#the internalized misogyny

[girlblocker]

a contender for dumbest post I’ve seen on here… literally ‘let men hate women’

[marzipanandminutiae]

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

[graysonnightwing]

i need you guys to fall in love with female characters the same way you do male characters i need you guys to fall in love with female characters the same way you do male characters i need you guys to fall in love with female characters the same way you do male characters i need you guys to fall in love with female characters the same way you do male characters i need you guys to fall in love with female characters the same way you do male characters i need you guys to fall in love with female characters the same way you do male characters

[offkilterkeys]

The world isn’t ready for my alpha kid readings.

[mahoutoons]

honestly i wish the only way for magical girls to get respect wasn't for them to be as close to shonen as possible.

"unlike other magical girls, precure has hand to hand combat! its dbz for girls!"

"i know princess tutu's name is stupid but its actually not girly at all!"

"sailor moon isn't ACTUALLY for little girls because [insert scene of characters suffering or creepy stuff from the manga here]"

"madoka is better than other magical girls because its DARK"

like do magical girls really needs to be dbz but girly to be worthy of respect? can't they just be... magical girl shows? a show can be unapologetically girly and aimed at girls and still be worth checking out. yes, princess tutu is girly. yes, sailor moon is girly. yes, precure is girly. yes, madoka, despite being a seinen and darker, ultimately upholds the messages of the genre. and they're all awesome and deserve respect on their own merits, not as a comparison to popular shonen shows.

[breadandblankets]

duke and cass' spars from the outside must look soooo weird, no one has landed a single hit for hours it looks staged, they might as well be in the matrix

cass is reading every minute twitch and duke is literally seeing the future, no one is winning, it is the worlds hardest workout, it is weird as fuck

[nappingpaperclip]

y’all we r not beating exorsexism and misogyny by calling every transmasc that pisses u off a ‘theyfab.’ Idc if they are annoying or have dumbass opinions, literally using someone’s agab as an insult is wrong and treating transmascs as annoying little afabs is deeply misogynistic and transphobic. What happened to just calling people fucking idiots

[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.

[ciderjacks]

Someone made a really well written post on chilchuck and misogyny, but its not able to be rbed so im just sharing my analysis of it here. Bc i love this topic. I love it so much.

[saint-ambrosef]

everyone wants to make fun of "im not like other girls" and "im only friends with boys" kind of girls and accuse them of being pick-mes, but nobody is ready for the conversation about how that kind of attitude often originates in girls who have been ostracized, ridiculed, and traumatized by other women in their lives due to toxic feminine culture.

[glorious-spoon]

i think that if you find yourself penning a post arguing that women are intrinsically too sentimental/hysterical/emotional/intellectually shallow/sexually frigid/otherwise deficient to have valid opinions about a fictional male character (excepting, of course, those women who agree entirely with your opinions), you should perhaps stop and ask yourself 'am i committing a misogyny in the name of winning a stupid ship war on tumblr dot com?'

and then you should shut the fuck up.

[ratmans-notebooks]

everyone listen to me right now. trans men & transmascs are targets of misogyny. crazy idea i know but when youre seen as a woman and/or shoved into the woman category people will be misogynistic to you. it is fuckign crazy the amount of posts ive been seeing syaing stuff like "trans men think theyre exempt from being mras cause the dr said they were a girl once" or "having a pussy doesnt mean you cant be sexist" and its like. YEAH OBVIOUSLY having a pussy doesnt mean you cant be sexist but jesus christ the presumption that trans men are unaffected by their asab or that theyve never ever experienced anything like misogyny is wilddd!! not to mention why are we still referring to transmascs by their (assumed) genitals. like its obviously vile to reduce transfems & trans women to their genitals but the same people who realize this seem to have no problem doing it to transmascs

[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.

[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

[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.

[copperbadge]

The comment was exactly as unhinged as you'd expect from that fake username.

[ID: a screengrab of an AO3 comment notification for my fanfic "A Partial Dictionary of the 21st Century by Captain Steve Rogers, US Army". All that is visible is the notification header, which shows that the commenter chose "ThisWhyIHatePepperFangirls" as their fake handle.]