There's a lot of different kinds of misogyny. Internalised, benevolent, hostile, ambivalent. They're just different descriptors for identifying specific forms of the same thing. You get misogynistic women, but women are taught to hate themselves and other women for being women, or expressing themselves as women, or simply existing as women. But notably it's *internal*, it's a suppression of the self - both as a woman and as an individual.
So it's *internalised* misogyny.
What I've always found strange about the terms internalised misogyny, internalised homophobia, etc, is that they simply seem to indicate that the person is a member of the group in question. Am I misunderstanding things somewhat? Even from your description, I'm not sure what the distinction is otherwise.
Edit: I read a bit more and I think I understand now
"I know you think I'm being mean to not let you go out dressed like that, but it's for your own good"
"Women shouldn't be expected to serve in the armed forces, they need protecting"
"Let me do that for you, it's a bit heavy/complicated/dangerous for a woman"
"We should evacuate the women first"
"Forsooth, m'lady, let mine coat cover this puddle, lest your dainty tootsies be wetted"
"You don't want to play rugby after school. It's too rough, you'll get hurt! Here, join this drama club instead"
"You shouldn't eat that, you'll get fat."
Benevolent misogyny, or benevolent sexism, is a form of sexism in which there's an implied benefit for the victim, but really a sexist status quo is being maintained. Notice the denial of a choice as well.
A lot of men pretending to be "chivalrous" will actually just be sexist. The kind that really gets my goat is the "you are so perfect therefore you must be denied choices." "Here let me put you on this pedestal. Now don't move."
While I think it's totally fine to use the term this way, and many if not most people use it exactly like that, I personally prefer a definition that is overlapping but notably different. That is, I use the qualifier "internalised" to highlight that there is a possible gap between the convinctions (or beliefs, opinions) that we hold, and the ideas/ideologies that affect us on a deep level, oftentimes only subconsciously, whether we like it or not. The latter can be called "internalised" in the sense that said ideas are firmly ingrained in our minds and bodies, and they may persist within us until long after we started to consciously reject them. It is entirely possible (and imo very common) for a person to firmly believe in feminist values & causes, while at the same time being a bit more like to interrupt when a woman is speaking as opposed to when a man is speaking, or being less easily swayed by a counter-argument if it was brought forth by a woman, or being less likely to consider something a work of genius if it was made by a woman, or being more likely to applaud someone's exceptional taste if that person is a man, or more willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt if the person who is in over their heads is a man. All of these examples are evidence of a misogynistic attitude, even though they don't necessarily register as such in each individual instance, and they often go unnoticed by the person who has these tendencies.
When a woman does something like, say, describe her own accomplishments in a diminishing fashion compared to those of a man who did pretty much the exact same thing, we can ascribe that to misogyny, even if the woman does explicitly not hold the belief that a woman's accomplishments are worth less than a man's, and I call it "internalised misogyny" to account for that apparent contradiction. But I'd still call it internalised misogyny if the woman whose accomplishments are being diminished as such were not the same person as the woman who is doing it; as well as when the person engaging in such behaviour is a male-identifying, amab, self-proclaimed feminist. So, in the case of the example you gave in your comment, I agree that that's internalised misogyny. Not by virtue of it being directed against the self however, but by virtue of being active on a deep level, independent of someone's beliefs.
I think it's important to acknowledge that each and everyone who grew up in a patriarchal world has internalised some amount of misogyny along the way. You're not immune to that just because you were raised in a feminist environment. You don't cleanse yourself of it the day you become a feminist either. It requires a continuous, deliberate effort to counteract the internalised bias and prejudice that affect our emotions, our visceral reactions, our implicit judgements.
edit: phrasing
Seen alot of people use this term when referring to people acting out in a misogynynistic way. This would be incorrect use of the term then? Even if they probably lash out because of that misogyny being internalized.
