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?

Mermaid Personally im very wary of women who say they get on better with men and that other women are always nasty to them, as I usually find that they are the ones with the problem.

I don't think anyone on this thread has claimed other women are always nasty to them. Aren't you actually being nasty though, by making such sweeping assumptions about people who would probably love to have female friends but find it hard to make them?

witsender I don't want it to be sexist, I just don't get it. All women are different and all men are different. That's all.
I don't get it either! Just have observed it myself.

I actually think it's rather misogynistic to blame the women in this situation, rather than the society at large. I get on well as an aquaintance with loads of people, just struggle to get beyond that level more with women. For a start, they always seem to have plenty of friends already - could that be the emphasis society places on women maintaining relationships? Could men making the effort actually be them hoping for more than friendship? Could there simply be an exposure issue - having one good male friend leads to you making more because you're introduced to their friends who you likely get on with? I've been unemployed a lot and most of the others I've met in the same position are men, too.

In addition, is there something to do with not conforming to gender roles at play? Women with Aspergers, for example, often feel neither male or female and are less likely to conform to various social expectations, including those of gender roles. They also tend to struggle to make female friends after leaving school. Could there be a connection there that applies to women without Aspergers too? (Also, a lot of us may well be undiagnosed! Won't go into that now...)

I just think it's a lot more complicated than "blame the women". Sigh.

Whether it's reasonable or not, I have always found it easier to work with men. I just find them more straightforward and they don't take offence as easily as women I have worked with.
I hate 'girly' stuff and girly nights out and gossip and unfortunately most women I have met at work are like that. Perhaps it's just the places I have worked.
Sometimes I think life would be easier if I conformed and was like them.

DP and I were to find out last night his mum has always hated female teachers. His dad was a teacher (retired now) and while his mum liked his male colleagues she thought the female ones were too stroppy. Every single one.

I once worked with a girl who had no female friends and said women just didn't like her. She would stop being a complete bitch and morph into this sultry, helpful being whenever a man walked in the room, they were mesmerised by her! Years on and she still texts my DP occasionally (he worked at the same place) even though she knew me far better. The most ridiculous woman I've ever met.

When I made my comment about low intelligence, I didn't mean that all those at the lower end of the intelligence scale are naturally sexist, as that would quite obviously be a ridiculous thing to say. I meant that those people who are misogynistic / sexist will almost certainly be incapable of critical thinking.

You can be capable of critical thinking and have low intelligence.

You can be capable of CT and refuse to do so, as a survival technique. People go into denial and refuse to be self aware for many reasons.

People are good at survival and they adapt themselves to fit into what they think their environment demands.

It's interesting that on the Feminist forum, whenever the number of sexual partners etc come up, many Feminists only see Women who behave sexually as having low self esteem and won't be told otherwise. They fail to see that this comes from them being socialised to believe certain things about Women's sexual choices. The same applies to appearance.

It's taking the time to think about why you believe what do. It doesn't take a fair bit of self challenge.

elementofsurprise - I don't think anyone is attacking women with a high proportion of male friends - which as you say could happen for many reasons - but specifically women who say they "get on better with men." A woman I know has said this many times to me - it's breathtakingly rude and aggressive to say it to another woman ("I just don't seem to get on as well with people like you") and it's a programmatic statement - it suggests that they believe that there is something different in the way men and women behave and that it's not just coincidence that they have more male friends, it's that they are predisposed to get on with men better and are likely to do so in the future. Tbh it also raises serious issues with self-esteem imo, and often goes along with suggesting that women are bitchy and men are straightforward and "more interesting" (:O the same woman I know said this). These kind of statements seem just so disconnected from how people actually behave in the world that it's hard to see it not as a reflection on the person making them.

It does, not doesn't.

Sadly I know lots of very intelligent sexists.

element please don't let a thread on MN, especially in the Feminism section make you feel like shit

I think you have been highly unlucky to be surrounded by women you can't click with and men who are only interested for the sex you can give them

Perhaps you should completely rethink your friendship group ?

