Origin, Impact, and Reaction to Misogynistic Behaviors

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:

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2019

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2018

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.

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.

Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2022

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2020

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2020

Kate Manne's Down Girl (2017) offers an 'ameliorative' account, in Sally Haslanger's sense of the term, 1 of misogyny, sexism, patriarchy, and the relations between them. Manne argues that women's essential role within patriarchy is to offer various social goods and support such as recognition, sexual attention, and emotional labor to men. Misogyny enforces patriarchy by keeping women in their proper place, as suppliers of these services, through an elaborate and interlocking set of social images, disciplinary practices, normalizing techniques and bodily habituation, and so forth. Misogyny is a self-correcting system that penalizes and disciplines women who violate the patriarchal order and step out of their proper place, 2 while promoting special sympathy for men who do not receive the support and recognition from women that they are 'owed.'

2005

This edition of the Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy features a number of reviews of recent books in feminist philosophy. The books range from social and political philosophy, to environmental philosophy, and continental philosophy. They attest to the flourishing of feminist scholarship, and the reviews demonstrate the ongoing dialogue that has long characterized the field. I have organized them somewhat thematically, though readers will also note the impressive variety of topics and ideas represented. But the news is not all good. In “Female-Friendly Departments: A Modest Proposal for Picking Graduate Programs in Philosophy,” Julie Van Camp undertakes a thorough scrutiny of Brian Leiter ’s The Philosophical Gourmet Report. Her analysis, however, is not limited to that Report. Van Camp raises a series of questions regarding the status of women in the profession, and her article is a “must-read” for anyone considering graduate school or participating in the profession in a facul...

Review of Metaphysics, 1996