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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny
Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist--or increase--even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward women generally. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs.
Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.
Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.
338 pages, Hardcover
First published October 9, 2017
About the author
Kate Manne
3 books591 followersKate Manne is an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University, having previously been a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2011-2013. She works in moral, social, and feminist philosophy. Her work has appeared in venues including The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine/The Cut, The Washington Post, Politico, as well as academic journals.
Manne's first book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, was awarded the 2019 PROSE Award for Excellence in Philosophy and in the Humanities by the Association of American Publishers. It also received the APA (American Philosophical Association) 2019 book prize. In 2019, Manne was voted one of the world's top ten thinkers by Prospect Magazine (UK).
Manne's second book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, will be out with Crown (US) and Penguin (UK) on August 11 2020.
Manne's first book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, was awarded the 2019 PROSE Award for Excellence in Philosophy and in the Humanities by the Association of American Publishers. It also received the APA (American Philosophical Association) 2019 book prize. In 2019, Manne was voted one of the world's top ten thinkers by Prospect Magazine (UK).
Manne's second book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, will be out with Crown (US) and Penguin (UK) on August 11 2020.
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June 29, 2022
Essential reading.
Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny is a brilliant philosophical treatise on misogyny and the systemic ways a patriarchal hegemony policies, punishes and effectively controls women. This is an academic work and can be quite dense, but Manne has a gift of exploring a whole array of complex ideas in conjunction with each other in a way that is precise, informative and enlightening. This is an essential work in feminist studies, particularly with the efficiency she examines misogyny not as, necessarily, hostility towards women--this would be sexism--but as the system of control that serves a patriarchal purpose. Sexism, she proposes, justifies patriarchy as an ideology whereas misogyny enforces the patriarchy by policing women who may deviate from it.
Opening with a chapter on strangulation by men--notables such as Steve Bannon strangling his wife are used as an example--Manne moves from physical silencing of women right into systemically silencing them through social norms and institutions while demonstrating how misogyny is at the heart of this. By first canvassing traditional definitions of misogyny, Manne works to examine and expand upon the term and look at the systemic ways it encroaches upon women, often in violent ways. Misogyny, she argues, is a historically enforced idea that demands a male dominance and that all aspects of women should serve patriarchal purposes. Even non-violent or commonplace notions: ‘“Smile, sweetheart” is an ostensibly less offensive remark,’ to use one of the endless examples in the book, ‘but it is expressive of the same insidious demand that a woman’s face be emotionally legible.’ There is a sense of entitlement that is also systemic here, though that is better discussed in her next book.
This book is also noteworthy for bringing the term ‘Himpathy’ into use. Manne defines himpathy as ‘the excessive sympathy shown toward male perpetrators of sexual violence.’ The term became common use in social discussions along with Manne’s essay on rapist Brett Kavanaugh--which can be read here—as an example of himpathy. Down Girl provides many instances and demonstrates how himpathy comes to excuse bad behavior and further enable it, and how himpathy towards abusive men from women is a learned condition that is also systemic of misogyny and patriarchal power. There is a section that deals with victimization and a tendency to silence victims.
A major theme throughout looks at the way there is an economy of behavior. What is allowable in the behavior of men is often criticized in women, just look at the language used about women in the workplace or politics. Similarly, any masculinely coded perk or privilege in society is denied to women and they are strongly chastised if attempting to utilize them. This reinforces a very gendered society, one that Manne observes becomes more enforced when gender binaries start to slip or blur. Also that women are viewed as property to the male figures in their lives, that their 'personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty.' Part of the gendered economy is an expectation for women to provide unpaid labor such as but not limited to sex, emotional labor, care, houseworks, etc.
While Manne never draws the conclusion directly, a reader can’t help but connect this to the way neoliberalism, anti-feminism and misogyny go hand-in-hand and why women are punished or gaslit when demanding fair compensation, equity or even to voice annoyance in the home for doing all the unpaid household labor without much help (an essay upon this last idea makes for a very interesting chapter in her next book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women). These ideas also culminate into a frightening reality that misogyny polices women under the assumption that they are less-than: less human, less capable, less believable and thereby not trusted with their own bodily autonomy. It is a belief that men are entitled to the bodily control of women and a demand for their subservience.
Kate Manne is upfront about the shortcomings in this work that, as a cis, hetero white woman, the treatise is focused on percisely that. She apologizes in the introduction, rationalizing that she wanted to begin by speaking to what she felt was her ability, though encourages readers to consider her words in cases of misogynoir (the intersections of misogyny and anti-Blackness) and transmisogyny.
There are many more interesting concepts discussed here, and, honestly, if you haven't read this yet you should snag a copy right now. Really do it. Drawing on a long, sad history, Manne brilliantly examines these concepts in a way that is extremely enlightening and a useful tool in shifting the paradigm in our modern world. Many of the examples used are recent and taken from major headlines, allowing it to be an easily functional social commentary as readers will already be familiar with the events and their outcomes and keeping it currently relevant also aids in keeping a reader engaged. While imperfect, it is a great voice in the conversation and I would urge anyone to read this book.
Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny is a brilliant philosophical treatise on misogyny and the systemic ways a patriarchal hegemony policies, punishes and effectively controls women. This is an academic work and can be quite dense, but Manne has a gift of exploring a whole array of complex ideas in conjunction with each other in a way that is precise, informative and enlightening. This is an essential work in feminist studies, particularly with the efficiency she examines misogyny not as, necessarily, hostility towards women--this would be sexism--but as the system of control that serves a patriarchal purpose. Sexism, she proposes, justifies patriarchy as an ideology whereas misogyny enforces the patriarchy by policing women who may deviate from it.
taking sexism to be the branch of patriarchal ideology that justifies and rationalizes a patriarchal social order, and misogyny as the system that polices and enforces its governing norms and expectations. So sexism is scientific; misogyny is moralistic. And a patriarchal order has a hegemonic quality.
Opening with a chapter on strangulation by men--notables such as Steve Bannon strangling his wife are used as an example--Manne moves from physical silencing of women right into systemically silencing them through social norms and institutions while demonstrating how misogyny is at the heart of this. By first canvassing traditional definitions of misogyny, Manne works to examine and expand upon the term and look at the systemic ways it encroaches upon women, often in violent ways. Misogyny, she argues, is a historically enforced idea that demands a male dominance and that all aspects of women should serve patriarchal purposes. Even non-violent or commonplace notions: ‘“Smile, sweetheart” is an ostensibly less offensive remark,’ to use one of the endless examples in the book, ‘but it is expressive of the same insidious demand that a woman’s face be emotionally legible.’ There is a sense of entitlement that is also systemic here, though that is better discussed in her next book.
This book is also noteworthy for bringing the term ‘Himpathy’ into use. Manne defines himpathy as ‘the excessive sympathy shown toward male perpetrators of sexual violence.’ The term became common use in social discussions along with Manne’s essay on rapist Brett Kavanaugh--which can be read here—as an example of himpathy. Down Girl provides many instances and demonstrates how himpathy comes to excuse bad behavior and further enable it, and how himpathy towards abusive men from women is a learned condition that is also systemic of misogyny and patriarchal power. There is a section that deals with victimization and a tendency to silence victims.
A major theme throughout looks at the way there is an economy of behavior. What is allowable in the behavior of men is often criticized in women, just look at the language used about women in the workplace or politics. Similarly, any masculinely coded perk or privilege in society is denied to women and they are strongly chastised if attempting to utilize them. This reinforces a very gendered society, one that Manne observes becomes more enforced when gender binaries start to slip or blur. Also that women are viewed as property to the male figures in their lives, that their 'personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty.' Part of the gendered economy is an expectation for women to provide unpaid labor such as but not limited to sex, emotional labor, care, houseworks, etc.
Her humanity may hence be held to be owed to other human beings, and her value contingent on her giving moral goods to them: life, love, pleasure, nurture, sustenance, and comfort, being some
While Manne never draws the conclusion directly, a reader can’t help but connect this to the way neoliberalism, anti-feminism and misogyny go hand-in-hand and why women are punished or gaslit when demanding fair compensation, equity or even to voice annoyance in the home for doing all the unpaid household labor without much help (an essay upon this last idea makes for a very interesting chapter in her next book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women). These ideas also culminate into a frightening reality that misogyny polices women under the assumption that they are less-than: less human, less capable, less believable and thereby not trusted with their own bodily autonomy. It is a belief that men are entitled to the bodily control of women and a demand for their subservience.
Kate Manne is upfront about the shortcomings in this work that, as a cis, hetero white woman, the treatise is focused on percisely that. She apologizes in the introduction, rationalizing that she wanted to begin by speaking to what she felt was her ability, though encourages readers to consider her words in cases of misogynoir (the intersections of misogyny and anti-Blackness) and transmisogyny.
There are many more interesting concepts discussed here, and, honestly, if you haven't read this yet you should snag a copy right now. Really do it. Drawing on a long, sad history, Manne brilliantly examines these concepts in a way that is extremely enlightening and a useful tool in shifting the paradigm in our modern world. Many of the examples used are recent and taken from major headlines, allowing it to be an easily functional social commentary as readers will already be familiar with the events and their outcomes and keeping it currently relevant also aids in keeping a reader engaged. While imperfect, it is a great voice in the conversation and I would urge anyone to read this book.
December 12, 2017
This is a brilliant academic treatise on man's inhumanity to woman. It should be required reading for every feminist. After a thorough treatment of academic and historical instances of misogyny, the author somewhat despairs of its ever being replaced by egalitarian discourse, much less behavior. I remember reading once that men are afraid that women will laugh at them, whereas women are afraid that men will kill them. Manne reviews several instances where husbands killed their wives basically out of fear of being humiliated.
The essence of the problem is that women are only allowed by society to be carers and givers, but if they presume to be alphas, they are immediately discounted and vilified. (See Clinton, Hillary; Warren, Elizabeth, and hosts of others). The attitude is so common and unconscious that even white women married to white men feel they have to uphold the standard of male dominance, since it's so ingrained in the culture that people of both genders rarely seem aware of it, much less critical of it.
The book is really academic, and I had to read each paragraph twice to apprehend the meaning correctly. I'll probably have to read it in its entirety once more to be sure I really get it. It is thoroughly convincing by both example and argument, and it agrees with my observations from my own life.
This is one of the best books I've read in 2017, and I've read a lot. One can only hope for a paradigm shift that looks possible by #metoo accounts of male sexual attacks on women over the past 20-some years.
Did I say it's a brilliant book?
The essence of the problem is that women are only allowed by society to be carers and givers, but if they presume to be alphas, they are immediately discounted and vilified. (See Clinton, Hillary; Warren, Elizabeth, and hosts of others). The attitude is so common and unconscious that even white women married to white men feel they have to uphold the standard of male dominance, since it's so ingrained in the culture that people of both genders rarely seem aware of it, much less critical of it.
The book is really academic, and I had to read each paragraph twice to apprehend the meaning correctly. I'll probably have to read it in its entirety once more to be sure I really get it. It is thoroughly convincing by both example and argument, and it agrees with my observations from my own life.
