ugh i had almost forgotten about that one post where people wax eloquent about how young girls who hate “pink and dresses and girly things” just have internalized misogyny and need to ~develop~ into proper pink-liking, dress-wearing women in order to be good feminists who celebrate all girls

not that internalized misogyny can NEVER play a role in this — shit is complex, and there was some degree of it involved in my hatred of pink at age ten — but come on it is perfectly reasonable for a woman or girl to resent the clothing, activities, and behaviors forced on her by patriarchy.

and if you’re going to say well, we don’t live in a vacuum, how can dislike of these things associated with women be totally unaffected by societal misogyny? then i am going to say to you, well, we don’t live in a vacuum, how can the demonization of gender nonconforming women and girls as self-hating, politically impure failures at supporting women be totally uninfluenced by the overwhelming demonization of them in our patriarchal society as pitiable, ridiculous failures at being women? and how can the idea that girls who do not become feminine women have failed to demonstrate appropriate development and growth be unrelated to the widespread patriarchal conviction that gender nonconforming women are childish and need to “grow up” into “real” women?

how is it that rejecting the trappings of womanhood deemed mandatory under patriarchy is a sign of misogyny, yet repeating patriarchy’s stigmatizing messages about gender nonconforming women and girls in new shiny pink feminist wrapping is not?

get back to me when your politics of celebrating all girls includes ALL girls, not just those whose self-exploration and struggles against internalized misogyny result in a love of skirts and makeup