One of the big rules is you don't expose the unwilling public. Apologizing to the two women who were brushing the author's hair is a double-whammy: you're involving them in the sexualizing of this experience, and you're implicitly expecting them to be ok with it and forgive you.

If someone is going to demand you do this or they will end their friendship with you, you're "lowkey" better off losing that friend.

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buu700 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

To be fair, it's likely that the author's former friend would have a hard time disagreeing with this if presented in exactly the way that you have.

I suspect that what such a person finds offensive isn't OOP's behavior (i.e. receiving a hair treatment without incident), but rather the thought in and of itself. Since they know that they can't credibly assault a person's character purely on the basis of an involuntary or intrusive thought, they have to settle for calling out some behavior as a stand-in for the thought itself. In an alternate timeline where OOP had apologized (which would really just be extremely socially awkward, not harmful), I'd bet on the former friend making the exact opposite stink and chastising OOP for failing to keep it to herself.

Another layer that wouldn't be surprising in this instance would be subconscious homophobia. The friend thinks she's upset at OOP for "victimizing" two poor strangers without their knowledge, but in reality she's disturbed by the sudden realization that she herself may have been or may one day become the unknowing object of such thoughts. Since she can't say as much without implying that she's categorically uncomfortable being around queer women, she reached for any excuse to turn it around on OOP and make herself feel like the good guy.

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nuancebydefault 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My physio therapist is very nice and caring, genuinely interested in conversation and helping with my and other people's physical and sometimes even psychological problems. While she was moving my legs using her upper body, it felt quite intimate and I admired her for being so professional while doing her work physically and giving psychological support as a bonus. I'm sure she will notice at times that some people get intimate feelings but she seems to be okay with that, knowing she is helping patients while such things can happen as a side effect.

All to say that feelings are only natural and they can induce thoughts. Why apologize.

	▲	tonyarkles an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> moving my legs using her upper body, it felt quite intimate and I admired her for being so professional This highlights something that I've been chewing on a lot lately. I'm not sure what you specifically meant by the word "intimate" when you said that, but I do think it's really interesting to distinguish between "intimate" and "sexual", even though they often coincide. As an example, years ago I was staying with some out-of-town friends after a break-up and they wanted to introduce me to a couple of lovely single women they knew. I hadn't really been taking great care of myself in the fallout of the breakup, so I went and shaved and got cleaned up. While doing my hair, I realized that my eyebrows were pretty unruly and somewhat sheepishly asked my friend's wife if she'd be comfortable taking some tweezers to them and helping me get them cleaned up. It wasn't, even a little bit, a sexual moment but it ended up being incredibly and unexpectedly intimate. We were both pretty surprised by it and ended up getting closer (as friends) afterwards.