This is one of the best books I've read in 2017, and I've read a lot. One can only hope for a paradigm shift that looks possible by #metoo accounts of male sexual attacks on women over the past 20-some years.
Did I say it's a brilliant book?
February 25, 2018
At first, I resisted her idea that misogyny had nothing to do with seeing women as wholly human, but she convinced me. I also resisted himpathy as an explanation to domestic violence, but she convinced me on this too and on and on. This is an excellent contemplation of misogyny and Manne is a rigorous thinker. I have thought about this book so many times since I read it. It also made me want to rage and scream at the end as Manne sees no hope for recovery. I’m sort of with her. There’s another great book called the history of misogyny—both of these are essential readings—unfortunately. It’s hopeless.
April 22, 2018
If you are human, you should read this book. Manne's book is academic treatise on Misogyny, and is anything but dry. While I'm not convinced she had to include the look at literature (such as her analysis of Mockingbird), but her look at court cases (her reading of the Brock Turner case is brilliant) and politics is well worth the price.
Seriously, read this book.
Seriously, read this book.
December 22, 2019
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny is a challenging read, but one worth the invested effort. Kate Manne offers what she describes as the "first full length work from the viewpoint of analytic feminist philosophy", which might be the first clue that this is written in Academese (more on that later), requiring intense focus. Manne distinguishes sexism (defined here as a branch of patriarchal ideology that justifies and rationalizes patriarchal social order) from misogyny (the system that polices and enforces its governing norms and expectations), and then breaks down a host of examples, terms, and underlying logic to show the various ways, subtle and blatant, that misogyny works to keep women in their "places". If you're like me, you've already re-read those definitions of sexism and misogyny a couple times to decode them: hopefully it is a fair condensation to say that sexism is the underlying belief and attitude, and misogyny is the application or behavior. Thus, misogyny includes tools of enforcement such as catcalling, trolling, commenting on appearance, objectification, assult, and slurs. I ended up reading the book twice: once to take it all in, and a second time to take notes. It is available as an audio book, admirably narrated by Lauren Forgang, which I recommend.
Because it was published in 2017, Down Girl can offer Trump's baffling election in 2016 as Exhibit A. Surely it says something about our country that an obvious misogynist like Trump, who boasted about forcing himself on women and has over a dozen credible assault accusations, can be elected President (with a majority of the white women's vote, no less). I had been unaware of his marital rape of Ivana Trump in 1989, "provoked" by a botched scalp treatment from a surgeon she had recommended. After tearing out some of her hair and forcing himself on her, he smilingly asked the following morning, "Does it hurt?" Later Ivana retracted her story, and Manne discusses how control of the narrative is just another extension of misogyny. A similar example centers on Andrew Puzder, backed by Trump for labor secretary, who abused his wife Lisa Henning. She, similarly, later retracted her story. Rinse and repeat with Trump's political architect Steve Bannon and his abuse, strangling and intimidation of ex-wife Mary Louise Piccard. Strangling is given special attention: often euphemized as choking, grabbing, or worse, "nothing", strangulation can cause internal damage with delayed results, and is one of the most accurate predictors of a coming homicide.
Another case covered at length is the Isla Vista killings, perpetrated by Elliot Rodger after he released a manifesto complaining that the beautiful women of UCSB had been denying him their love, attention and sex. Each story has a number of attendant issues, and Manne explores these implications and addresses various arguments (e.g. Rodger killed more men than women that day, his case is an outlier, perhaps he valued women TOO much, and so forth). Manne also explores the use of language in Rodger's pre-killing missive, as he shifts from second- to third-person in addressing women, and from granting them autonomy to treating them as objects. This story in particular touches on the male expectation that women should provide certain "feminine-coded goods" such as sympathy, respect, and nurturing. When women "neglect" to offer these expected goods, they are punished. Similarly, women are singled out for retribution when they seek "masculine-coded goods" such as respect, power, or compensation.
There are a variety of other concepts presented in the book, some of which were new to me. Topics include asymmetrical support roles (there's a societal expectation that women will offer support, and will be considered selfish if they advance their own interests), intersectionality (the stacking of various identities, e.g. "gay" and "black" that are treated differently than the sum of their component identities), misogynoir (behavior targeting black women specifically), himpathy (a redirection to express sympathy for accused men), erasure (ignoring or minimizing women's representation and contributions), family annihilators (men who choose to murder their families rather than suffer a loss of esteem), sexual solipsism (objectification in pornography), victim culture (a complicated topic dealing with attitudes toward victims and perpetrators, and a chapter I listened to a couple extra times to try to get my head around), gender bias, double standards, and so forth.
There are numerous other examples in the book: Hillary Clinton's candidacy and the reactions to it plays a central role for analysis (as the first major party female front-runner, Clinton offers a small but compelling sample), as does Julia Gillard's abbreviated stint as Australia's prime minister. Rush Limbaugh attacks Sandra Fluke: if she wants publicly provided birth control, she's a "slut" and owes him access to her sex life. Dustin Holtzclaw abused his position as a police officer to target and rape disadvantaged black women. And many others. There are also numerous examples from media, and we learn lessons from Virginia Woolf, Gone Girl, Huck Finn, the Fargo TV series, To Kill A Mockingbird, and even Shel Silverstein.
I'll just warn you, as mentioned above, that this is not an easy read. Written to accommodate browsers, there's a fair amount of retread for those reading it in entirety, plus taxing outlines of preceding or following chapters. There's also a seemingly ostentatious display of language that comes at the cost of comprehension, and requires one's brain to crank to decode abstract terms into concrete examples. Here's an example passage: "My proposed feminist analysis of misogyny hence aims to ameliorate the concept by highlighting misogyny's political dimensions, rending it psychologically more explicable, and supporting a clean contrast between misogyny and sexism ... This limits the extent of my ameliorative proposal's revisionism, and also suggests that this pattern of usage has a theoretical unification, rather than being ad hoc, or so I'll argue in chapter 3 on the strength of the analysis."
It doesn't have to be this way: when Manne tells a story, the writing style shifts into an engaging state of flow, but invariably we revert to the stilted doctoral thesis. I started keeping a list of progress-arresting words that pop up serially: ignominy, milieu, remonstrate, salutary, epistemic, recherché (that's a fun one I didn't know), paradigmatic, concomitant, ameliorative, comorbidity, aversive, phenomenology, metaphysically, inchoate, constitutively, normative, systemic, precis, agentic, attitudinal, justificatory, evince, hierarchical, vis a vie, indexical, moral-cum-social (and other forms of x-cum-y), perfidy and perspectival. Plus, you'll get a healthy helping of Latin: ipso facto, ad hoc, modus operandi, inter alia, sui generis. I mean, really... Cui bono?
I am appreciative for the paces this book put me through. It was interesting to witness my own internal dialogue, and how I reacted to the various stories, examples, and points being made. I can only assume the book will do the same for you.
Because it was published in 2017, Down Girl can offer Trump's baffling election in 2016 as Exhibit A. Surely it says something about our country that an obvious misogynist like Trump, who boasted about forcing himself on women and has over a dozen credible assault accusations, can be elected President (with a majority of the white women's vote, no less). I had been unaware of his marital rape of Ivana Trump in 1989, "provoked" by a botched scalp treatment from a surgeon she had recommended. After tearing out some of her hair and forcing himself on her, he smilingly asked the following morning, "Does it hurt?" Later Ivana retracted her story, and Manne discusses how control of the narrative is just another extension of misogyny. A similar example centers on Andrew Puzder, backed by Trump for labor secretary, who abused his wife Lisa Henning. She, similarly, later retracted her story. Rinse and repeat with Trump's political architect Steve Bannon and his abuse, strangling and intimidation of ex-wife Mary Louise Piccard. Strangling is given special attention: often euphemized as choking, grabbing, or worse, "nothing", strangulation can cause internal damage with delayed results, and is one of the most accurate predictors of a coming homicide.
Another case covered at length is the Isla Vista killings, perpetrated by Elliot Rodger after he released a manifesto complaining that the beautiful women of UCSB had been denying him their love, attention and sex. Each story has a number of attendant issues, and Manne explores these implications and addresses various arguments (e.g. Rodger killed more men than women that day, his case is an outlier, perhaps he valued women TOO much, and so forth). Manne also explores the use of language in Rodger's pre-killing missive, as he shifts from second- to third-person in addressing women, and from granting them autonomy to treating them as objects. This story in particular touches on the male expectation that women should provide certain "feminine-coded goods" such as sympathy, respect, and nurturing. When women "neglect" to offer these expected goods, they are punished. Similarly, women are singled out for retribution when they seek "masculine-coded goods" such as respect, power, or compensation.
There are a variety of other concepts presented in the book, some of which were new to me. Topics include asymmetrical support roles (there's a societal expectation that women will offer support, and will be considered selfish if they advance their own interests), intersectionality (the stacking of various identities, e.g. "gay" and "black" that are treated differently than the sum of their component identities), misogynoir (behavior targeting black women specifically), himpathy (a redirection to express sympathy for accused men), erasure (ignoring or minimizing women's representation and contributions), family annihilators (men who choose to murder their families rather than suffer a loss of esteem), sexual solipsism (objectification in pornography), victim culture (a complicated topic dealing with attitudes toward victims and perpetrators, and a chapter I listened to a couple extra times to try to get my head around), gender bias, double standards, and so forth.
There are numerous other examples in the book: Hillary Clinton's candidacy and the reactions to it plays a central role for analysis (as the first major party female front-runner, Clinton offers a small but compelling sample), as does Julia Gillard's abbreviated stint as Australia's prime minister. Rush Limbaugh attacks Sandra Fluke: if she wants publicly provided birth control, she's a "slut" and owes him access to her sex life. Dustin Holtzclaw abused his position as a police officer to target and rape disadvantaged black women. And many others. There are also numerous examples from media, and we learn lessons from Virginia Woolf, Gone Girl, Huck Finn, the Fargo TV series, To Kill A Mockingbird, and even Shel Silverstein.
I'll just warn you, as mentioned above, that this is not an easy read. Written to accommodate browsers, there's a fair amount of retread for those reading it in entirety, plus taxing outlines of preceding or following chapters. There's also a seemingly ostentatious display of language that comes at the cost of comprehension, and requires one's brain to crank to decode abstract terms into concrete examples. Here's an example passage: "My proposed feminist analysis of misogyny hence aims to ameliorate the concept by highlighting misogyny's political dimensions, rending it psychologically more explicable, and supporting a clean contrast between misogyny and sexism ... This limits the extent of my ameliorative proposal's revisionism, and also suggests that this pattern of usage has a theoretical unification, rather than being ad hoc, or so I'll argue in chapter 3 on the strength of the analysis."
