quietblogoflurk:

Incomplete, inarticulate thought: It is usually shitty to define yourself as ‘not like other girls’, because it implies contempt of other girls.

However, for many young girls, seeing themselves as ‘not like other girls’ is the first step towards expressing their dissatisfaction with the limiting and harmful forms of femininity they’re supposed to conform to. Also, girls who get routinely punished by authority figures or by their peers for not being girly enough, or being girly in the wrong way, are being completely logical when they draw the conclusion that they are not like other girls: if they were, they’d be left alone. (I’m talking about lesbian girls, GNC girls, disabled girls, neurodivergent girls, working class girls, but also just girls who are not good at the social role ‘girl’.)

I think internalized sexism works in complicated ways and we will always feel the need to condemn other women to prove we’re the good ones. But I’m done seeing women go: I hate girls who think they’re not like other girls, soooo sexist! Ew, I’m not like those other girls who say they’re not like other girls!

I’d prefer it if we could support and educate girls who took that clumsy, shaky first step, and help them towards a feminist view, as opposed to internalized misogyny. Contempt of women who are contemptuous of women does not solve the problem.