I don't have lots of female friendships but the ones I do have are strong and enduring, mainly because I am pretty choosy about who I share my life with. The best female friendships I have are based on shared values/experiences and an unshakeable feminist outlook.

I have some friendships with men but they are much more superficial. I am certainly a "woman's woman" and I think it comes across when other women are looking to make a connection. However, lots of women don't like me, and that is ok too as I question a lot of things they happily live with.

Sorry, my mistake. I thought we were in the Feminism section. My points still stand though.

After my abusive ex partner had physically attacked me I remember of 2 women I knew expressing the opinion that I must've said/done something to 'deserve' it. Also one of the male police constables involved in the case said the same. No wonder so many women are killed by current/ex partners

I'll admit that I'm sexist but towards men. I don't mean to be but I generally feel more comfortable around women. As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, I think I'd find working in a male dominated environment very hard. Even having a male boss as mine are always women, would feel strange.

For example, I wanted a female driving instructor. When I took my second driving test I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw the examiner was a woman and I'm convinced that helped me pass as I was more relaxed. I'm a shy person anyway but I'm even more shy around men. It's something that started in childhood and has carried on into adulthood. I experienced bullying from both sexes at school but the male bullying seemed more....vicious or aggressive so I'm sure that didn't help. I haven't had a male friend without there being some kind of sexual element since primary school. I'd like to have proper male friends because I'm in this all female bubble most of the time but I don't know how to go about it.

Sorry, my mistake. I thought we were in the Feminism section. My points still stand though.

I was deafened by the sound of Mumsnetters desperately clicking the back button for a moment!

Help the feminists have escaped!

Gah. Put me back in my box. [santa]

I do.

like pipestheghost, having been in and escaped from an abusive relationship (over 8 years ago now) some of the comments have shocked me. Insinuations that I was a drain on the state when I was on benefits (when in fact he was not supporting the children) like pp, suggestions that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. And then, later, when I began to get back on my feet I realised that there is a kind of core glossy element who feel tainted by something so grim as domestic abuse. They'd rather never talk about, never acknowledge it, never think about it because it's all a bit to down market. Lowers the tone darling.

Everybody went mad for the ice bucket challenge. I have about two hundred friends on facebook and about three of them clicked like and donated to the white ribbon thing I put up during the recent week of awareness. I wasn't lecturing them or pressuring them. It hurt a great deal, and angered me actually that the whole ice bucket thing was not about caring. It was about being seen to join in, being seen to be a good sport, about posting yourself on facebook. ASL effects so few people compared with how many women are effected by domestic abuse. And yet, nobody seems to care. It was an eye opener.

I also have some very intelligent cousins and friends who earn fortunes and seem very unwilling to believe that less well off women, less educated women and less privileged women still need feminism. I think it embarrasses them and in their eyes weakens their high status. I had a discussion about this with a friend from school who I love dearly but she has a masters and earns over a hundred thousand a year. I ended up telling her that she should ask her cleaner if "women are equal now". Her cleaner's husband is a driver and he earns more I bet.

My mum.

Boys are better at science and learning to drive etc etc.

Nope mum the reason I was crap at learning to drive was because I didn't want to, when I did want to it took me 7 lessons, I learned to ride a motorbike in a week.

Women wearing certain clothes, she would say, "I know you should never say a woman is asking for it, but oooh so and so wore ..."

oh yes, If I read an article in the sunday supplements when I'm at home with my Mum, we can get in to a barney. eg, where a young singer/chef/actress/author is interviewed in hardly any clothes looking 'provocative' I get annoyed with the magazine, the photographer. My mum doesn't seem to grasp that the people who hold the power to publicise the song/food/show/book are older men in their forties (at least) who have the power to shut the interview right down. My mum doesn't seem to grasp that the young women who want their product/song/show/designs/artwork publicised are at the mercy of older more powerful men who tell them that the stylists have brought this dress, that the make up artists would like you to look like a 60s baby doll and that the photography would like you to stand like twiggy in 1966 even though you're 24 and went to university and managed to convince the dragons to invest in your product/get a publishing house to print your book.

