Internalised misogyny examples please

This exactly

There was a poster some months ago that kept saying "gendered traits" included things like 'having breasts" or similar. Pretended not to be able to distinguish between shared female biology and "what women are like, yknow, feminine"?

Because istr that poster didn't actually identify any traits I shared with any other person of my or any other "gender" and conflated it with physical characteristics to the point they got in a real muddle.

I think some of the worst, or most damaging are the ones some PPs have mentioned. When a girl within a family is told she cant have the same as brothers. By worst I mean that as a child it can be hard to understand and can really hurt that it is family members treating you as a lesser person.

Not sure if it is misogyny but a lot of women take on a sort of social policing of other women. Sometimes quite trivial in terms of dress, but some of the nonsense (amplified by commercialism) around weddings, and sadly sometimes around the sex of the first born child.

One of the worst is that research has shown that in rape trials it is often the women jurors who argue it isn't fair to "wreck" a man's career by convicting him of rape. (Apparently this still happens.)

And of course those who think the must insulting thing to say about someone and how worthless they are, is to compare them to a part of women's anatomy as being the worse thing in the world ie the c word.

Has someone had a namechange fail there? Don't understand what's being replied to otherwise.

Unless someone is trying to make this a TAAT to get it deleted?

I always thought of it more as 'unconscious misogyny ' - some women will a argue all sorts of things that are derogatory to women, as evidence on this thread - rather than it being specifically against oneself as an individual.

While denying the sexism that they are demonstrating. The belief that they aren't being sexist that's just how it is.

For me it’s things like men make better leaders because that’s what women have been told all their lives.

Or you wouldn’t want the pilot, surgeon, firefighter to be a woman, would you because they’re too emotional/not technical/not brave enough.

Or women are too emotional to make good decisions- as if anger is not an emotion….

Or women having periods makes them too erratic.

Or the OW is to blame for being the siren and leading him on.

'Internalised' to mean 'directed at oneself' is kind of odd, linguistically, though - we can have a lot of beliefs that we've internalised that don't necessarily need to be about ourselves or a facet of ourselves?

I nearly quoted "biological essentialsm' in my first post as an example that's always - erroneously to the point I get painful second-hand embarrassment - trotted out, but didn't think we needed to descend into farce.

Anyway, someone has kindly done that for me.
We had a poster on here who insisted that the GC take - that being female-bodied means nothing about anyone as a person re their characteristics, desires etc - was "biological essentialsm" and not in fact the exact opposite

Women, like men, reaching first for a female example when it comes to negative qualities or compiling derogatory lists. Most irritating tv presenter, most incompetent Cabinet minister, most annoying actor - women are often just as good as the men at piling on a woman.

I contribute to a couple of political discussion forums and this phenomenon is really noticeable. The media both orchestrate and reinforce it, so whether I like it or not, I often find I'm primed with all the negative evidence about female politicians whereas male politicians tend to be treated as decent, reasonable and tolerably competent by default, no one searches for their weaknesses or less likeable qualities until there's a reason to do so.

Once I realised how over-informed I was about women's weaknesses and how easy it would be to join in the criticism I made a decision that I would actively avoid criticising female politicians. Very occasionally I criticise a female minister's policy or the specifics of the way she's presented it but never the woman, no matter how tempted I am. There's always a chorus of critical voices, so there's yet to be an occasion when a woman escapes criticism because I kept schtum about how I feel.

I might be guilty of internalised misogyny, but I do at least make sure I never voice it. It's been a useful way of making myself aware of this bias in political discourse.

Plenty of women think women's sexuality is icky or dirty if not directed to a monogamous partner - see the current Swingers thread!

This can also work the other way. There's a thread going in AIBU where the OP isn't ready to sleep with her new man a month into the relationship - and anyone agreeing she should listen to her feelings is being called a pearl-clutcher, and won't anyone think of the poor man being made to wait!

It is eye opening.

the only one I agree with here is the ball-breaker one. I would say thinking applying for a nursing degree is somehow lesser than applying to medicine or doing family law is lesser than doing corporate law is itself internalised sexism. Nursing and family law are seen as professional areas with more women so seeing them as not as good as medicine or corporate law is sexist to a certain extent. Expecting to work part time once you have kids without thinking through the numbers/the needs/your emotions may be internalised misogyny but doing it when you have considered everything may just be making a choice that isn't based on capitalism.

