To be more disappointed with misogynist women

[DeepThinkingGirl]

Than misogynist men??

I find myself feeling intensely more disappointed with women who try dissociate themselves form women issues and dismiss them only so they can fit in their misogynist surrounding

Than I feel anger towards misogynist men.. for some reason I feel like I have very little hope in men doing the right thing if they’re toxic but to see women enabling them to reach higher ranks in society is really upsetting

It’s just that I expect a lot better from women when it comes to sisterhood and feeling some sort of compassion for each other or at least indifference.. but it takes special type of effort for a woman to treat another woman’s pain as invisible..

It just all seems spiteful and deliberate

I know what you mean, and wish internalised sexism was recognised and discussed a bit more (perhaps hard to do without being victim blamey) but still reserve most of my ire for the perps.

I know what you mean. I work in the middle east in a man's job and have few issues with men. But women can be pretty tough tk deal with. There are two categories I watch out for. The highly educated and high ranking Arabic women who can look down their noses at a western woman acting above her station. Then I also have to navigate through the 'ladies' as in women who literally think they are unable to lift a box, walk any distance, carry their handbag from the car, you get the gist. They generally don't even get given orders from their husband but always the father in law who they live with. One of my greatest joys was mentoring one of tmy team following the sad death of her father in law. She had gone from her childhood home to her in laws, her father handing her over to the in law and they were so cruel to her. They do my head in and I line manage a huge number but i have to remember that they are not allowed to fight.

Just too many women are out for themselves. They truly believe they got the nice jobs, clothes, and relative independence solely on their own merit, refusing to acknowledge the shoulders on which they've been carried.

The young ones seem not to know history - that until fairly recently mortgage companies refused to lend women, police laughed in the face of rape victims, and that birth control they take for granted was fought for.

Women are still trained, and are training their daughters, to see every other woman as (sexual) competition which means they cannot stand united.

Generally - Women still don't know what men have always known which is our power.. so we keep handing it to men for less than nothing, and then punishing other women for it.

YABU. Misogynistic men do far worse.

I think it's a difficult thing to tackle as our idea of what internalised misogyny is will differ and many women will have different ideas of what sexism looks like. At this point misogyny is so engrained in all of us that it is almost impossible to imagine what true equality would look like.

I also think some women benefit from a world where the rules are designed to suit and further men or more masculine traits. These women will often pedal a narrative that women should change to be more like men in order to succeed rather than focussing on dismantling the system that intrinsically favours men.

I don't see what good it does to try and assign a ranking of blame. All people are a product of their upbringing and pouring scorn on others rarely changes hearts and minds.

The female MRA’s or self styled ‘honey badgers’ are truly awful. I stumbled across one trolling Refuge, demanding they stop the ‘lie’ that women are more at risk of domestic violence than men and using the few studies (undertaken by other MRA’s and amounting to nothing more than questionnaire’s) that make the claim men are the real victims of domestic violence.
These women are all over YouTube & Twitter playing the ‘pick me’ game with the male MRA’s as they argue for rape laws to be redacted, domestic violence shelters for women to be defunded and offered to men instead and offer unwavering support to hate groups who’s very mission statement involves asking women and girls to stay out of public and political life.

It’s like people of colour signing up for EDL. I don’t understand it. They legitimise hate groups. It’s bizarre.

Unfortunately 16 to 30 year old women include many who have no idea that they are throwing away hard earned rights.
Its as if a thief takes one item a day and until the house is bare they won't even realise.
I'm quite glad I'm a boomer.

Well that attitude is problem in itself. Once again women get the blame. A lot of the time their attitude is a product of their upbringing or their surroundings and sometimes a need to try and please men.

Women are groomed from birth to comply with and support male dominance. Part of this includes pitting us against each other and encouraging us to compete with each other to win the game of patriarchy rather than dismantling it.

Women with internalised misogyny are simply a product of this environment, so I can't feel more upset and angry with them than I do with men. That attitude is part of the same problem, same as when women blame the OW more than the adulterous man.