It doesn't have to be this way: when Manne tells a story, the writing style shifts into an engaging state of flow, but invariably we revert to the stilted doctoral thesis. I started keeping a list of progress-arresting words that pop up serially: ignominy, milieu, remonstrate, salutary, epistemic, recherché (that's a fun one I didn't know), paradigmatic, concomitant, ameliorative, comorbidity, aversive, phenomenology, metaphysically, inchoate, constitutively, normative, systemic, precis, agentic, attitudinal, justificatory, evince, hierarchical, vis a vie, indexical, moral-cum-social (and other forms of x-cum-y), perfidy and perspectival. Plus, you'll get a healthy helping of Latin: ipso facto, ad hoc, modus operandi, inter alia, sui generis. I mean, really... Cui bono?
I am appreciative for the paces this book put me through. It was interesting to witness my own internal dialogue, and how I reacted to the various stories, examples, and points being made. I can only assume the book will do the same for you.
March 31, 2018
Awesome read. Points out a bunch of weird confusing contradictions in gender politics, then explains them. Argues that misogyny isn't about hating women - it's about punishing "bad" women. "good" women like subservient housewives, the "cool girlfriend", etc, don't experience misogyny. Women who go against patriarchal norms (e.g. activists, women working in masculine fields, women who don't give men enough attention/emotional labor/sex/etc) experience the kind of "down, girl!" responses that punish them and put them back in their place.
Although it's accessible to a general audience, it's definitely written like a Philosophy Book and aimed at an academic audience. She very formally defines her terms, pre-empts criticism, uses a lot of philosophy jargon, makes a lot of defensive qualifications that are helpful to philosophical reading but might bore an average reader.
Really liked it - its treatment of misogyny as reinforcing certain power structures was awesome. She criticizes the idea of sexism as "not seeing women as people" - the problem is men do see women as people, but people who owe them sex/emotional labor/status (good) but can also be threats, rivals or emasculate them (bad, needs punishment).
Uses lots of literary and political references to support her points, esp. the Trump/Clinton election, Julia Gillard, and Elliot Rodgers, which lends a lot of real-world flavour to a book that sometimes gets a bit academic.
Her background in formal logic and computer science shines through when she talks about the flaws in normal decision-theoretic models of "agents" - as a logic/CS person myself, I found that part really fascinating!
Although it's accessible to a general audience, it's definitely written like a Philosophy Book and aimed at an academic audience. She very formally defines her terms, pre-empts criticism, uses a lot of philosophy jargon, makes a lot of defensive qualifications that are helpful to philosophical reading but might bore an average reader.
Really liked it - its treatment of misogyny as reinforcing certain power structures was awesome. She criticizes the idea of sexism as "not seeing women as people" - the problem is men do see women as people, but people who owe them sex/emotional labor/status (good) but can also be threats, rivals or emasculate them (bad, needs punishment).
Uses lots of literary and political references to support her points, esp. the Trump/Clinton election, Julia Gillard, and Elliot Rodgers, which lends a lot of real-world flavour to a book that sometimes gets a bit academic.
Her background in formal logic and computer science shines through when she talks about the flaws in normal decision-theoretic models of "agents" - as a logic/CS person myself, I found that part really fascinating!
February 12, 2018
All my feminist peeps: You're going to want to read this book. Manne does a fantastic job laying out the (il)logic of misogyny in ways you've definitely experienced and might have reflected on, but haven't seen put together in this way. All my non-feminist peeps: You especially should read this, but you won't.
July 26, 2022
I am baffled by all the rave reviews for this book, and can only conclude that most people did not read this as the work of philosophy it claims to be, but more of general look at misogyny in the world with some socialogical excursions. But Manne does claim to be writing the first analytical philosophical work on misogyny and at the beginning of the book she says she will analyze the term. She barely does that. What little definition there is, is debatable at best: Misogyny is not, as we generally think, a hatred of women but is instead a belief system that is primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance.
Manne gives a lot of examples of people controlling/policing/punishing women for challenging male dominance and other examples of what she believes to be misogyny. Some of them are clear enough (how the law treats rape victims), some of them are rather strange (I think she severely misunderstood or at least misrepresented the first season of Fargo), but they all suffer from beinge extremely 'current'. Manne talks so much about Trump and Clinton and the elections that just four years after publication, this book feels very dated. Maybe a different more general framing would have helped. But dated examples don't make bad philosophy, of course, and I agree that most of her examples show cases of misogyny, but she seems to want to be doing something else then merely point out the existence of mistreatment of women - she wants to show these examples underscore her (non-given) definition of the term, and I don't see how they do. At all.
Although she uses a lot of philosophy jargon (at one point she writes about tollensing a modus ponens and I had to wonder how many non-philosophy versed people had a clue what she meant), taken as a work of analytical philosophy this is extremely poor. It lacks premise, a clear aim and an understandable thesis. Non-fiction books that leave me wondering what the hell they are trying to say, even if they're easy to read from page to page, just infuriate me. If it's philosophy, it's even worse. Tell me what you're doing and what you're trying to argue for. If not, why should I waste my time on you?
One of the few parts where I understand what Manne wanted to argue for was the chapter on humanism. According to her, misogynists don't think of women as "sub-human", like the humanists' approach suggests, but instead of 'all too human'. I'd never really considered this question before, so I was intrigued. However, the way she argues made me laugh and shake my head. She talks about the red army soldiers raping German women in the aftermath of the second world war. Humanism would have you believe that these soldiers didn't consider these women to be human, and that's how they were capable of such cruelty. Manne argues that this can't be true, because if the soldiers considered the women as non-human and as animal-like, they would be engaging in quasi-beastality. That's it. That's the argument. I can't get over how silly it is. First of all: men DO engage in beastality. Second: treating women as sub-human does not mean, the soldiers literally think of these women as a specific animal, just as 'lesser than'. They know their bodies are human, they're not confused about their physicality and their sex organs - just about their essence as equals. It's strange to act is if treating someone according to their "lack of humanity" seriously entailed a misunderstanding about someone's species affilation.
Fans of this book tell me, what new philosophical and feminists insights did this book offer? I'm genuinely curious if they just evaded me. All I saw was a barely-argued for thesis for a definition of a word. But why? Why would misogyny mean what Manne wants it to mean and not how we've been using the word before? Because it's clearly not how we use the word now. It's on her to show us why we should change the usage, and I don't think she's done that successfully at all.
Manne gives a lot of examples of people controlling/policing/punishing women for challenging male dominance and other examples of what she believes to be misogyny. Some of them are clear enough (how the law treats rape victims), some of them are rather strange (I think she severely misunderstood or at least misrepresented the first season of Fargo), but they all suffer from beinge extremely 'current'. Manne talks so much about Trump and Clinton and the elections that just four years after publication, this book feels very dated. Maybe a different more general framing would have helped. But dated examples don't make bad philosophy, of course, and I agree that most of her examples show cases of misogyny, but she seems to want to be doing something else then merely point out the existence of mistreatment of women - she wants to show these examples underscore her (non-given) definition of the term, and I don't see how they do. At all.
Although she uses a lot of philosophy jargon (at one point she writes about tollensing a modus ponens and I had to wonder how many non-philosophy versed people had a clue what she meant), taken as a work of analytical philosophy this is extremely poor. It lacks premise, a clear aim and an understandable thesis. Non-fiction books that leave me wondering what the hell they are trying to say, even if they're easy to read from page to page, just infuriate me. If it's philosophy, it's even worse. Tell me what you're doing and what you're trying to argue for. If not, why should I waste my time on you?
One of the few parts where I understand what Manne wanted to argue for was the chapter on humanism. According to her, misogynists don't think of women as "sub-human", like the humanists' approach suggests, but instead of 'all too human'. I'd never really considered this question before, so I was intrigued. However, the way she argues made me laugh and shake my head. She talks about the red army soldiers raping German women in the aftermath of the second world war. Humanism would have you believe that these soldiers didn't consider these women to be human, and that's how they were capable of such cruelty. Manne argues that this can't be true, because if the soldiers considered the women as non-human and as animal-like, they would be engaging in quasi-beastality. That's it. That's the argument. I can't get over how silly it is. First of all: men DO engage in beastality. Second: treating women as sub-human does not mean, the soldiers literally think of these women as a specific animal, just as 'lesser than'. They know their bodies are human, they're not confused about their physicality and their sex organs - just about their essence as equals. It's strange to act is if treating someone according to their "lack of humanity" seriously entailed a misunderstanding about someone's species affilation.
Fans of this book tell me, what new philosophical and feminists insights did this book offer? I'm genuinely curious if they just evaded me. All I saw was a barely-argued for thesis for a definition of a word. But why? Why would misogyny mean what Manne wants it to mean and not how we've been using the word before? Because it's clearly not how we use the word now. It's on her to show us why we should change the usage, and I don't think she's done that successfully at all.
December 18, 2017
Update: The author contacted me and told me that the galley I read and reviewed was changed significantly before publication and that many of my criticisms were addressed before publication. I will be reading the published copy soon and may revise my review.
Down Girl is a measured consideration of misogyny, not as the simplistic hatred of women, but the structural, systemic structures and beliefs that serve to keep women down, in their place. It is an academic book, despite its title that suggests a more popular audience. Kate Manne lays the foundation thoroughly for her assertions and makes a persuasive argument for a more comprehensive understanding of misogyny. It just so happens that is the way many people, particularly women, are using the word anyway.
This is important and necessary work because just as with racism, there is concerted effort to define misogyny in the most limited, restrictive sense so everyone, even Elliott Rodger, the mass murderer who left a video manifesto explaining why he was setting out to murder women,, is acquitted of being a misogynist. With American opinion leaders arguing Elliott Rodger is not a misogynist, it reminds me of David Duke saying he is not a racist.
In Manne’s view, misogyny is not as much about hating women as it is about keeping women in the women’s sphere, where they gaze adoringly and defer to their men. It is about making sure women pay attention to men’s needs rather than fulfill their own, about making sure women don’t challenge men, or seek positions that are thought to be men’s jobs. There are mountains of depressing studies proving, again and again, that ambitious women are seen as dishonest, fake, cold, cunning, dishonest, and every other pejorative adjective you can recall from the 2016 election. Submit the same resume with a man’s name and a woman’s name, the man will be seen as more qualified. Preface the resumes with the information they have the same qualifications, the woman will be seen as unlikable. Does that sound familiar?
I agree with Kate Manne’s argument and think this topic is vital, but I struggled far too much reading Down Girl. It’s a book of philosophy full of the taxonomy of philosophy with sentences like “The implicit modus ponens here is too seldom tollensed.” or “”Quasi-contrapositive moral psychological claim”. This stuff makes me want to cry because it means that this book will not be widely read. This matters! Misogyny kills women, so why seek the smallest possible audience?
Manne also overused footnotes. She has endnotes for her sources and uses footnotes to make arguments and forestall critiques of her argument. She needs to just incorporate that into her text and not use footnotes to avoid reworking the text to address the critiques. There are pages that have more footnotes than text. It’s disruptive. In one chapter, there’s one narrative in text and another in footnotes. Just do two chapters or fight it out in the main text of the chapter.
