Misogyny and Ideological Logic

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2020

Mind , 2019

Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny combines traditional conceptual analysis and feminist conceptual engineering with critical exploration of cases drawn from popular culture and current events in order to produce an ameliorative account of misogyny, i.e., one that will help address the problems of misogyny in the actual world. A feminist account of misogyny that is both intersectional and ameliorative must provide theoretical tools for recognizing misogyny in its many-dimensional forms, as it interacts and overlaps with other oppressions. While Manne thinks subtly about many of the material conditions that create misogyny as a set of normative social practices, she does not fully extend this care to the other intersectional forms of oppression she discusses. After touching on the book’s strengths, I track variations of its main problem, namely, its failure to fully conceive of oppressions besides sexism and misogyny as systemic patterns of social practices, as inherently structural rather than mere collections of individual beliefs and behaviors.

Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective , 2018

Kate Manne's Down Girl breathes new life into an underexplored yet urgently important topic. Using a diverse mixture of current events, empirical findings, and literary illustrations, Manne guides her reader through the underbelly of misogyny: its nature, how it relates to and differs from sexism, and why, in supposedly post-patriarchal societies, it's "still a thing." 1 Chapter 1 challenges the standard dictionary-definition or "naïve conception" of misogyny, as Manne calls it. This view understands misogyny primarily as a psychological phenomenon, operative in the minds of men. Accordingly, misogynists are disposed to hate all or most women because they are women.

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2018

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2019

Hypatia

Manifestations of misogyny have proliferated over time, reshaping and diversifying in response to increasing gender inclusivity and the progression of women's rights. Although some forms of gender-based exploitation are painfully blatant and obviously express a sexist ideology, other forms are more ambiguous, hiding in the collective shadows of the masculinist psyche and public discourse. These covert forms of misogyny are not necessarily less devastating to those who experience them than are the more widely recognized overt forms, especially when they occur within intimate relationships. 1 Indeed, their very elusiveness leaves victims prone to torturous self-doubt, threatening their confidence and self-trust and corroding their agency. Within romantic or intimate relationships, even subtle misogyny contravenes the mutual respect and vulnerability that loving intimacy requires. The articles in this cluster illuminate moments on a continuum of misogyny in the context of relationships, from overt, consciously sexist, and violent expressions to covert, sometimes indeliberate expressions. They also highlight the ambiguities and ambivalences at play in at least some of its manifestations. Our hope is that entertaining the notion of a continuum of misogyny can illuminate some of its subtle behavioral expressions, while contributing to a growing understanding of its logic. This may clarify the affective dissonance that agents experience when they sense, yet doubt, that they are experiencing misogyny. The articles in this cluster, and the analysis we offer here, is part of a larger attempt in contemporary feminist theory to demystify the bewilderingly expansive range of misogynistic behavior by identifying, naming, and making sense of its novel or previously obscured expressions to pave the way for healthier and more ethical relationships. Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny offers a novel and ameliorative structure for understanding and responding to misogyny, one that helps to frame the articles in this cluster. Of particular use are Manne's distinction between sexism and misogyny, and her insistence that misogyny need not involve the hatred of women. Manne understands sexism as "the branch of patriarchal ideology that justifies and rationalizes a patriarchal social order" (Manne 2018, 20). Misogyny, by contrast, is "the system that polices and enforces its governing norms and expectations" (20). Manne's characterization of misogyny contrasts with the popular notion that it is primarily a property of hate-filled individuals, who are hostile to any and every woman (32). As such, it represents an important contribution to the feminist project of decoding misogyny because it better explains lived experience (31).

Medium

Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny is an extremely partisan philosophical book whose chief aim is to re-engineer the word misogyny. In the first chapter, she articulates what she takes to be a significant problem with the standard notion of the word misogyny, which she refers to as the "naïve conception". Of course, the standard notion of misogyny is supposed to refer to the attitudes-i.e., dislike, hatred, prejudice-that a misogynist harbors towards women qua women. But as Manne sees it, the standard notion is problematic:

Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal

Kate A. Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, where she has been teaching since 2013. Before that, she was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows (2011–2013), did her graduate work at MIT (2006–2011), and was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne (2001–2005), where she studied philosophy, logic, and computer science. Her current research is primarily in moral, feminist, and social philosophy. She is the author of two books, including her first book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and her latest book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. Manne has also published a number of scholarly papers about the foundations of morality, and she regularly writes opinion pieces, essays, and reviews in venues—including The New York Times, The Boston Review, the Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women, 2021

It is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of … Women are doing great. (Donald Trump, 2 October 2018, on the #MeToo movement) The virtual war against women is not confined to or predominantly fostered within incel spaces, and it is also not occurring entirely online, though much of the support and dissemination of the misogynistic and anti-feminist messages are generated and propagated by men with extensive public platforms and followings, which then extend offline. Much of what is being espoused, however, long predates the internet and patriarchal ideologies about the inferiority of women are being regurgitated and recycled online, into the minds and mouths of people offline, in a continuous misogynistic loop. This chapter shows how even though there are 'acceptable' forms of misogyny-the day-today micro-sexisms easily dismissed as 'lad culture' or banter, and seemingly extreme forms-such as incels, gender inequality is preserved via normalised practices of everyday misogyny. All modes are components of the same war on women, comprising of vitriol directed towards any challenge to the patriarchal status quo and demonstrating opposition towards progression. This chapter also explores the impact of leaders, known misogynists, yet able to maintain powerful and public platforms, for example, the political success of men like the former President of the United States (POTUS) Donald Trump contributes to perceptions of women, enabling further objection towards gender equality. Then, there are those associated with the alt-right and the manosphere, including the so-called intellectual dark web. Jordan Peterson, Milo Yiannopoulos, Roosh V, Paul Elam, and others espouse the same right-wing rhetoric as that propagated by incels, Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) and the alt-right, yet are able to maintain a veneer of respectability and credence emboldening these movements, and there is evidence that their influence is leaking into public life and the mainstream.

Feminist Theory, 2022

Misogyny is a weighty term. Its affective power invokes spectres of rape, sexual assault, hate-fuelled insults and gas-lighting. Its presence in nearly every culture on the planet haunts our pasts and frames our presents. Aiming to build an understanding of misogyny for our future social justice efforts, I look to Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, where she dusts off an old definition of misogyny as the hatred of women to describe it as the enforcement branch of a patriarchal society, a renewed engagement for feminists and activists alike. In particular, this framing provides opportunities to examine misogyny from an intersectional lens, including its intersections with race, gender and sexuality. For example, through stories such as that of Pamela George, an Indigenous woman from Regina, Saskatchewan who was murdered in 1995, I argue that it is crucial that we recognise the collusion between settler colonialism and misogyny. Or in the case of transphobic comedian Dave Chapelle, we must understand the interplay of heteronormativity and cisnormativity in propping up transmisogyny. Consequently, I argue that an intersectional logic of misogyny provides not only a shift but a tipping point for feminist and queer movements to come.