Why do Girls Hate Feminism?

By Sianna Zewdie (Y12)

In the process of collecting data for another article I’ve been planning to write on white feminism, I’ve been making the rounds, shamelessly pestering friends and acquaintances to fill out a survey I’d made (and, while I have you here, dear reader, why not fill it out too?). As I started going through the early responses, something caught my eye. To the question ‘Do you consider yourself a feminist?’ a surprising number of girls had selected ‘Not sure / Depends on what you mean by feminist.’

A few of my friends had preempted my badgering and had filled it out while sitting right next to me, and I remember watching them pause at that question. When one of my friends, after about thirty seconds, finally clicked ‘no’, it caught me off guard. When I remarked on it, she shrugged and said, “Yeah, I mean… what do you mean by feminist?”

A quick Google search provided a fairly straightforward answer: ‘An advocate of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes; a person who supports feminism.’ She looked at it and said, “Oh, well, yeah—I mean, I don’t hate men or anything…like I don’t think women are better or whatever, you know?”

And I’ll admit, I was mad. Not at my friend—she’s wonderful (don’t come for her)—but at the invisible hand that had subtly shaped her thinking. She, like many others, had immediately assumed that to be a feminist was to be a a dirty word: a man-hater, a bra-burner, a feminazi.

This rise in the new day and age of the number of young women embracing internalized misogynistic thinking is a growing concern, especially in the era of digitalization, which allows such ideologies to disseminate with startling efficiency. At the root of this problem, lurks the bane of my very existence, the thing that makes me hate getting up in the morning, the source of all my woes—the patriarchy.

The continued existence of patriarchal structures comes as a surprise to many people when I discuss it; oftentimes people respond with: ‘I thought that was over?’ and ‘It’s not that bad anymore, isn’t it?’ While societies have obviously taken steps to grudgingly recognize what should have been clear from the very beginning—i.e., that women are no less capable, no less deserving, no less human than men (shocking news!)—the inherent structure of the world around us is designed not only to cater towards men, but to repress women. This isn’t abstract theory; it’s lived reality. Women constantly have their pain dismissed or misdiagnosed in healthcare, are subtly steered away from STEM and leadership in education, and erased from conversations on race, class, and sexuality, where the struggles of men are centered while intersectional female experiences are ignored, minimized, or outright erased.

But even though the patriarchy still stands domineering as ever, feminism is not unlike a pesky mosquito that it wants to swat before it becomes a larger problem (and, for a system that glorifies male strength and dominance, it’s continued fear of feminism is an ironic display of the fragility of male egos) Since it is no longer socially acceptable for anyone who isn’t a podcaster to say outright that feminism must be eradicated, the patriarchy has forced to get clever, neutralizing the threat by diminishing the power of the word ‘feminist’ itself.

Language is powerful—it shapes both how we see the world, and how the world sees us. And the patriarchy (like any oppressive regime) has a history of wielding it as a weapon and tool of subjugation to ensure dominance. Consider, for example, the arsenal of vulgar insults aimed at women: ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘pussy’. Even insults that seem to be gender-neutral—‘motherfucker’ or ‘son of a bitch’—still really target women, making us a both a punchline and the standard of inferiority. Then there’s ‘bitch’, a word so normalized it ranks consistently among the top ten most used swear words, its sting dulled only by repetition. Language, in the hands of patriarchy, doesn’t just punish—it trains us to accept our subjugation.

I could write endlessly about language in the patriarchy, but for the sake of this article I will limit myself to one more point: the way seemingly neutral words have consistently twisted over time to carry negative connotations—at women’s expense. An example: ‘buddy’ and ‘sissy’, which used to be abbreviations for ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. While ‘buddy’ evolved a more casual, friendly usage, ‘sissy’ came to imply a man reduced to the lowest possible standard imaginable: femininity. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy: when the patriarchy sees women as inferior, association with womanhood is seen as an insult, a sentiment that seeps into language—which then comes full circle to strengthen the power of the patriarchy’s oppression.

The word feminist seems to be undergoing similar changes those before: once a simple marker of striving for gender equality, it has now been burdened with negative, violent, and radical connotations. These associations push it from a reasonable ideology to a fringe label, outside the carefully crafted box of societal acceptability. Regardless of the arbitrariness of said box, the fact that feminism is being left further and further out of the mainstream, leads young girls already primed to internalize patriarchal messages to learn to recoil from the word, rejecting it not because of its meaning, but because society has trained them to fear its power.

This is the story of how misogyny gets internalized; as girls distance themselves from the term, they distance themselves from the movement, and begin policing their actions and thoughts in order to avoid being ostracized. The comfort of conformity then fools them into thinking that they have successfully thrown off the proverbial chains of subjugation. And yet they then turn around and spew male supremacist rhetoric disguised as common sense, without realizing that they too are perpetuating a system they claim to have resisted. For example—at school, it is not uncommon to hear girls who twist male dominance in sports into purely being a testament to their physical prowess, without taking into account the prevalent structural biases in women’s sports. Through this rhetoric—presented as practical scientific thinking—they act as a mouthpiece for the patriarchy, that other girls then buy into, trusting the message because it comes from one of their own.