If women naturally had, or were at least raised to have, a sense of "sisterhood" then we'd be much further forwards. Is it any wonder then that we're discouraged from this and taught instead that other women are bitchy, mean, manipulative, and two faced? We're taught that "you're not like other girls" is a compliment and that "I just prefer being friends with boys" is a virtue. We're taught that heterosexual romantic love is more important than our female friendships and our family, whilst female homosexual romantic love is erased and forbidden by both traditionalists ("its against my religious beliefs, its just a phase") and progressives ("it's against my gender identity beliefs, its just a preference"). It's the reason that young women are taught to dispise old women; that abusers focus first on alienating their victims from their female friends and mothers; and that women meeting or speaking in large groups has always been treated as dangerous. It's the reason why men are desperate to change and remove the language we need to empathise and identify with each other - whether that's TRAs seperating us into groups based on our body parts (cervix havers, menstruators, pregnant bodies) as if these groups have nothing in common with each other; anti choice activists referring to pregnant women as "hosts" or simply erasing the existence of a pregnant women from their rhetoric entirely (the often used image of a fetus in a disconnected floating womb); or surrogacy campaigners using language like "surrogate" and "carrier" to erase the women involved, and the media reporting celebrity children born to through surrogacy as if the woman in question had never existed.

We are taught to erase each other in our view of the world and to frame every narrative a the way which centers men and their feelings and agency whilst dismissing our own and other women's needs as selfish, hysterical, and manipulative.

Women who harm other women through internalised misogyny are also victims of misogyny. When she gave evidence to the Woman's Equality Party recently, Jane Claire Jones said that women have the lowest level of class consciousness of any group and I think she's right, but I don't think it's an accident. Women hating women isn't just a by product of patriarchy, is an essential part of its foundations. It's also the one we might have the best chance of destabilising, but not if we become part of the problem by focusing our anger and disappointment on each other.

^^That

It comes down to the fact that you want every woman to be brave. And some aren't.

Either through temperament or through a lifetime of being undermined and belittled, some woman are too tired, too scared or too timid to do what you want.

You are young and strong and independent minded and that's great but you need to accept that not everyone is. It doesn't mean they deserve less

ByGrab, I agree with what you say, to a large degree, but I also think it's hard as a woman to feel even empathy, let alone sympathy, when one encounters an overtly misogynistic woman. There is an element, often boldly stated, of competitiveness which is difficult to frame as anything other than aggressive.

It's like being the object of any abuse. Being able to explain it doesn't mean one can forgive or accept it, or that it hurts any less. Or, indeed, that one should.

I've encountered quite a lot of low level misogyny, and three very clear examples of women who are more or less successful in undermining other women and dominating being 'successful' with the men.

All three I've totally cut ties with. They are like Meghan Markle with bells on. Only option is to bail.

(I am not manipulated into disliking MM - her lying to a group of disadvantaged women about her struggle to be educated was enough of a red flag for me) (add only the perpetuation of the little-Charlotte's-dress debacle and I was totally gone)

Mean girls are very mean. I'm not mean. They're too mean to be around. Even if it's #nottheirfault.

Great post @ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings.

👏

It’s just that I expect a lot better from women when it comes to sisterhood
I don't believe in sisterhood. I don't look at people and see them for their gender before anything else. I don't assume all women are from Venus and all men are from Mars.

I dislike people who stereotype. I like to judge individual people for who they are as a person. I was raise by two parents who are probably both 50/50 on the female/make traits.

This whole sisterhood thing, women can do no wrong, males are all horrible unless they act exactly as we want them to quite unpleasant.

We are all entitled to our views, neither make us a better person than the other. Tolerance starts at home.

They're trying to escape misogyny by getting behind it so it won't be directed at them. It doesn't work long term but I can see why they're trying it.

It's obnoxious but I can understand it. I don't hold them to a higher standard. They're starting from a disadvantage.

I don't think I've ever heard the "sisterhood" referenced unless it was to criticise women for not confirming to it.

*All three I've totally cut ties with. They are like Meghan Markle with bells on. Only option is to bail.

(I am not manipulated into disliking MM - her lying to a group of disadvantaged women about her struggle to be educated was enough of a red flag for me) (add only the perpetuation of the little-Charlotte's-dress debacle and I was totally gone)*

You may not have been manipulated into disliking her, but you have never met her or actually know her so it says a lot to reference a person you’ve never met and then go on to defend it on a thread that it wasn’t necessary to mention her to begin with.

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings

Thanks for that post, it raises some very interesting points and it’s certainly given me food for thought on my stance on female MRA’s. It is, as Parker says, very difficult to find empathy or sympathy when these women are so aggressive in their hatred for other women. I suppose we want to hold women to a higher standard in that regard. The damage a female MRA publishing a paper (some are academics) as opposed to a man can’t be underestimated because of the legitimacy it gives their cause. Their work faces little back lash or is scrutinised to the level feminist academics work is.

Another poster the other day made a good point about male issues being raised online. Never ever, do we find a barrage of men saying, “what about women, they suffer from this too”. But women fall over themselves to centre men even though they are so good at doing it themselves.

