#internalized Misogyny

[marzipanandminutiae]

A lot of people sure love to pretend it’s feminist to tell women how to dress or present aesthetically

[hermajestyimher]

I recently came across a TikTok from a young woman whose entire profile seems dedicated to advising women on how to mold themselves so that average men will choose them. The premise of her video was that if you are “not like the other girls” (whom she referred to as “h*es”) and instead present yourself as classy and set apart, then the same men who lack sexual discipline and sleep around with the women she was demonizing would choose you over them in the long term. It’s astonishing that in 2024, some of us are still performing purity and chastity not for ourselves, but to be selected by men who are, frankly, undeserving. It’s disheartening to see how deeply ingrained this mindset is in women, where they have no qualms about tearing down other women if it means gaining access to men who aren’t held to even a fraction of the same standards.

Let me be clear: if I’m putting in the work to gain sexual discipline and save my body for the right person, no amount of desperation will ever get me to perform to a group of lustful and promiscuous men for their attention or romance. It goes both ways, as simple as that.

I don’t and have never condoned hookup culture. I believe celibacy is powerful and necessary; your body is a temple best reserved for a man who truly loves, protects, and cares for you. However, this belief doesn’t give me the right to tear down women who choose to engage in promiscuous behavior, nor should it be used as a way to appeal to men who partake in the same behavior, just to be “chosen” by them.

Internalized misogyny is a disease, and I hope that those struggling with it can find freedom and make peace with themselves and their fellow women.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Body Horror and Internalized Misogyny

This post showed up in my "for you" feed, and I commented that 63% of people have internalized misogyny, to which two other people asked how being afraid of getting pregnant was misogynistic, so I thought I would explain.

First, the option that the majority of people voted on was this: Pregnancy "sounds like unreal terrifying body horror". Not just something scary or dangerous, but body horror. So lets talk about that first.

Body horror comes from taking something normal and natural about the body and twisting it. Putting teeth where there should not be teeth. Grafting dozens of arms onto every part of the body. Faces in odd places. Limbs bending the wrong direction. Think Dark Souls et al.

Now, one could try to describe normal bodily processes as horrifying, but I wouldn't call this body horror. Take puberty, and all the crazy things your body goes through during it, or describe exactly how each organ keeps you alive in detail. Or take "Skeletons", by Ray Bradbury. This is a horror story in which a man feels aches in his bones and becomes convinces that his skeleton--all skeletons--are some form of Other, some entity inside people that is trying to get out. He describes seeing his wife's skeleton peering out of her mouth each time she smiles, and seeing the shape of people's bones poking out just below the skin.

The thing about this story is that the skeleton is not actually what is horrifying, but rather the man's phobia of the skeleton. It's one of those stories where the protagonist is clearly not in his right mind. It only veers into body horror once the inhuman doctor that first stoked his fears into a phobia shows up and sucks the skeleton out of the man, leaving a gasping, jelly-like mass with nothing to hold it up.

Body horror inherently comes from something being unnatural, something a body is not supposed to have or be able to do.

If one were to view a racial trait, such as more or less body hair, darker or lighter skin, or the presence or absence of epicanthic folds as horrifying, we would call that person racist. If they viewed their own racial traits as horrifying, we wold call that internalized racism.

So now we can circle back to pregnancy. True, pregnancy can be dangerous and scary, and one's body goes through some pretty crazy changes during and after it, but it's also something that female bodies have evolved to be able to do. The potential to become pregnant--the specific gametes and organs and hormones--is literally what makes a body female, at least for placental mammals like humans. Pregnancy is a normal, natural, uniquely and definitively female biological process.

You don't have to want to get pregnant, and it's totally fine to be scared about being pregnant. But to treat it as something unnatural, or as the original poll said, as "unreal terrifying body horror" is to see the capabilities of the female body as somehow Other and alien and twisted. That is misogyny. When women view our own bodies this way, it's internalized misogyny.

