Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

by Kate Manne

My argument in this book is that, in milieu like mine, for comparatively privileged women like me, e.g., me, our humanity is perfectly well-recognized in general. I think it likely has been for quite some time.5 This is reflected in the fact that misogyny often involves what P. F. Strawson ([1962] 2008) calls “the reactive attitudes,” such as resentment, blame, indignation, condemnation, and (for the first-personal analogues) guilt, shame, a sense of responsibility, as well as a willingness to accept punishment when one is held to deserve it. The second-personal and third-personal reactions are supposed to be restricted, at least in the first instance, to our dealings with others who are recognized as “fellow human beings.”6 Moreover, we only tend to have these morally laden and broadly juridical or legalistic reactions to other presumptively reasonable and reasonably mature persons, who we are willing and able to remonstrate with regarding their behavior. Strawson says we take the objective stance, in contrast, to young children, the severely intoxicated, people having a psychotic break, and those who are “not themselves,” more or less temporarily. We may instead try to manage, treat, educate, or simply avoid, someone to whom we take the objective stance. And we may also take the objective stance as a “refuge” from the “strains of involvement” with those we could but choose not to relate to interpersonally ([1962] 2008, 10, 13, 18). We may be too exhausted—or lazy, or ove...