Women that give in to misogyny ?

[1ForAllnAllFor1]

Hi all,

I’m just wondering how do you handle women that give in to misogyny and put like pressure on other women to do the same/bully them because they have deduced that it’s the only way to avoid conflict... and then they even label you as a trouble maker and dissociate form u because you decide to no give in.

How do you cope in an environment full of this?

Hi

It depends on your precise situation. I used to attend various evangelical churches where the women ecstatically accepted the 'man is the head of women' narrative. My best line of defence was to calmly stand firm in not being pushed to accept their point of view in my own life and be willing to talk about. Some just accepted me as I was eventually but sometimes I was hitting a brick wall and just had to move on.

Not sure that's helpful for you in whatever you're experiencing? Are these people you work with? Family?

My own mother. Made me furious as a teenager. Think it's really affected by self esteem as an adult. I do say my piece these days.

Is there a difference between misogyny and sexism/patriarchy though? There are women who submit to male-headship in their marriage/faith/society but wouldn’t feel they are the victim of misogyny. Indeed, they may feel it is their free choice to submit (similar to women who opt for ‘obey’ in their marriage vows, or taking your husband’s name in marriage). I’m sure a lot of people of faith would believe their view of relationships between men and women should be respectful and nurturing (in Christianity the relationship is likened to the relationship between Christ and his people).

Another woman could live in a less sexist/repressive society/not submit to any of these things but be the victim of misogynistic abuse.

I would imagine that the two do frequently go hand in hand though, it’s hard to bring your sons up to respect women if the examples all around them are of women as second class citizens or something that’s theirs to own. I presume misogynists usually love their mothers but don’t extend the respect to other women.

Danceswithwarthogs

Yes, I hear what you're saying. I was in Christian circles for over 2 decades and read lots of books about Christian feminism. The practices of "Biblical manhood and womanhood" are part and parcel of a wider phenomenon of believing that God has set rules that are good for us and therefore shouldn't be questioned too closely. But for all practical purposes, it was literally just a flat dismissal of female opinions and qualities.

But none of that may be relevant to the OP's situation.

Yes, more detail needed!

I know what you mean and I deal with it very badly. I am labelled as difficult, angry, argumentative and so on. From my own mother to colleagues at work. I wish I could not give a shit but I do.
I will watch this thread with interest, thanks for posting.

I think I get it. I'm in a group chat with 7 or 8 friends who share a hobby. Mostly we chat bollocks and it's all good fun. However, one of the guys kept finding it amusing to send pornographic gifs, memes and clips which I really didn't appreciate. I said firmly that this wasn;t the place for it and I didn't want to see that shit tyvm. I got a load of jeering/mocking from one of the women asking if I'd had a sense of humour failure, it was just a bit of fun ffs, we're all adults. Really annoyed me and made me feel like some ancient prude - doubly annoying as I'm quite sure this woman didn't particularly find it amusing to watch a woman being jizzed over by 6 men, etc, but just wanted to be seen as "cool" by the men.

id say an awful lot of women go along with it because its easier and less exhausting than confronting it because it is exhausting. the default of the world is male - reading the Invisible Woman only makes you realise just how much!

i get tired of it, the every day comments and assumptions e.g. when you buy something big for the house "oooh spending your money is she?" (to my DH)

i dont confront every singe thing anymore , i pick my battles. doesnt mean im not pissed off that I ahve to do that

and anduin urrrghhhhhh at the 'cool i loves a good bit of bukake porn me wife'

Oh wow ! I think I’ve found my people! Absolutely relieved to finally feel understood.

I’ll explain a bit more this evening. But it’s pretty much the same attitudes being discussed. Trying to win brownie points by betraying the sisterhood and trying to force an expectation of being subservient to men even when my husband isn’t interested!

I've talked about this before, but it's basically a huge psychological payoff.

Many of you already know I was involved with extreme patriarchal christianity. For that set up to function, it's necessary for certain women to keep other women in line. Attwood used the idea in a fairly blunt way with her 'Aunt Lydia', but in my experience it's much less caricature, more subtle.

Obviously, in christian circles, there's the specific mechanisms of holy writ and an invisible, almighty god to keep adherents in line more generally, but in practical terms, every woman will at some point have doubts about her subjugation, at whatever level.

Enforcing women will be the ones who use socialization to keep those women from acting on those doubts, and even possibly punish those women who do act.
It's not consciously done, obviously, or it would be so much easier to break free from, and any woman can function in this capacity given the right balance of reward/fear.

The idea is simply that enforcing women are strongly motivated to keep other women compliant, due to being given high standing by approving males, possibly privileges and certainly open praise, and eventually due to fear of losing that standing and facing ostracism.

It has a vital function in cult settings because, like any oppressed class, the danger for the oppressors is if an oppressed class begins to see it's true position and organize. So enforcer women will serve to short circuit that.

Now, clearly, cultic patriarchal christianity is an extreme example itself, but you really can extrapolate the psychology to many other situations where women are liable to notice that they are being treated badly.

There are 3 modes of behaviour;
Assertive
Aggressive (overt aggression)
Passive aggressive (covert aggression)

Misogynistic women can be aggressive (enthusiastically join in and police other women) or passive aggressive (go along with it for a quiet life, try to deflect negative attention away from themselves, and perhaps hope a responsible adult comes along to take over if things go too far).

The patterns are replicated in extreme conservative religions, and other patriarchal structures such as those that demand FGM. You can even see them being played out in some families that are described as 'led by a strong matriarch'.

If you are assertive, you cannot 'win' by going head to head with someone who is aggressive and determined to cause trouble. You can only encourage them to use assertive behaviours. So your options are to manage the situation if you can, put boundaries and rules in place; or leave the situation.
For some women this means literally walking away from their family, friends and culture, and starting over.

trying to force an expectation of being subservient to men even when my husband isn’t interested!

