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?

There are literally hundreds of examples in posts on here over the years

@OtterlyAstounding
I can kind of see that, e.g. if a woman feels inadequate or ugly or socially unacceptable without expensive treatments, nails, hair products, etc. etc. It certainly advantages the capitalist system. But how does it advantage men if women feel compelled to wear make-up? Apart from of course the main beneficiaries of capitalism being the men who run the system.

I guess it gives men an easy thing to criticise - he can call a woman ugly if she has no make-up and the insult will often land, she will feel hurt and ugly.

I don't agree that a simple preference for skirts is being a victim of oppression.

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

Only if you are sexist enough to believe expressing "femininity" is the essential and fundamental quality of womanhood, the reason a social group of people called "women" even exists, so much so that a man who has this quality is truthfully a woman 😂

The Genderist in question undoubably believes (claims to believe) this is indeed what a woman is. But that just makes them a sexist twunt.

It is, of course, important to try to make sense of opposing arguments. But it is also important to have enough confidence in ones own intelliegence (and indeee ones own experience of ones own life) to recognise when there is no underlying sense, no coherent world view being expressed. When it's literally just spraying any old bollocks around trying to score points or twist something said into something that can be misrepresented as a reason to reject the whole argument.

Because honestly, when you look properly at any Genderist argument, they got nothing. There is lliterally no more to any of this than sexism, emotional blackmail and accusations of "transphobia" to avoid having to make a clear case for why a women's sex doesn't matter as much as men's sense of self.

A memory from long, long ago, & perhaps relevant to other debates…

I am bisexual & was aware of it fairly early. Being RC & celibate though it was all academic (until it wasn’t).

In a cuddle with a woman I had a massive crush on (same background as me) she said “I suppose with a woman it wouldn’t really count”.

Bit of a turn-off. I thought it would count, & I very much wanted it to.

That seems like internalised misogyny to me.

Just had a lightbulb moment - thinking aloud and answering my own question.

If your only definition of woman is "feminine person, male or female", then being anti-femininity must be the same as being anti-woman and therefore misogynistic.
But by saying I had 'internalised' it, they assumed I was a feminine person! Else what could that internalisation mean?
And by that definition a non-feminine female is not a woman !

It is hard to make sense of nonsense. But I do think it is worthwhile trying to understand what goes on in the heads of these people. (Giving them the courtesy of assuming they are sincere in what they say).
In the same way I like to understand what goes on in the head of anyone who is vastly different to me in their thinking.

cross posted - we reached the same conclusion

I suppose if you were to think less of women for being concerned with their appearance and other frivolous things rather than recognising they are the product of sexism within the society in which they and we live, that would be misogynistic.

You would be taking on the Patriachal idea that "women are silly fluffy things who only care about pink and frills and makeup" rather than the Feminst recognition that women are complete human beings with as much depth, complexity, variety and potential as men, who differ to men in the realm of frills and makeup not because they are innately frivolous but because they have been formed just as men are by their social context and expectations placed upon them, and within that are reacting in rational ways.

Make-up makes women feel insecure about themselves; they're making a choice or a statement if they choose not to wear make-up in certain situations – they're being brave. The implication is that a woman's natural face is not good enough on its own, in situations where a man's is. Not only that, but the belief that women need to be ornamental, and men don’t. There's also the added expense of make-up, which is often an expectation rather than a true choice, and the mental white noise of living in a society where just wearing your natural face can be controversial.

Of course, then it can be wielded against women – for wearing too much make-up, for wearing it poorly, or for ‘tricking’ men by wearing it.

Capitalism confounds it slightly, because more and more, skin care etc is being marketed towards men. But ultimately, in our modern society, make-up being feminine-coded is used as a way to control and police women, and create self-consciousness and insecurity amongst the majority.

Skirts? Well, they’re not innately misogynistic, but they do restrict movement, and discourage activity in girls. They make upskirting by creeps possible, they’re fetishised as uniform items, they blow up in the wind, they are rolled by school girls to self-sexualise, they make physical activity more difficult (as mentioned) – but there are times when a light, breezy skirt is more comfortable for most people than shorts or trousers.

So as a socially pressured sign of femininity that’s pushed on girls, skirts are arguably a tool of misogyny, even though as a free choice they can be practical for men and women.

Anyway, my point was more just that being critical of current social aspects of 'femininity' isn't necessarily 'internalised misogyny'. There can be good reasons to be critical of 'femininity' as constructed and expressed in a patriarchal society.

Yes. Dismissing women as frivolous and silly because they adhere to socialised norms that are deeply ingrained into society would be misogynistic.

But believing that many indicators of femininity are actually (some of) the methods by which women are oppressed isn't misogynistic, imo. I think it should be possible to criticise socially constructed expressions of femininity and explore what they're rooted in, and what impact they have, without being accused of suffering from internalised misogyny by 'choice feminists'.

Skirts? Well, they’re not innately misogynistic, but they do restrict movement, and discourage activity in girls. They make upskirting by creeps possible, they’re fetishised as uniform items, they blow up in the wind, they are rolled by school girls to self-sexualise

I see.
My skirts are shin-length and worn with leggings in winter or anti-chafing shorts in summer. The elasticated waists means that they give me more movement (and ability to eat more 😁) than tight jeans would. As a middle-aged women I am not doing cartwheels.
But I take your wider point about skirts.

I think anything women wear would be fetished and sexualised, to be honest. (And plenty of cultures have men wearing dresses or women wearing divided legs)

As an aside, I have always found it funny that the sex with a bit that dangles in the middle has the trousers and the sex with the clear crotch zone has the skirts - seems to make far more sense the other way round 😂

My mum is a great one for it. Whenever a man has done something wrong, say have an affair, well what is wrong with his wife putting up with it stupid cow.
If a man abuses his child why did the mother allow it?

