When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) announced she would be freezing her eggs and shared a video of herself injecting fertility medication, she clearly anticipated some less-than-ideal reactions.“Don’t be weird about this,” she told her followers on Instagram. “Even though I know all of you will be.”The Democrat said she decided to share her experience with the egg freezing process to offer women more information about reproductive health and normalize a conversation that can feel isolating and daunting.“As women, in general, we are not taught about our bodies, we are not prepared for our own lives, whether that is in puberty, whether that is in pregnancy, whether that is in perimenopause, menopause, whether that is in so many different aspects of our lives, whether that is if you have a condition like PCOS, whether you know you want to plan to have a family, whether you don’t plan to have children or biologically or what have you,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think we need to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.”The response from certain corners of the internet was swift, opinionated and, as Ocasio-Cortez predicted, very weird. And it was particularly weird from many men.Conservative commentator Matt Walsh criticized the lawmaker’s age and timeline, writing on X: “She’ll turn 37 in a couple months. If she got pregnant now, it would technically be a geriatric pregnancy. Instead she’s freezing her eggs. This desire to start having children late in life is completely baffling to me. I’ll have kids in their 20s by the time I turn 50. AOC apparently wants to have a toddler at that age. Totally backwards and ridiculous.”Others criticized her choice of the word “badass” to describe herself and other women who go through this daunting process while continuing to work and otherwise go about their lives. And still others took issue with her unmarried status. “Comments like [Walsh’s] stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of reproductive medicine and an outdated view of women’s lives,” Dr. Mickey Coffler, a reproductive endocrinologist with HRC Fertility, told HuffPost. “Freezing eggs in your mid-30s isn’t ‘backwards’ ― rather, it is a smart, forward-thinking act.”“Negative reactions towards egg freezing are often couched in bias,” echoed Dr. Iris Insogna of Columbia University Fertility Center. “Fertility preservation via egg freezing, particularly under the age of 40, offers a very real protection in terms of extending fertility and a very real path towards future parenthood.”Gender studies experts say the negative response is neither surprising nor random. It reflects something deeper about how women’s bodies ― and the decisions made about them ― are still treated as public property, subject to male approval.“Women’s reproduction has never belonged solely to women,” said Caroline Heldman, professor of political science and chair of gender, women and sexuality studies at Occidental College. “For recorded history it’s been claimed as a public matter, as a question of bloodline, national strength, racial future. This entitlement of men speaking about the reproductive choices of a prominent political woman isn’t a glitch but a genuinely held pronatalist worldview that reproduction is a public good, so strangers have standing to weigh in.”Jillana Enteen, professor of instruction in gender and sexuality studies at Northwestern University, also took note of many negative comments from men in particular.“As I see it, there are four categories of slander: That she’s too old to be a mother, that she seeks attention, that she’s violated some non-written rules about what is private and that she’s a figure deserving of ridicule, such as ‘freeze some bacon, too,’” she told HuffPost. “That this has caused such an uproar seems to be in part to criticize her as a politician and a left leaning one, but more so it appears to be some kind of opportunity for men to insult women’s choices, their motivations and their bodily autonomy.”This is hardly a new phenomenon, of course. “Gender theorists often argue that men feel entitled to weigh in on women’s bodies because they are unable to produce children,” Enteen said. “Their bodies are not equipped to carry or birth, or in fact nurse, babies.”Tom Williams via Getty ImagesRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opened up about her decision to freeze her eggs and offered a look into the reality of the process.Enteen argued that we live in a patriarchy in which men are institutionally positioned above women and assert control over language and law. “From the commencing documents of the U.S., women were seen as inferior to men,” Enteen said. “Women could not own land, have a say in government matters, etc. This foundational attitude of men’s superiority persists because of the residual effects of the past, as well as the increasingly conservative actions at present.”The pattern stretches back centuries. “Whether it’s Napoleon Bonaparte declaring women nothing more than machines for reproducing, or Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘On American Motherhood’ speech urging white women to bear more children, or Elon Musk declaring that women should have more children, or men weighing in on a stranger’s egg freezing ― they’re all reading from a script that tells men their job is to judge and validate women’s reproductive choices,” Heldman said. “The message to every woman watching is that a woman who doesn’t reproduce early and often will face social policing.”Kari J. Winter ― a professor of American studies at the University at Buffalo whose expertise includes gender, feminism, race and class ― said the response reveals how deeply patriarchal systems depend on reproductive choices.