I just had my core session with my PT and somewhere mid 1200 sit ups (OW FFS) I remembered a scene from a book I once read. Thriller. Woman has won lottery, male ?journo? goes to her isolated house to interview? her, something like that. /1

She has an amazingly flat stomach because she does 1000 sit ups a day. 30s. Possibly has a shotgun (this is deepest Florida).

Once the man is established as not a threat, she asks him to hold her ankles while she does her sit ups.

Can you guess if a cis man wrote this.

So obviously, a) "Please hold my legs down while you crouch two feet from my crotch, complete stranger miles from help" is in fact not a thing that women tend to say except in some fairly specific and well defined situations.

But b)...

If you do 1000 sit ups a day, you don't bloody *need* anyone holding your ankles. That would be the *point*. I do core once a week and I can knock out 1200 without my PT unsocially distancing himself around my feet.

I must have read this book over a decade ago, and the absolute wrongness of this scene is still with me. And this, folks, is why you can't just 'imaginatively put yourself in your characters' heads' when you lack their experience and assume you'll get it right.

This thread brought to you by needing to think about *something* around the 800 mark. But also by the fact that other people's experiences is often an unknown unknown, and the more we strive to be actively conscious of that, the better writers (and people) we'll be.