Internalised Oppression: Why are Women Sexist?

Sometimes, women can be just as sexist as men, and sometimes, People of Colour can be just as racist as white people. And although their words may say the same thing and have the same impact, sexism from women or homophobia from queer people comes from a very different place than their male or straight counterparts. It's called internalised oppression, and its where minority groups like women, People of Colour, queer or transgender people come to accept and live out the inaccurate myths and stereotypes applied to their group.

When a woman shames another girl for wearing too much makeup and looking like a "dumb bitch", she has internalised the constant social messages perpetuated by several millennia of patriarchal society that says women who value their appearances are superficial, one dimensional and stupid.

When a black police officer treats a black criminal with unnecessary violence, they have internalised the white supremacist attitude that black people are inherently dangerous and violent, and that their lives are worth less.

Although this sounds like an extreme and fictional case of brainwashing, it is actually extremely normal and likely that our brains work this way. Conformity has been proved time and time again to be an incredibly powerful influence on human behaviour. The famous Sherif conformity experiment in 1935 and Asch experiment in 1951 both drew conclusions that people will shift their actions and responses to agree with the majority, despite knowing that majority are wrong. Psychological studies on internalisation weigh in on the "nurture over nature" theory, but even without the fancy jargon like "sociological influences on the superego", we can see in our everyday lives how conformity is commonplace - sometimes necessary - and often we don't even realise we're doing it.

That's the premise of internalised oppression. When a little girl grows up constantly hearing people make demeaning comments on what women wear, she will internalise those thoughts and also start believing that girls shouldn't wear short clothes if they want to be respected. Fast forward ten or twenty years, and she will be the one slut shaming, or questioning the validity of her friends' rape claim, since she was wearing a tight bodycon dress at the time.

While some anti-feminist women do understand feminist theory and made a purposeful decision to disagree with it, the vast majority of women who are sexist or anti-feminist act that way because they've spent their entire lives solely being fed messages that degrade, shame and vilify women; understandably discouraging them from wanting to take part in anything that empowers femininity. Oppression perpetuated by an oppressed person is still unacceptable and needs to be called out, but we have to understand that it has very different roots than if it came from a majority group. When men are sexist, they are pushing the power and the privilege that society has systematically allotted them, just for being born with a penis and identifying with masculine gender roles. But when women are sexist, somewhere deep down its coming from a place of self hate, disempowerment, and disillusionment with being a women. Its coming from habitual conformity, where agreeing with sexism is almost a survival thing, to fit into the popular, patriarchal social norms.

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xx Hannah