Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

by Kate Manne

Misogynists can love their mothers—not to mention their sisters, daughters, wives, girlfriends, and secretaries. They need not hate women universally, or even very generally. They tend to hate women who are outspoken, among other things.

Women are thoroughly integrated into prototypical patriarchal households, where they are tasked with a wide range of critical domestic, social, emotional, as well as (hetero)sexual, services. Such women are too useful to the dominant for all women to be dispensable—or even for spatial segregation to be capable of serving dominant needs and interests.