Overview

Internalised misogyny is the absorption of a culture's contempt for women into a woman's view of herself: the belief, usually unspoken, that femininity is weakness, that the female body is shameful or dangerous to live in, and that being a woman is a lesser way of being a person. Few people who carry it would endorse it if asked directly. It usually shows up as a felt aversion ("I just don't feel like a girl") rather than as a belief anyone holds on purpose.

In detransition accounts, internalised misogyny is one of the most frequently named reasons why girls and young women came to believe they were boys, men or "non-binary". Looking back, many detransitioned and desisted women (those who stopped identifying as trans before medically transitioning) on /r/detrans say their distress was not evidence of a male inner self. They now see it as a reaction to what being female had come to mean to them: being sexualised, unsafe, not taken seriously and boxed into stereotypes. This page covers how that reaction can look like gender dysphoria, how feminist and psychoanalytic thinkers have explained it, what the limited research shows, how some trans men object to the framing, and how women describe making peace with their sex.

What internalised misogyny is

Psychologists describe several overlapping forms of internalised sexism:

• Internalised misogyny: devaluing women and traits coded as feminine, including in oneself.
• Self-objectification: habitually watching one's own body from the outside, as an observer would.
• Gender-role internalisation: treating stereotypes (gentle, caring, decorative, emotional) as the definition of what a woman is, not as social expectations.

Objectification theory, proposed by Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts in 1997, argues that girls in cultures that routinely sexualise the female body learn to take an observer's view of themselves. The theory links this to body shame, anxiety, depression and eating disorders, all of which are more common in women (Moradi & Huang 2008; Calogero 2012). Research on internalised misogyny has found it associated with higher depression, lower self-esteem and greater psychological distress after sexist events (JISS 2024 review).

None of this research was designed to study gender dysphoria. What it shows is that girls can absorb negative messages about womanhood, that this commonly produces distress focused on the body, and that the distress is often hard to name. That is the ground on which a trans identification can take root.

How it can present as gender dysphoria

Detransitioned women rarely describe one single cause. In their accounts, internalised misogyny usually sits alongside trauma, same-sex attraction, autism, eating disorders and online peer influence. The patterns below recur often in these accounts.

"Girl = bad": rejecting femininity

One of the clearest descriptions comes from a woman who, at the time, would have denied thinking any such thing:

Everything was about just not being a girl. Because girl = bad. And of course if you asked me at the time, does girl = bad? I would've said of "course not!! I just don't personally feel like a girl". But like, what is feeling like a girl? … I just didn't want to be a woman because woman = unintelligent, dressing feminine, and easily preyed upon. —221gp, detrans female

The mechanism is a confusion between the category (female) and the stereotype attached to it (soft, decorative, passive). A girl who doesn't fit the stereotype, or who sees it as degrading, can conclude that she doesn't belong in the category. Several women also describe a quieter version: liking feminine things but hiding them out of shame. One commenter described suppressing her love of pink, pretty clothes and makeup because she was "terrified that it'd make me look like a girl", after being exposed to "not like other girls" content at age ten (kyles_durians, desisted female). See gender stereotypes for the wider context.

Puberty and the sudden body

Many accounts place the start of distress at puberty, when a girl's body begins to be read sexually. Breasts in particular become public property in a way the girl did not choose:

It felt like my body was no longer mine but belonged to the whole world. … I craved the time when I could walk around shirtless outside and no one would bat an eye. —Ok-Cress-436, detrans female

Several women say that what they wanted was not a man's body but their pre-pubertal one: a boy's body, or a child's body, which they saw as neutral and unwatched. One desisted woman put it plainly: "I didn't want to be a man, I just wanted to be a boy" (baksasugo963, desisted female). This matters clinically. Distress that is really about being sexualised responds to safety, boundaries and time. A mastectomy or testosterone does not undo it.