Here’s the thing. I am smart and well-read and I came so close to giving up on this book time and time again…and this is a topic I care about and am very interested in. I recognize the bad cold I have been struggling with probably impeded my comprehension, but I asked my best friend, a college professor who teaches neuroscience to read it and she read and few pages and just shook her head.
This is not just Kate Manne’s fault. I have read her articles in magazines and know she is capable of communicating well. In this book, sometimes her humor and wit shine through. The whole thing with the footnotes? She needed some editor to tell her to cut it out.
It’s possible her desired audience is only other academics, but why give it the title Down Girl that calls up popular culture then? Besides, we need these ideas to get out of academia and into popular culture.
I received an e-galley Down Girl of from the publisher through NetGalley.
Down Girl at Oxford University Press
Kate Manne author site
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
Down Girl is a measured consideration of misogyny, not as the simplistic hatred of women, but the structural, systemic structures and beliefs that serve to keep women down, in their place. It is an academic book, despite its title that suggests a more popular audience. Kate Manne lays the foundation thoroughly for her assertions and makes a persuasive argument for a more comprehensive understanding of misogyny. It just so happens that is the way many people, particularly women, are using the word anyway.
This is important and necessary work because just as with racism, there is concerted effort to define misogyny in the most limited, restrictive sense so everyone, even Elliott Rodger, the mass murderer who left a video manifesto explaining why he was setting out to murder women,, is acquitted of being a misogynist. With American opinion leaders arguing Elliott Rodger is not a misogynist, it reminds me of David Duke saying he is not a racist.
In Manne’s view, misogyny is not as much about hating women as it is about keeping women in the women’s sphere, where they gaze adoringly and defer to their men. It is about making sure women pay attention to men’s needs rather than fulfill their own, about making sure women don’t challenge men, or seek positions that are thought to be men’s jobs. There are mountains of depressing studies proving, again and again, that ambitious women are seen as dishonest, fake, cold, cunning, dishonest, and every other pejorative adjective you can recall from the 2016 election. Submit the same resume with a man’s name and a woman’s name, the man will be seen as more qualified. Preface the resumes with the information they have the same qualifications, the woman will be seen as unlikable. Does that sound familiar?
I agree with Kate Manne’s argument and think this topic is vital, but I struggled far too much reading Down Girl. It’s a book of philosophy full of the taxonomy of philosophy with sentences like “The implicit modus ponens here is too seldom tollensed.” or “”Quasi-contrapositive moral psychological claim”. This stuff makes me want to cry because it means that this book will not be widely read. This matters! Misogyny kills women, so why seek the smallest possible audience?
Manne also overused footnotes. She has endnotes for her sources and uses footnotes to make arguments and forestall critiques of her argument. She needs to just incorporate that into her text and not use footnotes to avoid reworking the text to address the critiques. There are pages that have more footnotes than text. It’s disruptive. In one chapter, there’s one narrative in text and another in footnotes. Just do two chapters or fight it out in the main text of the chapter.
Here’s the thing. I am smart and well-read and I came so close to giving up on this book time and time again…and this is a topic I care about and am very interested in. I recognize the bad cold I have been struggling with probably impeded my comprehension, but I asked my best friend, a college professor who teaches neuroscience to read it and she read and few pages and just shook her head.
This is not just Kate Manne’s fault. I have read her articles in magazines and know she is capable of communicating well. In this book, sometimes her humor and wit shine through. The whole thing with the footnotes? She needed some editor to tell her to cut it out.
It’s possible her desired audience is only other academics, but why give it the title Down Girl that calls up popular culture then? Besides, we need these ideas to get out of academia and into popular culture.
I received an e-galley Down Girl of from the publisher through NetGalley.
Down Girl at Oxford University Press
Kate Manne author site
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
June 8, 2018
I hit the wall on this book at about page 50. Perhaps I'm just a philistine, ill-equipped to handle the academic tone, the esoteric allusions, and the deft opaqueness the author seems to prize. I was met by this couplet just before I drove over the cliff.
"I take it that a social milieu counts as patriarchal insofar as certain kinds of institutions or social structures both proliferate and enjoy widespread support within it--from, for example, the state,as well as material resources, communal values, cultural narratives, media and artistic depictions, and so on. These patriarchal institutions will vary widely in their material and structural, as well as their social, features."
Now, if this prose hits your literary sweet spot, which apparently it does with some reviewers, you'll enjoy the several hundred more examples soon to follow. As for me, I'll meet you later further on down the highway.
"I take it that a social milieu counts as patriarchal insofar as certain kinds of institutions or social structures both proliferate and enjoy widespread support within it--from, for example, the state,as well as material resources, communal values, cultural narratives, media and artistic depictions, and so on. These patriarchal institutions will vary widely in their material and structural, as well as their social, features."
Now, if this prose hits your literary sweet spot, which apparently it does with some reviewers, you'll enjoy the several hundred more examples soon to follow. As for me, I'll meet you later further on down the highway.
April 2, 2018
This is an example of exceptional and accessible analytical philosophy. The subject matter is so much needed for these times, and so much appreciated. The method is antithetical to current popular thinkers (Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker et al), who are often mistaken as paradigmatic philosophy by, for the most part, men. Manne takes the actual tools of the philosophical discipline, distilling from descriptive and conceptual inquiry a well argued, timely, and hugely useful normative conception of misogyny.
There's philosophical insight from a huge range of thinkers, from Nussbaum to Nietzsche and along with the footnotes, the book is a treasure trove of further substantiation and additional reading in whole different areas of philosophy. From Rae Langton's view on pornography and objectification to Miranda Fricker and Jose Medina on epistemic injustice. There's a succinct discussion on reasons and motivation, Manne subscribes to something like the Humean theory. She also takes issue with Steven Pinker in a particularly large and wonderful footnote. There's Paul Bloom on the case against empathy and why this usually results in taking sides with historically dominant, as well as Moya Bailey who coined the term 'misogynoir' and many, many more.
Manne's conclusion does not predict any light at the end of the tunnel (“pretty pessimistic about reasoning with people to get them to take misogyny seriously”). But the book is reaching a wide readership. Buy it! Her neologisms, 'himpathy' in particular, are being deployed by readers and commentators. The point of philosophy is to change the world. This is a must-read for us all.
There's philosophical insight from a huge range of thinkers, from Nussbaum to Nietzsche and along with the footnotes, the book is a treasure trove of further substantiation and additional reading in whole different areas of philosophy. From Rae Langton's view on pornography and objectification to Miranda Fricker and Jose Medina on epistemic injustice. There's a succinct discussion on reasons and motivation, Manne subscribes to something like the Humean theory. She also takes issue with Steven Pinker in a particularly large and wonderful footnote. There's Paul Bloom on the case against empathy and why this usually results in taking sides with historically dominant, as well as Moya Bailey who coined the term 'misogynoir' and many, many more.
Manne's conclusion does not predict any light at the end of the tunnel (“pretty pessimistic about reasoning with people to get them to take misogyny seriously”). But the book is reaching a wide readership. Buy it! Her neologisms, 'himpathy' in particular, are being deployed by readers and commentators. The point of philosophy is to change the world. This is a must-read for us all.
September 18, 2020
This is an academic (though not dry) book about misogyny in public life & politics. Manne distinguishes between sexism (ideology) vs. misogyny (system that polices) of women. She is at her best when writing about current events (having read Know My Name: A Memoir I was interested in her thoughts on the Brock Turner case). She does an outstanding job relaying the contradictions of gender politics & my own internal dialogue surprised me at different times while reading this information. Two standout terms: misogynoir (behavior targeting black women) & himpathy (expressing sympathy for accused men). After learning them both I saw examples everywhere. Anyone interested in an increased awareness about the ways in which misogyny enforces gender norms will find much to learn in Down Girl.
Want to read
November 15, 2017there's an interesting adapted excerpt from this here, highlighting the link between insecure bodily boundaries and misogyny
November 30, 2017
While this book is on a really important topic that more people need to understand, unfortunately it is unreadable. There are many better written and edited books on the general topic of women's place and treatment in the world. Not recommended.
I was going to pick out some quotes to illustrate the unreadability, but too hard to choose from the many examples.
I was going to pick out some quotes to illustrate the unreadability, but too hard to choose from the many examples.
June 3, 2019
Originally published on my book blog, TheBibliophage.com.
Kate Manne is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Why am I leading with that in this review? Because knowing that informs everything about her book Down Girl: The Logic Of Misogyny. She’s a brilliant academic thinker and researcher. First and foremost, this is a scholarly book. More importantly, it’s utterly brilliant.
Manne upends the typical thinking on misogyny. If asked to define it, most of us would say it means men who hate women. Manne calls this the “naïve concept.” Instead, she defines misogyny as a more systemic set of beliefs and actions that are designed to support sexism and the patriarchy. She explains that it can be upheld by the actions of either sex, although mostly by white, hetero, cis gendered men.
Another essential point in Manne’s process is thinking about misogyny from the POV of the target or victim. This switches our focus to the hostility women face in the world, which may come from individuals or may be societal. Or both.
Making these changes to my perspective—and many others—meant I was gobsmacked on almost every page. In fact, I used up the ink from two separate pens underlining passages in Down Girl. Honestly, it could have been three. But then the whole text would be underlined. I also couldn’t begin to summarize all of Manne’s cogent and revolutionary concepts in one review.
The book includes eight chapters, a preface, introduction, and conclusion. Each intentionally reads like a separate essay, with the conclusion neatly tying up her thesis and proofs. (And that last sentence!) This structure makes it easier to digest, although some chapters are philosophically deeper than others. Still, Manne takes us from sexism to humanism and from victim blaming to exonerating men. All the relevant ground is covered.
My conclusions
Down Girl is 800 pages of intelligence crammed into just over 300 pages of print. Every single word is vital. That means I read many sentences multiple times. And I may reread the book when it comes back from its postal book club journey.
My in-person book group read Rebecca Traister’s recently. It was my favorite 2018 nonfiction book. But one member of our group felt it was too angry and emotional, which I think is a valid perspective.
Manne’s book is much less emotional, perhaps because of its academic flavor. This is both an advantage and disadvantage. It is certainly more dry in tone. But when you’re fighting a misogynist society that says, “all women are too emotional,” that’s a logical tactical decision.
The way misogyny works in the world is a fluid thing. What seems relevant today may be less so in five or ten years. Or this may become the definitive work on the topic. Either way, I’m giving it five solid stars and recommending it to everyone I know.
For more reviews of books related to feminism and women's studies, please visit my book blog.
Kate Manne is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Why am I leading with that in this review? Because knowing that informs everything about her book Down Girl: The Logic Of Misogyny. She’s a brilliant academic thinker and researcher. First and foremost, this is a scholarly book. More importantly, it’s utterly brilliant.
Manne upends the typical thinking on misogyny. If asked to define it, most of us would say it means men who hate women. Manne calls this the “naïve concept.” Instead, she defines misogyny as a more systemic set of beliefs and actions that are designed to support sexism and the patriarchy. She explains that it can be upheld by the actions of either sex, although mostly by white, hetero, cis gendered men.
