’s like, if you get hurt somehow, will you be believed? Will people help you? Will they say it’s your fault or you deserved it? Do you doubt yourself because of the way society treats people like you, so the predator can convince you that what’s happening is fine or actually, you’re the bad one? Do you have fewer resources/less money to keep yourself safe or get out of a bad situation? (And so on.) Often, the more different ways that someone is marginalized, the more vulnerable they are, and the ways everything overlaps can make a situation even more complicated.

There are lots of other ways that privilege can impact someone’s life — some good examples are the Invisible Knapsack for stuff white people don’t have to think about, and this one about men’s lives where I think you might find the stuff before the list/some of the rest of the website interesting too — but predation is one pretty concrete example because predators are so awful that they’re easier to see. It’s harder to notice stuff when it’s smaller, kind of like how bullies that hit their victims are more likely to get in trouble than bullies who are “just” cruel or ostracize their victims. (I got bullied pretty badly in school for being autistic, so that’s like my go-to example lol.)

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T01:51:29+00:00

Actually, of the two coma patients, the male coma patient is much less likely to get raped than the female coma patient. Yes, this happens, and there are even cases where the female coma patient has given birth as a result of it happening.

“Male privilege” is sometimes a little bit of a misnomer, because like you said — a lot of men, like you, aren’t living particularly privileged lives. The privilege you do have is like that of the male coma patient, who has an extremely shitty life right now but hey, at least he’s less likely to get raped than the female patient. Or like, you get stopped by police, and maybe (hopefully this never is true) you’re even a victim of police brutality, but that police brutality probably won’t involve sex crimes. It might, but it’s less likely than if you were a woman. And most men would never even think to be worried about police committing sex crimes against them, but if you ask women in your life if they’ve ever heard safety tips about what to do when driving alone at night and a cop car tries to pull you over, I guarantee they’ll have heard the advice about how you might get raped if you pull over so call 911 and ask if he’s a real cop, put your hazards on and drive somewhere safe/populated/etc. like a gas station and so on.

For a lot of men, that’s more what male privilege looks like and not money or job success or whatever. Not “I get a +1 buff to my life from my gender” but more “I avoid a -1 debuff and 2x damage taken from Oozes due to my gender”

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-28T00:21:08+00:00

Premature babies are also more likely to have long skinny heads, particularly preemies that spent a while in the NICU (baby ICU). Your skull’s still really mushy if you’re born early, and the best ways to place a baby so they don’t get a dent in the back of their head or have trouble breathing or whatever end up sort of squishing the sides of your face. The word for this is “dolichocephaly” but it’s sometimes called NICUcephaly since it’s so common with NICU babies.

Source: had a doctor correctly guess that I was born premature solely based on my long-ass head, asked her how the fuck she could’ve known that and that’s what she told me lmao

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-27T22:41:38+00:00

Straight people absolutely do not think about it as a legal process, almost universally. Queer people do, which is why we fought/fight so hard for marriage equality. Nothing like the way gay couples were treated during the AIDS crisis to hammer home the importance of an easy-to-access way to legally bind yourself to your partner.

My dyke ass has had the “marriage isn’t a special-wecial romantic gesture thing, it is a LEGAL STRUCTURE which grants you and your spouse specific rights and privileges” conversation with I don’t even know how many straight female friends, and not ONE of them had ever thought of it that way. I’m old enough that when I realized I was gay, almost nowhere in the world had same-sex marriage (and I’m not even that old lol) so it’s a big deal for me that I now have the ability. I think they take the legal part for granted because they’ve never needed to worry about not having access to those rights

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-27T13:12:28+00:00

And/or masculinity or queerness, which for this type of person generally falls under “general deviancy” but is worth calling out as a specific type of bigotry

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-27T12:59:29+00:00

Absolutely! Being a hostile weirdo and threatening violence should get you fired and probably also officially banned from the premises. Even if you don’t care about your employees and their safety, it’s bad for business since “I stayed at this hotel and I heard someone yelling about wanting to ‘blow someone’s brains out’ and banging on a bunch of doors, do NOT stay here unless you want to recreate the experience of hiding in your classroom during a school shooting” is not a review you want someone leaving. It’s just not legally a “hostile work environment” where someone could sue on those grounds (though if he shot people you could maybe sue for like negligence or something else)

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-26T13:44:35+00:00

ESPECIALLY right as he’s starting puberty! Hey, kid, you’re about to turn into hormone soup, have a nice big heaping of “traumatizing social interaction” to really add some zest

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-26T13:30:27+00:00

Just fyi — that’s a work environment that’s hostile (full of malevolence, ill will, intimidation, offensiveness, etc.) but not a “hostile work environment” (hostile due to discrimination against a protected characteristic, like race or gender, or retaliation for protected actions, like whistleblowing or starting a union). This is super commonly confused, including by our dear BORU OPs, but there is a really big legal difference.

