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.