Another essential point in Manne’s process is thinking about misogyny from the POV of the target or victim. This switches our focus to the hostility women face in the world, which may come from individuals or may be societal. Or both.
Making these changes to my perspective—and many others—meant I was gobsmacked on almost every page. In fact, I used up the ink from two separate pens underlining passages in Down Girl. Honestly, it could have been three. But then the whole text would be underlined. I also couldn’t begin to summarize all of Manne’s cogent and revolutionary concepts in one review.
The book includes eight chapters, a preface, introduction, and conclusion. Each intentionally reads like a separate essay, with the conclusion neatly tying up her thesis and proofs. (And that last sentence!) This structure makes it easier to digest, although some chapters are philosophically deeper than others. Still, Manne takes us from sexism to humanism and from victim blaming to exonerating men. All the relevant ground is covered.
My conclusions
Down Girl is 800 pages of intelligence crammed into just over 300 pages of print. Every single word is vital. That means I read many sentences multiple times. And I may reread the book when it comes back from its postal book club journey.
My in-person book group read Rebecca Traister’s recently. It was my favorite 2018 nonfiction book. But one member of our group felt it was too angry and emotional, which I think is a valid perspective.
Manne’s book is much less emotional, perhaps because of its academic flavor. This is both an advantage and disadvantage. It is certainly more dry in tone. But when you’re fighting a misogynist society that says, “all women are too emotional,” that’s a logical tactical decision.
The way misogyny works in the world is a fluid thing. What seems relevant today may be less so in five or ten years. Or this may become the definitive work on the topic. Either way, I’m giving it five solid stars and recommending it to everyone I know.
For more reviews of books related to feminism and women's studies, please visit my book blog.
March 14, 2018
Brilliant, brilliant book. Highly sophisticated writing that, while somewhat academic in style, is very readable.
The most illuminating part for me is, in Chapter 4, with how she clearly break down the underlying dynamics between men and women in contemporary patriarchal society, and how many (men and women) have been conditioned to expect women to give “feminine-coded goods” to men while men are taught to be entitled to “masculine-coded goods”; women who infringe on this (knowingly or unknowingly) are punished accordingly while women who support men and men’s goals are rewarded (though never with the same prestige that the men accord themselves)—just look at the female Fox News anchors, for instance: Roger Aisles insisting they reveal their legs is a way they were obliged to “give” while upholding the obviously very patriarchal system of beliefs that informs Fox News’s political ideology.
Excerpt that sums of the gist of the book:
“I try to understand misogyny throughout from the inside, not primarily as a psychological matter—but rather, as a social-political phenomenon with psychological, structural, and institutional manifestations. I present misogyny as a system of hostile forces that by and large makes sense from the perspective of patriarchal ideology, inasmuch as it works to police and enforce patriarchal order. Since I believe that patriarchal order is oppressive and irrational, and that it casts a long historical shadow, I also believe that misogyny ought to be opposed, and that individual agents often have reasons, and sometimes obligations, to try to resist it.
However, following the lead of the critical race theorist Charles Lawrence III (1987; 2008), this book primarily takes what he calls an “epidemiological” approach to matters of social justice. That is, I concentrate largely on moral diagnosis, or getting clear on the nature of misogyny, construed as a moral-cum-social phenomenon with political underpinnings. This is as opposed to making explicit moral prescriptions and characterological judgments, and effectively putting people on trial—and hence on the defensive. I think that such an approach to misogyny tends to be unhelpful by encouraging moral narcissism, among other things: an obsessive focus with individual guilt and innocence. Moreover, as we will see time and again over the course of these pages, misogyny frequently involves moralistic take-downs or the unforgiving shaming of women for their (real or supposed) moral errors. Misogyny also subjects women to what I have come to think of as a kind of tyranny of vulnerability—by pointing to any and every (supposedly) more vulnerable (supposed) person or creature in her vicinity to whom she might (again, supposedly) do better, and requiring her to care for them, or else risk being judged callous, even monstrous. Meanwhile, her male counterpart may proceed to pursue his own ‘personal projects,’ as the English moral philosopher Bernard Williams called them (1981), with relative impunity. She is, in view of this, subject to undue moral burdens.”
http://a.co/7IAPFOM
The most illuminating part for me is, in Chapter 4, with how she clearly break down the underlying dynamics between men and women in contemporary patriarchal society, and how many (men and women) have been conditioned to expect women to give “feminine-coded goods” to men while men are taught to be entitled to “masculine-coded goods”; women who infringe on this (knowingly or unknowingly) are punished accordingly while women who support men and men’s goals are rewarded (though never with the same prestige that the men accord themselves)—just look at the female Fox News anchors, for instance: Roger Aisles insisting they reveal their legs is a way they were obliged to “give” while upholding the obviously very patriarchal system of beliefs that informs Fox News’s political ideology.
Excerpt that sums of the gist of the book:
“I try to understand misogyny throughout from the inside, not primarily as a psychological matter—but rather, as a social-political phenomenon with psychological, structural, and institutional manifestations. I present misogyny as a system of hostile forces that by and large makes sense from the perspective of patriarchal ideology, inasmuch as it works to police and enforce patriarchal order. Since I believe that patriarchal order is oppressive and irrational, and that it casts a long historical shadow, I also believe that misogyny ought to be opposed, and that individual agents often have reasons, and sometimes obligations, to try to resist it.
However, following the lead of the critical race theorist Charles Lawrence III (1987; 2008), this book primarily takes what he calls an “epidemiological” approach to matters of social justice. That is, I concentrate largely on moral diagnosis, or getting clear on the nature of misogyny, construed as a moral-cum-social phenomenon with political underpinnings. This is as opposed to making explicit moral prescriptions and characterological judgments, and effectively putting people on trial—and hence on the defensive. I think that such an approach to misogyny tends to be unhelpful by encouraging moral narcissism, among other things: an obsessive focus with individual guilt and innocence. Moreover, as we will see time and again over the course of these pages, misogyny frequently involves moralistic take-downs or the unforgiving shaming of women for their (real or supposed) moral errors. Misogyny also subjects women to what I have come to think of as a kind of tyranny of vulnerability—by pointing to any and every (supposedly) more vulnerable (supposed) person or creature in her vicinity to whom she might (again, supposedly) do better, and requiring her to care for them, or else risk being judged callous, even monstrous. Meanwhile, her male counterpart may proceed to pursue his own ‘personal projects,’ as the English moral philosopher Bernard Williams called them (1981), with relative impunity. She is, in view of this, subject to undue moral burdens.”
http://a.co/7IAPFOM
July 22, 2018
Read. This. Book.
August 13, 2019
Seeing all the reviews that criticize the book for being too difficult or too academic, I should say that I’m not in the field of academic feminism, or whatever it is this may be called, and I can in no way state that I understand complex or academic language better than the general reader either, as English is not even my main language. Yet I had no trouble understanding the book as a whole, and I found the academic jargon which most people described as making the book “unreadable” to be educating, helping me step out of my comfort zone and enjoy something a bit more challenging for a change. Thus this book is in no way “impossible to read” if you are genuinely interested in the subject and eager to learn.
It's just crucial to decide what your expectations of this book are before you actually start reading it, as I have noticed many negative reviews about the book are caused by the readers’ unreasonable expectations of it. This is an academic book, written in a serious, condensed language that focuses on conveying as much information as possible on the related subject. It is definitely not one of the books you can take with you to the beach and post quotes to Facebook to prove how much of a feminist you are. If that sort of a read is what you have in mind, which is completely fine, Down Girl is certainly a wrong choice, and finding it “too academic” to your own taste does in no way mean this book deserves less than 5 stars.
I kept delaying reading this book for a long time, perhaps because I feared it would disappoint me, as writing about gender-related topics is a very difficult thing to do, considering everyone, and I mean literally everyone, has an idea or opinion on such issues. When I finally gathered up my courage and read the book, it turned my world upside down, showing me that despite all that I thought I knew, I actually knew nothing… And call it an exaggeration if you’d like, but to me, anyone who thinks they know anything about misogyny before reading this book knows absolutely nothing about it. Antonelle Gambotto-Burke’s review; “Manne comes at the problem from all angles, tearing it apart”, sums up everything that is just so great about Manne’s writing. You keep thinking that the discussion is over, that there couldn’t possibly be anything else to say about the subject, but Manne surprises you in every page, tackling the issue at a completely different angle. The book not only includes the victims’ side, but of the accused, making you, as a member of this society, doubt your thoughts and actions (or sometimes the lack of them), and wonder if you in any way have a role in the quite messed-up way things work. Making you doubt yourself in such a way is very hard for a book to achieve, and I respect Manne so much even just for that.
I should also say that Down Girl increased my awareness more than I could have imagined; only after reading the chapter on “himpathy” I realized how big a problem it is in my society. I started noticing himpathy in the conversations between my own family members, and what shocked me was how I never noticed it before. The way we have all accepted the present patriarchal order, the way we have gotten used to certain gender stereotypes, the way we let go of minor discriminatory acts and details because we choose to fight bigger battles is now shocking to me. Kate Manne made me ashamed of myself for not knowing or understanding this issue completely, yet still thinking that I knew everything about it. Kate Manne writes towards the very end of the book; “So I give up. I wish I could offer a more hopeful message” (300). Although this wasn’t what I had hoped to hear from her in the end, it is true that knowledge may make you feel hopeless, and this book has given me so much knowledge that I too sometimes fear for our future. I questioned whether we can ever achieve a society that doesn’t discriminate against gender if even I, where I thought of myself as very educated and aware concerning issues of gender equality, doubted if I was in fact so ignorant and flawed.
I’m not saying everyone who reads this book will realize how terrible they have been, but if it challenges your ideas or makes you reconsider your stance in such social issues even a little bit, I would say it’s worth reading. I highly recommend sticking with it until the end, as this is one of the most life changing books I have read.
It's just crucial to decide what your expectations of this book are before you actually start reading it, as I have noticed many negative reviews about the book are caused by the readers’ unreasonable expectations of it. This is an academic book, written in a serious, condensed language that focuses on conveying as much information as possible on the related subject. It is definitely not one of the books you can take with you to the beach and post quotes to Facebook to prove how much of a feminist you are. If that sort of a read is what you have in mind, which is completely fine, Down Girl is certainly a wrong choice, and finding it “too academic” to your own taste does in no way mean this book deserves less than 5 stars.
I kept delaying reading this book for a long time, perhaps because I feared it would disappoint me, as writing about gender-related topics is a very difficult thing to do, considering everyone, and I mean literally everyone, has an idea or opinion on such issues. When I finally gathered up my courage and read the book, it turned my world upside down, showing me that despite all that I thought I knew, I actually knew nothing… And call it an exaggeration if you’d like, but to me, anyone who thinks they know anything about misogyny before reading this book knows absolutely nothing about it. Antonelle Gambotto-Burke’s review; “Manne comes at the problem from all angles, tearing it apart”, sums up everything that is just so great about Manne’s writing. You keep thinking that the discussion is over, that there couldn’t possibly be anything else to say about the subject, but Manne surprises you in every page, tackling the issue at a completely different angle. The book not only includes the victims’ side, but of the accused, making you, as a member of this society, doubt your thoughts and actions (or sometimes the lack of them), and wonder if you in any way have a role in the quite messed-up way things work. Making you doubt yourself in such a way is very hard for a book to achieve, and I respect Manne so much even just for that.