Sexualisation and objectification

The comments contain many experiences of being sexualised early: catcalling from age ten to twelve, comments from adult men about developing breasts, and being taught to "smile and be polite" to harassers. For some women, transition was a way to leave the category of "sexual object" altogether:

At the time I thought it meant I was meant to have an androgynous "nonbinary" body, but what I really wanted subconsciously was to go back to a time when I was treated like a person and not like a sexual object. It's so sad to think that the last time I felt that happen was when I was 10. —Grey-Skies-Silflays, detrans female

Others describe how online art and fandom made flat chests look "pure" and presented surgery as an almost spiritual rebirth into a higher (male) form. This made the escape look beautiful as well as safe (see platform influence).

Fear of male violence and the wish for safety

Where sexual abuse or assault is part of the history, internalised misogyny and trauma become hard to separate. Several women describe the male identity as a kind of armour: if you are the man, no man can hurt you in that way.

For me it's that men have it easier in majority of the world. They also don't have periods, don't get sexualized the way women do,aren't as vulnerable to male violence(such as r4pe) etc. It seemed like an escape,to blend in with males is to be safe. —throwawaydonkey3, desisted female

One woman recalled noticing, while passing as male at night, that women crossed the street to avoid her. She realised "how scared of men I was", and remembered a therapist's view that she wanted to be big and strong "to avoid further assaults and abuse" (Luck_Unlucky, desisted). In psychological terms this resembles identification with the aggressor: taking on the identity of the feared group as a way of mastering the fear.

Wanting male freedom and respect

Some accounts are less about danger and more about status: being listened to, paid fairly, allowed to be blunt, silent or dirty without being called unladylike. One commenter remembered being brought inside from the rain at kindergarten because playing in mud was "unladylike", while her male friends played on:

I wanted to be a boy and be able to get away with all the things my best (male) friends got away with. … But recently I've come to realise that while I am unhappy with the way I'm treated in society, that is society's fault - not mine. I don't need surgery or body-altering hormones with potential side effects in order to have the right to be respected and valued. —haessal, self-questioning

Women who passed as men often confirm that the social difference is real. One described being harassed less, listened to more and allowed to be grumpy or silent, but added that it "caused me anxiety, because I realized that people see something that I'm really not and the real me had become non-existent. It felt fake" (babewithp0wer).

"Not like other girls"

The "not like other girls" attitude keeps a girl's own worth intact by separating her from her sex: other girls are shallow and weak, I am different. Taken further, "not like other girls" becomes "not a girl". One detransitioned woman linked the attitude to women's isolation from each other:

So women suffer their struggles alone, isolated from other women. Sometimes it gets to the point they can't even see other women as the same people they themselves are. It's where "I'm not like other girls" comes from. Being a man really showed me how much I missed being a woman. —DucksDontBiteDoThey, detrans female

Mothers, fathers and the family

Family messages come up again and again: fathers who openly preferred sons, mothers who belittled their daughters' bodies, households full of jokes like "women can't drive" and "don't cry like a little girl". One woman described "the abusive mother and absent idealized father thing", adding that she "did NOT want to be anything like my mother… and I think womanhood was a part of that" (CuriousD3vil, detrans female). The psychoanalytic section below looks at this pattern more closely.

The reverse also appears. A woman whose mother was "proactive, stoic and direct. Woodsy and sporty" wrote that without that model "I'm pretty sure I would have fully physically transitioned by now" (spare_eye, desisted female). Having a gender non-conforming adult woman to look up to seems to protect some girls.

Feminist analysis

De Beauvoir: the girl who becomes "the Other"

In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir wrote that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She was not saying that sex is unreal. She was saying that a female child is gradually made into "woman": a social role defined as man's Other, confined to immanence, appearance and service. Her second volume follows this process through girlhood and puberty and describes how the developing body is experienced as an alienating object under others' gaze (Philopedia summary; Sociology.Institute).

Many detransitioned women describe the same experience in their own words. De Beauvoir's distinction points to a different response to it. If "woman" as a degraded role is something a girl is made into, the problem lies in the role and not in the female body. Changing the body leaves the role as it is.

