i see the phrase "internalized misogyny" thrown around a lot online but i don't think i've ever come across a post that explains what internalized misogyny looks like in female people. so i've come up with a running list:
believing that your reproductive organs are only good for making babies and that they are essentially just there for decoration (or, worse, that they are a burden) in those who don't ever intend on becoming pregnant
seeing yourself through a lens of sexualization -- this often manifests in two, seemingly opposite, ways: (1) feeling like you need to cover up your body to prevent others from seeing you and sexualizing you, and (2) having the mentality that if you will be sexualized anyways, you might as well use it to your advantage by using your sexuality to manipulate men or to make a profit
struggling to experience sexual pleasure without dissociating from your body, following a sexual script, engaging with certain paraphilias, needing to feel pain or humiliation during sex, being unable to enjoy sex without any exaggerated power dynamics, or otherwise needing some kind of distraction from the act of having sex in order to derive pleasure from it
treating sex as a performance in which you need to look good and do a good job. being more concerned about being seen than you are about seeing, or pleasuring your partner more than you are being pleasured
only being able to access feelings of confidence and competence when your body is altered in some way. struggling to reconcile with your body hair, your fat distribution, cellulite, stretch marks, wrinkles, your natural eyebrows, the way you look without makeup, etc. this includes things like putting on makeup alone in your room so you can do your homework, even if you know that no one will see you
believing that your relationship with womanhood is more deep and complex than other women's, believing that all women feel like women, feeling that you are alone in struggling to accept certain parts of womanhood and femaleness, believing that you are uniquely able to see through gendered stereotypes and trends that other women are falling for, believing that you are more interesting than other women, feeling a sense of competition among other women, etc.
believing that women are, by default, worse than men at anything. that women are worse leaders, teachers, athletes, comedians, doctors, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, gamers, etc., by virtue of being women
not being relate to female characters, no matter how well-written they are. seeing characters as female before anything else, and thus everything that the character does is because she's female--she is either (1) acting the way she is because she's a female character and that's how female characters act, or (2) acting the way she is because that's not how female characters act, and because the author wanted to subvert expectations about female characters. not thinking to extend the same criticisms to male characters, whose gender is apparently default and has nothing to do with the character.
most importantly: internalized misogyny convinces us that women aren't oppressed, that none of this is a major problem, that misogyny is well-deserved, and that the experience of misogyny (internalized or otherwise) is a sign of personal failure on the part of individual women.
internalized misogyny serves a very specific and essential role in keeping women from realizing our full potential. you are not a bad woman or a bad feminist for struggling with this. billions of women feel the same way as you do, and they have been writing about it for a very long time. it is never your fault if you feel uncomfortable being labeled as a woman, being associated with the social role of women, and if you feel like you have failed at womanhood.
womanhood is a patriarchal construct that has been designed, redesigned, and fine-tuned to alienate women and female people from our bodies and from other women as effectively as possible. it's our job as women and as feminists to destroy the patriarch in our minds by refusing to see ourselves through his eyes, and then to free other women from it, too.