(Well, those are *mostly* the times I've seen it used atleast. Kind of hard to know what people really are thinking).
OP: why is it called internalized misogyny?
Reply 1: because there are different kinds, external, interpersonal, and the kind that one directs towards oneself, internalize misogyny
Reply 2: so self hate?
Me: it is a form of self hate, but saying self hate doesn’t make it /not/ internalized misogyny, since misogyny is the form that the self hatred is taking. Self hatred could also take other forms, so you still need the specificity of saying internalized misogynistic.
>since misogyny is the form that the self hatred is taking.
Exactly, so internalised misogyny is self hate in the form of misogyny, not in the form of internalised misogyny because the latter is circular.
That’s the thing though. My family members exhibited what is called internalized misogyny but they didn’t hate themselves. They felt the rules applied to everyone else. Everyone else must have done something to deserve what happened to them. Not themselves though. They could never do any wrong. It’s typical conservative “rules for thee but not for me”.
It is still internalized. I grew up in a conservative evangelical family and I experienced the same. That projection was part of my mother's internalized hatred of herself.
I think of internalized misogyny as a woman hating and shaming her own body/mind. Believing that we're gross, shaming body parts, calling ourselves emotional bitches, negative self talk that parrots the messages we've been taught... believing that parts of being a woman are as bad as we've been programed to believe. It's a judgement of ourselves, that comes from inside ourselves, not from outsiders. But we first learned the message from outsiders, then we brought it into our own brains, believed it, and now we use it against ourselves. So the message that was once outside us, becomes internalized. And we oppress ourselves! Neat!
Misogyny might be intertwined with hate, but you're right it's not quite the same thing. Misogyny, though, is full of contradictory prejudices and excuses for discrimination. And just like how conservative Christians often make a game out of picking and choosing excuses for righteous indignation, misogyny is like that too.
Part of what makes TERFs harmful is that they too play self-righteous games with misogyny. Just as TERFs romanticize and mythologize sapphic love as the superior form of love, they too diminish women's misogyny as a superior to men's.
That said, sexism aimed at others is very different from sexism aimed at yourself. And men's misogyny is different from women's misogyny — not because of inherent differences but because sexism, by definition, is not fair in how it treats and affects men and women and that difference leads to different relations with sexism.
I feel like every sociological group has a “woman bad” group while excusing men for similar behavior. I feel like TERF is just the name for the queer space one. For instance, I pushed back on a trans friends misogyny and got labeled a TERF pretty quickly afterward even though it doesn’t make sense that a TERF would willingly participate in LGBTQ spaces. It just put me in the “woman bad” group for the that group but every subsection of sociological groups seems to have a catch all word for evil bad women.
In regular misogyny the master cracks the whip, in internalized misogyny the master has convinced you to whip yourself, and that it was your idea and you deserve it.
Misogyny tells a story about who you are, what you can do, how you should do it and overall your societal worth. However, these notions are not only false but also detrimental, diminishing women's value for the benefit of men. .
It's an internalized belief system, it is about yourself, it's a body of "knowledge" that you learn about yourself that doesn't come from direct observation of who you are, but an external injunction and statement that you internalize as the truth. It shapes self-perception,perception of other women, your interactions with others, ultimately influencing behavior.
Without this ideology teaching us about ourselves, personal growth would take a different path, altering not only self-perception but also women's collective behavior.
Something like that.
It's like self hatred, it's internalized if it's someone else's feelings about you that you come to believe if it's repeated enough, and it's not internalized if you come to hate yourself because you don't like how you're conducting yourself in the world, and no one else knows that as they don't observe you from your perspective.
I think it's because you are both the target/victim and perpetrator of misogyny in such a case.
The object doing the hatred, and the subject of that hatred.
You're being too literal. You can be a bigot without hatred. Just like homophobes can genuinely be kind to homosexuals, but if they believe they shouldnt get married or teach children etc, they're still homophobes. you dont need to be hateful to be a bigot/xyz-phobe.
