When Humor About Our Bodies Is Read as Misogyny

Ever heard of labial fusion? I hadn’t either, until a few weeks ago, when an OBGYN’s Instagram reel made its way into my feed and explained that women’s labia can sometimes fuse during low-estrogen phases of life. In other words, something that can happen during menopause.

My reaction was immediate. Another thing. Another bodily detail I’d somehow managed to reach adulthood without being told, stacked on top of everything else that shifts, changes, and surprises us over time.

So, I made the wrong move.

I responded with humor in a space that was asking for emotional alignment instead. I thought the joke would read as a joke: a comment about our bodies, yes, but more pointedly a cynical stab at the society that insists women have “expiration dates.” That omnipresent shadow of patriarchy that tells us we have a short window to be desirable, relevant, valued. We fight the assignment we never asked for, and then our bodies go ahead and change anyway, on their own timelines, with their own rules.

Shock turned into irony. Irony turned into a joke, mostly to diffuse my own discomfort. At first, it felt like other women got it.

And then, at some point, my comment stopped being about society and became a stand-in for patriarchy, predation, and beliefs I don’t hold. I was told to shut up. To go to hell. I’ll admit I was stumped by how quickly intent was replaced by accusation.

Worse, when I responded, I did it with more emotion than I’d have preferred. My tone was dismissive. That part is mine to own.

Which is why this feels like the right moment to take a step back. To trust that we’re capable of sitting with discomfort and complexity without trying to negate one another. To respond with thoughtfulness rather than reflexive fire.

The Medical Reality

It’s worth pausing on the actual medical reality for a moment.

No, not every menopausal woman will experience labial fusion. But menopause itself is real. Estrogen levels do decline over time. Perimenopause and menopause bring physiological and emotional changes for many women. None of this is radical or controversial. It’s biology.

Which exposes something more insidious: an unspoken expectation that humor is no longer an acceptable way to cope with these realities.

The forbidden truth is simple. Bodies change. Not as decay or disappearance, but simply as change.

Acknowledging that change is not the same as assigning value.

And yet, increasingly, even naming biological reality without gravity or solemnity is read as betrayal. As if speaking about women’s bodies with anything other than alarm or reverence somehow undermines their worth.

Women are allowed to speak imperfectly about their own bodies. Humor is not violence. Biology is not betrayal. And being misread is not the same as being wrong.

Humor as Refusal, Not Cruelty

This matters because humor is often misunderstood as cruelty when it’s actually refusal.

For me, humor is a form of resistance. A pressure valve. A way of staying human in a body that is constantly sexualized, medicalized, monitored, and judged. It’s not dismissal. It’s relief.

I’m not laughing at women. I’m laughing alongside those who are tired of being managed by shame, fear, and perpetual alarm. Humor, in this context, isn’t an attack. It’s a way of saying: I see this, I feel it, and I’m still here.

Generational Tension

I can empathize with the fears younger women carry. I also want to name the exhaustion many older women live with. I remember a time when my own fear showed up as outrage, before I learned how to sit with time rather than fight it.

What this moment clarified for me is how naturally generational gaps create tension. Younger women are vulnerable in ways that are urgent and raw. Those of us closer to menopause carry a different kind of vulnerability, shaped by change, uncertainty, and neglect. The medical system does little to bridge that gap. Perimenopause exists in a kind of hormonal limbo, where concerns are often dismissed, minimized, or poorly addressed. Cynical humor becomes, for many of us, one of the few tools left to cope.

Social media flattens nuance. A joke becomes a position. A position becomes a moral threat. In that collapse, discomfort is quickly converted into accusation, and emotional alignment becomes an unspoken demand.

Being triggered is human. Projecting intent is understandable. But demanding that strangers preemptively carry your emotional history is unsustainable. Weaponizing words like misogyny against women speaking imperfectly only narrows the space further.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the structural misalignment underneath it all. Younger women are warned they’ll expire too soon. Older women are quietly asked to retreat, to reappear only as gentle, wise figures who no longer take up space. And those of us in between are left without a clear script.

I’m sitting squarely in the middle. Being a Millennial right now means still having eggs, but no longer having perky, plump skin. Not young enough to be protected, not old enough to be granted basic respect. What feels most fraught is the simple act of speaking about what’s happening without being dismissed, dramatized, or corrected out of my own experience.

If we reach for humor, we’re told the issue is too serious. When we speak plainly, we’re told we’re overreacting. We’re expected to suffer silently, while also carrying the full weight of seriousness without relief.

The information we now have access to is increasingly exposing how uneven medical care really is. If even a fraction of what women routinely experience were happening to men, the response would be swift, well-funded, and urgent.

Instead, many of us are met with shrugs. That’s just what happens to women. We’re dismissed by medical professionals, told to endure quietly, to accept discomfort as normal, inevitable, unremarkable.

I won’t flatten myself to make this easier to digest. My body, my mind, my experience are full of texture right now. Humor is part of how I stay in it, not how I escape it.

Choosing Lightness Without Erasure

I considered deleting the comment. But self-erasure has never aligned with what I stand for. Disappearing quietly, or speaking only in tones deemed acceptable by people who haven’t yet had to inhabit this stage of life, doesn’t feel like honesty. It feels like compliance.

So I’m choosing lightness without erasure.

I’m not retreating. I’m not apologizing for existing in a changing body. And I’m not asking permission to joke, to cope, or to speak.

I’m not claiming this as truth for everyone. I’m sharing it because this feels like the kind of discomfort that belongs here. If you’ve been holding something adjacent to this, you’re welcome to bring it into the room.