I’m not sure that “internalized misogyny” is the correct term for the self-hatred of her own womanhood that Elliot Page, the former Ellen Page, reveals in her memoir. But whatever you call it, it’s something very toxic, and I think that this author is correct in saying the phenomenon has certain things in common with the body self-loathing exhibited by some of the olden-day religious fanatics. Here’s just a small sample of what Page says:
Like those women (who practiced mortification of the flesh for religious reasons), Elliot writes of her dread of womanhood. She speaks of female physiology with a contempt that would be damned as misogyny if it came from a man. Her first period horrifies her: ‘That smell of metallic blood, [like] a robot leaking.’ Puberty, and in particular the growth of her breasts, sickens her. ‘I’d forever feel this disgust, and I punished my body for it’, she writes.
There’s much much more at the link, and it is deeply disturbing. I probably wouldn’t be writing about it at all if these feelings were limited to Page, but they’re not. There is a deep strain in a not insignificant number of girls and young women who feel similar disgust and need for punishment, and it takes different forms in different times and cultures. I’m not equating religious motives with the motives of someone like Page, but the similarity of the form the impulse takes can’t be denied.
Back when I was in MFT graduate school many decades ago, the form it took was anorexia and cutting, or both. These activities have not gone away, but there is now considerable overlap with the trans phenomenon. Page, for example, did both (starving and cutting) in an effort to minimize and punish her flesh prior to deciding she was trans. I’ve seen video interviews with women who became trans who said they had also starved themselves and cut themselves in adolescence, in a similar effort. One of them mentioned that she first became aware of the trans “solution” as a young teenager on an online anorexia discussion board, when she mentioned that because her weight was so very low she was getting all-over body hair (something that is a well-known aspect of extreme anorexia; see this). And yet someone in the group told her that meant she actually was a trans man and that the hair was her body’s effort to let her know her that she was really a man. That was one of the things that propelled her along the trans route, which included several surgeries.
What is so very awful about female puberty, or female socialization, or whatever it is that leads to this sort of self-loathing? I confess that although I’m aware of the phenomenon I don’t understand it although I’m certainly a female. A personal note – I had two very good friends in childhood who became anorectic in early adolescence, and that was before I knew a term for it and before it was as common as it later became. I tried to talk both of them into eating – this was between the ages of ten and twelve. It was no go, even though they were wasting away before my very eyes. What did they have in common? They were both smart, perfectionistic, and somewhat tall, but that was all.
And in fact, looking at it objectively, I would have been a good candidate back then for the same anorexia, although I never succumbed. I had a very early puberty, way earlier than any of my peers. I was about nine years old when older boys at the ballfield started whistling at me and heckling as I walked by. I was so frightened by this that I turned around and ran home. I often dressed to hide my body during adolescence. I felt like an adult among children, and I towered over the boys. My parents were not especially aware or supportive. And yet – and yet – I clung to the idea that some day the others would catch up and things would be, if not alright, at least okay. I never hated my body or wished to mortify it; it certainly wasn’t my body’s fault and I didn’t blame it.
I wasn’t a “typical” girl or woman either. I was no tomboy, however, and I thought girls’ clothing to be far more interesting and fun than dressing like a boy. I was somewhat unusual in my interests, which were more philosophical and scientific, but I loved the arts, which I suppose is more traditionally feminine. More importantly, I didn’t think of these endeavors as being gendered, and this was back in a time when one would imagine that gender roles were more rigid. And yet it’s today’s young people who are being told that if boys like girls’ pursuits and girls like boys’ pursuits that that might mean they’re trans. We were allowed far more freedom.
Paradoxically, I think one of the things that has hurt women is the way feminism has hardened into something that has made them ashamed of their softer bodies and natural reproductive focus, and this has been an element in causing some women to reject those things or to even loathe them. And feminism plus the sexual revolution has helped to make women more afraid of men, who are now defined as predators out to exploit the female body. Most teenagers these days have been heavily exposed to online porn as well, and much of it is violent and frightening. What better way for a young woman to avoid that scene than to become a man herself, or at least to look more like one and muscle up with testosterone?