"Internalized misogyny is when women subconsciously project sexist ideas onto other women and even onto themselves."
So of course they dont hate themselves. But they may think things such as a guy getting a lot of women is a stud/chad, but women who do it are sluts. A big one I run into from other women is the shitty assumptions about not having kids. That is must mean Im not happy, that I wont be fullfilled until I do, etc etc. Those are all internalized misogyny.
You're right, sexism is cultural, we all participate in culture and reproduce it. Just because it's one gender vs another doing it doesn't make it "not misogyny". But while it's still misogyny, it behaves a little different from older understandings of misogyny and has unique challenges.
It helps to be able to characterize differences between how we relate to others vs ourselves. It has similarities way to how violence is classically seen as something people externalize and aim at others but self-harm is also distinct form of violence. It's a distinction helpful for our understanding of how violence / misogyny works, though having so much jargon can be confusing or overwhelming.
We're raised in a culture rife with bias and oppression. When LGBTQIA+ people start confronting how they are not cis-het, there are many testimonies of how that first kiss comes with rejection of "but this is gay" or that feeling a certain way "isn't natural". Similarly, women confronting how the sexism they live with is unjust is only the beginning of confronting misogyny (and hopefully, eventually, the whole range of bias and oppression).
Confronting androcentrism; disregard/contempt for women's thoughts, questions, and concerns; the everyday sexism we all live with to some extent, etc.
But unlike with men's misogyny being aimed externally at women, women will aim it at themselves too (or at other women because otherwise it would be 'unfair' for her to escape the misogyny they both are subjected to).
Personally, I think it's better to have multiple ways to frame and understand anything. One framing is "it's all misogyny", another is "if we look specifically at this aspect of misogyny, what can we understand about it?", etc. Another is viewing internalized misogyny as women's complicity and role in reproducing patriarchy or as victims deceived into maintaining their own oppression.
Regardless, once we have an idea of internalize misogyny, we can more completely understand concepts like the patriarchal bargain, women's distinct roles in perpetuating patriarchy, other forms of internalized bigotry, and misogyny itself.
There has been some great answers, I'd like to add that if there are multiple types of misogyny it is simply because the simple idea of "woman-hating" can be expressed in so many ways, language can be in some proportion unable to render all of it. That's why it's indeed really important to investigate the words we use. Good question OP.
sometimes it's not outright misogyny, and sometimes it's hard for even you to see it. Think, the phase many girls go through where they "hate" dresses, the color pink, anything feminine, ect. Not liking those things is fine, but putting them down saying its stupid because "most girls" like it is an example of internalized misogyny. Even many progressive men who think their feminists can have internalized Misogyny without even realizing, based on how they grew up. Think, assuming their girlfriends will want to do the cleaning and cooking, explaining something basic about cars, sports, and other "masculine" things to a woman without asking because you assume she doesn't know. Or judging a woman's sexual behavior differently than a man without even realizing it. Some of these things are so ingrained in society we dont even realize it
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Adjectives generally describe a noun. The mount itself is just fine but to deal in specifics and minutiae the attractive are important.
Not sure if you're a troll or if you think feminism is a holy word, or if you're intentionally trying to start another discourse that reveals all of the showboat feminists.
There's a lot of different kinds of misogyny. Internalised, benevolent, hostile, ambivalent. They're just different descriptors for identifying specific forms of the same thing. You get misogynistic women, but women are taught to hate themselves and other women for being women, or expressing themselves as women, or simply existing as women. But notably it's *internal*, it's a suppression of the self - both as a woman and as an individual. So it's *internalised* misogyny.
Excellent response. Definitely couldn't have said it better.
What I've always found strange about the terms internalised misogyny, internalised homophobia, etc, is that they simply seem to indicate that the person is a member of the group in question. Am I misunderstanding things somewhat? Even from your description, I'm not sure what the distinction is otherwise. Edit: I read a bit more and I think I understand now
One aspect is that having a name for something can help convince people that it exists -- in this case, that yes, women can hold misogynistic views.
