I always hear feminists saying that men need to stop calling women and girls “bossy”, and that women who use the word to each other are just suffering from internalized misogyny. Apparently it’s just making women feel bad about having power and success. There are a few issues with that (apparently shaming a man for acting “like a woman” is misogyny, but shaming a woman for acting “like a man” is... also misogyny?) However, in my experience the idea isn’t even true to begin with.

The word “bossy” always seemed gender neutral in my experience. When me and my brother talked back as children, we were always reprimanded as “bossy”. When my coworkers and I complain about our male manager, we talk about how needlessly bossy he is. In my experience the word is used to call out needlessly combative and entitled behavior regardless of the gender of the person.

Am I missing something? Are my experiences not representative of reality? Are feminists actually being honest, or are they just whining about not being able to be shitty people without any consequences?