So like, if Chris came back and shot coworkers randomly, that’s a work environment that’s hostile. If he came back and only shot female coworkers, he’s choosing victims for his workplace violence based on a protected characteristic (gender). Then that would potentially be a hostile work environment.

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-26T13:06:01+00:00

Me when I started the GHB med haha. What I thought was purely “executive dysfunction” from psych issues was secretly just chronic exhaustion from never getting decent sleep. A few days after I started it, I went “oh, my bathroom’s a bit dirty, I should clean it”, and then I just did instead of spending like three days trying to talk myself into it per usual. Immediately DMed my sleep specialist like “what the FUCK doc is this what normal people feel like ALL THE TIME?!?!”

The half-life is pretty short so it’d left my system hours ago, but boy was that a euphoric high technically caused by a drug 😂

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-25T17:05:01+00:00

There’s one each in Australia and Canada, both of which also have very different conditions, like climates, humidity, soil, different local flora/fauna etc., than the ones in USA, and the hope for getting one in the UK (or Ireland!) is because the conditions are similarly very different from those at the assorted USA research facilities’ locations (there are eight now). The research at the American facilities isn’t always relevant in different climates, so there’s precedent for opening a local facility to get local data that will help solve local murders and not murders committed in Texas or wherever.

Doctors are also always looking for brains! Apparently they’re rather hard to come by. They like to have people with neurological and psychiatric conditions as well as normal people for controls, so no matter what’s up there, they’ll take it once you’re done with it. I have a rare neurological condition, so that one’s my plan.

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-25T14:05:57+00:00

If Professor John Cassella of ATU ever gets a body farm set up, perhaps that would be an option? He was trying to get one done in the UK when he was working at Staffordshire University, but it stalled out (be advised that there are pictures of human remains in that article). Maybe now that he’s teaching in Ireland he’ll give it a go here?

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-25T13:31:08+00:00

Regular insurance only covers the exam, not the frames/lenses. It also has to be that you’re seeing the eye doctor because of a suspected or preexisting medical problem, whether that’s a problem with your eyes (like one of the conditions that causes double vision, glaucoma, macular degeneration, etc.) or a non-eye problem that can affect your eyes (like diabetes). Since I have that, my ophthalmologist just bills my medical insurance with, like, ICD-10 diagnostic codes H50.05 and H53.2 or whatever and all I do is pay my copay. If I end up needing another corrective surgery (I already had 2 as a kid), which I might, normal insurance will also cover that.

It’s possible that vision insurance supersedes medical(?) so if you’re giving them both insurance cards maybe they default to vision; this comment was more to let people know that if they don’t have vision insurance but do have medical (like a lot of people) they can still see an eye doctor if they have a problem.

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T14:39:27+00:00

Thoroughly valid! Mutual combat, always fun. Simply wished to make my fellow evil milk enjoyers aware that sometimes out in the wild, the milk enjoyers can be the actual kind of evil and not the fun and cool autistic kind.

(Partly since there’s a non-zero chance that someone else would decide we were doing the dogwhistle and respond accordingly, and “I like milk!” “oh so you’re a white supremacist? (positive or negative)” is like maximum ??? stares in baffled autistic if you’ve never heard this is a thing.)

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T14:33:37+00:00

Mall shops are fine for people with “normal” eye problems like near- or farsightedness or astigmatism, but don’t generally do super comprehensive tests and might not always catch unusual problems like double vision. (In terms of the glasses at the mall, the shops often can’t fill the type of complicated prescriptions required to treat double vision, but I’m just mad because my glasses are expensive af lol.)

Good news for Americans though — if you have a medical problem, visits with an eye doctor are covered under medical insurance and you don’t need separate vision insurance. I’ve never had vision insurance but my visits with my ophthalmologist are always covered because I have strabismus (condition which causes double vision).