Gender-identity theory later read de Beauvoir as support for its own position: if gender is constructed, a female body can be "the locus of other constructions of gender", as Judith Butler argued (Butler on Beauvoir). Many detransitioned women use the same line in the opposite direction: because the stereotypes are constructed, they can be refused without leaving one's sex.

Radical feminism: "not a binary but a hierarchy"

Radical feminists argue that gender is a hierarchy that places men above women, not a neutral menu of identities. Seen this way, it is predictable that some girls will try to climb out of the lower position. Janice Raymond (The Transsexual Empire, 1979) and later Sheila Jeffreys (Gender Hurts, 2014) went further. They argued that the transgender framework turns a political problem (sexism) into an individual medical one and treats women's bodies as the thing to fix (New Yorker 2014; Jeffreys review, Project MUSE).

Several detransitioned women describe radical feminist writing as the turning point for them:

Specifically- they were talking about the "gender binary" and stated, "It's not a binary. It's a hierarchy." And just like that, I saw with absolute clarity- how logically it would follow that FTMs internalized the messages elevating men and denigrating women. —L82Desist, detrans female

Another summed up the contrast in one line: "Transgender ideology tells you that your body is wrong, radical feminism tells you that society is wrong" (AbolishGender).

Criticisms and limits

The radical feminist critique is contested, and the disagreements are worth stating fairly:

• Trans-inclusive feminists say the critique erases trans people's own reports and has been used to exclude trans women from women's spaces (New Statesman 2014).
• Some detransitioned women find radical feminism helpful as an analysis but alienating as a community. One wrote: "Do I endorse everything? Maybe not. But a lot of it makes sense if you hold it loosely" (L82Desist, detrans female).
• Not every gender non-conforming woman experiences her tomboyishness as misogyny. One commenter who questioned but never transitioned said femininity "truly just feels foreign", and that she struggled with feeling inferior to feminine women, not superior (spamcentral). Disliking femininity for oneself is not the same as despising it. Internalised misogyny is one possible explanation, not a label to put on every masculine woman.

Psychoanalytic perspectives

Horney's "flight from womanhood"

In 1926 the psychoanalyst Karen Horney published The Flight from Womanhood. She described a masculinity complex in some women: "the entire complex of feelings and fantasies that have for their content the woman's feeling of being discriminated against, her envy of the male, her wish to be a man and to discard the female role" (The Unknown Karen Horney). Freud had explained such wishes through "penis envy". Horney argued instead that they were largely produced by a male-centred culture that gives women a lower position, and that the masculine trend often served to defend against feminine feelings (Lacanian Works archive; LibreTexts).

Horney's account is close to the explanation many detransitioned women reach on their own a century later: the wish to be male as a response to being treated as lesser, and not as a sign of an innate male core.

Identification with the father, rejection of the mother

Depth psychology describes a related family pattern. A daughter may idealise a father (often absent or emotionally unavailable) and reject a mother who is seen as weak, hostile or degraded. Becoming female then means becoming her. Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano's case study of "Maya", a young woman who took testosterone for almost two years and then detransitioned, interprets her trans identification as serving several unconscious functions. These included rejecting her mother, escaping feminine expectations, expressing split-off aggression and finding social belonging, against a background of unresolved grief and attachment trauma (Marchiano 2021).

The case has clear limitations. It is a single case, reconstructed after detransition, by an analyst known to be critical of the affirmative model, and its interpretations cannot be tested prospectively. Its value lies in showing a way of thinking: treating the wish to change sex as a symbol to understand, not a literal instruction to carry out. Many comments describe similar patterns: a father who wanted sons, a mother who "used me as a doll", or a mother who taught that "the most important thing a woman can be is pleasing to a man" (zigzagstich, detrans female).

What the research shows

No study has directly measured how often internalised misogyny underlies female gender dysphoria. The available evidence is indirect, and almost all of it comes from self-selected samples.

