There's almost nothing worse than your partner being rude and controlling in front of other people. Unfortunately, many women experience this. Research shows that 95% of men who use physical violence against their partners also use coercion and control to harm them emotionally.
When this guy took his girlfriend to a business dinner, she struck up a conversation with his associate. The boyfriend immediately showed his controlling tendencies by basically telling her to shut up – a gesture that his business associate didn't appreciate. In the end, his rude behavior cost him more than just a business deal.
A business deal gone wrong opened a woman's eyes to her boyfriend's misogynistic behavior
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After she dared to talk to his business associate during a meeting, he blamed her for costing him the deal
Image credits: guyswhoshoot / Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Marzipan-Fabulous
"Derek was rude and HE caused the deal to go wrong," the commenters reacted
Misogyny and mistreatment are, in large part, caused by upbringing
Image credits: Yunus Tuğ / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
This guy probably thought that his girlfriend's role during business dinners was to shut up and look pretty. Yet, long gone are the days when it was normalized to treat women just as eye candy and trophy wives who have nothing important to say.
Nevertheless, even in the year of our Lord 2026, a lot of women face misogyny almost every single day. According to a 2025 YouGov poll, 41% of British women say they have personally suffered from misogyny.
Sometimes, we're so conditioned to the social constructs we were raised with that we don't even notice our own biases. That's what a shocking global study by the UN in 2020 showed. They found that a whopping 90% of both men and women hold some kind of bias against women. Without even realizing it, most of us may be more sexist in subtle ways without even knowing it.
Misogyny also seeps into romantic relationships. When one partner doesn't treat another as their equal, mistreatment or even violence is bound to happen. Research shows that we bring a lot of values related to relationships from childhood. For example, the likelihood of a person being violent in an intimate relationship is heavily influenced by what their family situation was like during critical childhood development years.
In fact, studies show that those who were exposed to intimate partner violence as children are twice as likely to perpetrate it in adulthood. That's especially true with emotional violence, as there's a bigger chance that an adult will mistreat their partner if they witnessed any kind of intimate partner violence at home.
An alarming share of young men have misogynistic beliefs
There are some worrying trends in the new generation regarding gender roles. While many of us may think that older people hold traditional and outdated opinions, quite the contrary seems to be true.
According to a March 2026 study by Ipsos and King's College London, Gen Z men are twice as likely as boomers to believe that a wife should obey her husband. 31% of men from 29 different countries agree that "a woman should always obey her husband," while 29% of millennial men, 21% of Gen X men, and only 13% of boomer men think the same.
What's even more alarming is that young boys don't seem to take violence against women seriously. A recent survey of Australian teens found that 40% of boys aged 13 to 17 believe that women lie about domestic and intimate partner violence.
Experts note that these restrictive, old-fashioned views on gender roles, masculinity, and femininity hurt both genders. According to the chair of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, it's troubling to see such opinions in 2026.
"Not only are many gen Z men putting limiting expectations on women, they are also trapping themselves within restrictive gender norms," she told The Guardian. "We must continue to do more to dispel the idea of a zero-sum game in which women are the only beneficiaries of a gender-equal world."
The next day, the woman confronted her boyfriend
Image credits: Wavebreakmedia / Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: guyswhoshoot / Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Marzipan-Fabulous
Commenters cheered for the woman for standing up to her misogynist boyfriend