In my own life my internalised sexism meant I didn't even consider giving my children my surname even though I didn't change my name on marriage. both dh and I think we would do it differently now but at the time it just didn't occur to me.

I noticed internalised misogyny within myself and I had to check it. When I went to Morocco I found I didn’t really go in the shops that were run by women.
I would just go to the man next door.
I realised it’s because I thought I wouldn’t be able to speech them down and bargain a good deal like I could with the men.

Thinking that not conforming to social stereotypes of womanhood means you are not a woman.

(Edit to correct typo)

Brilliant parody but maybe a tad too far fetched.

Quite common, Im afraid.

Back in the Bronze Age, my Mum (who had never passed the driving test) was happy to pay for each of my 3 brothers to have driving lessons.

But not me “because you should always be able to get a man to drive you”.

I wish I was kidding.

My most mumsnet example is women apportioning the whole chilcare bill to their salay, rather than seeing it as a split cost shared between both salaries.

A bit like the skirt example, I hate that pre school boys shoes are generally more set up for running, jumping and playing than the ballet pumps or strappy sandels seen on pre school girls sometimes.

Defence of biological essentialism.

Defending misogynists and rapists because they don't like trans people.

insisting there is a certain way women must look and if they deviate from it they're men.

Allying with violent men who promise them protection.

Accepting male violence as innate and unchangeable, and attacking trans people alongside those men.

Hiring a domestic abuser above the protests of abused women.

Attacking or accepting the abuse of minority women.

Thinking that conforming to what men demand of our appearance will prevent sexual assault.

Accusing cis female athletes of being men and abusing them alongside men. Refusing to apologise when they are ruled eligible to compete in women's sport - something which requires intimate examination and extensive testing.

Claiming that public toilets are safe spaces and accepting the argument that cis men are just too noble to go in and attack us there.

Ignoring consequential activism in favour of spending all day obsessing about trans people - the only space where we don't get Not All Men'd when discussing sexual assault, because it's accepted that a) men are innately violent so can't be blamed for that, and b) trans women are more of a danger than cis men, despite the very high number of trans women who've been raped and beaten up by cis men. And despite there being no record of an increase in SA by trans women in toilets, in countries with self-ID.

Calling women men as an insult to their looks, intelligence or perceived aggression....

No, that’s misandry.
So internalised misogyny is the holding and performing of the belief that women are inferior to men when it is done by women.

Internalised misogyny examples I can think of:

• woman is ugly/not taking care of herself/frumpy if she doesn’t wear make-up / femininen and or tight clothes and spend a lot of time on hair
• woman who doesn’t have children must be selfis / cold / not a woman
• If woman doesn’t have sex she’s prude / cold
• Women own good looks and performing to the male gaze
• Single women are bitter / must have something wrong with them
• pp who mentioned body hair is right, no idea why women’s body hair is seen as wrong and gross

Those tend to be the main one’s…. Mostly how women must look certain way (weight must also be low is another one) followed by usefullness to men (date them, have sex with them - be kinky, marry them and take their last name, have kids). These are must or you’re not a ’good woman’ and ’worthy’.

The logic never follows! It's a Möbius strip. There's always a hidden twist in there that relies on the assumption that women are female.

You straighten that out and you see how bizarre it is.

I see a lot of internalised misogyny on the endless MIL threads on MN, where the implication of many of the grumbles is that women are great just as long as they don't get old, at which point they had better stop having either needs or boundaries because what are they even for? I've seen endless posts on here that wouldn't be out of place in an incel chatroom.

My mum is a great one for it. Whenever a man has done something wrong, say have an affair, well what is wrong with his wife putting up with it stupid cow.
If a man abuses his child why did the mother allow it?

I think anything women wear would be fetished and sexualised, to be honest. (And plenty of cultures have men wearing dresses or women wearing divided legs)

As an aside, I have always found it funny that the sex with a bit that dangles in the middle has the trousers and the sex with the clear crotch zone has the skirts - seems to make far more sense the other way round 😂