Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

by Kate Manne

misogyny should not be understood as a monolithic, deep-seated psychological hatred of girls and women. Instead, it’s best conceptualized as the “law enforcement” branch of patriarchy—a system that functions to police and enforce gendered norms and expectations, and involves girls and women facing disproportionately or distinctively hostile treatment because of their gender, among other factors.

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.

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.

understanding misogyny as more about the hostility girls and women face, as opposed to the hostility men feel deep down in their hearts, helps us avoid a problem of psychological inscrutability.

What we need to know is something we are often in a much better position to establish: that a girl or woman is facing disproportionately or distinctively gendered hostile treatment because she is a woman in a man’s world—that is, a woman in a historically patriarchal society (which includes, I believe, most if not all of them).15 We don’t need to show that she is subject to such treatment because she is a woman in a man’s mind—which, in some instances, can’t be the issue.

So I propose defining a misogynist as someone who is an overachiever in perpetuating misogyny: practicing misogyny with particular frequency and consistency compared to others in that environment. This definition helps us acknowledge the important truth that we are all to a certain extent complicit in misogynistic social structures. But at the same time, for many people, especially those who are actively engaged in anti-misogynistic resistance efforts, it would be wrong to call us misogynists on the whole. That label should be reserved for the chief offenders.

There is no universal experience of misogyny—not least because gendered norms and expectations always intersect with these other unjust systems to produce novel forms of oppression faced by different groups of girls and women.

Moreover, and more subtly, incels are but a vivid symptom of a much broader and deeper cultural phenomenon. They crystallize some men’s toxic sense of entitlement to have people look up to them steadfastly, with a loving gaze, admiringly—and to target and even destroy those who fail, or refuse, to do so. 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.

Anyone can feel lonely. But a wrongheaded sense of entitlement to a woman’s sexual, material, reproductive, and emotional labor may result in incel tendencies prior to the relationship and intimate partner violence afterward, if he feels thwarted, resentful, or jealous. In other words, an incel is an abuser waiting to happen.

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

According to Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy, there are an estimated 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide, and the existing evidence suggests that rapists commit between seven to eleven rapes, on average, before being apprehended.

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?

He was evidently not only indifferent to Gutierrez’s mounting distress; he was aiming to cause it, to make her accede to him. It’s not that Gutierrez’s no meant yes to Weinstein, exactly; it’s that it meant nothing—it merely being his cue to keep asking, prompting, needling. He repeatedly reminded her of who he was (“I’m a famous guy”), as well as the script from which she was deviating (“Now you’re embarrassing me”). She was refusing to take direction; she was being impossible to work with.

women, compared to men, received less and less effective pain relief, less pain medication with opioids, and more antidepressants and got more mental health referrals….A major finding is that women’s pain in the reviewed studies was psychologized….Women’s pain reports are taken less seriously, their pain is discounted as being psychic or nonexistent, and their medication is less adequate than treatment given to men.17 So, overall, the authors concluded: “the reviewed studies showed gender bias in the [medical] encounter, along with gender bias in prescribed medication. Differences in the treatment of men and women in these studies could not be explained by different medical needs.”18

Of course, the heightened moral scrutiny of so-called late-term abortions belies the fact that only slightly more than 1 percent of abortions are performed after twenty weeks (about halfway through a typical pregnancy).12 And these procedures are almost always undertaken due to severe fetal anomalies or serious health risks for the patient, should the pregnancy continue.

The novelty of prosecuting men for abortion—despite the sound legal footing of such charges—tells us something important about the way we have, until now, framed the debate. Boys will be boys, but women who get pregnant have behaved irresponsibly. We are so comfortable with regulating women’s sexual behavior, but we’re shocked by the idea of doing it to men. Though it might seem strange to talk about men and abortion, it’s stranger not to, since women don’t have unwanted pregnancies without them.

With the bar for men in general set so low, there is a temptation to compare a present male partner and father to his absent counterparts, and to find him morally admirable rather than wanting. Another invidious comparison turns on the fact that, currently, fathers do far more than their fathers usually did. The modern father is far more involved, on average, than his predecessor. But, again, it is vital to be clear about the most morally relevant comparison to make here: between male and female partners. And seen through this lens, women remain massively overburdened, while men often fail to do their fair share. This is particularly so because a man’s female partner is nowadays much likelier to bring in a comparable amount of income, and to work comparable hours of paid labor.32 So why should she do far more work than him at home, all else being equal? The answer, of course, is she shouldn’t.