I see a lot of internalised misogyny on the endless MIL threads on MN, where the implication of many of the grumbles is that women are great just as long as they don't get old, at which point they had better stop having either needs or boundaries because what are they even for? I've seen endless posts on here that wouldn't be out of place in an incel chatroom.

The logic never follows! It's a Möbius strip. There's always a hidden twist in there that relies on the assumption that women are female.

You straighten that out and you see how bizarre it is.

Internalised misogyny examples I can think of:

• woman is ugly/not taking care of herself/frumpy if she doesn’t wear make-up / femininen and or tight clothes and spend a lot of time on hair
• woman who doesn’t have children must be selfis / cold / not a woman
• If woman doesn’t have sex she’s prude / cold
• Women own good looks and performing to the male gaze
• Single women are bitter / must have something wrong with them
• pp who mentioned body hair is right, no idea why women’s body hair is seen as wrong and gross

Those tend to be the main one’s…. Mostly how women must look certain way (weight must also be low is another one) followed by usefullness to men (date them, have sex with them - be kinky, marry them and take their last name, have kids). These are must or you’re not a ’good woman’ and ’worthy’.

No, that’s misandry.
So internalised misogyny is the holding and performing of the belief that women are inferior to men when it is done by women.

Defence of biological essentialism.

Defending misogynists and rapists because they don't like trans people.

insisting there is a certain way women must look and if they deviate from it they're men.

Allying with violent men who promise them protection.

Accepting male violence as innate and unchangeable, and attacking trans people alongside those men.

Hiring a domestic abuser above the protests of abused women.

Attacking or accepting the abuse of minority women.

Thinking that conforming to what men demand of our appearance will prevent sexual assault.

Accusing cis female athletes of being men and abusing them alongside men. Refusing to apologise when they are ruled eligible to compete in women's sport - something which requires intimate examination and extensive testing.

Claiming that public toilets are safe spaces and accepting the argument that cis men are just too noble to go in and attack us there.

Ignoring consequential activism in favour of spending all day obsessing about trans people - the only space where we don't get Not All Men'd when discussing sexual assault, because it's accepted that a) men are innately violent so can't be blamed for that, and b) trans women are more of a danger than cis men, despite the very high number of trans women who've been raped and beaten up by cis men. And despite there being no record of an increase in SA by trans women in toilets, in countries with self-ID.

Calling women men as an insult to their looks, intelligence or perceived aggression....

My most mumsnet example is women apportioning the whole chilcare bill to their salay, rather than seeing it as a split cost shared between both salaries.

A bit like the skirt example, I hate that pre school boys shoes are generally more set up for running, jumping and playing than the ballet pumps or strappy sandels seen on pre school girls sometimes.

Quite common, Im afraid.

Back in the Bronze Age, my Mum (who had never passed the driving test) was happy to pay for each of my 3 brothers to have driving lessons.

But not me “because you should always be able to get a man to drive you”.

I wish I was kidding.

Brilliant parody but maybe a tad too far fetched.

Thinking that not conforming to social stereotypes of womanhood means you are not a woman.

(Edit to correct typo)

I noticed internalised misogyny within myself and I had to check it. When I went to Morocco I found I didn’t really go in the shops that were run by women.
I would just go to the man next door.
I realised it’s because I thought I wouldn’t be able to speech them down and bargain a good deal like I could with the men.

the only one I agree with here is the ball-breaker one. I would say thinking applying for a nursing degree is somehow lesser than applying to medicine or doing family law is lesser than doing corporate law is itself internalised sexism. Nursing and family law are seen as professional areas with more women so seeing them as not as good as medicine or corporate law is sexist to a certain extent. Expecting to work part time once you have kids without thinking through the numbers/the needs/your emotions may be internalised misogyny but doing it when you have considered everything may just be making a choice that isn't based on capitalism.

In my own life my internalised sexism meant I didn't even consider giving my children my surname even though I didn't change my name on marriage. both dh and I think we would do it differently now but at the time it just didn't occur to me.

Plenty of women think women's sexuality is icky or dirty if not directed to a monogamous partner - see the current Swingers thread!

This can also work the other way. There's a thread going in AIBU where the OP isn't ready to sleep with her new man a month into the relationship - and anyone agreeing she should listen to her feelings is being called a pearl-clutcher, and won't anyone think of the poor man being made to wait!

It is eye opening.

Women, like men, reaching first for a female example when it comes to negative qualities or compiling derogatory lists. Most irritating tv presenter, most incompetent Cabinet minister, most annoying actor - women are often just as good as the men at piling on a woman.

I contribute to a couple of political discussion forums and this phenomenon is really noticeable. The media both orchestrate and reinforce it, so whether I like it or not, I often find I'm primed with all the negative evidence about female politicians whereas male politicians tend to be treated as decent, reasonable and tolerably competent by default, no one searches for their weaknesses or less likeable qualities until there's a reason to do so.

Once I realised how over-informed I was about women's weaknesses and how easy it would be to join in the criticism I made a decision that I would actively avoid criticising female politicians. Very occasionally I criticise a female minister's policy or the specifics of the way she's presented it but never the woman, no matter how tempted I am. There's always a chorus of critical voices, so there's yet to be an occasion when a woman escapes criticism because I kept schtum about how I feel.

I might be guilty of internalised misogyny, but I do at least make sure I never voice it. It's been a useful way of making myself aware of this bias in political discourse.