[blushedfemmes]

ok but can we talk about how the current wave of resentment towards “pillow princesses” has become like. straight up femmephobia and people being weirdly shitty towards femmes online / calling us spoiled and damn near evil because butches wanna take care of us and how dare we

yes we can and we can also talk about how a lot of people use femmes as a receptacle for their unexamined internalized misogyny. i have experienced this directly from a masc queer partner in the past, and on a casual/subtle basis my entire life, both from cishet women and from fellow queer people. and i will go ahead and say this is a femme-specific problem (at least in the context of these posts) because people will often use the way we present and our mannerisms and what we might prefer in bed as an excuse to belittle us, because the urge to belittle women (or that which we perceive to be woman-shaped, consciously or not) is so prevalent. in other queer people it will come out as ‘well i just think they’re being selfish in bed, i think they’re being spoiled/entitled, i think they look childish and stupid dressed that way, i think they’re scared of looking queer, i think they’re dressing for the male gaze, i think they’re acting like a stereotype, (and especially if it’s a femme transfem) i think they’re being too binary-gender conforming and therefore oppressive/predictable/bad, etc etc’ and all this plus more for femmes of color whose femme expression doesn’t ‘make sense’ to any given white person or immediately read to a white person as queer or lesbian

and it really is about gut reactions and never about the truth. femmes often exercise a great deal of care in our interactions with butches or with anyone, and we often derive immense satisfaction in caring for our partners. of course femmes can be shitty. femmes can be selfish. we are an enormous and complex group of people and, furthermore, everyone is capable of causing harm, i know i have. but the times when i have personally experienced this brand of femmephobia it is almost always because of assumptions that people made because they already had a gut reaction to me and how i dress and what i like, and they’re making up reasons to justify it.

there is no end to the excuses people will make in their minds to justify treating femmes badly, because they saw a woman-shape and decided to use us as a dumping ground for internalized misogyny. and yes it is a particularly stinging betrayal, because it happens the most in our own queer communities, where we long to be accepted.

[fadedelegance]

It’s not women’s responsibility to coddle men. This isn’t 1950 for fuck’s sake.

I am ALWAYS tired when I come home from work, as well, but you know what? I don’t expect anyone else to have dinner ready for me. I scrounge around in the kitchen, or I pick up a frozen dinner and heat it up when I get home. The point is, I take care of my damned self BECAUSE I AM AN ADULT.

Both men AND women work long hours.

I know you’re tired, but fix your own goddamned dinner. You think your partner isn’t also tired? Why is it one party’s—usually the woman’s—responsibility to make dinner for the other when they come home from work after a long day? Why can’t they just relax after they make own individual dinner? What if your partner is still at work when you get home? Do you just sit around and pout until they come home and whine about them making dinner?

Be an adult and take care of your damned self. Or if you come home at similar times, share the responsibility. Cooking together could even be a source of bonding.

I can NOT with how society is regressing.

BTW, this is also an indictment of capitalism. People shouldn’t have to work that much so that they are coming home with barely even any energy to do things like make their own meals, only to barely stay afloat financially. I believe in the 6-hour work day, living wages and salaries, and a 4-day work week.

Archaic gender roles and capitalism are both putting strain on relationships—both romantic and familial. Hardly anyone has work-life balance anymore because all most people fucking do is work.

But this is about the 12th time this week I’ve thought “I hate men. I don’t have time for them and their sexist bullshit, nor do I have time for women who have internalized that sexist bullshit.”

God damn it, I’m tired.

[punkeropercyjackson]

If anybody in the Drew vs Piper ordeal had internalized misogyny,sorry,it was Drew,not Piper.Drew was no girls girl-She victim blamed her older sister for getting groomed by an older man,shamed Piper for her female masculinity before Piper even said anything to her and canonically bullied Sadie-a younger black girl who was already targeted by other kids for her easy to spot biracial features-at their school.Meanwhile Piper only hated feminine girls because basic white girls traumatized her out of femininity so it was moreso a hatred for heteropatriarchal femininity than anything else and she never treated Hazel,a younger black girl with adultification and isolation trauma,badly for her black femininity and instead befriended her easily and thinks she's cool asf.I don't doubt Drew faced attempts at masculinization as a woc herself but she's neither black like Sadie and Hazel nor brown like Piper so realistically Piper got it worse than her and girls don't get bullied,much less oppressed,for being feminine unless there's intersection there such as queerness,which Piper canonically has and which Drew does not.I love Drew to bits and actually headcanon her hyperfemininity as being due to autism like mine is but tbh i'm really tired of people acting like her and Piper were 'equally bad' when Piper was never a bully and just tried to mind her own bussiness-Drew's character is more interesting with her antagonism and she deserved a redemption arc but Piper is in no way obliged to like femininity for herself.Respect it in other women yes,to take it on for herself?Nah,butch Piper should've been it and Piper dosen't exist for normie girls who wanna be freaks' comfort(not Drew.She IS a freak but in denial and that's internalized misogyny at play)

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

And Honestly...

