Invisible Rainbow?

so we’re not really relevant

"Stop being a girl."

I’m not saying you’re brainwashed. I’m saying that society (and that mythical patriarchy you don’t seem to believe exists) has conditioned everyone, women included, to believe that defaulting to white, cis-males in positions of authority is just the natural order. It’s why we continue to elect dudes to important political positions and when a woman runs or wins, it’s somehow noteworthy, mostly based on the fact that she’s a woman. 

It’s why we still have debates about how effective women service members are. It’s why we still hear about how a female president wouldn’t work because she would obviously lose her mind every 28 days and nuke everything in a fit of hormone induced rage. It’s why we still hear people blaming victims of sexual assault based on the clothes they were wearing, or how sexually promiscuous they may have been in the past. It’s why my female friend who is an engineer, and has been an engineer for a long time, and is a damn find engineer, still has to combat sexist bullshit on job sites when people who are supposed to be reporting to her and executing HER design want to talk to her like she’s a “little lady” who doesn’t know how to math properly. That’s all the patriarchy. 

And telling men they have to man up, keep their emotions in check, don’t be a pussy… these are all putting supposedly “feminine” traits in a negative light. And making it sound like being feminine is literally the worst thing a man could do. The patriarchy keeps men oppressed too. 

So when I accuse someone of having internalized misogyny, it’s because I’m frustrated that someone else, anyone else, but especially a woman is going out of their way to undermine the lived experiences of those around them. 

Women are oppressed. Men are oppressed. Minority groups are oppressed. And it all stems from a default position of white, hetero males who are healthy and wealthy. That merely being born anything other than those things means you will face systematic oppression and fundamentally less opportunity than those who do fall into that lucky few is part of what I, and other feminists, fight against. 

When you say the patriarchy doesn’t exist, you are discounting the experiences of others. And that’s super not cool. It’s not fair for me to assume that you are in a position of privilege, and it’s not fair for you to assume that your experience or perceived experience as someone who isn’t oppressed speaks for everyone everywhere. 

That’s why feminists use the internalized misogyny argument. When you remove the right for someone else to speak out, you are being a misogynist. The fact that you’re a woman doesn’t mean you are immune to being a misogynist. Internalized misogyny is when you as a woman slut shame, victim blame, talk over or dismiss the experiences of other women. 

DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW DEEPLY PROBLEMATIC THAT IS DO YOU EVEN-

It comes from the same mindset that urges men to correct a woman’s behavior when they’re not smiling on the street.

It’s literally the same thing only internalized IT’S THE SAME FUCKING THING