“Controlling women’s bodies and labor is foundational to patriarchal societies,” she said. “Patriarchies cannot function without women’s reproductive labor and care work. For this reason, the domination of women’s sexuality and reproductive choices is core tenet of patriarchal ideology. Women who refuse to subject their bodies and life choices to male domination are attacked with fanatical hatred by believers in patriarchy.”The hostility directed at Ocasio-Cortez goes beyond partisan politics, Winter added. It’s about the threat she poses to a particular worldview.“All systems of oppression are grounded in the belief that the elite have the right to exploit, enjoy and benefit from the bodies and labor of the people they oppress,” she explained. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the worst nightmare of misogynists because she rejects their domination.”Winter sees the congresswoman as someone with the power to envision and actualize a world in which all people are created equal and in possession of the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “People whose dreams of fortune and power derive from the exploitation of women are beside themselves with rage when women assert the right to self-determination,” Winter said.“It appears to be some kind of opportunity for men to insult women’s choices, their motivations and their bodily autonomy.- Jillana Enteen, professor of instruction in gender and sexuality studies at Northwestern UniversityEnteen pointed to a particularly revealing aspect of many responses ― the extension of anti-abortion logic to egg freezing itself amid rising attacks on women’s rights. “As state and federal legislation increasingly aim at controlling women’s right to choose, available choices such as egg-freezing appear to be implicitly connected,” she said. “These derogatory comments presume that men have a say about women’s eggs, which are not yet fetuses so show no signs of life, and potential life is the fundamental anti-abortion argument. By extending anti-abortion rationale to that of women’s eggs, these men seek to extend their control. This is a step towards controlling women’s bodies and women’s choices. Thus, it’s a move back to seeing women’s bodies as under the rule of men.”Enteen also situated the backlash within a broader political moment.“From the day Trump took office and pronounced in an executive order that there are only two sexes ― male and female ― and they are declared at birth, healthcare has increasingly been surveilled and controlled not by individuals and doctors, but by the government,” she said.Heldman framed the backlash as part of a larger reckoning.“The backlash against women’s reproductive rights ― the overturn of Roe, how openly the Manosphere talks about controlling women’s reproduction ― is a backlash against the social, political and economic progress of women,” she said. “The more women decide for themselves about their lives, the more they threaten a patriarchal order built on the assumption that men should decide for them.”Criticizing Ocasio-Cortez’s potential timeline for having children is also telling. “It is rank hypocrisy for people to lecture her about the appropriate age for parenting,” Winter said. “Thousands of men have babies in their 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s. They can avail themselves of the benefits of erectile dysfunction drugs and other scientific advances. Likewise, women have every right to use medical technologies to achieve their sexual and reproductive desires.”“There’s a real double standard here,” Coffler said. “Women are criticized for waiting too long to have children, but when they use science to preserve their options, they’re judged for that, too. Women should be supported, not judged, for making thoughtful choices about their future.”The lawmaker herself addressed the double standard on Instagram.“This is just not something that men deal with,” she said in one of her videos. “Men run for office, or frankly, they interview for jobs. And people don’t think in the back of their minds, ‘OK, this guy’s running for office. How old is he? Oh, well, is he going to want to start a family?’”For Winter, Ocasio-Cortez’s willingness to share something so personal in such a hostile political environment is itself an act of defiance.“AOC is keenly aware that choosing if and when to have children is central to every adult’s pursuit of happiness,” she said. “She has chosen not simply to resist reactionary attacks on women’s bodies and reproductive rights but to proactively assert her right to make meaningful decisions about how to live.”