Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny Paperback – March 1, 2019

Donald Trump broke into national consciousness during the GOP primaries by making outrageous comments. In August, 2015, he attacked the began the first GOP presidential debate with horrible comments about one of the moderators of the first debates, Megyn Kelly. Toward the end of the campaign, a tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women was released. Yet he won and has now served as president for a year.Kate Manne’s book Down Girl, is perfectly timed (despite having been in the works for many years—she swears Trump’s election is not just a marketing ploy to sell more books). Down Girl examines the concept of misogyny—deconstructing some of the common definitions, proposing one of her own, and examining the application of her definition in a variety of contexts, including (among many others) examining the tv show Fargo, Rush Limbaugh’s attack on the Georgetown Law Student who dared to make the case that contraceptives should be covered by health insurance, two high profile crimes, and concluding with an analysis of the role misogyny played in the recent presidential election.Kate Manne is a professor of philosophy at Cornell, but you should not let that scare you away. While this is real philosophy, it is (almost) jargon free, and highly readable, even for those with zero background in philosophy (full disclosure: my undergrad major was Ethics and Political Philosophy 40 years ago, but am in no sense a philosopher).To risk over-simplifying Prof. Manne’s thesis, she defines misogyny as a system of customs and actions designed to signal to women that they should “stay in their lane” and not compete for what have traditionally been coded as jobs (which I am using loosely to include all social roles) reserved for men. She rejects the view that misogyny is defined by the motives of the men in question, and instead suggests that the key is examining the impact of the actions and social structures on women—do they have the effect of signaling to women that they are out of line? Do they impose a cost on women not borne by men in similar situations? If so, they are examples of misogyny, regardless of the intent of the actor. Viewed this way, people who perform acts furthering misogyny can love their wives, mothers and girlfriends, without contradiction). Note that this allows women to engage in actions which constitute misogyny as well.It is important to note the limitations of Prof. Manne’s book. Early on, she explicitly states that she is not qualified to address—and will not examine in any detail—the very important issues of the intersection of race and misogyny, or the special case of how misogyny intersects with the struggle by transwomen for equal rights. That said, in the final chapter, she does discuss race, and its interplay with misogyny, in the context of examining Trump’s victory over Clinton.But it is the earlier chapters of the book which I found to be the most thought provoking. Prof. Manne rejects the idea that misogyny depends on pretending that women are somehow less human than men—rather, they are viewed as serious competitors for male coded jobs who—precisely because of their full humanity—must be slapped down. I am not sure that I agree. Using John Rawls’ framework of the “veil of ignorance,” you must consider the possibility that you would fill any of the “fully human” slots once the “veil” is removed, and are thus motivated to develop moral rules which would benefit you, regardless of your future position in society. However, you need not consider the impact of your proposed moral rules on those who are viewed as less than “fully human,” as you can be assured that you will not fill one of those slots. It is in this sense, that the ethical rules applicable to non-human animals are generally considered less compelling than those applicable to humans. Applying this formula to misogyny, if you adopt a moral rule which allows misogyny to exist, then you presumably don’t believe that you will be assigned a role as a woman—otherwise, why would you purposely inflict handicaps on yourself? In this sense, I think that racism and misogyny both depend on some level on the assumption by those in power that women (and non-white people) are not fully human.To be clear, my argument against Manne on this point in no way detracts from my admiration of Professor Manne’s book—it adds to it. I love books that engages me in this sort of thought process. It is why I chose an undergraduate major in philosophy, and it is an exercise I (and I suspect many people) engage in only rarely after we leave college. Reading Down Girl was for me an excellent way to regain that habit.

This is an exceptionally well thought out, developed and persuasively defended book on misogyny and its devastating effects on women's lives. The author is a philosopher but the book is, for the most part, written in such a way that a person with little background in philosophy can easily read and understand its basic premises and conclusions. It is dense, to be sure, and contains hundreds of footnotes (all of which should be read in their entirety), but seriously worth it.The most interesting aspect of the book, to me, was that she removes misogyny from the realm of the psychological (which conceptualizes misogyny as the hatred that individual "bad apple" man have for women) and places it firmly in the realm of the political. Her definition of misogyny as the policing arm of sexism (defined as the attitudes people hold on the differences between the genders, which they often view as innate and unchangeable) and of patriarchy is convincing, well argued, intellectually satisfying and rings true. Her analysis of misogyny as the rage and shame that men feel when their entitlement to female attention, caring and giving is perceived to have been withheld is eye opening.The most interesting aspect of the book, for me, is her analysis of how we women are largely complicit in the misogyny that prevails in our culture. We "himpathize" with the man even when he has clearly wronged a woman. We suspect the rape victim of being a slut or a liar and prefer that the golden boy in an elite college who has perpetrated this crime not to go to prison and ruin his poor young life; what happens to the girl becomes largely irrelevant. We tend to find the testimony of a man more believable than that of a woman. We excuse statements denigrating women as locker room talk or just joking. We stand by silently when we are humiliated, and we stand by when other women are humiliated. We view ambitious women as cold, shrill, demanding and bitchy when competing against a man, whereas we view ambitious men as strong and focused. This finally explained to me why some of my female friends accepted the mainstream media's views of Hilary Clinton as untrustworthy and unfit for higher office.I sympathize when, towards the end of the book, the author arrives at a point where she seems to say, oh what's the point, all this will probably never change, given the deeply ingrained complicity of women in their own subjugation and denigration. I often find myself feeling the same way but I would ask her: What's the alternative? Giving up? Yes, we are looking at a Mt. Everest of opposition but we have made much progress and will continue to make progress. An encouraging factoid of which I was unaware is that the negative emotions that women feel towards a woman running for the highest office are not directed towards a woman running, say, for the Senate. So there is hope here. Let's elect as many woman to as many public offices as we can and get rid some of the pernicious misogynist policies that cripple women's lives.On a personal note, although I am a fairly assertive and outspoken person, this book has made me even more resolved never to stand by and allow myself to be denigrated again, unless it's literally a dangerous and life threatening situation where caution is probably the better part of valor. It is the same resolve I have long ago arrived at with respect to racism when it happens in my presence. Bad things happen when good women remain silent. And I have found a line for myself that I will have handy when misogyny happens to me. " You want to bully me? I'm not going to be bullied by you. Back off." I no longer permit mansplaining ("nah, don't need you to explain, I'm good"), and, as a person who flies a lot, manspreading ("can you put your legs into your own space instead of mine") ) (man become almost literally apoplectic when you do that), or any of the insidious forms of misogyny we all put up with every day. It won't change the world but it changes my world. Up Girl!