Pretend you had the bestest idea ever. All you had to do was utter four simple words. But only a fraction of the people you talk to signed on for it. Rejection hurts. What can you do to alleviate the pain? How about making up a mental condition based on your wondrous idea. Now whenever your victim listener responds that your bestest, best-best idea stinks, he’s not rejecting it. Or you. He’s just suffering from mental illness!
The idea, of course, is feminism: The movement to “treat both sexes equally.” Surely nobody but privileged men would object to that? In fact, everyone who likes the idea already is a feminist-! Except only 18% of people in America want to be identified as such. Even after someone carefully explains to these Americans that they really already are feminists. That’s problematic, eh?
Solution?
The female half of the population suffers from a mental condition so severe that it causes them to reject basic common sense. Let’s call it something psuedo-psychological, like internalized misogyny. The promise of feminism since the ’60s has been that women are free to choose what path they want in life. But what about women who insist on making the wrong choices? For example:
- A woman chooses marriage and children? Internalized misogyny.
- She chooses to skip college and join the family business? Internalized misogyny.
- She chooses to have a boyfriend and gets a pet that isn’t a cat?
- Or she simply rejects feminism because it stopped being about equality forty years ago?
That’s right: Internalized misogyny!
Internalized misogyny is not your fault. You’ve merely bought into the women-are-property mentality of the patriarchy. You happen to enjoy your chains and are thus betraying every vagina-enabled woman on the planet. Shame on you.
But Q, I can hear you thinking, am I not allowed to make my own decisions regarding my religious beliefs and choice of pet? No, you can’t. Not according to feminists. But count your blessings. The ones who accuse you of internalized misogyny are still somewhat reasonable, if annoying. The certifiable crazies accuse you of not being a woman at all.
Internalized misogyny is also a convenient way of disqualifying your opinion from any given discussion involving topics of feminism. In other words: everything. Disqualification deserves its own entry, but in a nutshell? It is a polite way for Authoritarians to make sure no-one listens to you, and if capable, should block, ban, or no-platform you. A woman with her own opinions about, well, anything, is dangerous indeed, and not to be tolerated. Not according to real feminists, anyway.
These columns are meant to be basic descriptions of common terms used by both the Authoritarian and Cultural Libertarian sides of the culture war. They are a little dry compared to our usual fare. For this I apologize, and will include this hilarious video explaining more about internalized misogyny. Warning: potty language.
Tempest in a Teardrop: The Churchians 
I’ve SEEN the LIGHT! I am now a Progressive!
I will, of course, have zero tolerance for harassment based on gender, race, sexuality or lack thereof, religion or lack thereof, class or lack thereof, trans status or ableness or lack thereof, skin pigment or lack thereof, brains or lack thereof.
I will also not merely prohibit harassment that is direct and public, but also less-direct harassment that creates a hostile workplace.
Furthermore, I will join the cutting edge of the harassment-detection industry in forbidding microaggressions, nanoaggresions, picoaggressions, yoctoaggressions and all such oppression “particles,” down to the quantum level.
I additionally forbid man-splaining, white-splaining, straight-splaining, cis-splaining, able-splaining, splain-splaining, splain-plaining, splain-shaming and, in general, saying things Progressive People don’t like.
Discussion or possession of the Kurt Vonnegut short story “Harrison Bergeron” will be grounds for immediate execution.
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“splain-splaining”
YOU JUST MADE THE LIST, PAL… of phrases I steal from commenters 😉
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But what about Mickey ‘splaining?
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No, I can’t steal that. Plus #391 included the word ‘yoctoaggressions’. What a fabulous word!
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No, I suppose you can’t steal that. (I already stole it, from M*A*S*H).
But I was wondering the Duke of URL was agin it.
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AAARRGGGHHHHHH…
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I like the four words, “Women are people, too.” And in THAT sense, I am feminist – but that’s of the ancient type (well, I am an Old bull… used to babysit Cthulhu, don’tchya know…)
But the idea that males are to be subservient? Well, some roleplay might be fun for those into it, but imposing such a lifestyle on everyone is… what’s the word for forcible coercion? Slavery? Not that one.. even more general.. oh yes… it’s EVIL.
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“Women are people, too”
I am often amazed at how people can take such simple, common-sense notions, bake them into a meat/jam/catfood pie, roll it in that stuff under the refrigerator, and force feed it to folks. And the folks still eat it.
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You and me three.
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Ekshully, I got that speech from a blogger – am embarrassed to have to admit that I can’t recall who – think maybe it was Peter Grant. I edited it a bit.
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