I should also say that Down Girl increased my awareness more than I could have imagined; only after reading the chapter on “himpathy” I realized how big a problem it is in my society. I started noticing himpathy in the conversations between my own family members, and what shocked me was how I never noticed it before. The way we have all accepted the present patriarchal order, the way we have gotten used to certain gender stereotypes, the way we let go of minor discriminatory acts and details because we choose to fight bigger battles is now shocking to me. Kate Manne made me ashamed of myself for not knowing or understanding this issue completely, yet still thinking that I knew everything about it. Kate Manne writes towards the very end of the book; “So I give up. I wish I could offer a more hopeful message” (300). Although this wasn’t what I had hoped to hear from her in the end, it is true that knowledge may make you feel hopeless, and this book has given me so much knowledge that I too sometimes fear for our future. I questioned whether we can ever achieve a society that doesn’t discriminate against gender if even I, where I thought of myself as very educated and aware concerning issues of gender equality, doubted if I was in fact so ignorant and flawed.
I’m not saying everyone who reads this book will realize how terrible they have been, but if it challenges your ideas or makes you reconsider your stance in such social issues even a little bit, I would say it’s worth reading. I highly recommend sticking with it until the end, as this is one of the most life changing books I have read.
October 2, 2018
This book is an excellent visitation on how to define misogyny. I found it useful for crystallizing my own thoughts, discussing with other people, and picking apart misogyny so that I could address it even in discussion with the relatively closed-minded. Sometimes the philosophy writing style shone thru (no other discipline uses the word 'contra'!!!!) but I found the level of rigor to be pleasant and enlightening. Recommended reading for those of us who loooooove talking/learning about misogyny, and for those dudes who pepper you in discussion with counterexamples and strawmen like they are Jafar, you are Jasmine, and their clever examples are grains of sand in that one hourglass scene in Aladdin.
May 4, 2018
Fantastic, not only in framing the current state of misogyny and lack of progress in this area, but also opened my eyes to my own limitations and misogyny. Required reading for every feminist.
January 16, 2020
I LOVED this book. It was not an easy or a quick read, but it relied on such interesting narratives and made so many surprising, provocative points that I often stayed up reading well past my bedtime because I truly found it hard to put down.
Much of the book was validating and affirming rather than challenging; I've spent a lot of years now attempting to explain misogyny to people who aren't really sure it A) exists or B) harms women all that much if it does exist, so especially in the first third of the book, a primary pleasure was encountering ideas I understood already and seeing Manne express them succinctly and defend them very thoroughly. In particular, I was completely on board with Manne's observation that
That squares absolutely with explicit statements I encountered especially at church about "the divine role of women." And one reason I like this book is because, without ever acknowledging that such a thing exists, it demolishes the bullshit feminism known as "complementarianism": the idea that men and women have different roles by divine decree and that you can argue for women's full empowerment by saying that they owe the men in their lives all this nurturance and support--that, in fact, real feminism will help women be more nurturing and supportive of dudes. [Seriously. There are women who claim to be feminists who say this shit.]
What I really had to grapple with was Manne's analysis and rejection of the idea that the problem with misogyny is that men fail to see women as human and that certain harmful behaviors would stop if men could fully recognize women as human:
By the end I was persuaded. I think she's right.
I also really dug the coinages "himpathy" and "herasure."
Manne acknowledges that her polemic isn't likely to succeed in creating a lot of new converts to the cause: she writes that she is not particularly "optimistic about the prospects of getting people to take misogyny seriously—including treating it as a moral priority, when it is—unless they already do so” (280) in part because “Misogyny is a self-masking problem. Trying to draw attention to it is illicit by the lights of the phenomenon itself, since women are supposed to minister to others, rather than solicit moral attention and concern on their own behalf.” (281-82)
But if you already consider misogyny a moral problem, this book is a terrific resource because it lays out the stakes so clearly and articulates strong, coherent responses to common objections to feminist ideology.
And if you want to know how this plays out in real life, look at what happens when someone like Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi dares to invoke misogyny as an explanation for certain bad treatment they receive.
Misogyny is the means by which patriarchy attempts to punish and control women who disrupt or challenge the status quo.
Pointing out that the patriarchy is attempting to punish her for disrupting or challenging it just underscores the extent to which a woman needs to be punished and controlled. It makes even more explicit the degree to which her behavior is wrong and the patriarchy's bad treatment of her is justified.
Much of the book was validating and affirming rather than challenging; I've spent a lot of years now attempting to explain misogyny to people who aren't really sure it A) exists or B) harms women all that much if it does exist, so especially in the first third of the book, a primary pleasure was encountering ideas I understood already and seeing Manne express them succinctly and defend them very thoroughly. In particular, I was completely on board with Manne's observation that
a woman is regarded as owing her human capacities to particular people, often men or his children within heterosexual relationships that also uphold white supremacy, and who are in turn deemed entitled to her services. This might be envisaged as the de facto legacy of coverture law—a woman’s being ‘spoken for’ by her father, and afterward her husband, then son-in-law, and so on. And it is plausibly part of what makes women more broadly somebody’s mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, always somebody’s someone, and seldom her own person. But this is not because she’s not held to be a person at all, but rather because her personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty. (173)
That squares absolutely with explicit statements I encountered especially at church about "the divine role of women." And one reason I like this book is because, without ever acknowledging that such a thing exists, it demolishes the bullshit feminism known as "complementarianism": the idea that men and women have different roles by divine decree and that you can argue for women's full empowerment by saying that they owe the men in their lives all this nurturance and support--that, in fact, real feminism will help women be more nurturing and supportive of dudes. [Seriously. There are women who claim to be feminists who say this shit.]
What I really had to grapple with was Manne's analysis and rejection of the idea that the problem with misogyny is that men fail to see women as human and that certain harmful behaviors would stop if men could fully recognize women as human:
a fellow human being is not just an intelligible spouse, parent, child, sibling, friend, colleague, etc., in relation to you and yours. They are also an intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, betrayer, etc. Moreover, in being capable of rationality, agency, autonomy, and judgment, they are also someone who could coerce, manipulate, humiliate, and shame you. In being capable of abstract relational thought and congruent moral emotions, they are capable of thinking ill of you and regarding you contemptuously (147)....
We may see others as rivals, insubordinates, usurpers, betrayers, and enemies (inter alia), without ever losing sight of these people's full humanity. And we may subsequently be disposed to try to defeat, chastise, trounce, punish, destroy and permanently close the eyes of those we know full well are people like us (158) ....
People may know full well that those they treat in brutally degrading and inhumane ways are fellow human beings, underneath a more or less thin veneer of false consciousness. And yet, under certain social conditions—the surface of which I've just barely scratched in this chapter—they may massacre, torture, and rape them en masse regardless. (168)
By the end I was persuaded. I think she's right.
I also really dug the coinages "himpathy" and "herasure."
Manne acknowledges that her polemic isn't likely to succeed in creating a lot of new converts to the cause: she writes that she is not particularly "optimistic about the prospects of getting people to take misogyny seriously—including treating it as a moral priority, when it is—unless they already do so” (280) in part because “Misogyny is a self-masking problem. Trying to draw attention to it is illicit by the lights of the phenomenon itself, since women are supposed to minister to others, rather than solicit moral attention and concern on their own behalf.” (281-82)
But if you already consider misogyny a moral problem, this book is a terrific resource because it lays out the stakes so clearly and articulates strong, coherent responses to common objections to feminist ideology.
And if you want to know how this plays out in real life, look at what happens when someone like Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi dares to invoke misogyny as an explanation for certain bad treatment they receive.
Misogyny is the means by which patriarchy attempts to punish and control women who disrupt or challenge the status quo.
Pointing out that the patriarchy is attempting to punish her for disrupting or challenging it just underscores the extent to which a woman needs to be punished and controlled. It makes even more explicit the degree to which her behavior is wrong and the patriarchy's bad treatment of her is justified.
January 21, 2019
In her conclusion, Manne discusses the need first to identify misogyny as a *moral* problem and second to convince people that it is a *serious* moral problem, one that has a bodycount. She acknowledges feeling discouraged that progress on either score has been slow and meager: the people eager to discuss misogyny as a serious moral problem are likely to believe people--largely women--who did not need to be convinced in the first place.
Manne's book obviously does not stand alone, but it provides pieces of a broader effort to elevate the urgency and enormity of misogyny that cannot (as far as I know) be found elsewhere. Manne is doing different work from people like Rebecca Solnit or other influential writers on the subject in that she has developed a conceptually rigorous but also fundamentally revisionary account of misogyny that both enriches it as a philosophical and moral subject and clarifies certain lines of political response. In other words, this book will give philosophers a new and substantial subject to talk about and activists new strategies to employ. How many works can one say that about?
For instance, one of the many casual asides in the book touches on the brand of advice peddled by people like Joan Williams or Arlie Russell Hochschild. These writers argue that we need to recognize the immense shame these people feel--especially when it comes to accusations of racism, homophobia or misogyny--and we need to focus on making them feel "heard." But if shame is really the underlying problem, Manne argues, that strategy is not going to be effective.
"shame—especially of the entitled variety—doesn’t make for the kind of pain you can pander to, productively. That’s the mistake that some people on the left, including some of the most intelligent and sensitive commentators, such as Arlie Russell Hochschild, seem to me to be making at the moment. (See, e.g., the “open letter” to her fellow liberals at the end of Strangers; 2016.) Listening and offering sympathy to those who are prone to shame-based misogynistic as well as racist outbursts is feeding the very need and sense of entitlement that drives them in the first place, when they go unmet. In other words, it’s adding fuel to the fire, at least in the long term. You can’t do much to help or give to someone who, yes, is in genuine pain and lashing out—but only because they feel too needy and illicitly entitled to getting such moral attentions to begin with. The liberal impulse is therefore misplaced here, unless we want to get stuck feeding the need-monster forever. As many white women indeed appear to be committed to doing, when it comes to the white men they’ll remain loyal to notwithstanding their sexual misconduct (among other things)."
This paragraph is a stray thought, but it also gets at the underlying thesis of the book: misogyny is not an individual psychological condition related to hatred or dehumanization. It is instead a repertoire of corrective responses to perceived threats to a patriarchal order--one where men receive a disproportionate amount of attention, love, admiration, reassurance, etc. (as well as more tangible goods like promotions or raises). These responses need not even be personal--they can be generated by institutions or even by environments. What is more important is that they are meant to reestablish the "correct" distribution of roles and benefits between men and women, most often by punishing women who are claiming more of the goods designated for men.