Women who bend over backwards to defend men or call out "misandry" that men are supposedly oppressed by, especially by rallying against lesbians and feminists are so pathetic and stupid in my eyes, and always inspire in me a combination of amusement and pity. Like what do you mean you don't hate them? What do you mean you don't live in fear? What do you mean you fucking feel bad for them that they decided we were a lesser group worthy of degradation and humiliation and would rather emotionally repress themselves and each other than be seen as adjacent to us in any capacity? Are you naive or what? Don't tell me you're caping for your oppressors, as if the shit underneath their boot really tastes that good that you'd rather lick it then stand in solidarity with the smart women who actually call out misogyny and don't coddle men's bruised baby egos even when it doesn't spare men's feelings. The men you're defending don't give a shit about you or any of us and would sooner leave you to rot then treat you as the human being that you deserve to be treated as, so I don't know what benefits you expected to receive from throwing your own under the bus and worshipping men like they're kings. A pat on the back, maybe? Lol.. What a truly depressing and bleak existence you lead. Could never be me. 🤣 Trust me, men couldn't care less about your problems, they certainly don't need you on your hands and knees trying to fix theirs even if they convinced you that they do(because men would rather blame women for their problems then admit they have them and get to work fixing them, everything is a woman's fault and here you are contributing to that shit). Like seriously. Stop the cap.

It reminds me of this Tumblr post:

Like sorry to be harsh but it's true. You're not and will never be "one of the good ones" so if you're one of those women who defends men from those mean misandrist dykes then I suggest you wake the fuck up before you find out the hard way how little these men think of you. While you're kissing their assholes until you're brown in the nose, this is what they're saying about you. Pathetic. Get a fucking grip, and some self-respect too while you're at it, sis. It's honestly pretty appalling.

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

with Kamala Harris being the democratic nominee, how will things be different compared to in 2016 with Hillary Clinton?

I hope this isn't just me being optimistic but here's a few things that have changed.

white women overwhelmingly voted for Trump because Hillary had had the smear campaign of the "emails" that trump dumped at her.

also Hilary was deemed "unlikeable" by the masses. (reminder Black women voted for her and generally always vote democrat) but lots of the stuff that hilary is dislked for is decades in the making. I was just a kid in the 90's but I remember seeing segments and thinkpieces about how everyone liked Bill Clinton and hated Hilary because she didn't "know her place" as a wife and a mother she was too wrapped up in the politics.

It's been nearly 8 years since Trump won in nov 2016 and we've seen the damage that can happen from a trump presidency. we've got a stacked conservative supreme court that's revoked Roe v Wade and trump actually dismantled a LOT of the stuff that Obama had put in place for a pandemic which is partly why so many died of covid in the first place.

I've had people tell me to my face that Trump "isn't racist" back in 2016. Kamala is half biracial and none of her is white.

Followers please chime in and help me out here! I've been exposed to covid and had a constant headache for 3 days now so I'd really appreciate the help!

mod ali

[marzipanandminutiae]

To the woman I just overheard her telling her little daughter that she couldn’t come into the museum where I work, because “that’s for boys!”

A. How does it feel to be living in 1954

B. I hope your kid grows up to be a New York Times best-selling historian/author

C. W h a t

[the-beacons-of-minas-tirith]

tswift every time she releases yet another version of her album:

[pagesinmylife]

I think people really need to start grappling with the fact that a ton of women have a lot of internalized misogyny. I remember in 2016 watching so many women say Clinton couldn’t be President because she’d start WWIII over a hot flash and this hasn’t changed. The problem isn’t that women didn’t turn out to vote- the problem is women are also perpetrators of sexism

[demiaroacejadeharley]

Brandon Rogers slutshaming a fictional minor (Octavia) for "cockblocking" a MLM ship is so disgusting. I've always known that Vivziepop (and maybe Brandon, too) was a Fujoshi as usually people and media that sexualizes and fetishizes Queer men and MLM relationships see women as some sort of threat to their ships, and as a result they will villianize and demonize those women.

Helluva Boss perfectly sets that up with Viv writing Stella to be some sort of evil bitch, when in actuality she's a woman whose justifiably angry at her husband for cheating on her. On top of that, we have Octavia, who just wants her father to pay attention to her, just for her to be reduced down as just another female character in the way of a MLM ship to happen.