The internalized misogyny seeps into culture, giving rise to tropes like the ‘pick-me’—a woman who belittles other women for male approval and validation. The pick-me aims to distance herself from other women, by employing and contrasting herself to negative female stereotypes. She does this by presenting herself as ‘not like other girls’—because apparently women are inherently flawed—implying that if she is not like other girls, she’s more like the ‘better’ alternative: a man. (The quotes around the word ‘better’ are very, very intentional, by the way.)

What people don’t necessarily notice is that the term ‘pick-me’ itself has now become an example of the misogyny it addresses—a term used online to bully or harass women that step outside the cultural norm; a woman may now be called a ‘pick-me’ for having male friends, or having typically masculine interests, or for adhering to an alternate form of feminity (what even is feminity? Is there some sort of ‘essence’ that every women has in her, or a social performance we’re expected to act out? Perhaps I’ll save these questions for TOK…) In any case, the irony is striking: a term created to call out internalized misogyny now enforces it. Women are punished whether they adhere to the rules or challenge them, and the patriarchy looks on, tutting at the cattiness of women, ignoring the fact that it caused these problems in the first place.

Celebrity culture also compounds internalized misogyny. Female actresses, pop stars, singers are held to higher standards than their male counterparts and are constantly vilified for not managing to reach those unattainable levels. Celebrity culture is the epitome of the objectification of women; at every photo shoot, award ceremony, or public appearance, women are picked apart by tabloids and fans alike, until they are reduced to nothing more than, frankly, their ability to get a dick wet. Girlfriends, wives, partners of male idols are slandered endlessly, or, if they too are artists, are cast into the lesser role of lovers, or muses, their autonomy and individual brilliance shadowed by the men around them.

Some women buy into this male centered regime: take Sydney Sweeney, for example, selling soap infused with her own bath water. What is obviously a deeply disgusting, degrading venture was presented as a paragon of the assertion of female power and autonomy. Self-objectification for what? Male approval? Sweeney has definitely received this—her bath water soap sold out seconds after it was released, thanks to the loose wallets of parents, and the teenage boys brave enough to riffle in them. But the cost of this was her own dignity; where she thought she was highlighting the sexual liberation of women, she merely reinforced the patriarchal ideology of women’s inherent conformity to a singular stereotype.

The shift in modern dating culture is yet another perpetrator of the misogynistic propaganda that young women are falling for today. The advent of social media and dating apps has brought a sense of urgency to dating, increasing pressures on young girls to be in relationships during their teenage years. Approximately 80% of women are attracted to men (a statistic derived from female sexual orientations, not from the so-called 80-20 rule that that the manosphere is so fond of preaching, as if it was a direct message from God or something)—so seeming ‘dateable’ to them is at the forefront of many young girl’s minds. To be considered an ‘ideal partner’, many girls learn—consciously or not—to conform to a patriarchal view of attractiveness: to soften their opinions, to downplay ambition, and to laugh at jokes that really aren’t that funny.

Dating culture thus becomes a quiet breeding ground for internalized misogyny where to be desirable, one must be agreeable; to be loved one must be ‘not too feminist’. Girls learn that opinions are unattractive, that confidence is arrogance, and that independence is loneliness. In trying to appeal to men shaped by patriarchal norms, many women end up shaping themselves around them, distancing themselves further from the very word that once promised their liberation.

Some girls reject the label outright, calling it anachronistic. ‘Why do we need feminism anymore?’ they ask, as if equity is a trend that can go in and out of style. Not only is sexism still deeply prevalent even in privileged institutions, this is a very white-feminist viewpoint that fails to take into account the intersectionality of oppression. To declare feminism ‘no longer necessary’ is to assume that gender equality has been achieved universally, when in reality, it simply confuses proximity to privilege to progress. As much it may pain some people to hear it, centering white, cisgender, middle-class women and calling it feminism mirrors the very hierarchies that it attempts to dismantle. If feminism doesn’t hold true for all women, then it will never be complete.

One might argue that most girls who filled in my form still believe in gender equality—they just might not want to associate it with such a ‘radical’ term. But like I said: language is powerful. To allow the patriarchy this concession, to allow it to once again take a term that we created, that propped us up during the fights for equal rights, recognition, and opportunities, and reduce it to a mere insult is to hand over the tools of our own oppression. We shouldn’t be so willing to surrender the words that built our shelter. Because every time another word of ours becomes theirs, it is like fleeing from a plague—you build a home just beyond its reach, only for the sickness to creep closer until you’re forced to abandon it and start again. Each retreat costs us ground, and eventually, there will be nowhere left to run. And, once our language is taken away, our voices will soon follow.