How I Tore Down the Lie that I Favoured Male Friendships
Exhuming internalized misogyny takes a lifetime
One of my lesbian friends said something the other day that coalesced a swirling cloud of amorphous thoughts that have long hung around my head. Why did I so strongly self-identify from early adolescence well into my late 20s as the kind of woman who preferred the friendship of men?
This is what she said:
Trans men get represented way less often than trans women because everyone considers it self-evident why you’d want to be a man. Trans men are “trading up”; trans women are “trading down”.
A lightbulb went off. The same way society assumes trans men are “trading up,” I was unconsciously trying to get as close to men as I could to disavow my feminine affiliations. Right, I thought. Internalized misogyny. We meet again.
No matter how feminist you are, internalized misogyny is almost sure to rear its ugly head from time to time. I think they put it in the water like the fluoride. It’s not a time for self-recrimination when this happens, but it is an excellent opportunity for self-reflection.
In distancing myself from other women, in cultivating shallow, non-committal friendships, I was really expressing a deep discomfort with aspects of myself.