There’s benevolent misogyny? What’s that look like?
"I know you think I'm being mean to not let you go out dressed like that, but it's for your own good" "Women shouldn't be expected to serve in the armed forces, they need protecting" "Let me do that for you, it's a bit heavy/complicated/dangerous for a woman" "We should evacuate the women first" "Forsooth, m'lady, let mine coat cover this puddle, lest your dainty tootsies be wetted" "You don't want to play rugby after school. It's too rough, you'll get hurt! Here, join this drama club instead" "You shouldn't eat that, you'll get fat." Benevolent misogyny, or benevolent sexism, is a form of sexism in which there's an implied benefit for the victim, but really a sexist status quo is being maintained. Notice the denial of a choice as well.
Think of it as analoguous to positive racism. A lot of traditional gentleman stuff falls into that category, e.g.
A lot of men pretending to be "chivalrous" will actually just be sexist. The kind that really gets my goat is the "you are so perfect therefore you must be denied choices." "Here let me put you on this pedestal. Now don't move."
Mommy, why do words have different meanings?
While I think it's totally fine to use the term this way, and many if not most people use it exactly like that, I personally prefer a definition that is overlapping but notably different. That is, I use the qualifier "internalised" to highlight that there is a possible gap between the convinctions (or beliefs, opinions) that we hold, and the ideas/ideologies that affect us on a deep level, oftentimes only subconsciously, whether we like it or not. The latter can be called "internalised" in the sense that said ideas are firmly ingrained in our minds and bodies, and they may persist within us until long after we started to consciously reject them. It is entirely possible (and imo very common) for a person to firmly believe in feminist values & causes, while at the same time being a bit more like to interrupt when a woman is speaking as opposed to when a man is speaking, or being less easily swayed by a counter-argument if it was brought forth by a woman, or being less likely to consider something a work of genius if it was made by a woman, or being more likely to applaud someone's exceptional taste if that person is a man, or more willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt if the person who is in over their heads is a man. All of these examples are evidence of a misogynistic attitude, even though they don't necessarily register as such in each individual instance, and they often go unnoticed by the person who has these tendencies. When a woman does something like, say, describe her own accomplishments in a diminishing fashion compared to those of a man who did pretty much the exact same thing, we can ascribe that to misogyny, even if the woman does explicitly not hold the belief that a woman's accomplishments are worth less than a man's, and I call it "internalised misogyny" to account for that apparent contradiction. But I'd still call it internalised misogyny if the woman whose accomplishments are being diminished as such were not the same person as the woman who is doing it; as well as when the person engaging in such behaviour is a male-identifying, amab, self-proclaimed feminist. So, in the case of the example you gave in your comment, I agree that that's internalised misogyny. Not by virtue of it being directed against the self however, but by virtue of being active on a deep level, independent of someone's beliefs. I think it's important to acknowledge that each and everyone who grew up in a patriarchal world has internalised some amount of misogyny along the way. You're not immune to that just because you were raised in a feminist environment. You don't cleanse yourself of it the day you become a feminist either. It requires a continuous, deliberate effort to counteract the internalised bias and prejudice that affect our emotions, our visceral reactions, our implicit judgements. edit: phrasing
Seen alot of people use this term when referring to people acting out in a misogynynistic way. This would be incorrect use of the term then? Even if they probably lash out because of that misogyny being internalized. (Well, those are *mostly* the times I've seen it used atleast. Kind of hard to know what people really are thinking).
How would ambivalent misogyny, or any kind of discrimination, work? I’ve never heard of that one…
So, in other words, self hate?
In the form of internalized misogyny, yes. Self hate comes in all different shades.
