To think that women being unpleasant to other women is not automatically internalised misogyny?

[Carla786]

I see this a lot on FWR and in other places.
It certainly can be, but it seems a cop-out to say it is always the cause. It's not anti-feminist to say that women can be cruel to each other for other reasons, just as men can : intrasexual competition, insecurity, narcissism etc

AIBU?

Yes, this

True. Some people are just dicks, plain and simple.

And your point is?
women kill men too. Every single day.
sorry to burst your bubble

I disagree, children have literally zero power over their lives, they exist where adults put them and that's it. Adults have an agency that children simply will never have even when they feel trapped in abusive relationships.

What would be the point in moving schools? It's really not a simple task and queen bees and means girls exist in all schools. I was at the best school in the town and moving would mean giving up a lot of opportunities to go to a shitty school where the kids were more feral and were infamous for bullying eachother.

My whole point was that it's not internalised misogyny to say women are bitchy and nasty to eachother because it's an observable fact, I've seen it in every school I attended, heard about it at every school my friends attended and as an adult I see it now at work and in social groups. It's also woman specific behaviour because I've never witnessed men engaging in this kind of behaviour. Trying to make out we can't call it out without having internalised misogyny is stupid.

No they don't. Not on the same scale or anywhere near.

I’m assuming you’re actually joking. Have you looked at the proportions of men and women who commit violent crimes?

Women being nasty to other women in general isn’t internalised misogyny.

Women being nasty to other women for certain specific reasons absolutely is. For example, women who sneer at other women for having casual or kinky sex, or accuse them of being a ‘pick-me’ because they like football and don’t mind their partner going on stag weekends, or who judge women as ‘shallow’ for liking clothes and makeup etc. Those are all examples of internalised misogyny and I see them on Mumsnet constantly.

Oh yeah the FWR lot love calling other women pick me's, the hypocrisy is incredible.

Er, that's not hypocrisy. 'Pick me' usually suggests a woman's defending some obnoxious male behaviour toward women. It could only be hypocritical of a woman to call someone a 'pick me' if she, too, was defending obnoxious males. Not very likely in Feminism, surely!

So your argument is that pointing out behaviours that are indicative of internalised misogyny/internalising patriarchal norms....is itself internalised misogyny?

Hm. I don't think that holds water.

im inclined to agree. I remember this one girl at school I used to love arguing with. We literally loved insulting each other. I still stalk her Facebook even now. No misogyny there. I just found my nemesis. Remember her quite fondly now…

I think a lot of what people describe as inherently ‘bitchy’ or nasty behaviour from women comes from being conditioned to patriarchal standards.

So look at the relationship boards where the vitriol for the OW is vicious and they’re blamed for luring some poor unwitting man to betray his wife. But we all know from our own observations of work/families/social lives that in the cold hard light of day that that exact scenario is very unlikely. Uniquely predatory women are rare and if they do exist, why would your dumb husband put his penis in her?

Women who criticise Katie Price (including myself) are holding her to a standard of motherhood and morality that equivalent men are not (or not as much). So someone like Kayne West is ridiculed yes, but still taken seriously as an artist and still lauded and given work.

So the example given by a pp of being bullied by girls and experiencing only men being nice to her… yes of course they’re nice when you’re at a fuckable age. Just wait until you’re middle aged and menopausal and life spits you out. That’s when you realise that women are not the enemy. But maybe we are still conditioned by the patriarchy to see each other as such.

So when you sneer at some other woman’s hair/ worldview / naff kitchen etc. yes, that’s bitchy, but it’s also likely to be internalised misogny.

You're not bursting any bubble, I expect. The point is that women do not kill men at anywhere near the rate men kill women.

Irrelevant to the thread. Women kill babies at a higher rate than men, and almost exclusively kill newly born children.

Although I guess this is all the fault of "The Patriarchy" and internal misogyny too...

Women killing newborns is usually down to severe mental illness.

I think women can be nastier than men in a different sense, not a violent way, we know men are way ahead in that aspect, but I think women can be cruel to other women in the sense of bullying, put downs, bitchyness

Women cannot commit rape, full stop. By definition.

Also, rape and murder aren't the only way people can be nasty to each other.

Are you saying that liking football, or liking casual sex, can't be genuine preferences on a woman's part - they only exist because she has internalised patriarchal norms?

You're not giving women much agency with that theory

Re the several comments on this thread about gangs of girls & women being mentally/emotionally cruel, I don't think gang cruelty is unique to women but it's much more likely to be mental. Men can be cruel in gangs and pressure each other to do awful things but it's much more likely to be physical (hence stuff like hazing scandals in college fraternities, some army bullying etc)

Well, forced sex, then. A non penetrative assault can be just as emotionally devastating.

Do you mean all those things though? I agree re stag weekends (at least ones including strippers or sex workers) but what's wrong with liking football, clothes or casual sex?

Makeup has more issues and can be bad for skin anyway. I do also agree that BDSM has huge issues.

For what kind of things?

This.

No, I'm saying that I think that claiming it's internally misogynistic to have discussions about whether or not any behaviour is motivated more by socialisation and the patriarchal culture we live in than by uninfluenced (impossible) personal desire, feels like a bad faith attempt to silence feminist discussion.

It's also interesting that all the behaviours mentioned in the comment benefit men, while many present a financial, emotional, or physical harm to women (football being an exception).

For instance, such an increased emphasis on clothing in regards to women (something that's odd because usually the male of the species 'peacocks') means that women feel social pressure to spend more money, time, and mental effort on their clothing than men do. Those norms also often involve clothing that either enforces modesty or sexualises women at the cost of their comfort.

On top of that, capitalism encourages both men and women to spend money (that often could be better spent) on pointless clothing or accessories that do nothing but signify wealth. So no, it's not internalised misogyny to question why women spend over 1k on a pair of impractical high heeled shoes, for instance, and to think it an example of the intersection of patriarchy and capitalism.

@Carla786 I think this answers your comment too.

That’s usually due to post partum psychosis or post natal depression. Men kill and abuse their partners and children because they can.

Your needing to use this to defend the kill rate of men is misogny. Not sure it’s even internalised - it’s blatent.