The wider context is a large change in who presents with gender distress. At the UK's Gender Identity Development Service, referrals went from mostly young boys to mostly adolescent girls between 2009 and 2016 (de Graaf et al. 2018), a change also noted by the Cass Review, the 2024 independent review of NHS gender identity services for children and young people in England. The female majority in every detransitioner sample above fits the hypothesis that female-specific pressures are involved, though it does not prove it. See rapid-onset gender dysphoria and evidence reviews.

Limitations. Littman's 2018 study relied on parents recruited partly from sites sceptical of youth transition, and it received formal methodological criticism (Restar 2019). The detransitioner surveys recruited mainly from online detrans communities, including /r/detrans, where internalised misogyny is a common shared explanation. Respondents may have taken up that framing from the community instead of discovering it on their own. None of these studies can tell us how many women who remain trans-identified would recognise the same pattern. Even so, they consistently show that a group of women, mostly young and often same-sex attracted, came to see their dysphoria as rooted in something other than a male identity.

Trans men's perspectives and objections

Many trans men reject the internalised misogyny explanation as applied to themselves, and their objections should be stated accurately.

• "It's a way of dismissing us." Some see the label as a tool to push gender non-conforming women back into femininity. One trans man on r/ftm called it "Painting it in pseudo-feminist language to shame non conformity and uphold the patriarchy" (FakeBirdFacts, trans man (FTM)).
• "Women who hate sexism don't become men." Another argued that if misogyny caused transition, "the entire female population of, say, Afghanistan would try to transition into men" (DadJoke2077, trans man (FTM)).
• A proposed distinction. One commenter drew the line this way: "Thinking it sucks to be a girl/woman … classic trans guy feelings. Thinking that girls/women suck in general - misogynistic" (armadillotangerine, trans man (FTM)).

Some trans men do acknowledge misogyny in their own histories. One wrote that while he still thought of himself as a girl, he felt "pretty loathingly towards women because everything they enjoyed being was something I would be absolutely disgusted to see in myself", and called this "pure self-hatred" (789734095, trans man (FTM)). Others describe how passing changed their lives: fewer pet names from men, being taken more seriously, and feeling "safer walking around in public" (Last-Laugh7928, trans man (FTM)).

Weighing the objections. The Afghanistan argument shows that misogyny alone does not produce trans identification, and nobody serious claims it does. The detransition accounts describe misogyny combined with puberty, trauma, same-sex attraction, autism, and an available identity and online community that frames this distress as gender. Many detransitioned women also believed at the time that their feelings were "classic trans guy feelings" and only later understood them differently. So the distinction between disliking being a woman and disliking women is less clear from the inside than it looks. The two experiences can coexist: some trans men are content and do not recognise this pattern, while others later realise it applied to them. This page does not question content trans-identified people. It describes what those who left the identity found.

Reconciling with womanhood

Detransitioned women describe recovery less as "becoming feminine" and more as making womanhood neutral: a fact about their body and not a role they have to perform.

I realized that being a woman is a neutral part of me that doesn't matter all that much. It definitely has no bearing on what personality traits I can have, or what I can wear, or what aesthetics I can achieve. —beautifulagain, detrans female

Recurring elements in these accounts include:

• A biological definition as relief. Several women describe the definition "adult human female" as freeing, because it means there is nothing to perform to be a woman: "There was nothing i, or anyone else, had to do to be a woman" (Space-A1ien, detrans female).
• Friendship with women, especially gender non-conforming and lesbian women. One commenter recommended socialising with other women as "one of the best ways of overcoming internalised misogyny" (Frosty_Green_5995, detrans).
• Re-inhabiting the body. Several women describe the return of their period after stopping testosterone as unexpectedly moving: "for the first time in my life, I was letting my body do what it is meant to do and not fighting against it!" (OnceBitten8240, detrans female). See testosterone cessation.
• Somatic and trauma-focused therapy, where trauma is involved. These approaches work with bodily sensations and not just with the stories a person tells about her body.
• Staying gender non-conforming. Recovery does not mean giving up short hair, men's clothes or masculine interests. One woman wrote: "Being a woman doesn't undermine my masculinity, or my thoughts, or my gender non conforming expression, or my sexuality, or anything about myself, really" (DarichUbish, desisted female). See gender non-conformity without labels.