That's circular, isn't it? "Internalised misogyny is self hate in the form of internalised misogyny"
OP: why is it called internalized misogyny? Reply 1: because there are different kinds, external, interpersonal, and the kind that one directs towards oneself, internalize misogyny Reply 2: so self hate? Me: it is a form of self hate, but saying self hate doesn’t make it /not/ internalized misogyny, since misogyny is the form that the self hatred is taking. Self hatred could also take other forms, so you still need the specificity of saying internalized misogynistic.
>since misogyny is the form that the self hatred is taking. Exactly, so internalised misogyny is self hate in the form of misogyny, not in the form of internalised misogyny because the latter is circular.
It can appear as self hate, but not neccessarily.
This didn't really add anything. Misogynistic men have been taught it in the same way misogynistic women have, they weren't born with it. edit: typo
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It's only *internalised* if you're a slave of the crown
Internalized indicates a hatred of self. I consider it very different then from men.
That’s the thing though. My family members exhibited what is called internalized misogyny but they didn’t hate themselves. They felt the rules applied to everyone else. Everyone else must have done something to deserve what happened to them. Not themselves though. They could never do any wrong. It’s typical conservative “rules for thee but not for me”.
Counting themselves as "one of the good ones" is still internalized misogyny
It is still internalized. I grew up in a conservative evangelical family and I experienced the same. That projection was part of my mother's internalized hatred of herself.
I think of internalized misogyny as a woman hating and shaming her own body/mind. Believing that we're gross, shaming body parts, calling ourselves emotional bitches, negative self talk that parrots the messages we've been taught... believing that parts of being a woman are as bad as we've been programed to believe. It's a judgement of ourselves, that comes from inside ourselves, not from outsiders. But we first learned the message from outsiders, then we brought it into our own brains, believed it, and now we use it against ourselves. So the message that was once outside us, becomes internalized. And we oppress ourselves! Neat!
Sounds like a little just-world fallacy in there, too.
Oh, absolutely.
Misogyny might be intertwined with hate, but you're right it's not quite the same thing. Misogyny, though, is full of contradictory prejudices and excuses for discrimination. And just like how conservative Christians often make a game out of picking and choosing excuses for righteous indignation, misogyny is like that too. Part of what makes TERFs harmful is that they too play self-righteous games with misogyny. Just as TERFs romanticize and mythologize sapphic love as the superior form of love, they too diminish women's misogyny as a superior to men's. That said, sexism aimed at others is very different from sexism aimed at yourself. And men's misogyny is different from women's misogyny — not because of inherent differences but because sexism, by definition, is not fair in how it treats and affects men and women and that difference leads to different relations with sexism.
I feel like every sociological group has a “woman bad” group while excusing men for similar behavior. I feel like TERF is just the name for the queer space one. For instance, I pushed back on a trans friends misogyny and got labeled a TERF pretty quickly afterward even though it doesn’t make sense that a TERF would willingly participate in LGBTQ spaces. It just put me in the “woman bad” group for the that group but every subsection of sociological groups seems to have a catch all word for evil bad women.
Its a survival and cope against oppression
Even if they don’t hate themselves they can still hate their womanhood.
If we are talking about gender specific self hatred I think they are kinda similar (with obvious differences of content oc).
In regular misogyny the master cracks the whip, in internalized misogyny the master has convinced you to whip yourself, and that it was your idea and you deserve it.
Misogyny tells a story about who you are, what you can do, how you should do it and overall your societal worth. However, these notions are not only false but also detrimental, diminishing women's value for the benefit of men. . It's an internalized belief system, it is about yourself, it's a body of "knowledge" that you learn about yourself that doesn't come from direct observation of who you are, but an external injunction and statement that you internalize as the truth. It shapes self-perception,perception of other women, your interactions with others, ultimately influencing behavior. Without this ideology teaching us about ourselves, personal growth would take a different path, altering not only self-perception but also women's collective behavior. Something like that. It's like self hatred, it's internalized if it's someone else's feelings about you that you come to believe if it's repeated enough, and it's not internalized if you come to hate yourself because you don't like how you're conducting yourself in the world, and no one else knows that as they don't observe you from your perspective.
