“I’m calling my mother.

We are going to sit down and figure out how to fix this absurd emotional breakdown you’re having—”

Emotional breakdown. Of course.

The oldest move in the book, the reflexive reframing of a woman’s clear-eyed, well-organized, professionally-executed decision as hysteria, as breakdown, as a temporary madness to be managed and corrected by the calm authority of men and their mothers.

A week earlier, it might even have worked on me, might have made me doubt myself, wonder if I was overreacting, apologize.