Question

How is it that some woman in the Middle Easthave internalized misogyny?

Answer 1

• Culturally engrained sexism is not particular to Arab societies. In other words, it's a problem that Arab societies have, but it's not a distinctly Arab problem. The actual, root causes are disputed, complicated, and often controversial.
• Some of the most important architects of institutionalized Arab misogyny weren't actually Arab. They were Turkish or, as they called themselves at the time, Ottoman-British, and French. These foreigners ruled Arabs for centuries, twisting the cultures to accommodate their dominance. One of their favorite tricks was to buy the submission of men by offering them absolute power over women.
• Those first seeds of misogyny had to come from somewhere. The evolutionary explanations are controversial.
• Some say that it's simply because men are bigger and could fight their way to dominance; some that men seek to control women, and particularly female sexuality, out of a subconscious fear being of cuckolded and raising another man's child; others that the rise of the nation-state promoted the role of warfare in society, which meant the physically stronger gender took on more power.
• Though most common in men, misogyny also exists in and is practiced by women against other women or even themselves. Misogyny functions as an ideology or belief system that has accompanied patriarchal, or male-dominated societies for thousands of years and continues to place women in subordinate positions with limited access to power and decision making.
• For centuries, women have been encouraged to turn on each other, rather than the men who wronged them.
• Women who experience internalized misogyny may express it through minimizing the value of women, mistrusting women, and believing gender bias in favor of men.
• Women, after observing societal beliefs which demean the value and skills of women repeatedly, eventually internalize those misogynistic beliefs and apply them to themselves and other women.And this applies not just to middle eastern women but women around the world.
  
• Internalized misogyny is learned by women from those same external forces, in a converse way. Girls most often learn primarily from their mother in the home setting, being that during their early life mothers are more often than not the primary caregiver.
• Internalized misogyny may be learned by verbal abuse demeaning women on the basis of her gender and from other women on the basis of beauty standards and behavioral practices (like sex, flirting, and interaction with the same sex), etc. And since middle eastern countries have always been conservative and submissing women,women have internalised this view and view themselves as scapegoats.
• Also I think religion and culture have also conditioned internal misogyny of certain women to judge other women and their character or lifestyle. The stereotypical role of women which some might have been following,but when they see a strong independent woman defying the norms and living life on her own term,these submissive women feel threatened and develop dislike towards other women and all the misogynstic beliefs about "how to behave like a woman" come out.