If we apply this line of thinking to those white working class voters whom Hochschild feels we ought to be lavishing with attention, we can quickly see why this will be a self-defeating strategy. We will merely be confirming them in their belief that they are entitled to a disproportionate amount of (political) attention and consideration--that they count for more than their numbers, that they have an inflated moral claim on the nation well beyond the power of their votes.
Manne's book is chock-full of insights into particular cases and situations, but its greatest benefit, I feel, is its overall conceptual coherence and the power of its central argument. It is an essential work for the work of the present.
Manne's book obviously does not stand alone, but it provides pieces of a broader effort to elevate the urgency and enormity of misogyny that cannot (as far as I know) be found elsewhere. Manne is doing different work from people like Rebecca Solnit or other influential writers on the subject in that she has developed a conceptually rigorous but also fundamentally revisionary account of misogyny that both enriches it as a philosophical and moral subject and clarifies certain lines of political response. In other words, this book will give philosophers a new and substantial subject to talk about and activists new strategies to employ. How many works can one say that about?
For instance, one of the many casual asides in the book touches on the brand of advice peddled by people like Joan Williams or Arlie Russell Hochschild. These writers argue that we need to recognize the immense shame these people feel--especially when it comes to accusations of racism, homophobia or misogyny--and we need to focus on making them feel "heard." But if shame is really the underlying problem, Manne argues, that strategy is not going to be effective.
"shame—especially of the entitled variety—doesn’t make for the kind of pain you can pander to, productively. That’s the mistake that some people on the left, including some of the most intelligent and sensitive commentators, such as Arlie Russell Hochschild, seem to me to be making at the moment. (See, e.g., the “open letter” to her fellow liberals at the end of Strangers; 2016.) Listening and offering sympathy to those who are prone to shame-based misogynistic as well as racist outbursts is feeding the very need and sense of entitlement that drives them in the first place, when they go unmet. In other words, it’s adding fuel to the fire, at least in the long term. You can’t do much to help or give to someone who, yes, is in genuine pain and lashing out—but only because they feel too needy and illicitly entitled to getting such moral attentions to begin with. The liberal impulse is therefore misplaced here, unless we want to get stuck feeding the need-monster forever. As many white women indeed appear to be committed to doing, when it comes to the white men they’ll remain loyal to notwithstanding their sexual misconduct (among other things)."
This paragraph is a stray thought, but it also gets at the underlying thesis of the book: misogyny is not an individual psychological condition related to hatred or dehumanization. It is instead a repertoire of corrective responses to perceived threats to a patriarchal order--one where men receive a disproportionate amount of attention, love, admiration, reassurance, etc. (as well as more tangible goods like promotions or raises). These responses need not even be personal--they can be generated by institutions or even by environments. What is more important is that they are meant to reestablish the "correct" distribution of roles and benefits between men and women, most often by punishing women who are claiming more of the goods designated for men.
If we apply this line of thinking to those white working class voters whom Hochschild feels we ought to be lavishing with attention, we can quickly see why this will be a self-defeating strategy. We will merely be confirming them in their belief that they are entitled to a disproportionate amount of (political) attention and consideration--that they count for more than their numbers, that they have an inflated moral claim on the nation well beyond the power of their votes.
Manne's book is chock-full of insights into particular cases and situations, but its greatest benefit, I feel, is its overall conceptual coherence and the power of its central argument. It is an essential work for the work of the present.
April 9, 2019
It's par for the course to talk about sexist and patriarchal "norms" and "values," but it's much less common in my experience to really dig into what this means. If patriarchy is really normative then we'd expect to see moral reactions to transgressions against these norms. This is the central argument of Kate Manne's Down Girl: the Logic of Misogyny, a book that clarifies how there can be so much misogyny in a world that by many measures has made significant strides toward women's equality. Indeed, on her model, misogynistic backlash is exactly what we should expect.
One of her illustrative analogies has nothing to do with sexism, and it serves to offer some critical distance. Imagine a server at a restaurant suddenly stops serving you with politeness or deference, and suggests you help yourself. Even apart from questions of money, you would feel at least a little outraged, and you might even try to get them fired or punished. You'd have this reaction even if you are friends with servers or have experience in the industry yourself. Even though you *know* a restaurant employee is a full human person deserving of dignity, in the *context* of the server/customer relationship, certain deferential behaviors and attitudes are expected, and we have a moral response when those expectations are flouted.
In a patriarchy, women are expected to perform certain roles and functions, notably to provide care and emotional nurturance, to be sexually available, and to perform domestic and reproductive labor, among others. These norms are internalized from a tender age and are reinforced in countless ways by both individual behaviors and by public policies and institutions. As such, we may have moral responses to violations of patriarchal norms without realizing the source, and even if consciously we reject sexism.
Manne ditches the unhelpful "naive" definition of misogyny as hatred of women in favor of misogyny as the enforcement mechanism of patriarchal norms. Misogyny comes in the form of hostile attitudes to women who are not performing their expected roles or who are trying to usurp male spaces or roles. It comes in the form of aggression, including gendered violence. And it can come in purely structural forms, for example as forcing women to bear unwanted pregnancies to term and suffering the associated economic hardships (thus enforcing the role of motherhood on a woman resisting this role). One of Manne's innovations is shifting the conceptual focus of misogyny onto the receiver, rather than the producer. That is, misogyny is what happens to victims of misogyny, and we should theorize from this starting point, rather than defining misogyny as what misogynists do. This is especially useful because with structural misogyny, there doesn't even have to be a single misogynist person.
Because patriarchy is a value system, we expect misogyny (hostility, violence, endorsement of structural misogyny, etc) to come not just from men, who may feel robbed of the care, support, sex, etc. On Manne's model, we should also expect misogyny from women who are "following the (patriarchal) rules." Likewise, men prone to misogyny have no reason to act hostile toward women who uphold patriarchy. This defuses the common confusion that misogyny implies hatred of *all* women.
There's much more to say about this book, but I'll close by appreciating Manne's approach to intersectionality. Manne, a white cis woman, pointedly opens her model to modification and critique from other perspectives. She gives several examples of the intersections of misogyny and antiblack racism, and of transmisogyny. She gestures to how experiences of other forms of oppression may change the way misogyny manifests, but for the most part she respectfully asks those in positions closer to these experiences to further these investigations themselves.
Down Girl is packed with rigorous philosophical argument, but Manne's prose is clear and easy to read. For good reason, I suspect Down Girl will become a classic feminist text if it's not considered such already. Given its clarity, concision, and importance, for the foreseeable future the book will be my go-to recommendation for anyone interested in learning more about feminism.
One of her illustrative analogies has nothing to do with sexism, and it serves to offer some critical distance. Imagine a server at a restaurant suddenly stops serving you with politeness or deference, and suggests you help yourself. Even apart from questions of money, you would feel at least a little outraged, and you might even try to get them fired or punished. You'd have this reaction even if you are friends with servers or have experience in the industry yourself. Even though you *know* a restaurant employee is a full human person deserving of dignity, in the *context* of the server/customer relationship, certain deferential behaviors and attitudes are expected, and we have a moral response when those expectations are flouted.
In a patriarchy, women are expected to perform certain roles and functions, notably to provide care and emotional nurturance, to be sexually available, and to perform domestic and reproductive labor, among others. These norms are internalized from a tender age and are reinforced in countless ways by both individual behaviors and by public policies and institutions. As such, we may have moral responses to violations of patriarchal norms without realizing the source, and even if consciously we reject sexism.
Manne ditches the unhelpful "naive" definition of misogyny as hatred of women in favor of misogyny as the enforcement mechanism of patriarchal norms. Misogyny comes in the form of hostile attitudes to women who are not performing their expected roles or who are trying to usurp male spaces or roles. It comes in the form of aggression, including gendered violence. And it can come in purely structural forms, for example as forcing women to bear unwanted pregnancies to term and suffering the associated economic hardships (thus enforcing the role of motherhood on a woman resisting this role). One of Manne's innovations is shifting the conceptual focus of misogyny onto the receiver, rather than the producer. That is, misogyny is what happens to victims of misogyny, and we should theorize from this starting point, rather than defining misogyny as what misogynists do. This is especially useful because with structural misogyny, there doesn't even have to be a single misogynist person.
Because patriarchy is a value system, we expect misogyny (hostility, violence, endorsement of structural misogyny, etc) to come not just from men, who may feel robbed of the care, support, sex, etc. On Manne's model, we should also expect misogyny from women who are "following the (patriarchal) rules." Likewise, men prone to misogyny have no reason to act hostile toward women who uphold patriarchy. This defuses the common confusion that misogyny implies hatred of *all* women.
There's much more to say about this book, but I'll close by appreciating Manne's approach to intersectionality. Manne, a white cis woman, pointedly opens her model to modification and critique from other perspectives. She gives several examples of the intersections of misogyny and antiblack racism, and of transmisogyny. She gestures to how experiences of other forms of oppression may change the way misogyny manifests, but for the most part she respectfully asks those in positions closer to these experiences to further these investigations themselves.
Down Girl is packed with rigorous philosophical argument, but Manne's prose is clear and easy to read. For good reason, I suspect Down Girl will become a classic feminist text if it's not considered such already. Given its clarity, concision, and importance, for the foreseeable future the book will be my go-to recommendation for anyone interested in learning more about feminism.
February 13, 2019
A work of philosophy that, unlike so many, wants passionately to convince and be understood, and to speak to pressing problems that everyone has some experience of (whether they choose to see the problem as such or wish it away with post hoc rationalizations).
Crisp, thorough, intellectually honest, persuasive, and even musical at times, though never to the detriment of the central thesis.
This is some of the most powerful feminist writing I've read; can't recommend enough.
Crisp, thorough, intellectually honest, persuasive, and even musical at times, though never to the detriment of the central thesis.
This is some of the most powerful feminist writing I've read; can't recommend enough.
December 1, 2017
As is often the case, a little disclaimer is warranted. I've had some social interaction with Kate Manne, including some discussion of the content of the book and the authorial choices while I was reading.
Manne's Down Girl is an instructive and accessible piece of writing on a problematic and potent topic. There are a few technical areas where I think philosophers and other academics (myself included) would do well to follow Manne's model. The most obvious to me (because it is something I struggle to emulate) is that Manne uses technical language from the ethics and political philosophy literature well, without dwelling excessively on the details in ways that would frustrate non-academic readers. This is a useful editorial skill, and one I don't see exercised often enough.
The book presents a wide range of topics on the reach of misogyny; in many cases, that can make a book feel scattershot, but Manne does a good job signposting and ensuring that the reader is clear on how all of the topics connect together. Again, this is something that academics do not do well; and in a topic where it is necessary to cover topics from sexual violence to political discourse to structural inequality to psychological bias, this is a pretty good achievement.
My major praise of the book is in a decision that I think sets it apart from a lot of feminist literature (both academic and popular) in methodology. Manne is not committed to stagnantly talking about either the psychological or social dimensions of misogyny to the exclusion of the other. Rather, she shifts back and forth between the two; now, for a lot of social scientists and critics, this can make it seem as though there isn't a clear etiology for misogyny, no clear source either in our social world or in our minds. But that is precisely the point; the whole thing is a tangled mess. To attempt to reduce our causal explanations of misogyny principally to one dimension is to miss what's so difficult about these sorts of oppression, that they're simultaneously psychological and social.
