Down Girl
Here's a kind of hyper-idealized, miniature dialogue that plays out over and over again:
Liberal/progressive: "x is real and we can see it manifested everywhere."
Conservative: "No, x is all in your head; you project it and thus see it everywhere, but it's really nowhere except in your head."
There are many different things that could easily take the place of the variable x in this dialogue: racism, misogyny, white supremacy, exploitation by corporations, illegal voting, terrorism, entitlement, etc. Sometimes disagreements about x stem from simple factual dispute (or confusions). Other times the disagreement is conceptual rather than factual. Like some of these other concepts, misogyny is a contested concept. For example, feminists see misogyny as a ubiquitous phenomenon and its existence as morally problematic, whereas conservatives tend to deny not that its existence would be morally problematic, but that the phenomenon exists at all. Part of the problem in such discussions (if/when they even happen) is that there is often no agreement on the concept/phenomenon being discussed. And this makes discussion difficult, but also not very fruitful. Before we can determine whether x exists we need some agreement about what x is and how we could pick it out. In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne puts forward an analysis of the concept misogyny. As she sees it, her analysis will be successful if it is descriptively adequate (i.e., it answers to the way the term "misogyny" is used in a range of circumstances) and also enables us to make some progress rooting out social injustice--in this case, the subordination of women to men according to traditional gender roles (pp. 42-43).
So consider one analysis of misogyny that fails--what Manne dubs the "naive conception" of misogyny. According to this conception misogyny is simply the hatred of women. In particular, it is a psychological phenomenon that applies (or doesn't) to individuals. This sounds sensible and may seem to keep close to the etymology of the word, but this sort of definition is unhelpful because it puts the putative phenomenon epistemically out of reach. That is, whether an individual is/isn't a misogynist will come back to a question their mental states and since this is very often inaccessible to us, the very existence of misogyny as a phenomenon will be in question. (Analogy: the problem of other minds arises only for Cartesians.) Arguably, this is exactly the kind of defining move that certain conservatives would like to make since it basically plays into their hands: misogyny is rare and the few cases in which it can no longer be denied are also cases in which the individual has some serious mental health problem(s). For example, consider the Isla Vista killings in which Elliot Rodger attempted to kill a bunch of sorority girls as revenge for how they had treated him (by not giving him the time of day). On the conservative analysis, Rodger's problem was not misogyny per se; rather, it was some other kind of mental health issue--he was just fucking crazy (that's the technical term for it). Thus, on the conservative analysis, the few misogynists that there are aren't really misogynists but people with serious other issues that don't represent the general populace. Misogyny isn't a social problem so much as it is simply an issue of mental health of individuals.
And indeed an individual who hates all women as such does sound kind of crazy. What exactly would that even look like in a sane person? What reason could someone have for hating all and only women? (Maybe there are misanthropes but presumably what makes the misogynist a misogynist is that they hate women as such but not men as such, for example. Otherwise, one is simply a misanthropist.)
So how can we provide a more sensible account of misogyny than the naive conception? We should provide such an account since the term is used in a number of linguistic communities and charity demands giving such an account of this usage rather than taking the conservative's easy way out and claiming that misogyny is merely the feminist's boogeyman.
Manne's proposal is that misogyny is the policing of traditional gender roles and the norms and expectations that govern these roles: one is rewarded for conforming to those gender roles and policed when transgressing them. The point of the policing is to keep those roles/norms in place. And those norms are not symmetrical in who they benefit. Fundamentally, the norms that govern traditional gender roles view women as givers and men as takers: women are to give attention, affection, admiration, sympathy, sex, children, nurture, security, soothing, and comfort, while men are entitled to take power, prestige, public recognition, rank, reputation, honor, respect, money, status, including the status conferred by having a high-ranking woman's loyalty, love, devotion, etc. (p. 130).
