Internalised misogyny examples please

I see it as another way women have learned to survive in the patriarchy. Accept it, capitulate, be the good girl and good wife. Consider it a man's world and accept your role as the supporting act. Hope that men appreciate what you do, seek their approval, and if they behave badly, blame the other woman or laugh it off with a 'boys will be boys shrug'. That's the model I saw growing up. I hated it and still do. But I understand why it's there.

I think you could be missing the point. Its a lot more subtle than that. I don't think many women sit around consciously thinking 'women are worse than men'; its a lot more subtle and unconscious than that.

Influence is a thing. That's why there is s multi million pound advertising agency. But nobody buys something just because they saw one ad - its more subtle than that.

Its about the unconscious messages we don't even know we've absorbed.

Which is why fuck off is the only reasonable response. It is not naive to understand how the world works and reject it. If I unconsciously internalised (as you call it) anything, it was that the rules were written by men and they weren't to the benefit of women. Just pick up e.g. a bible as a child and you understand that.

I can recall discussions I had as a little girl about the illogicality of male superiority. I stand by my view, which has not changed even into my ninth decade, that if, as a woman, you "internalise" female inferiority or accept as "normal" female roles dictated by society you lack self esteem. You must, to put yourself and your whole sex down for no logical reason.

I totally hear you.

I grew up thinking to be 'girly' was the worst thing to be.

I don't know why - my mum is a strong woman and she and my dad have a pretty egalitarian marriage (tangent: mum was raised to expect this. In the 1960s, her dad was involved in the child rearing and housework. The other men were all down the pub. Top bloke my grandad).

I think its the subtle drip drip of 'women are worse' that we get from society.

Maybe it wasn't helped by all the old kids classics like famous 5 that I used to read, where girls were either wet and a bit useless, or competent but wanted to be a boy.i was an avid reader. Also Brownie and guides activities used to be very 'feminine coded' back in the day and I desperately wanted to be a scout instead because they did cool stuff like night hikes.

I remember telling my mum that I wasn't like most girls because I didn't like sewing and 'girl stuff'. She told me she didn't think many girls actually were like that, it was how they were forced to be 'in the old days'.

I forced myself to take maths and physics A level, despite hating it 🤦‍♂️ because I wanted to prove I could do 'boys subjects'.

It wasn't until my 30s, I think, that I realised there is nothing wrong with feminine coded things.

I think this is definitely a type of internalised misogyny.

Women who think power is a bad word and want to have nothing to do with it, hence condemning themselves to the background
Same for money

Women who don’t believe in women as a sex class and still believe we can be « people » with men

Super sorry about all the typos, I can’t edit them!

@ISaySteadyOn
We’re aboit the same age, then.
Do you think what you thought feminism came more/mostly from (starting) online boards, from general view from (possibly anti-feminist) media and/or people? Or did you spend time in some of the many feminist spaces, real-life or online?

I know I got a scary image of feminists in two way: just general attitude/the way people spoke of feminism (the usual ugly women who hate men and young/beautiful women because they are single and childless (this should have been a clue, but I wasn’t that bright, LOL) and then from short snippets of online comments from women that said more or less the ’women are strong and smart and don’t need men’.

and those to attitudes build in my head kind of scary but also kick ass view on feminist. And then when I started spend more time on feminist spaces, online mostly, it was pretty underwhelmed tbh. Not to be rude to anyone. But I was expecting something more, turns out it’s just everay women living very everyday lives. I’m not best at explaining, so this isin’t meant to be insulting to anyone, just trying to explain how I also had (a little different from ISAYSTEADYON but also pretty black and white view) a very different understanding of what feminists are like.

Rambling now, sorry.

Haha, we recognise our own 😆

It's very easy (ime) to get tangle up in 'shoulds' and 'oughts' that are (mostly) correct in theory, but that - when it comes to real world application - require a relaxing of one's internal principles and 'rules', or are more nuanced than they may appear.

The '90s was big on a sort of feminist attitude that could end up sliding into sexism, where anything girly was automatically bad and inferior (whether it was or not) and everything 'for boys' was superior and to be lauded. Girls (especially autistic girls) trying to get away from restrictive sex norms that they chafed under often went to extremes, and threw the baby out with the bathwater.

A lot of femininity deserves critical examination, and is wielded as a patriarchal tool, imo...but that doesn't mean that it's all bad in any blanket sense. And it doesn't mean masculinity is somehow superior, either.

I think that's naive. It's not about "falls for the guff", it's about deep seated often unconscious biases about what's normal or how things should be. It's stuff like women as well as men thinking a woman dominated the meeting when she actually spoke less than the men. It's stuff like "they'd get their message over better if they just spoke a bit more nicely". It's stuff like women as well as men being more likely to challenge what a woman says than a man, so women are constantly on the back foot or have to spend time being on top of details that men can high level over and no one minds.

@OtterlyAstounding you asked if I was autistic. However did you guess?