Manne is successful in giving an illuminating and thoughtful view of this psycho-social tangle without pretending that there can be a clear or successful reduction. I think that's important to appreciate and acknowledge; it pushes against the social scientific disciplines' attempts to offer explanations that are simultaneously comprehensive and comprehensible when the case under study is too complicated to allow for that sort of thing.
I do have one sort of misgiving about the book, but I should say up front that there are good principled and logistical reasons why Manne doesn't attempt what I'm going to suggest below in the book. (It'd make the book far too long and Manne thinks she's not really ideally positioned to do it. I think that's all true and, further, that she's not obligated to do it, for reasons she outlines in the conclusion of the book.)
Manne's prognosis for addressing misogyny is largely negative. It turns out that traditional humanist treatments of moral education (i.e. creating conditions where potential oppressors and offenders see the oppressed and offended as human beings) is not really likely to be successful, because it is based on a (mistaken) assumption that these crimes are preceded by dehumanization. So that program doesn't work. Manne also argues that one of the goals has to be to remove from women the sense of obligation to give of themselves, because it is deeply rooted in the entitlement society feels to the emotional and moral labor of women. That entitlement fosters an attitude of punitive deserts towards women who are not seen as sufficiently giving when society suggests they ought to be.
Surely, Manne is right about all of this. These are useful points in developing a program, but it really doesn't say much about what a program combatting misogyny would look like, or how one would even go about setting this up. Manne puts us (as a moral community, and more specifically those who do have a positive obligation to combat misogyny, as its principal beneficiaries) in an uncomfortable position; after all, we've recognized the tangle that is going to make it especially difficult to challenge either the psychological or social dimensions, given their interdependence and mutual reinforcement. So, what happens next? I have some embryonic ideas about this, but just as they fall outside of the scope of Manne's book, they fall outside of the scope of this review.
Manne's Down Girl is an instructive and accessible piece of writing on a problematic and potent topic. There are a few technical areas where I think philosophers and other academics (myself included) would do well to follow Manne's model. The most obvious to me (because it is something I struggle to emulate) is that Manne uses technical language from the ethics and political philosophy literature well, without dwelling excessively on the details in ways that would frustrate non-academic readers. This is a useful editorial skill, and one I don't see exercised often enough.
The book presents a wide range of topics on the reach of misogyny; in many cases, that can make a book feel scattershot, but Manne does a good job signposting and ensuring that the reader is clear on how all of the topics connect together. Again, this is something that academics do not do well; and in a topic where it is necessary to cover topics from sexual violence to political discourse to structural inequality to psychological bias, this is a pretty good achievement.
My major praise of the book is in a decision that I think sets it apart from a lot of feminist literature (both academic and popular) in methodology. Manne is not committed to stagnantly talking about either the psychological or social dimensions of misogyny to the exclusion of the other. Rather, she shifts back and forth between the two; now, for a lot of social scientists and critics, this can make it seem as though there isn't a clear etiology for misogyny, no clear source either in our social world or in our minds. But that is precisely the point; the whole thing is a tangled mess. To attempt to reduce our causal explanations of misogyny principally to one dimension is to miss what's so difficult about these sorts of oppression, that they're simultaneously psychological and social.
Manne is successful in giving an illuminating and thoughtful view of this psycho-social tangle without pretending that there can be a clear or successful reduction. I think that's important to appreciate and acknowledge; it pushes against the social scientific disciplines' attempts to offer explanations that are simultaneously comprehensive and comprehensible when the case under study is too complicated to allow for that sort of thing.
I do have one sort of misgiving about the book, but I should say up front that there are good principled and logistical reasons why Manne doesn't attempt what I'm going to suggest below in the book. (It'd make the book far too long and Manne thinks she's not really ideally positioned to do it. I think that's all true and, further, that she's not obligated to do it, for reasons she outlines in the conclusion of the book.)
Manne's prognosis for addressing misogyny is largely negative. It turns out that traditional humanist treatments of moral education (i.e. creating conditions where potential oppressors and offenders see the oppressed and offended as human beings) is not really likely to be successful, because it is based on a (mistaken) assumption that these crimes are preceded by dehumanization. So that program doesn't work. Manne also argues that one of the goals has to be to remove from women the sense of obligation to give of themselves, because it is deeply rooted in the entitlement society feels to the emotional and moral labor of women. That entitlement fosters an attitude of punitive deserts towards women who are not seen as sufficiently giving when society suggests they ought to be.
Surely, Manne is right about all of this. These are useful points in developing a program, but it really doesn't say much about what a program combatting misogyny would look like, or how one would even go about setting this up. Manne puts us (as a moral community, and more specifically those who do have a positive obligation to combat misogyny, as its principal beneficiaries) in an uncomfortable position; after all, we've recognized the tangle that is going to make it especially difficult to challenge either the psychological or social dimensions, given their interdependence and mutual reinforcement. So, what happens next? I have some embryonic ideas about this, but just as they fall outside of the scope of Manne's book, they fall outside of the scope of this review.
November 11, 2020
Manne is a moral and analytic philosopher, and offers an examination of misogyny through that lens. She differentiates between sexism and misogyny (though acknowledges that they are often intertwined), suggesting that sexism is the belief that women are innately inferior to men in certain ways (less able leaders, less capable of intellectual rigor, more emotional, naturally more nurturing, etc), and suggests that misogyny is not the hatred of women qua women, but a tool of the patriarchy to police and control the behaviour of women, and has the power to punish 'bad' women and provide a warning to other women. The victims of misogyny are women, and the most serious perpetrators are usually men, but women are also capable of participating in misogynist behaviour. (For example, women are just as likely as men to rate powerful women as unlikable, and when a woman is raped both men and women are asking what she was wearing.)
Manne also argues that the idea that misogynists view women as less than human is false. Rather, it's that they view women as the rightful providers of love, care, tenderness, admiration and nurturing kindness, commodities that can ONLY be provided by another human. So misogyny is about women denying those commodities, either directly or more generally, to the men who deserve them. Manne likens this to a diner at a fine restaurant. He goes expecting to be served and waited upon deferentially. That is, after all, a reasonable expectation at a fine restaurant. But what if the server expects deference? What if the server begins to demand service from the diner, and does not bring the appetizer or the wine list in a timely manner, and denies the diner parts of his meal? Of course the diner would complain! Of course the diner would feel puzzled and frustrated, and might even bang his spoon on the table, demanding what is his right, as per the conventions of restaurants. And because of these conventions, most people who hear or see this will sympathize with the diner.
Manne explores killers like Elliott Rodger, the public speech of Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke, and Donald Trump’s speech and actions. She examines psychological and sociological studies, and the public reaction to Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard. She digs into so-called victim culture and public reactions to the women who come forward to tell their stories.
This was an interesting read, and I'm glad I picked it up. I found Manne's arguments convincing, and I think she makes a good case here for the ways in which misogyny is embedded in our culture, both in overt and covert, unconscious ways. And for philosophy, this was a fairly clear and easy read. A good read for feminists, and probably for those who believe that we've closed the gap between the sexes and the work is done.
Manne also argues that the idea that misogynists view women as less than human is false. Rather, it's that they view women as the rightful providers of love, care, tenderness, admiration and nurturing kindness, commodities that can ONLY be provided by another human. So misogyny is about women denying those commodities, either directly or more generally, to the men who deserve them. Manne likens this to a diner at a fine restaurant. He goes expecting to be served and waited upon deferentially. That is, after all, a reasonable expectation at a fine restaurant. But what if the server expects deference? What if the server begins to demand service from the diner, and does not bring the appetizer or the wine list in a timely manner, and denies the diner parts of his meal? Of course the diner would complain! Of course the diner would feel puzzled and frustrated, and might even bang his spoon on the table, demanding what is his right, as per the conventions of restaurants. And because of these conventions, most people who hear or see this will sympathize with the diner.
Manne explores killers like Elliott Rodger, the public speech of Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke, and Donald Trump’s speech and actions. She examines psychological and sociological studies, and the public reaction to Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard. She digs into so-called victim culture and public reactions to the women who come forward to tell their stories.
This was an interesting read, and I'm glad I picked it up. I found Manne's arguments convincing, and I think she makes a good case here for the ways in which misogyny is embedded in our culture, both in overt and covert, unconscious ways. And for philosophy, this was a fairly clear and easy read. A good read for feminists, and probably for those who believe that we've closed the gap between the sexes and the work is done.
March 10, 2019
While I believe this is a very important topic, and something we should be talking more about this is not the book to start that conversation. Manne used such dry academic language that it's a miracle anyone outside of this particular field of research has actually finished it. I really wanted to like this book and I kept going with it longer than I should have in the hope that it would improve. It didn't. Manne repeats herself over and over, going far beyond what is necessary for making a point. While her real life examples were succinct and easy to read (and truly horrifying examples of misogyny in our society) she would revert back to dry academia when explaining why she thinks these things are happening. If the entire book had been written as well as her examples and stories then this would be a 5 star review and a must read book for everyone.
Still I applaud Manne for having the courage to write this, and for what it's worth I did agree with most of her points, and those I didn't agree with made me think. This would be a great read for someone else studying this issue, but not really for the general public.
Still I applaud Manne for having the courage to write this, and for what it's worth I did agree with most of her points, and those I didn't agree with made me think. This would be a great read for someone else studying this issue, but not really for the general public.
September 7, 2018
God. Damn. As a person who studied philosophy at a quasi-monastic Catholic liberal arts school where the curriculum gave us a thorough exposure to the grand old male authors of yore dunking on women casually and as a matter of course, while featuring exactly zero feminist texts---or any texts for that matter---that even ADDRESSED misogyny, this book has been like another liberal education in itself.
December 2, 2017
I'm giving it four stars because it's very well researched and well written, and organizes things that I have already well learned for sure in my 40.99 years as a woman on earth. However if you are not the type to think about these issues on a regular basis, it should be pretty eye-opening.
May 11, 2019
I want to say so much about this book. But you will just have to read it to know.
It took a while to digest and I’m still doing so. But I love books like this because I think it is so very important to be thinking of, talking about, and increasing awareness to how underlying core attitudes play out in our every social/relational interactions. Misogyny is described by Manne as “the system that operates within a patriarchal social order to police and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male dominance.” As you read through the pages and consider modern day events that are happening right in our backyards, it’s difficult to argue against this definition.
A very good read.
It took a while to digest and I’m still doing so. But I love books like this because I think it is so very important to be thinking of, talking about, and increasing awareness to how underlying core attitudes play out in our every social/relational interactions. Misogyny is described by Manne as “the system that operates within a patriarchal social order to police and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male dominance.” As you read through the pages and consider modern day events that are happening right in our backyards, it’s difficult to argue against this definition.
A very good read.
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