I would like to point out that I've been in a similar situation as both Octavia and Stella. I've experienced infidelity twice in my life by my first two exes. My first ex tried to leave me for another girl who was already in another relationship (and it turned out he only dated me out of pity and had no feelings for me to begin with), and my second ex cheated on me with his previous ex and lied about the breakup between him and his ex. I'm also a child of divorce, and I have a father who would rather be with his girlfriend than seeing both my brother and I. So, as someone who experienced betrayal by both a parent and a partner, I find myself relating to Octavia and Stella and sympathizing with both of them.

People like Vivziepop and Brandon Rogers are usually extremely misogynistic and treat women poorly by reducing them down to being a bitch (Stella, Loona, Verosika, Vaggie, and maybe Lilith), be only known as the significant other of another character (Millie and Vaggie), or reduced down to just be another obstacle for a MLM ship to happen (Octavia and Stella). And it's really sad that Vivziepop, a woman, poorly handles her female characters, and there shouldn't be an excuse for it, too.

I honestly believe that Vivziepop really hates herself and must be dealing with some internalized misogyny. Women who have internalized misogyny view themselves as "not like other girls" and view other women with traits they don't like in a villiainzing lens. Which is why hyper femme characters like Verosika and Stella are characterized as being bitchy. While tomboy characters like Millie are the complete opposite of that and are shown to treat others kindly.

I wouldn't be surprised that when the second season of Hazbin Hotel comes out, Viv would probably plan on having Lucifer get with a male character, with Lilith (or Charlie) coming in serving like some sort of interference from that ship from happening. Because knowing her, if she wrote Octavia and Stella to be some sort of force to prevent Stolitz from happening, then she'll do the same thing with Charlie and Lilith if Lucifer gets with another male character.

[deadclawdd]

trans wolverine again , shocking to nobody

this one is a bit of an angry letter to lost girlhood so buckle up for emotions

Logan’s femininity was never gentle nor quiet, he was not your average little boy, not an average little girl either. he grew up in victorian style dresses with sad eyes and drooping shoulders, angry at the world and himself for not appreciating the beauty of womanhood his mother had gifted him. His femininity had claw marks, deep and violent, he clung to something his body rejected and held it over his head like a suffocating sheet of plastic. just trying to get one more day- one more before he let go.

and he did, eventually. he gave in to the longing in his heart whenever he passed men’s wear on the run, deciding to live as a boy for ‘connivence’ sake since nobody would think to look for him if he were masquerading as something not himself.

only it was himself, his true self, he enlisted in any war possible who’s generals were morally grey enough to accept someone so small looking. carving his own footholds into the stone wall of masculinity and hauling his way up until shrunken, malnutrition worn arms became strong. muscular.

years passed, so many years that a name for his kind of person was invented (transsexual), and then reinvented (transgender). it was accepted and rejected, ridicule and pride, even so throughout it all he kept on going.

now though, in a time where his shoulders were no longer drawn so tight, and his posture free of fear, he found himself.. despaired for the little girl in those frilly dresses and her sad eyes. he missed her, in a way. he missed holding her close at night whispering words of comfort to her scared, not quite right body, he missed the joy in his mothers face whenever she’d relent and wear something not fitting of her frame. dresses.. heeled shoes.

and.. he was angry for her, fought furiously for the rights and privileges of his daughter laura in her honour.

some days? he thanked her for being so brave.

for bearing the burden of ‘not quite yet’ until his time came.

[burningtheroots]

We need to re-build our class consciousness and solidarity as women, globally. Creating division among the oppressed has always been the oppressors‘ primary strategy to assert their dominance and preserve their authority — we need to change that.

[hussyknee]

The Career-driven Emancipated Woman Can Barely Boil Water trope is extremely sexist and white feminist. I've been waiting thirty years for feminism to move past this classist girlboss bullshit and I'm clean out of patience. Even aside from the gross devaluing of traditional female labour, grown-ass adults should be able to feed themselves and their families regardless of gender. If you're abled and have had the resources to learn basic life skills but you've elected not to because you think you can always pay people to take care of your ass, you're a privileged nitwit who's trying to weaponize incompetence.

[konzilijum]

sneak peak into...

FIRST ISSUE OF KONZILIJUM! :)

Our independent (maga)zine, inspired by punk fanzines from 80s/90s, striving to spread education for *free* (you will be allowed to print it and share it yourself if you want, too).

This month's issue will contain a variety of articles (analysis of "The silence of the lambs", album of the month "Smak" (1975), feminist discussion of internalised misogyny, "Glass menagerie" short essay, playlist of the month, etc.!)