Do you know any misogynistic women?

[ovaryhill]

I've been reading a bit about this and wondered how common it is.
Has anyone had any experience of this?
I know at least one woman who behaves as if she hates other women and is very derogatory about women in general, agrees that wearing short skirts means you're asking for trouble kind of thing, sees other women as a threat and would prefer to work for men
Any opinions or experience?

They - I've kind of lost where we were going with that

BertrandRussell "Straight men are not called bitchy very often. Except by mumsnetters who use it all the time"

What you have to remember is that schoolgirls are bitchier than schoolboys, but that the word bitchy is never used selectively about girls over boys.

I am really confused

There are masses of comments on the early part of the thread about women and girls being bitchy and thats why some people prefer males

Never mind...back to the point of the thread i am going to have to re read the OP

Why not? We use cunt liberally on MN - the irony and misogyny appears either lost or selective.

The fact that we (as in men and women) use a word for female genitalia as one of the worst insults for both sexes is quite interesting, I find

You beat me to it. I find it very odd that the words for genitalia (male and female ) are used as insults.

I don't think I know any, thank Heavens. Can't stand misogynists. Creepy fuckers. It really upsets me to see the tidal wave of hatred towards women online and fear for my daughters. I wish women wouldn't collude in it by making sweeping generalisations about women. Can't they see they are harming themselves and also harming the little girls and boys too who will follow us?

I can only assume misogynistic women are filled with self hatred and perhaps wish to align themselves with the more powerful group (men) in the hope they will win approval.

I never use the word "cunt". Under any circumstances. Well, unless I was called upon to make an audiobook of The Canterbury Tales. In which case-needs must, darlings.

Dd and her friends get on really well but the boys in her year are awful to each other. It's a common trend to call each other fat and take the piss out of each others mums

But, if one of those girls has a bad day then people are lining up to slap the bitchy label on them. The boys behaviour is never labelled, it's expected, excused and endured. Just banter, innit.

I work with much younger children and you can already see that girls behaviour is expected to be better and girls bad behaviour is labelled, even at a very young age.

Often by other women. It makes me despair and I do question it all the time and now I get the eye rolls. I imagine people that questioned racism 30 years ago also got eyerolls.

Very interesting thread, thank you to the tenacious contributors!

The comment about men being higher status friends is interesting. I used to know a few women who said they got on better with men than women - this was largely because these women considered themselves amazingly sexy and they thought that any negativity from other women was down to jealousy. In reality the negativity was down to the women in question being vain - it wasn't friendship that they had with these men, but it suited them to hang out with her in case they 'got lucky'.

I think this is interesting and true. I also think the women forgive a lot of 'bad' behaviour from the men so they can still remain in the (perceived, by them) high status position of being in the men's group.

How awful to think that men only hang out with women because they think they they might 'get lucky'. Is that not a bit of a generalisation as well? Isn't it possible that some men and women can just be friends without wanting to get into each others pants?

I find that so many women go on about being mates with men, even claim to be best mates but yet you don't find men saying that the other way around. Just recently a friend put up on her FB page that she prefers men to women in terms of friendships, with a long list of why women were "unsuitable". She didn't seem to "get it" when I pointed out she was in effect criticising herself since she too is a woman, and is generalising and stereotyping other women which could be seen as "bitchy" (her word to describe women).

She has several guys on her friendslist I noticed not ONE landed on that thread and spoke up about their friendship. Yet there she was going on about her preference for men.

Too much of who we are as women is aimed to be wrapped up in gaining male favour approval and attention, and on the other side of that women who wholly court that approval and yet are in total denial of it, which I don't mind but continuously finding ways to engineer a discussion about it is boring.

Nobody is suggesting that men who abuse are the product of conditioning so lets excuse their actions because they cant help it. Honestly they are not.

Look at it this way- a man may rape a woman, or hit her or spike her drink, & not think of himself as a rapist. He goes back to work, possible relationship, kids etc & still doesnt consider himself a rapist because society doesnt condemn rapists enough. Its up to the woman to prove she was raped & even then there must have been something SHE did to deserve it because hitherto seemingly nice men dont go around raping/abusing women.

Except they do, they just dont think they are.

We all know someone like this dont we, or have heard, or overheard, or witnessed or been the victim.

So yes, women come to safe space like mn & try to figure out why this happens & why their voices arent important enough & maybe look at the underlying causes to find hope that it may improve for their dc, if not them.

Sorry if that didnt make sense- it did in my head- im not sleeping well ( hence posting on mn at 2:30 in the morning ) & not as eloquent as id like to be

It made sense! Unfortunately I know several men like that, they started when they were very young too. Rape that wasn't really rape because she said she was gonna go out with him etc...

