Internalised misogyny examples please

[StandingDeskDisco]

I have seen the term 'internalised misogyny' flung about on some threads like it is a catch-all gotcha or an all-purposed slur. To me it made no sense whatsoever as a genuine observation in the context of the discussion.
I have even seen a man accused of having internalised misogyny - is that even possible? Surely that is just misogyny?

I understand what the words mean, but not what it looks like.

Internalised: when you take on other people's beliefs. e.g. if your parents always said you were pretty, you will be confident in your looks, but if your sister was always 'the pretty one' while you were the clever / sporty / whatever one, you won't have such confidence. So women can absorb misogynistic beliefs from living in a patriarchy.
Misogyny: hatred or fear of women, females, or femininity.

So what does it look like?

Is it the woman who says she just gets on better with men, and has no female friends?
Is it the woman who only has female friends, never male, and thinks men and women can never be real friends?
Is it the woman who never leaves the house without full make-up and hair and nails done?
Is it the woman who hates all signs of femininity in her clothing, wears plain clothes, and if there is a tiny bow on a new bra she will snip it off.
Is it the woman who climbs the career ladder but never quite feels like she is worth it (imposter syndrome) due to being a woman?
Is it the woman who avoids promotion, preferring to stay in her comfortable all-female team, and calls any female managers 'bitchy' and 'bossy'?

Do you have any examples please?

I think "internalised" means you tend to assume the beliefs to be true about yourself, as well as others.

That might not be the actual meaning but how it tends to be used - rightly or wrongly?

Happy to be corrected though.

So you think you're lesser than a man, because you're female, as well as thinking this about other women.

Or internalised homophobia etc.

Maybe WAWAM is an example! (If you watch that show)

Misogyny can include making assumptions about people's beliefs, skills, personality, desires, character etc based on their sex. It doesn't necessarily mean thinking they are "bad".

Expecting to work part time once you have kids even though you may earn more. Applying for a nursing degree even though you’ve got the grades for medicine. Doing family law rather than corporate. Taking on extra unpaid duties at work. Referring to strong women as ball-breakers.

School always calling me because I'm mum even though DH is down as first contact

I don’t think misogyny is hatred or fear of women either. It’s assuming that men are better.

FGM would be a big one. Believing women's bodies in the natural state are flawed or dangerous, and need to be corrected to ensure purity or appropriate behaviour.

The women who perform it, and the women who subject their daughters to it, genuinely believe they are doig the right thing, because they geninely believe these things about women.

I even have some sympathy for them. They are often cut themselves. Allowing yourself to consider this might not be right for your child means facing up to what was done to you.

Internalised misogyny is essentially just having sexist beliefs while being a woman.

That would only be 'internalised' if you believed that the school was correct to do this, because men should not be disturbed at work but women should make themselves available for their children at all times.

good example, thanks

In a more general sense, it's just sexism done by women rather than men.

Plenty of women believe that women's needs should be put aside to support their man. Plenty of women would consider a woman "pushy" or "dominating" when that same behaviour in a man isn't even noticed. Plenty of women judge a woman spending time on work or hobbies rather than childcare when they would not judge a man. Plenty of women think women's sexuality is icky or dirty if not directed to a monogamous partner - see the current Swingers thread!

What if your sexist beliefs are that actually women are better than men, that all men are lazy, led by their dicks, incapable of doing what women do easily, etc. ?
Is that misogyny?

Ah, to clarify, to be (internalised) misogyny it would have to be sexist beliefs towards women.

That’s misandry isn’t it?

Internalised meams they grow up with ideas of women’s place in society without realising there is anything sexist about it.

Like the yummy mummies who think nothing of doing all the domestics (even though they work), whilst their husbands sit on their arse and do nothing because they think that’s the natural order of things.

Like people who automatically think of a man if you say the word doctor or engineer.

Like schools who will always ring and interrupt the mother at work first, rather than the dad.

Like people who think we should ‘be kind’ or ‘shouldn’t make a fuss’ because it’s not ‘natural’ for women to be angry, political or self serving.

etc etc

This isn’t internalised misogyny this is unconscious bias or just general misogyny.

Internalised misogyny would be something like a woman thinking that other women wearing make-up is shallow.

It's a subconscious response to the patriarchy where you absorb sexist beliefs and apply them to other women.

E.g. my mother being annoyed that my brother's girlfriend didn't iron his shirt. Or ...My mother commenting that a family member is a "good girl" because they're doing the caring responsibilities for elderly family members, when they're actually just in relationships with the men who are related to the elderly woman in question.

I could write a huge list based on my mother!

So it is pretty much what I thought it was.

So when a TRA accuses me of having internalised misogyny for some strange reason to do with me being sex realist, that really doesn't make any sense. It is just a non-sequitur.

So you can answer your op then??

Mostly, yes, but I just wanted to check what others thought.

When women refer to themselves as "cis women", thereby relegating themselves to a subset of the category "woman" and allowing some men into that category too

To add to the FGM one:
Thinking that women’s body hair and periods are ‘dirty’

Oh god, is that the one who thinks women recognising that our own choices are affected by our experiences of living as a female person rather than a male one mean we think women don't have our own minds? Yeah, that one just throws words around. Don't look for coherent meaning (even if it's factually or logocally wrong) underneath, it's literally all surface flailing.

Or is it the one who thinks recognising that we are on average less physically strong or as fast as men is having a misgynst view of women? That one I'm never sure if they are naive enough to believe it, or just like to spray shit over threads.

Either way, those ones are talking bollocks.

If you said something like "nature designed women different to men, she designed us to stay at home and have babies and wear pink, and that's what women should be doing and why trans women can't be women" then the TRA might have a point - I'm sure you didn't though. 😂

Similar to when they accuse you of bio essentialism when that’s exactly what gender is.

@FlirtsWithRhinos I couldn't tell you what their user name was - I don't tend to notice user names much. Nor do I follow who says what from thread to thread, I just respond to the posts in a thread.

As far as I could make out, it was something to do with me not accepting feminine men as being women, so I must have some issue with their femininity, and so must an issue with femininity in general.
But that is my best guess at making sense of something that was totally illogical.

For the record, I have no issue with femininity. I don't wear make up or do my nails, but I wear skirts and try to take care of my hair. I really don't care at all what the women I know wear or how they present. Nor for that matter do I care how 'feminine' the men are.

But attempting to make sense of it: would not accepting or liking femininity, in a male or female, be a form of internalised misogyny?

Personally, I lean towards much of social 'femininity' being the method by which women's oppression is enacted and reinforced in society; femininity as a practice is a way of directing and controlling women's presentation and behaviour in ways that benefit the patriarchy or disadvantage women.

So I'm not particularly in favour of much of what is considered 'femininity', and yet I am not suffering from 'internalised misogyny' - my opinions are based in feminist thought.