Resolution is often partial. Some women still feel dysphoria at times, still resent sexism, and still miss the freedom they had while passing. What changes is where they place the problem:

I still hate existing as a woman in a misogynistic society but my female body is not the enemy and does not deserve the hatred and punishment I gave it. —quoted by tomboyeurope, desister

Grief is common too: for lost years, for permanent changes from testosterone or surgery, and for the version of oneself who seemed to offer an escape. See healing and recovery and transition regret.

Practical considerations

For girls and women questioning their identity, and for the parents and therapists supporting them, detransitioned women often suggest asking why being female feels unbearable before deciding what it means:

• What specifically feels frightening or humiliating about being a woman? Is it the body itself, or how others treat it?
• Can a woman look, act and be perceived the way you want? Have you met women who do?
• Did the distress begin at puberty, after harassment or assault, or after discovering online gender communities?
• Is there same-sex attraction that has been hard to accept? (See internalised homophobia.)
• What did your family, especially your mother and father, teach you about what women are worth?

Exploratory therapy that leaves these questions open, rather than confirming an identity early, is described in gender-exploratory therapy. The support directory lists therapists and detransition support groups, and the video archive has many detransitioned women talking about this theme in their own words. A parallel pattern in males, where shame about maleness is mistaken for female identity, is covered in internalised misandry.

This page is not medical advice.

Related pages

• Causes and correlates (hub)
• Internalised homophobia
• Internalised misandry
• Trauma
• Gender stereotypes
• Non-binary identities
• Testosterone in females
• Mastectomy
• Rapid-onset gender dysphoria
• Healing and recovery
• Study archive

References

• Littman, L. (2018). Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. PLOS ONE. source.
• Littman, L. (2021). Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Vandenbussche, E. (2022). Detransition-Related Needs and Support: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey. Journal of Homosexuality. study page, source.
• Littman, L., O'Malley, S., Kerschner, H. & Bailey, J. M. (2024). Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Lomax, J. & Butler, C. (2025). Narratives of Adults Registered Female at Birth Who Started a Medical Transition and Later Detransitioned. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Marchiano, L. (2021). Gender detransition: a case study. Journal of Analytical Psychology. study page, source.
• Cass, H. (2024). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: Final report. study page.
• de Graaf, N. M. et al. (2018). Sex Ratio in Children and Adolescents Referred to the Gender Identity Development Service in the UK (2009–2016). Archives of Sexual Behavior. source.
• Restar, A. J. (2019). Methodological Critique of Littman's (2018) Parental-Respondents Accounts of "Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria". Archives of Sexual Behavior. source.
• Moradi, B. & Huang, Y.-P. (2008). Objectification Theory and Psychology of Women: A Decade of Advances and Future Directions. source.
• Calogero, R. M. (2012). Objectification theory, self-objectification, and body image. source.
• Journal of Integrated Social Sciences (2024). Internalized Misogyny (review), 14(1): 82–108. source.
• de Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex. Summary: Philopedia; Sociology.Institute.
• Butler, J. (1986). Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex. source.
• Horney, K. (1926). The Flight from Womanhood: The Masculinity-Complex in Women, as Viewed by Men and by Women. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 7: 324–339. source; see also The Unknown Karen Horney, LibreTexts.
• Jeffreys, S. (2014). Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Review: Project MUSE.
• Goldberg, M. (2014). What Is a Woman? The Dispute Between Radical Feminism and Transgenderism. The New Yorker. source.
• New Statesman (2014). It's time to end divisive rhetoric on sex and gender and create a trans-inclusive feminism. source.