I've not read the whole thread but yes. Each time a woman says a girl is dressing like a tart because she wears a short skirt she's being misogynistic.

All the women who think mothers shouldn't work and should be dependent on men. Kinder and Kueche, that's the (only) way.

The fact that girls have to modify what they wear at school (I'm fine with asking for appropriate dress in a "work"-type environment but it's not framed as that, it's always framed as not showing a bit of leg and leading the boys/male teachers on).

Mothers who let their pre-teeen daughters thread their eyebrows, shave their legs etc, so that other pupils (male and female) don't take the mickey of them? Why do we go along with the idea that female body hair is a bad thing? It's a lot of steps down from FGM but is still about making your body acceptable for men.

I could go on...it's sad.

I never use the word c**t either. Why on earth would you use the name of a part of a woman's body as an insult?

Another - that's a really interesting one with regards to body hair etc.

I'm a bit of a beauty junkie and take great pleasure from products / make up etc. However; I accept that's all part of my conditioning.

I've explained body hair to dd and will respect her choices regarding it. Society is fucked up but we still have to be part of it so sometimes we have to go along with the stereotype we've been handed, sometimes even taking pleasure in it. Hope this makes some sense, it did in my head.

Something I find interesting on MN - and other feminist sites - is how angry some people get when it comes to talking about appearance conditioning. A woman who says 'I feel under pressure to shave my legs/wear makeup and am not happy with it' will be met by a barrage of 'Well I shave my legs/wear makeup and I do it just for me! I have never ever felt this 'pressure' of which you speak! If you do you're clearly a bit thick!' If you don't feel that pressure - good for you. Why take umbrage with the people who do?

I know someone will say the opposite; that feminists who point out and criticise beauty standards are the oppressive ones trying to ban pink and glitter and treating women like babies, bla bla bla, but I've never seen as aggressive responses from those trying to argue that hey, maybe there is a little bit of societal influence in the fact that women rip out our body hair with hot wax (or whatever) as I have from those who claim every decision is entirely personal and made in a vacuum free from outside conditioning.

I'm one of the people who does it for me. I happen to like having my eyebrows threaded! DH probably wouldn't notice or care if I didn't.

I don't think some of the examples you have given = misogynist tbh Anothername. No doubt I'll now be told that I've been socially conditioned not to realise how misogynistic it is.

Do you ever wonder why the way our society likes women to look is a way that it is impossible to look without "modification"?

My mother is totally misogynistic

Has told me in the past
Not to earn more than DH
That if I don't have a son DH will leave me as all men want sons
Your not a real woman until you have a son
It's OK for a man to hit you now and again as long as he gives you his wages
Men need to go down the pub as they work hard all week
Men shouldn't do housework

Being brought up like this has turned me into a feminist, my brother (the favoured child by the result of his genitals) is a chauvinist pig.

I was raised the opposite as in a woman is always right, if 2 people don't agree listen to the woman, men can't do anything as well as women etc.

This is the dynamic of my whole family, and I can see myself tipping in to control freak territory sometimes but I am not like my parents and grandparents.

Could it be that women tend to behave in a way that is described as bitchy because open displays of dominance and agression are viewed as unacceptable in women so when they want to be unpleasant women tend on the whole to approach it in a different way?

By the way I believe that the alleged differences between men and women are exaggerated and tend to group together a large number of unrelated traits.

I don't think that men are nicer than women or vice versa but I do think men tend to be more violent and agressive. There might be a partly biological explaination for that but looking at the number of toy weapons marketed at little boys other factors are also at play.

I don't think I know any misogynistic women in the sense that they hate other women but I think everyone is influenced to some extent by the gender roles prevalent in society whether they realise it or not.

"Do you ever wonder why the way our society likes women to look is a way that it is impossible to look without "modification"?"

Firstly, I don't think there's any one way that 'society' likes women to look. Everyone is different and has different ideas of what they find attractive in other people.

Secondly, I think a lot of things that people find attractive in other people requires modification. Men shave their faces/trim their facial hair, wax their backs and chests, spend hours at the gym to get nice arms and a six pack etc. I think it's a bit blinkered to suggest that it's only women who feel somehow pressured to modify their appearance in order to be attractive to other people.

bumbley
I was going to write the same thing. Different groups of people have ideas of what is attractive in both men and women since human beings existed.
People have made all sorts of modifications to themselves. Some women decorate themselves with tattoos so do some men. The TOWIE men and women are all very 'modified' It shows they are part of a group and the group's norms for attractiveness. Other groups do not use fake tan, have veneers and eliminate their body hair.

So you don't think we have any societal norms of women's physical beauty? What about age and weight and body hair for example? Where are all the larger older hairy women on TV?