#habit shift

 - practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny.

Why: Everyone knows you never ask a woman her age. It’s rude. Because beauty is everything to a woman, and so ageing just cannot be acknowledged. Women have been taught to fear ageing since childhood. So few older women in media, be it in news coverage, as journalists, or as actors. A constant glorification of youth, with teenagers and twenty-somethings in the limelights and discarded as soon as they accrue just a little too many years. The never-ending pressure of advertisement and commercial for youth serums, for anti-age creams, for any sort of treatment that will save you from wrinkles and sagging skin. Apparently, nothing is worse for a woman than to display on her face and on her body the passing of time. That fear is echoed in all our mothers and their comments, in their “beauty” routines, in their desperate chase for eternal youth. But looking old, ageing, is not simply a matter of beauty. Looking old, looking your age, is showing on your body all the experiences you have lived through, all the wisdom you have gathered. Men don’t want women to grow old, because age makes us wiser, makes us more knowledgable, make us less tolerant of misogyny. It’s infinitely more profitable for men to push us to hunt, desperately for youth. If we’re busy looking for smooth and unwrinkled skin, we are not paying attention to our own oppression. If we’re lathering cream on our cheeks, we’re not acting for change and liberation.

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: Men thrive on women’s attention, on women’s time, on women’s coddling. They love wasting our time, having us try to explain to them things they understand perfectly well. Because the status quo suits them just fine, by pretending they don’t get it nothing changes; because a woman who’s busy trying to educate a man is not living her life or changing the world, she’s simply holding a man’s hand and coddling him. And men don’t even consider that our explanations, our justifications, our arguments, our reasonings hold any value anyway. If it hasn’t been put forward by a man, it’s not really worth their time, or it’ll be branded illogical, hysterical or shrill. By justifying your decisions and your actions, you reinforce the idea that men have the final say; that everything you do or think have to have a man’s approval stamp; that you’re not capable of independent thought.

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: There’s no context in which using misogynistic slurs is not harmful to women. These words treat our body parts as shameful; they link us to animals and as such as lesser; they reduce us to sexual objects; they debase us for our imagined sex life; they suggest that the very fact of being female is shameful and a curse; they treat us with unhidden contempt.  Men use them to humiliate us, to belittle us, to debase us. For many women, these words were what they heard before being abused, before being violated by men. Men use those words to terrorise us, to teach us to expect violence. Women using those words just reinforce the idea that it’s fine to treat women as second-class citizen, as sexual objects. Words matter. How we call ourselves, how we refer to ourselves impact how we walk through this world. Using misogynistic slurs in a casual manner is tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot before we ever start walking.

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny.

Why: To summarise, men don’t understand, and women who teach need your support. Men do not understand everything as well as they would like you to think. They do understand the male perspective — which is arguably the standard perspective — but they don’t have room for anything else. They don’t want to make room for anything else. Men will teach you to perpetuate sexism; men will often teach you to hate yourself and discount your own capacities. They are fine with their unchallenged status quo, with the way men have always done things. You too can — if you’re lucky — do the things men do, but only if you do it the male way without complain or comment. No man has your best interests at heart. Moreover, men in teaching positions hold power over you (they can choose to keep knowledge from you if you don’t behave) that can very easily be mishandled. This leaves you vulnerable, especially given that learning requires you to be open and to make yours concepts and ideas which were foreign to you. Learning from men always means being on the lookout for the misogyny they entwine in everything; always having to take measures not to fall prey to wrapped perspectives; or even to physical harm if you encounter one of the most sinister specimens. And this being said, women teachers need your support. Misogyny often means that they are discounted by both male and female students as incompetent or whatever negative stereotypes are associated with women who know too much. Women teachers share perspectives, life experiences and body types with you and so are better suited to understanding what might be an obstacle to your learning.

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: Women are weak. Men are the hunters, the digger of trenches, the lifters of bags of cement. Ideal men are all toned and muscled and provided with a six-pack by general expectations. Ideal women are dainty, with thin waists and thin arms and need a man to carry anything heavier than a bottle of milk. It’s learned helplessness. Women are consistently shamed if they dare to train, if they show any sort of muscle that is more than staying “toned” and “in shape” (read “thin”, and starved into compliance). How often have you seen women training, lifting, and displaying any sort of muscle in ordinary media, other than in very specific sport competitions — and even then, these women are often the butt of jokes or dismissive comments, because of course how could they be real women? And in popular culture, “strong women” designates not women who have physical capabilities, but women who can withstand pain without complaining. Women are strong because they don’t cry or rebel when they’re faced with misogyny; a strong woman is never one who can swim or run miles, or carry her own firewood. It’s easier to control a woman who can’t fight back, who needs someone else to accomplish some tasks. Keeping us weak is an insurance for men that we won’t become independent, that we will always rely on them. We don’t have to, tho.

