Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

by Kate Manne

In general, I think of misogyny as being a bit like the shock collar worn by a dog to keep them behind one of those invisible fences that proliferate in suburbia. Misogyny is capable of causing pain, to be sure, and it often does so. But even when it isn’t actively hurting anyone, it tends to discourage girls and women from venturing out of bounds. If we stray, or err, we know what we are in for.12 All the more reason, then, why Ford’s testimony was so courageous. In contrast to misogyny, I take sexism to be the theoretical and ideological branch of patriarchy: the beliefs, ideas, and assumptions that serve to rationalize and naturalize patriarchal norms and expectations—including a gendered division of labor, and men’s dominance over women in areas of traditionally male power and authority. Though this book focuses more on misogyny than sexism, it’s important to recognize that the two typically work in concert.

And, as will emerge here eventually, these men’s sense of entitlement to such affection and admiration is a trait they often share with the far greater proportion of men who commit acts of domestic, dating, and intimate partner violence.

Misogyny takes down women, and himpathy protects the agents of that takedown operation, partly by painting them as “good guys.”

The question thus becomes: Why, and how, do we regard many men’s potentially hurt feelings as so important, so sacrosanct? And, relatedly, why do we regard women as so responsible for protecting and ministering to them?

Back to being rude, though: Why would a woman take such drastic actions—acting against her own will in such a fundamental way—simply to avoid this seemingly trifling social consequence? But we know from social and moral psychology that people often do, as a matter of fact, go to great lengths to avoid disrupting a social situation in which their behavior is culturally scripted—especially when it is prescribed or even suggested by some kind of authority figure.

So, by all means, don’t have an abortion, if you’re personally opposed to them. But the state policing of pregnant bodies is a form of misogynistic social control, one whose effects will be most deeply felt by the most vulnerable girls and women. And this, in my book, is simply indefensible.