@AceInSpace I don't know where I got the idea. That's something I also wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas where that came from. I was a teenager in the '90s if that means anything.

For me it boils down to lack of self esteem. I found it incomprehensible that a woman should think so little of her own sex that she falls for all the guff "society" tells us we should feel, do, behave blah blah.

But I am an old second-wave feminist whose response to this sort of rubbish was always, from my earliest days, "fuck off".

It might help to have an example of how these ideas become socially accepted by some women/men. I noticed today that the game advertisements I get are that Harbour one with the single mum and her kid who have no money, the guy has run off and set up home with another woman and they look through the window at them warm. The game is all about helping them stay warm and fed against all odds. On the surface you might think this is about a woman surviving against the odds. On a deeper level it reinforces that men will find a woman without kids and leave, you will have to survive solo as a parent and if you are "good enough" you will just manage it by being ingenious. Users don't consider that it really wouldn't work with the man left holding the baby.

Or the King one where some fat white guy is stuck in his castle in rooms of gems. We are meant to want to "save" him, despite him being fat, old, surrounded by gold and presumably in the traps he set for people trying to steal from him. People wouldn't feel as obliged to help a rich old fat woman, where they will for an older round bellied man.

Women gynaecologists who call women 'silly' if they want pain relief during a hysteroscopy, who go along with 'take a paracetamol '. They have taken on the misogyny themselves. That's internalised misogyny.

I would say the burka is also internalised misogyny but aware I'll be shouted down! Ditto dressing in an overly sexualised way.

Misogyny is against women not men. What you describe is misandry

Another I see often on here is judging other women harshly for not adhering to conventional beauty standards, or conversely, shaming them for wearing revealing clothing or changing their natural appearance. Feeling intense disgust or shame toward natural traits like female body hair is a common too. Threads where posters start commenting on women wearing certain things usually descend into judging women for their active dating lives or sexual autonomy (slut-shaming) while viewing similar behaviour by men as normal or admirable

Great post.

On this forum I’ve seen it used for agreeing with a man in any way or disagreeing with a woman

There's also the "cool girl" who thinks (or has been told by men) she is "not like the other girls". They often say women have more "drama" so they hang out with men. Coding for women are shallow, silly, less inherently interesting. It also means the woman is trapped into not expressing herself for fear of being the same as all the other women "who moan/whinge" or in reality pull men up on their bullshit.

It is a recognised thing, not just a "gotcha" for mumsnet!
Generally it is when women and girls subconsciously absorb sexist stereotypes, patriarchal values, and biases, then project them onto themselves and other women. These beliefs are deeply embedded in culture and media, individuals often replicate them without realising it - the idea of a woman relying on a male's salary to survive = "gold digger" when she has given up working to be a SAHM, for eg.

I’d say this is more of misunderstanding of feminism, nothing to do with internalised misogyny, I mean how could it be?

I’m interested to know where you got this idea tbh, I’m not saying I doubt you - I’ve seen plenty of these comments. It’s just that most feminist site, MN included swear their feminism by ’all the expected things women are supposed to to do are empowering choices’.

I think that's just cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's prioritising ideological principles over pragmatism, even when those principles actually affect you negatively, and not acknowledging the possibility for any grey areas. Are you, by chance, autistic?

Another example might be women looking down on women who choose to be stay at home mothers rather than pursue careers or looking down on women who don't have a tertiary education.

My son's year group at school had many ex professional mothers who only associated with others who also claimed to be avowed feminists. They would ask mothers about their working life & quickly move on if they didn't meet their education standards giving the impression they would never have anything interesting to say as a result.

Honestly, there are just so many variations of this stuff that while you expect this rubbish from men is a real gut punch from women.

This seems a good thread to post something I have actually been mulling over for months now. I am not as eloquent as many of the posters on here, but I will do my best.

When I was growing up, I internalised the belief that to be a good person you must be a feminist because feminists were the only people who believed men and women to be of equal value. Fair enough. However, I also somehow developed the belief that to be a feminist you must eschew and loathe anything feminine coded or you were a bad feminist and that made you a Bad and Wrong person.

As a result, for years I wore trousers even though they were massively uncomfortable for me because skirts= feminine and therefore Bad and Wrong, I fought hard against my desire to get married and have children (feminine coded thus Bad and Wrong), against enjoying dressing up for formal occasions, wanting to wear makeup (dyspraxia made that impossible anyway so that was an easy one to give up) and I still feel guilty that I need DH's help sometimes because women should all be strong and independent and not need anybody ever because if you do, then you are letting the side down somehow.

Is that internalised misogyny? If it isn't, what is it?

As someone posting/reading in the swingers thread, I think that's a massive misrepresentation. I don't think any posters on there who think swinging is distasteful or unappealing (for whatever reason) think that it's a fine good time for men, but gross for women. The judgement is equally applied to women AND men, so not misogynistic.