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: “Sorry, but…”, “Excuse me, I think that …”, “… if that make any sense … “, “maybe we could consider”, … Sorry, sorry, sorry. Women are always apologising for existing and having opinions. How often do those words pass our lips, “sorry” and “excuse me”? For things as mundane as needing space to pass by or a little quiet to work in? For things that require no apologising for, like expressing our thoughts, our beliefs, our opinions? For things as important as  refusing insistent male advances or putting an end to misogynistic jokes and exchanges? We are taught from infancy that we should be discreet and silent, that we should stick to the kitchen and the child-rearing. That we are stupid and vapid and just good enough to clean and reproduce. We internalise it to the point that we can’t seem to stop apologising for daring to open our mouths, whatever the setting. It’s not a question of politeness, or of good manners. It’s our socialisation in a misogynistic system which taught us that what we have to say is worthless, hence the “sorry” and “excuse me” which spill endlessly in our language. But we have nothing to apologise for. We are allowed to exist. We are entitled to our opinions. Disagreement is not the subject; we can be wrong and still not have to grovel every time we speak. We have a right to make mistakes and to speak out of turn and to say inepties. And more often than not, what we have to say is important and smart and brilliant and needed to be said. Our words don’t deserve an apology, they deserve ovations and praises.

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: Clothes are supposed to cover and protect our bodies from the elements. Keep us warm and dry, and lower the risk of injury from scratching or bumping into things. Because it offers support and because we are so eager to express ourselves, it can also be adorned with art. But the basic function of clothes is protection. Do women’s clothes today answer that requirement? I’ve touched on how absurd high heels and bras are, but most clothes designed with women as end-users in mind are nonsensical too. Thin fabric that gives out after a few wears and that hides nothing of our bodies? Short cuts that leave our skin exposed and unprotected? No pockets or decorative ones or pockets so small you can maybe stash away an acorn and that’s it? Skirts so short the slightest breeze shows our underwear? Underwear so lacy it always itch and so laced with chemicals it always burns our genitals? Dresses so impractical we never even consider the possibility of climbing onto things, of running, of bending down to retrieve something that fell down? Clothes so tight breathing itself is a chore? Clothes so costly they’re a scam designed to directly relieve us of our financial independence for the myth of ‘fashion’? Clothes so cheap they’re a scam designed to never last and trap us into an infinite cycle of buying more and more trash? Clothes that never fit right, that are never supposed to fit right, to keep us hating ourselves and shaming ourselves over our appearances, guilting us into diets and starvation? Clothes that turn us into objects to be gazed at, instead of helping us be protagonists in our own lives?

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: That’s how every fairy tale ends: “And then they lived happy ever after”. The french version is literally “they got married and had many kids”. From infancy, girls are fed the idea that “true” love is the endgame. It’s in almost all piece of media aimed at little girls; it’s the foundation of the home, what goes on between mummy and daddy; it’s a promise in the sickly-sweet dismissal of boys’ antics or outright violence (oh honey, it’s because he loves you). We grow older, and love and relationships are in every book, every magazine, every tv show. The badass rebellious teen in the dystopia falls for the brooding dark handsome boy; this famous woman is dating what’s his name; there is no tv show without at least one love plot. If you are not in a relationship, you are supposed to be dying to find one. Be nice to strangers and always look put together—you never know when you might meet the one; download dating apps—live with your time; bring a plus-one to every social function—a woman cannot be seen alone. Think about it; how much do you desire a significant other? Someone to get you off, someone who knows the real you, someone with whom to spend the long, dark hours of winter, someone with whom to grow old? How much do you want to shackle yourself to someone else, because you have been taught to? Who decided on this model of romantic love? Whom does it serves? Who profits from women’s dream of a partner? Who reaps benefits from women working always at their appearance, always trying to impress their entourage, always putting themselves on display? Who profits from women thinking they can never find true success, true fulfillment, without someone else?