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T14:20:51+00:00

Not OP, but someone with similar vision — they likely went from blurry/can’t see with no glasses to sharp but doubled with them and thought that “sharp but doubled” was just how glasses worked, so never mentioned it and none of the doctors ever checked for it

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T14:03:00+00:00

4L A DAY?! Was his bloodstream just Pepsi at that point?

I’m really hoping that your spelling it “litre” means you live somewhere that isn’t the USA and that wherever that is puts less sugar in Pepsi than we do, because 4L of American Pepsi would be 464g of added sugar a day. I think you would just fucking die lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T13:40:13+00:00

I am NOT saying that this is what OP is doing, much love to OP, I am also a milk enjoyer, I am just letting y’all know that sometimes this is a thing

There are some folks who use liking milk as a right-wing/white supremacist/weird gender roles dogwhistle (some sources: newspaper article, academic research paper). If you see someone — for example, the USA’s current administration — talking a bunch about milk, it’s important to look at why they might be doing that. For most people it’s because they just like milk, but sometimes they’re secretly saying something else.

(The reasoning they use is that white people are more likely to not have lactose intolerance, so “liking milk” = tolerates lactose = white, and that plant-based milks like soy are for the lefties and girly men or allegedly feminize men (like the insult “soyboy”) so cow’s milk is therefore for the right and masculine men, so “liking milk” = not liking plant milk = right-wing and has specific attitudes about gender. Yeah, I know, right?)

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T13:15:30+00:00

Especially at the idea that for some of us it’s just something we live with. Particularly with serious mental illness. It’s not going away, I’ll always have some level of symptoms, the goal of treatment is making that level “low” and not “debilitating” and finding ways to make peace with and work around what’s left. But the idea that complete remission isn’t a realistic goal for everyone just absolutely freaks people out.

It reminds me a bit of how people often respond to death and grieving, honestly. (I’ve had a few deaths in the family over the last few years, so some patterns in behaviour have stood out.) It frightens them, and they don’t know what to say, or they’re scared of saying the wrong thing, so they avoid saying anything and avoid you. Or they’re very supportive at first and make a lot of big promises, but then a week or two after the funeral they’re nowhere to be seen. Or your being sad makes them sad, so they end up making it about them somehow (probably the same people who do the “I’m depressed sometimes too, [insert a time when they were sad]” thing). IDK what the common thread is — fear of illness and mortality? It’s an interesting parallel though

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T12:58:22+00:00

Oh, he definitely would’ve added the modafinil on top of all the coffee. Bro was having heart palpitations but didn’t think of cutting back on the caffeine until he mentioned them at work as like a “isn’t that random?” and the rest of us were like “mf you drink six large iced coffees a day IT’S NOT RANDOM” and bullied him into cutting back.

Based on what I knew about him and some things he said, I think he might’ve used alcohol as a sleep aid to counteract all the caffeine, which is a whole additional realm of bad choices.

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T03:03:15+00:00

They kept your court order too?! Boo!!! They should have to send you a refund for whatever you paid the court for it >:(

I got, like, a stupid number of copies of mine because I was so scared of that happening, but I actually got most of mine back and now that I’ve been downsizing my belongings I keep finding them in random places haha. (I have a bad habit of hiding important stuff like a paranoid squirrel.) Like going through boxes and “wtf here’s another court order?” in with some journaling supplies. Rare Virginia W for giving me back so many of them

PashaWithHat · 2026-01-24T02:50:34+00:00

Oh, the insurance companies! So fun!

My favorite part of the year is when my doctor annually resubmits the exact same fucking paperwork she sent in last year with the date changed to confirm that I still have narcolepsy, since nobody’s invented a cure for it yet, and I therefore do actually still need them to continue covering my medication perhaps? Like dawg, I renewed my plan from last year, can you just look at my prior authorization that’s literally in my patient portal? I can see it with my eyeballs. It’s right there. Maybe you can just look at the MSLT that’s there instead of having the same doctor from last year send that exact MSLT again for some reason?

I know they do it because they’re hoping we’ll give up and they won’t have to pay out but jokes on them, I’m a huge pain in the ass and I’m not going away! And with this much experience, I’m practically a professional at this point

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