Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

In her fascinating and provocative book, Kate Manne argues that we should abandon the naïve understanding of misogyny as a simple psychological phenomenon—i.e., hatred towards women qua women, in favour of seeing it as a complex social and political phenomenon. Manne sees her project as one in conceptual engineering: The ambition is to build a novel concept of misogyny that is better equipped to serve our feminist goals. On the ensuing account, misogyny is a system that serves to enforce and police gendered norms and expectations to which groups of girls and women are subject under historically patriarchal orders. Misogyny is not understood in terms of the hostility that men feel towards women, but rather in terms of the hostility that women face in a patriarchal social order whenever they attempt to break with their historically oppressed role. According to Manne, while sexism is the source of the oppressive gendered social norms and roles, misogyny constitutes the policing mechanism for reinforcing said norms and roles.