I think the topic is incredibly complex (and I'm remembering now a whole lot of tangles around fans of color relating that they had been accused of internalized racism, at times by white fans, during the Racefail 09 debates).
I do think that there is the issue of focusing on intent rather than impact (of actions, behavior) that overlaps with telling somebody else they are operating from internalized misogyny, as opposed to unpacking why certain actions are potentially harmful to other women. It's very clear though from a whole lot of internet conflicts I've seen that people will take a comment about an action or behavior as really being about intent (or why is the "I didn't intend it that way" so often the default?).
I think a lot of the extremely hyperbolic and nasty commentary about "Mary Sues" and knee-jerk dislike of original female characters in fandom is related to misogyny.
I think that growing up in a misogynistic society resulted in me being misogynistic in many ways--and I've been unpacking that for years (born in 1955, so wow, was it bad). I was very much in the "I don't like other girls, I don't like romance stories, I want to do COOL things" for years. So it's particularly ironic that my new favorite genre to love are the paranormal and sf romances--although I am not particularly turned on by most of the heterosexual relationships, especially those with marriage and end of story at the end, I adore the characters and the paranormal and sf worldbuilding and plots. This new love has made me realize that my dislike of a lot of the female characters in mainstream pop culture was not just misogyny, but dislike of a specific type of character's narrative function, if that makes sense.
Mainly, I think I end up with the mode/beam mode--i.e. presuming to lecture other people on their internalized misogyny (or anything else) can be really problematic, the more so in that I keep remembering something I've learned as a creative writing teacher for over twenty years: a lot of the faults that my students see in OTHER students' writing are faults in their own (that they don't see). So I keep extrapolating from that to this issue of identifying faults in others intentions or beliefs. That can overlap to criticizing behavior too--and at that point, I tend to get very conflicted, and just sort of stop.
no subject
I think the topic is incredibly complex (and I'm remembering now a whole lot of tangles around fans of color relating that they had been accused of internalized racism, at times by white fans, during the Racefail 09 debates).
I do think that there is the issue of focusing on intent rather than impact (of actions, behavior) that overlaps with telling somebody else they are operating from internalized misogyny, as opposed to unpacking why certain actions are potentially harmful to other women. It's very clear though from a whole lot of internet conflicts I've seen that people will take a comment about an action or behavior as really being about intent (or why is the "I didn't intend it that way" so often the default?).
I think a lot of the extremely hyperbolic and nasty commentary about "Mary Sues" and knee-jerk dislike of original female characters in fandom is related to misogyny.
I think that growing up in a misogynistic society resulted in me being misogynistic in many ways--and I've been unpacking that for years (born in 1955, so wow, was it bad). I was very much in the "I don't like other girls, I don't like romance stories, I want to do COOL things" for years. So it's particularly ironic that my new favorite genre to love are the paranormal and sf romances--although I am not particularly turned on by most of the heterosexual relationships, especially those with marriage and end of story at the end, I adore the characters and the paranormal and sf worldbuilding and plots. This new love has made me realize that my dislike of a lot of the female characters in mainstream pop culture was not just misogyny, but dislike of a specific type of character's narrative function, if that makes sense.
Mainly, I think I end up with the mode/beam mode--i.e. presuming to lecture other people on their internalized misogyny (or anything else) can be really problematic, the more so in that I keep remembering something I've learned as a creative writing teacher for over twenty years: a lot of the faults that my students see in OTHER students' writing are faults in their own (that they don't see). So I keep extrapolating from that to this issue of identifying faults in others intentions or beliefs. That can overlap to criticizing behavior too--and at that point, I tend to get very conflicted, and just sort of stop.