It is heartbreaking, and intolerable, and a whole host of other adjectives that, taken together, still couldn’t account for the daily reality of women treating themselves and other women with an unbearable amount of disrespect and contempt.

How do women hate each other? They’re too numerous to catalog here but we can include ubiquitous women’s magazines and websites that ingrain false notions of physical perfection, hypersexuality and material wealth while peddling alcohol, cigarettes and elixirs of youth.

Then there are the ever-present culture wars pitting women who believe in the “right to life” against those who believe in “a woman’s right to choose,” or those who want to pursue a career versus those who want to stay home with kids, or breast-feeding against bottle feeding, yada, yada, yada. Each portrays the other as incapable of making good choices.

If women became safe and respected by all men becoming feminists, then women accepting their own misogyny -- whether defined as bias, hatred, cattiness or extreme snark -- would seem to hasten a similar state.

Women may never be able to walk down a dark alley and feel completely comfortable, but it shouldn’t take so long to feel their self-esteem is likely to be safe within a diverse population of other women. For now, plenty of women wage war on other women.

Written by a woman, ladies. Via Esther Cepeda: Too many women ignore their own misogyny - The Washington Post.