I need you guys to settle a dispute for me...

[=sw=warlord]

I'm going to be blunt with this.
If your friends can believe something from such a one sided perspective and decide that they don't want to talk to you then their probably not people worth having around.
Real friends would know you a lot better than to take just one perspective and only see that as the truth.
The moment a friend makes you choose them over someone else they no longer become a friend in my opinion.

[sleepy1212]

I can't vote because you broke one of the cardinal rules of dealing with women: never get dragged into the emotional chaos, especially by doing something irrational (like pushing her). That was really dumb and you should have left it at "wtf".

chances are it has nothing to do with your comment and something else entirely that just made what you said the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe she had a hard time shaving that morning or read something unfunny (funny) about gingers or maybe she was just thinking how nice of a person you are and then you say something like that or maybe she was already mad at you. Either way I don't think you did anything wrong and on another day she probably would have laughed about it.

At any rate you have three choices:

Apologize and then act like nothing happened until she's over it.
Act like nothing happened and apologize when she's over it.
Ignore her forever.

*notice the first two differ in order based on when you're on speaking terms.

I'd also like to point out you can never have two female best friends. Two girls get along fine. Three do not. You are one of the girls. That makes three. That's one too many. There are no Three Female Musketeers. When it comes to girls two is company, three is always a crowd. One will always get shunned, picked on, or treated badly enough to make her leave reducing the number to two. They are like oxygen atoms. That is why "Ruth" is trying to take out "Holly". Too many girls in one place. You're going to lose one of them or they are going to lose you. sorry.

[Cojafoji]

She was wrong, but you never, ever lay a finger on a woman. Sounds like a fair weather friend to me. Let it go.

[STLRamsFan]

She's in the wrong for overreacting while you're in the wrong for the pushing. I can understand you were upset and all but unless she was physically harming you, that was just wrong. And quite honestly she sounds real immature, especially for overreacting over a stupid comment. This kind of reminds me of a time where me and friend were throwing medicine balls at each other while waiting for a gym class to start and I accidentally threw one to her face. She was a little ticked at first, got over it. Of course she ended up getting revenge by punching me in the gut while doing the gym class go figure haha.... Big difference in maturity there because she knew I didn't mean it and got over it, while your friend can't seem to get over a stupid comment that you didn't mean. Although you did make things far worse than they should have been with the pushing.

[Aerowyn]

I think you're both in the wrong. Now, I'm not entirely sure how close you two were before this little spat, but asking her if she's a firecrotch comes off to me as being pretty rude. I would never think of asking my best guy friend about the size of his penis unless we were, you know, dating or something, and talk about the intimate areas is somewhat warranted.

Her reaction despite your apologies is completely overblown, but by the same token, you shouldn't have shoved her.

If she is unwilling to reason with you or any of her friends, it seems as if she wasn't really your friend to begin with.

[teh lag]

About a week ago, I made a lighthearted comment, asking her what color her crotch hair was

Well there's your problem. You didn't give any real context about your relationship or social group (is this kind of joke common? do you guys have a lot of sexual humor?) so it's kindof a gut feeling here but unless you were somehow on the subject of peoples' nether regions or their hair color, I think it's perfectly understandable for her to be put off a fair amount. Believe it or not, people can and do get upset over silly things -I bet there are one or two seemingly innocuous things that could set you off as well.

I give Ruth a shove at the end because she isn't listening to anything I'm saying.

Maybe she overreacted at first but I really have to say you fucked up big time by doing that, no matter how you try to rationalize it. Unless you're in a drama or action movie where the fate of your career or the world is at stake I don't think that's a generally good idea when apologizing to someone. And you're not in a drama or action movie.

She has also stopped listening to Holly or any of her other real-world friends, all of whom have taken my side on the matter. She insists that I have done something majorly fucked-up and should do something about it to appease her, although she neglects to tell me what it is I should do about it.

Ok, this is pretty unreasonable of her but then again, teenagers. Dramatic teenagers. Sucks. It's up to you guys to work together if you want to solve this and it was your choice to make it into something even bigger by deciding that force was the best way to get her to listen - rather than, you know, giving her some more time and letting the thing blow over.

knock some sense into her

...Oh dear. The last thing you need in your mindset for doing this is "man she's so fucked up lets knock her back into reality!" Being confrontational got you in even deeper trouble the first time. If you want to repair your relationship in a realistic, manageable manner I would suggest giving it time, not hoping that a brute-force attempt will break through to her.

One last thing that concerns me about this.

Ruth complains to all her friends that I have done some great wrong to her, about half of whom now want to beat the living shit out of me. Ruth is still ignoring me, and has blocked any attempts by myself to bring about negotiations or any kind of reconciliation.

She has also stopped listening to Holly or any of her other real-world friends, all of whom have taken my side on the matter.

I assume these are two different sets of friends? You're really not explaining your group dynamics to us. It's really not easy to "settle a dispute" without knowing the context or if there are these kinds of bizarre apparent contradictions.

[Limited]

Pretty much what Lag said, it depends what kind of relationship you have with each other, if your real close and open about alot of things she may have taken it differently, but she sounds like shes pretty closed off about intimate things.

Has she overreacted? Yeah, okay it was rude that you asked her (unless like I said, you have that sexual humor banter going on) but the fact shes still pissed after a week, and now getting your friends to go against you, thats pretty fucked up and low.

Personally I wouldnt try and patch up with Ruth, she seems a total bitch. You've said your sorry, and I'd apologise again to Ruth and said you had no right to shout at her and shove her. If Ruth doesnt forgive you, well its her lose.

Maybe shes just being real stubborn for a different reason and your taking all the flack for that.

[ICEE]

As a redhead, I can tell you that people ask. She's a girl, I'm sure people ask her more than they ask me. If she's sensitive it could get overwhelming. If she's sensitive and a friend asks her, someone she didn't expect to objectify her in such a way, it could get really overwhelming.

There you go

[Maniac]

You dont raise your hand to a woman.
EVER.

[n00b1n8R]

Ginger here, asking us if we're fire crotch's is no biggy, ignore all the idiots who don't have a clue what they're talking about~