Notice then that on my proposed analysis misogyny’s essence lies in its social function, not its psychological nature. To its agents, misogyny need not have any distinctive “feel” or phenomenology from the inside. If it feels like anything at all, it will tend to be righteous: like standing up for oneself or for morality, or—often combining the two—for the “little guy.” It often feels to those in its grip like a moral crusade, not a witch hunt. And it may pursue its targets not in the spirit of hating women but, rather, of loving justice. It can also be a purely structural phenomenon,
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