Down Girl by Kate Manne

Down Girl is a deeply impressive book. At first, reading her discussion of misogynist actions vs misogynists, I was thinking: “yes, makes complete sense, but reminds me of Jay Smooth’s How To Tell Someone They Sound Racist video” (which didn’t appear to be referenced). However, she proceeded to expand on it in ways that I found profound.

Instead of viewing misogyny as being connected to individuals and their attitudes towards women, she reframes misogyny as a mechanism the patriarchy uses to enforce sanctions on those who misbehave by not fulfilling their roles. The roles involved not only include things to be avoided, e.g., societal deference to male authority (entailing not just deference to patriarchal authority, but also not shoving men out of their natural (current) spot in the pecking order and taking their place in line), but also requirements for action such as providing succor to the injured and needy males in her circle. The latter is significant in that it tracks a motivation for incels anger at women for the affront of ignoring them and not sleeping with them.

Manne develops this tack not only by examining the justifications promulgated by perpetrators of extreme violence, but also looking at the sympathy which these perpetrators engender in many commenters. But, why, why! would being ignored by those women possibly be a sympathetic justification for violence? It only makes sense if you think that women have an inherent obligation to care for the men in their circle.

To inform this discussion of the source of their anger she develops the salient analogy of being a restaurant customer with an inattentive server

It may be helpful to consider a schematic illustration. Imagine a person in a restaurant who expects not only to be treated deferentially—the customer always being right—but also to be served the food he ordered attentively, and with a smile. He expects to be made to feel cared for and special, as well as to have his meal brought to him (a somewhat vulnerable position, as well as a powerful one, for him to be in). Imagine now that this customer comes to be disappointed—his server is not serving him, though she is waiting on other tables. …It is easy to imagine this person becoming confused, then resentful. It is easy to imagine him banging his spoon on the table. It is easy to imagine him exploding in frustration.

So the guy is there, he’s hurt and feeling neglected while this woman who could and should help him is ignoring him — “who does she think she is, ignoring her duties like that?” Looked at from this (skewed) perspective, one could see the seed of an empathetic response, similar to one we might have if the customer upended his table and stormed out of the restaurant: “sure, that was excessive, but I can understand where he’s coming from”

Manne uses the term himpathy to characterize this sympathy for the “injured male”. Himpathy arises when you identify with the viewpoint of the patriarchal male in the story, even when the merits of the case are minimal. In Manne’s view this reflects the situation in which a person has so identified with the patriarchal perspective that they reflexively take the male perspective; however questionable the merits of the case may be. 

Misogyny then serves to enforce the patriarchy and is “equal opportunity”, in that it can be characteristic of the actions of both men and women. Manne identifies a couple of subtle implications here: there’s no reason to expect that someone would exhibit misogyny towards all women. Like other enforcement mechanisms, it’s only if someone bucks the hierarchy in some way that they become subject to censure. Similarly, it isn’t necessary that taking misogynist positions requires one to think that women aren’t people, on the contrary, their role as sympathizers and caregivers is one that is much more valuable when being provided by people rather than bots or pets. In a similar vein, even though she doesn’t explore it, I’d say that the characterization of men that support aggrieved women as “unmanly” or “betas” becomes much more understandable when the stakes involve patriarchy maintenance rather than particular males vs particular females. 

If misogyny is the mechanism to enforce appropriate behavior then sexism (females are intrinsically different) is the theory that justifies it. In short “women are inherently more caring and empathic than men and less able to lead and think abstractly. The natural conclusion is men should be in charge and that anything else is a misuse of natural talents (and/or god’s intention for deists).

So, all this is well and good (or perhaps “sad and bad”), but for it to operate as described it needs to be internalized and unconsciously embedded in most of the individual members of society. 

It’s not hard to make the case. We’re all familiar with the studies of different acceptance rates for papers with male vs. female authors – in which males have higher rates of acceptance even though the papers were exactly the same (the studies merely swapped names when submitting to different journals). Manne highlights similar studies performed by Madeline Heilman and collaborators who found that males were generally perceived as being more likable/competent under similar situations — it should be noted that Manne’s impetus for this work was the similarity of the negative words used to describe in Julia Gillard in Australia and Hillary Clinton in the US.

Manne ends on the note of “I give up” which I think is fine. This is a work of moral philosophy, not a call to political action. In the end, her fundamental rethinking of misogyny, the clarity of her thought, and the quality of her writing, make it a required read. Oddly, I didn’t find the “I give up” part particularly depressing. It felt more of an acknowledgement that tackling this is extremely difficult and one needs to pause and rest before even beginning to think about what to do next.

See also her interview in Guernica