unlearning casual misogyny
reflections from the people around me
No better month to write about misogyny than women’s history month! Quick disclaimer this is no way meant to be an academic piece with references to the imbedded structural/societal oppression faced by women rather just observations of the deeply imbedded misogyny I seem to be noticing in my daily life.
I recently started a new retail job (see back in October 2025), and as one does on slow days me and my colleagues love to talk each others ears off. I quite enjoy these conversations, sometimes they’re really as simple as what our favorite fruits are and other days we try and learn more about each other’s cultures and customs (there are around 6 or so different nationalities in the store!). It is important to note that this is an entirely female dominated team bar our store manager who is of-course a man. Now the reason I bring up my workplace is because sometime ago I joked about how I preferred an all-women’s team, it was brought up in relation to our hunt for an assistant store manager and who it might be. The response to my comment was however quite unexpected, to me atleast, my coworkers (two of them) shared that they wanted more men in the team as they were ‘fun’ and ‘interesting’ to talk to. Now although I like to say I’m a misandrist, I shall make it clear that I do not loathe the company of the opposite gender, some of my good friends are men! (The irony remains in the cliche of ‘i’m not racist I have black friends’ I’m duly aware).
I didn’t really have an issue with sharing that you may want a slightly more diverse team but I did have a problem with the comments that followed it up, which were essentially an iteration of ‘women talk about the same few things, and only care about their looks’. This specific coworker also made references to wanting to talk more about politics and other interests, she mentioned f1 as I have shared my interest in it. What I thought was perhaps a little funny but more worrisome was that this same coworker has shared that she has spent over £600 on skincare, and regularly mentions staying fit and eating healthy. Now I shouldn’t have to spell out why this juxtaposition is worrying but I will anyways. Simply put she continues to engage in major aspects of societal imposed standards on women while looking down on women that exercise a slightly (really?) different model of it. I’m not implying that eating healthy and cutting down processed sugar is something only women do (I live with a gym bro - my literal brother) but it is still important to recognize that this exists alongside as her need to look young and not age. Just a couple of days ago she shared that she felt like she had gained weight and needed to go back to the gym, I had to remind her she was on her period hence a little bit of bloating and perceived weight gain was entirely normal. My comments were not heard. My other coworker who shared similar sentiments, is also someone that advocates for eating better, taking care of your skin and staying healthy. All of which are good things to do but the intention behind them is not as innocent as one might assume.
Secondly, it was the comments around how they wanted to have more interesting conversations and discuss things like politics and sports, nothing wrong with those interests, but it does really set up a glaring double standard. Additionally it completely ignores that women can be multi-dimensional? I can use myself as an example here, I care quite a-lot about how I look, I like going out dressed well with my make up and hair done but I also have a bachelors of Science in International Relations and I do also follow F1 and cricket. So I find it a little troubling that these two women who to a large degree care about how they look and have degrees in Law (both of them!) think men are more interesting coworkers to have? Perhaps I’m a little too against the idea of working with men, but I have very little experience of doing so and hence my dislike for the idea simply arises from a lack of experience. But my own experience does not negate the fact that my coworkers felt comfortable enough to share these opinions, as I assume they are pretty well imbedded into their mindsets.
This is unfortunately a larger trend of how deep misogyny really runs in our minds, although these examples are quite overt, people engage in casual misogyny so regularly that we have normalized it. I see it in the way my friends discuss their latest dates, in marketing for literally any product ever, in even how we perceive our friends. It is worrying to me that after years and years of fighting for women’s rights and advocating for freedom, misogyny and anti-women rhetoric is so deeply ingrained into us that we may never be free of it.
My second coworker has a law degree from the university of Oxford, and despite that I think I’ve heard her engage in more conversations about the guys she’s talking to and whether they can provide for her after marriage than anything she wants to do with her career. Now I’m not saying all women need to be career oriented and aim for the stars, but I do think we need to start challenging our own ideas for why we think we want something. This has been a critique of choice feminism for years, if you do not know choice feminism refers to the idea that any choice women make is empowering and a result of freedom provided it is made freely. Now obviously the main critique with this is that sometimes women make bad choices, but in this current discussion it absolves women of actually understanding why they want to make certain choices over others. I for one do engage in wanting to look pretty and nice but I also know that is a direct result of societal conditioning and not my own empowering choice to dress for myself. We are as human beings products of our societies, cultures and environments and thus no choice nor decision you make will ever be made freely but it will mean more if you at-least know why are you doing so.
This idea around letting women choose what they want to do, or at-least define it, has obviously lead to some very troubling social media trends and concepts that are of-course also rooted in misogyny. The ‘i’m just a girl’ trend being an incredibly notable one but also the tradwife agenda or maybe the hundreds of comments about ‘big girl job’ or ‘girl dinner’ or ‘girl math’ and I could keep going. I’m not saying I’m absolved of any sin here either, I’ve definitely laughed at some of these, related to others and even said some myself. But I have also taken to unlearning the biases I hold myself and have been on a path to not let the internet and it’s trends allow me to dumb myself into some stereotypes about women.
The trend of how women present themselves on the internet to me is a larger manifestation of women having to fit a mould either way. I have noticed this in both progressive and conservative sides of the discussion, is that you often have to be one or the other but not both? This does in part refer to my piece about the million ways the internet has founded to put women into boxes (read here) but it assumes that women have to exist in a binary without leaving room for nuance. So I am once again saying you can be an extreme feminist, and look to dismantling the patriarchy but you can also enjoy baking and embroidery, those can co-exist! I do think that is largely due to the genderisation of hobbies and daily tasks, because there is nothing inherently feminine about baking, sewing, arts and crafts or even cleaning but we have lived through years and years of propaganda that those are things women do, not men. I mean my own brother who lost points for creativity in a competition pitch said all the other teams had at-least one or two women in them. My response to that was, “just learn how to make nicer posters then?”. I didn’t come out the womb knowing how to make aesthetically pleasing posters, I learnt it, so you can too.
I will say despite me making quite a few jokes about the performative male, I did think it was inherently misogynistic to assume that ‘feminist literature’ or certain musical artists could only be consumed by women. I do think to a degree the ways to de-center these ideas and unlearn our biases is to start calling out our own stereotyping. Why did I assume that hobby was done by a woman? Why did I associate that genre with men? Why did I say that word? It isn’t easy to recalibrate years of societal conditioning, its harder still to hold others accountable for their backward takes, but it does take one person to start making a difference, no matter how small.
This was a messy piece as usual but I hope that if you take anything from it, it is the need to want to do better, to be a better feminist, to be a better ally and to actually action it. To call out misogynistic behavior, your own or someone else’s.
I honestly did not have a thought process for this except I really wanted to say something, I think I may revisit and elaborate and make it more substantive but for now I hope this conveyed what I wanted it to. Happy (early) international women's day!
All the love,
Nosh
Another banger, as one of your male friends