YOU get the general picture here. But my mum just doesn't see it. It's slutty girls taking their clothes off in the sunday supplements. She blames younger women.

I (briefly) had a female boss and one of the first things she said to me was: "I think like a man."

She barely gave me the time of day but was all over my boyfriend at the time (later DH) when he came to pick me up after work. He worked in the same industry but for a different company. She never tried to disguise her contempt for other women. I didnt work for her for long - the atmosphere in that place was really unpleasant.

also, my mum thinks that some women make life very difficult for themselves by complaining. SHe sees putting up and shutting up as the best solution

I don't think saying you find it easier to make friends with men makes you a misogynist. I think most of us accept that men and women are socialised very differently - women are encouraged from early childhood onwards to be emotional gatekeepers, the ones in charge of smoothing over emotional upsets or even pre-empting them in the first place by being expected to second guess how others will react in any given situation. Like a lot of women's"work" (Iin the sense of stuff society expects women to do) this comes at a cost; it takes up head space that you could be using for other stuff. I think we are trained from childhood onwards to see and expect to experience women's friendships as more complex and emotionally more intense than mens. Witness all the threads on here about "my five year old DD has fallen out with her best friend, girls are just so complicated and so bitchy" which I always read with a sense of puzzlement, because my DS' s friendships seem just as complicated and fraught. But girls are encouraged to indulge (for want of a better word) in such complexity while boys are discouraged (man up, boys don't cry etc) such that by the time men and women reach adulthood they've been trained to expect very different things from friendship.

So for me when a woman says "I find it easier to be friends with men" she could be a misogynist, but to me it seems more likely that she's simply expressing a preference for what society labels as a typically male friendship: one where you talk about football (insert mutual interest of your choice) rather than emotions.

There is an underlying sexism to this in uncritically accepting that these are the appropriate models for male and female friendships, but it's a subtle and very deeply entrenched one I think.

And as other posters have said, it could also be luck and circumstance (I spent a lot of my early twenties with a lot of male friends - because I did a physics degree and spent my spare time rock climbing).

My Xmil was the worst I knew.

-In 40 years of marriage, she woke up an hour before her DH to put her make up on and do her hair- because, "no man should see his wife looking less than her best"
-Would refer to any woman in a shorter than knee-length skirt as, "the sort it doesn't take more than a drink to get into bed"
And, that women who are cheated on, "Should have made more effort in the mirror and the bedroom".

I remember the last one vividly - it was said to me when XH (her DS) cheated on me

I honestly don't believe you can be a fully rounded, intelligent person and still maintain sexist thinking. You can be intelligent in certain areas of course - you could be a heart surgeon or business analyst or run a multinational but I still wouldn't class you as a reasoned, bright, aware human being if you didn't question misogyny.

So for me when a woman says "I find it easier to be friends with men" she could be a misogynist, but to me it seems more likely that she's simply expressing a preference for what society labels as a typically male friendship: one where you talk about football (insert mutual interest of your choice) rather than emotions.
This is me down to a tee. I get on with farmers of both sexes because they talk obsessively about guess what? Farming! I enjoyed meeting up with PE specialists(mainly women when I taught because they talked obsessively about PE. I didn't enjoy staffroom discussions about who was being a bitch or what someone was making for tea.

Yes, but an intelligent woman will recognise it as such. I guess not all women are capable of understanding why it is that they don't have what society deems to be typical friendships.

There are so many different types of women though, that the '"i get on with men better than I do with women" statements make me think, oh here we go........ a woman who doesn't value female company, insight, but thrives and flourishes under the spotlight of male company and approval and attention. Whilst simultaneously giving themselves a pat on the back for this 'maleness'.