My DH revels in messing with this shit. That's one of the reasons I stay sane. We haven't bought goods and services because they said the wrong thing to him or me. My favourite was in a BMW showroom, "I don't know why you're talking to me mate, I know fuck all about cars" when the salesman insisted on telling DH about turbo chargers and suspension when I asked the questions. We didn't buy the BMW.

In case anyone from BMW is listening, we did buy another very very nice car. Not yours though.

Dworkin's book "Right Wing Women" helped me understand the women you are talking about. I recommend it.

There is so much sexism which many women support either expressly or by not doing anything about it. Ultimately it benefits alot of women to go along with certain sexist tropes. It’s sad as I would like to see a sisterhood standing up for each other but that’s not what happens. Ultimately some women are benefiting from patriarchy (eg women who have the ambition to marry a rich man often don’t have the ability to earn significant sums for themselves). And others don’t want to lose favour or to be seen as troublemakers or unattractive (and this lose status) by stepping out of line.

It’s the delegated power structure payoff.
I am king, I need people to support and protect me - to do that I give them rewards and dominion over these other people.
Kings supporters - I will support the king, put up with x because I gain y.
It tiers down with each layer gaining some power and benefit in exchange for their support.

Patriarchal society means within each level women are not people. They are a resource. Produce children, and then the children are a resource who can be used to cement other supporters/gain land/prove virility. The protection of women and children was required to avoid the mans standing being impacted in the same way as it would have been if someone damaged or stole his property,

Women who enforce these structures are either unable to process that any agency/benefit they have is only theirs as long as they behave or they have decided the payoff is worth it. Either way, anyone poking holes in their belief system must be shut down to preserve their reality/benefits and the structure supporting it.

Collaborators I suppose, either through choice, no personal experience which forcibly challenged their acceptance of the situation or fear.

This is a great thread.

I’m v fortunate that I definitely don’t live in a community of women who sell out to the patriarchy or enforce misogyny on their sisters. Because I definitely wouldn’t be able to hold my tongue in such circs!
I’m a Christian, but in the Church of Scotland, where we have had women ministers for over 50 years. We have had at least two female Moderators (national head of the church). My own minister is female, a doubly qualified minister and lawyer, and she is also the national coordinator of military chaplains. She’s served in Afghanistan, and with the navy in the Med rescuing drowning migrants at sea. Fabulous role model for young women. She is a brilliant preacher and a grade 8 violinist to boot!
Christ himself was neither sexist nor misogynist. Some sects have been hijacked as male power structures, ever since Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, which was the most macho, military, aggressive expansionist empire the world had seen at the time.
Christ rescued a woman about to be stoned for adultery. He broke Jewish social code to talk to the Samaritan woman at the well, and was wryly amused and non judgmental about her lifestyle, offering her salvation rather than a lecture. He had female disciples such as Mary of Magdala, and including some wealthy ones who helped with food and finance for his mission.
Sorry bit of a tangent there! Back to the thread - I think it’s more young women who sell out to men. My generation were the rad fems of the 70’s. It’s primarily young girls who think that being cool with porn and anal sex, and posting silly pouting selfies on social media, is the way to be acceptable to men, and they boost their own poor self esteem by belittling less attractive girls or bullying the ones who are dangerously independent and won’t invest in their crap worldview.

Babdoc. Don’t you think though that Church of Scotland proper is one of the hmm lightest touch versions of Christianity?

Rather than criticising young women and girls who have grown up in the age of camera phones, social media and ever increasing pornified society we should be working to change that. Society has told them they are only valued for the sexual commodity, them punching down is no different from you doing it to them.

Babdoc! You better now?

Well,I wasn't talking about Christianity en masse in my post, i was using my experiences of an extreme version to illustrate the dynamics of why women would engage in this behaviour against other women. As I said, it's useful to extrapolate the psychological dynamics in every situation where this kind of thing happens.

But tbh, from experience, I would have to say that young women are not more prone to it than older women. Young women may be more susceptible to the manipulation of being special, but ime, older women are just as likely to fall into the enforcement roles.

I agree that enforcement roles are not age specific. I do think that as age increases compliance decreases.

OverMy, in broad terms, yes, but I think that older women who are enforcers are among the least likely to buck the conditioning because they probably have the most to lose once in that position.

I think of one woman of my acquaintance, 10+ children, and entire life of devotion to her family, treated with respect and deference by all around her, and with that 'sweet disposition' of the living saint.

If she ever gave in to her misgivings and walked away, she would face ostracism, probably from a number of her children as well as non family, she would have no solid financial grounding to forge out alone, which, on top of losing a support network and all those psychological payoffs, she would be in a precarious situation.

It's like the difference, to use another extreme example, between a younger female member of the Westboro Baptist sect leaving, getting through school and having her whole life to live, and the matriarch doing it. The matriarch would be in a more difficult starting place once she bucked the control.

I can see why an older enforcing woman would be very reluctant to leave a place of relative privilege and go out into a situation where she is an older woman with no privilege whatsoever.

Hi Horseradish! Transferred from the Covid unit to the respiratory ward for aftercare, and discharged from hospital yesterday teatime. Still exhausted and having to rely on friend for cooking/shopping. Bloody Covid virus is a bastard- I was ill for 17 fucking days, only getting 2 hours sleep a night. It nearly broke me. Needing recovery time now!

Yes, I was thinking about the reduction in compliance as a percentage of all women
Age 20 to age 50
Hard enforcer
Part enforcer
Accepts it
Kicks back

I think the shift would mostly happen in the accepts it and soft enforcer groups moving down to kicks back. Some will move to hard enforcers.