You are right, logically we need to stop blaming women for this internalised mysoginy but it’s incredibly difficult because it feels like wading through treacle.

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings

Women are groomed from birth to comply with and support male dominance. Part of this includes pitting us against each other and encouraging us to compete with each other to win the game of patriarchy rather than dismantling it.

Women with internalised misogyny are simply a product of this environment, so I can't feel more upset and angry with them than I do with men. That attitude is part of the same problem, same as when women blame the OW more than the adulterous man.

If women naturally had, or were at least raised to have, a sense of "sisterhood" then we'd be much further forwards. Is it any wonder then that we're discouraged from this and taught instead that other women are bitchy, mean, manipulative, and two faced? We're taught that "you're not like other girls" is a compliment and that "I just prefer being friends with boys" is a virtue. We're taught that heterosexual romantic love is more important than our female friendships and our family, whilst female homosexual romantic love is erased and forbidden by both traditionalists ("its against my religious beliefs, its just a phase") and progressives ("it's against my gender identity beliefs, its just a preference"). It's the reason that young women are taught to dispise old women; that abusers focus first on alienating their victims from their female friends and mothers; and that women meeting or speaking in large groups has always been treated as dangerous. It's the reason why men are desperate to change and remove the language we need to empathise and identify with each other - whether that's TRAs seperating us into groups based on our body parts (cervix havers, menstruators, pregnant bodies) as if these groups have nothing in common with each other; anti choice activists referring to pregnant women as "hosts" or simply erasing the existence of a pregnant women from their rhetoric entirely (the often used image of a fetus in a disconnected floating womb); or surrogacy campaigners using language like "surrogate" and "carrier" to erase the women involved, and the media reporting celebrity children born to through surrogacy as if the woman in question had never existed.

We are taught to erase each other in our view of the world and to frame every narrative a the way which centers men and their feelings and agency whilst dismissing our own and other women's needs as selfish, hysterical, and manipulative.

Women who harm other women through internalised misogyny are also victims of misogyny. When she gave evidence to the Woman's Equality Party recently, Jane Claire Jones said that women have the lowest level of class consciousness of any group and I think she's right, but I don't think it's an accident. Women hating women isn't just a by product of patriarchy, is an essential part of its foundations. It's also the one we might have the best chance of destabilising, but not if we become part of the problem by focusing our anger and disappointment on each other.

👏🏻

Define "misogynist women*

It sounds like what you actually mean is "women who do not think and speak exactly as you tell them to". I don't believe in sisterhood. I don't believe that women are one big entity or one mind because they happen to have a vagina.

Too many self-proclaimed members of the "sisterhood" are trying to impose themselves and have no respect for the individuality or personality of others.

It's laughable that someone preaching for safety and equal rights of one gender is trying to deny them exactly that.

One of the issues I have with feminism is that I feel excluded from it, particularly on MN. This is my experience:

Being stereotypically feminine is devalued by society. Feminists therefore assert their femininity and the equality of that to masculinity. So far so good.

But I am not stereotypically feminine. Not now, not ever. As a kid, I was one of those "not like other girls" girls, because I... Wasn't like other girls. (sue me, I was a teen being made to feel like shit by my own gender for not behaving like them) And as an adult, I get accused of being a "cool wife" or an MRA infiltrator. I am neither.

I'm an educated woman who has worked up to a position of influence. I've instituted policies in my workplace that make things fairer and easier for all parents to flex their work. I've promoted women in part time roles. I debate feminism with my friends, and my husband, who's read more feminist literature than I have.

In my humble opinion, if your version of feminism excludes me because I'm not the right type of woman for you, then you should call it something else, because last I checked, I am a woman.

Anyone using the term "sisterhood' tends to ring massive alarm bells for me. It's never about women right, it's about THEIR vision of what is acceptable or not in their agenda.

Well we certainly won't be let into the brotherhood...

I get what you’re saying OP. I wouldn’t say more disappointed at some women than misogynistic men but having better expectations, still would be completely on the misogynistic men though.

*We are taught to erase each other in our view of the world and to frame every narrative a the way which centers men and their feelings and agency whilst dismissing our own and other women's needs as selfish, hysterical, and manipulative.

Women who harm other women through internalised misogyny are also victims of misogyny. When she gave evidence to the Woman's Equality Party recently, Jane Claire Jones said that women have the lowest level of class consciousness of any group and I think she's right, but I don't think it's an accident. Women hating women isn't just a by product of patriarchy, is an essential part of its foundations. It's also the one we might have the best chance of destabilising, but not if we become part of the problem by focusing our anger and disappointment on each other.*

Agree with this.