Current mood:

thoughtful

Internalized misogyny and exceptionalism
A few weeks ago, I was walking down the main drag in Biloxi with another young woman - let's call her Jane. After about the tenth asshole hollering at us through his car window, I grumbled something about how irritated I was with men. Astonishingly, Jane responded not in a spirit of solidarity, but with the following comment: "Oh, I like men, it's girls I don't like. There were only like, ten girls in my program at school, and I didn't even have to see half of them most of the time. It was great." Taken aback, I could only stutter, "Uh, I like girls..." before lapsing into stunned silence.

This is by no means the first time I've heard a comment like this, though. In fact, I'm ashamed to say I used to be one of the "I like boys better than girls" crowd too. Asked for my reasons, I would have supplied that girls were catty and backstabbing - never mind the fact that there is nothing quite so catty as talking shit about your entire gender. I stopped saying that a while ago, when I realized how hideously misogynist it was, and since then I've been trying to puzzle out why it seems to be such a commonly expressed attitude.

My first theory was that it was an attempt to gain some scraps of male privilege. By claiming that they're "one of the guys," women hope to achieve some of the benefits that "the guys" get for being, well, guys. I still think that might be partly true, but it doesn't explain why Jane would express such distaste for women to another woman, who wasn't really in a place to allow her entrance into the boys' club.

So here's my revised theory. In our culture, we are constantly accosted with negative images and opinions of women. So, as women, how do we deal with the conflict between the constant cultural onslaught telling us that women are shallow, incompetent, bitchy, fickle, stupid, slutty, and so on with the knowledge that we, ourselves, are none of those things?

1. We consciously remind ourselves that these messages are bogus, and resist them as best we can.
2. We internalize these messages, and accept that we must be those things.
3. We internalize these messages, but knowing that they are not true of us, we determine that we must be an exception; that is, they are true only of other women.

I think we all do a little of each. Certainly, I'm always striving for number 1, but it's not always possisble. In any case, I think strategy number 3 lies behind a fair amount of female distaste for other women. And being an exception doesn't necessarily mean that other people will recognize your exceptionality, so it's important to let people know when possible that you are different. This can be accomplished by hyping up the fact that you are "not like other girls" or by, as Jane did, cutting other women down.