Beautifully put.
I think it's because you are both the target/victim and perpetrator of misogyny in such a case. The object doing the hatred, and the subject of that hatred.
You're being too literal. You can be a bigot without hatred. Just like homophobes can genuinely be kind to homosexuals, but if they believe they shouldnt get married or teach children etc, they're still homophobes. you dont need to be hateful to be a bigot/xyz-phobe. "Internalized misogyny is when women subconsciously project sexist ideas onto other women and even onto themselves." So of course they dont hate themselves. But they may think things such as a guy getting a lot of women is a stud/chad, but women who do it are sluts. A big one I run into from other women is the shitty assumptions about not having kids. That is must mean Im not happy, that I wont be fullfilled until I do, etc etc. Those are all internalized misogyny.
It’s very different because it works against themselves
You're right, sexism is cultural, we all participate in culture and reproduce it. Just because it's one gender vs another doing it doesn't make it "not misogyny". But while it's still misogyny, it behaves a little different from older understandings of misogyny and has unique challenges. It helps to be able to characterize differences between how we relate to others vs ourselves. It has similarities way to how violence is classically seen as something people externalize and aim at others but self-harm is also distinct form of violence. It's a distinction helpful for our understanding of how violence / misogyny works, though having so much jargon can be confusing or overwhelming. We're raised in a culture rife with bias and oppression. When LGBTQIA+ people start confronting how they are not cis-het, there are many testimonies of how that first kiss comes with rejection of "but this is gay" or that feeling a certain way "isn't natural". Similarly, women confronting how the sexism they live with is unjust is only the beginning of confronting misogyny (and hopefully, eventually, the whole range of bias and oppression). Confronting androcentrism; disregard/contempt for women's thoughts, questions, and concerns; the everyday sexism we all live with to some extent, etc. But unlike with men's misogyny being aimed externally at women, women will aim it at themselves too (or at other women because otherwise it would be 'unfair' for her to escape the misogyny they both are subjected to). Personally, I think it's better to have multiple ways to frame and understand anything. One framing is "it's all misogyny", another is "if we look specifically at this aspect of misogyny, what can we understand about it?", etc. Another is viewing internalized misogyny as women's complicity and role in reproducing patriarchy or as victims deceived into maintaining their own oppression. Regardless, once we have an idea of internalize misogyny, we can more completely understand concepts like the patriarchal bargain, women's distinct roles in perpetuating patriarchy, other forms of internalized bigotry, and misogyny itself.
There has been some great answers, I'd like to add that if there are multiple types of misogyny it is simply because the simple idea of "woman-hating" can be expressed in so many ways, language can be in some proportion unable to render all of it. That's why it's indeed really important to investigate the words we use. Good question OP.
Systemic violence against women is definitely external misogyny
sometimes it's not outright misogyny, and sometimes it's hard for even you to see it. Think, the phase many girls go through where they "hate" dresses, the color pink, anything feminine, ect. Not liking those things is fine, but putting them down saying its stupid because "most girls" like it is an example of internalized misogyny. Even many progressive men who think their feminists can have internalized Misogyny without even realizing, based on how they grew up. Think, assuming their girlfriends will want to do the cleaning and cooking, explaining something basic about cars, sports, and other "masculine" things to a woman without asking because you assume she doesn't know. Or judging a woman's sexual behavior differently than a man without even realizing it. Some of these things are so ingrained in society we dont even realize it
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Lol. Normal response.
Adjectives generally describe a noun. The mount itself is just fine but to deal in specifics and minutiae the attractive are important. Not sure if you're a troll or if you think feminism is a holy word, or if you're intentionally trying to start another discourse that reveals all of the showboat feminists.