What form of behavior does this "policing" take? All sorts. And Manne investigates a number of them in detail using a range of case studies. (Some of the case studies are extreme cases--such as Rush Limbaugh--but it makes sense to use such extreme cases for pedagogical purposes as sometimes the most extreme cases set out the phenomenon most clearly--a point which I think applies to a number of her choice of cases to discuss.) Many times the policing involves denigrating women who, for example, are asking for those things that are traditionally men's to take or refusing to give in accordance with traditional gendered norms. For example, women who move into a traditionally male-dominated area are often subject to harsh treatment for behaviors for which men wouldn't be. And the rationales given, when pressed, for the harsh treatment often come back to a feeling or sense that the woman is "up to something" or is in "seems suspicious" in some unspecified way. As Manne sees it, such rationalization are often post hoc and suggest that what is really going on is that people feel the violation of a norm and then search, unconsciously, post hoc, for a reason for that feeling. (Post hoc rationalizations are a kind of phenomenon that have been well-documented in the cognitive sciences.) This is why rationalizations for why a particular woman who is transgressing a traditional gendered norm are often flimsy and don't stand up under scrutiny. Perhaps, Manne wonders, this is a common reaction to the violation of norms per se and not specific to the violations of gendered norms (p. 61). It should be noted, however, that there is a broader sense of "policing" that includes not only the harsh treatment of women who violate norms, but also the rewarding of women who don't. Both of these function as policing in a broader sense, although it is the harsh treatment that is most relevant to misogyny.
This account of misogyny makes misogyny a property of social environments: misogyny only exists against a backdrop of gender roles and the norms and expectations that govern those roles. Thus an action that polices those norms so as to keep them in place counts as a misogynistic action. Notice how Manne's conception contrasts with the naive version outlined above: on Manne's account misogyny is a social property rather than an individualistic psychological property. In philosophy lingo, misogyny supervenes on social systems rather than individual brains. (More accurately, she attempts to carve a middle way between individualism, on the one hand, and a purely structural account, on the other--p. 74.) This enables her analysis to avoid the problems that attach to the naive conception--in particular, the issue that misogyny becomes epistemically inaccessible and the issue that misogyny ends up being something irrational. Contra epistemic inaccessibility, Manne's account of misogyny makes some fairly specific testable predictions that allow us to verify its existence:
Liberal/progressive: "x is real and we can see it manifested everywhere."
Conservative: "No, x is all in your head; you project it and thus see it everywhere, but it's really nowhere except in your head."
There are many different things that could easily take the place of the variable x in this dialogue: racism, misogyny, white supremacy, exploitation by corporations, illegal voting, terrorism, entitlement, etc. Sometimes disagreements about x stem from simple factual dispute (or confusions). Other times the disagreement is conceptual rather than factual. Like some of these other concepts, misogyny is a contested concept. For example, feminists see misogyny as a ubiquitous phenomenon and its existence as morally problematic, whereas conservatives tend to deny not that its existence would be morally problematic, but that the phenomenon exists at all. Part of the problem in such discussions (if/when they even happen) is that there is often no agreement on the concept/phenomenon being discussed. And this makes discussion difficult, but also not very fruitful. Before we can determine whether x exists we need some agreement about what x is and how we could pick it out. In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne puts forward an analysis of the concept misogyny. As she sees it, her analysis will be successful if it is descriptively adequate (i.e., it answers to the way the term "misogyny" is used in a range of circumstances) and also enables us to make some progress rooting out social injustice--in this case, the subordination of women to men according to traditional gender roles (pp. 42-43).
So consider one analysis of misogyny that fails--what Manne dubs the "naive conception" of misogyny. According to this conception misogyny is simply the hatred of women. In particular, it is a psychological phenomenon that applies (or doesn't) to individuals. This sounds sensible and may seem to keep close to the etymology of the word, but this sort of definition is unhelpful because it puts the putative phenomenon epistemically out of reach. That is, whether an individual is/isn't a misogynist will come back to a question their mental states and since this is very often inaccessible to us, the very existence of misogyny as a phenomenon will be in question. (Analogy: the problem of other minds arises only for Cartesians.) Arguably, this is exactly the kind of defining move that certain conservatives would like to make since it basically plays into their hands: misogyny is rare and the few cases in which it can no longer be denied are also cases in which the individual has some serious mental health problem(s). For example, consider the Isla Vista killings in which Elliot Rodger attempted to kill a bunch of sorority girls as revenge for how they had treated him (by not giving him the time of day). On the conservative analysis, Rodger's problem was not misogyny per se; rather, it was some other kind of mental health issue--he was just fucking crazy (that's the technical term for it). Thus, on the conservative analysis, the few misogynists that there are aren't really misogynists but people with serious other issues that don't represent the general populace. Misogyny isn't a social problem so much as it is simply an issue of mental health of individuals.
And indeed an individual who hates all women as such does sound kind of crazy. What exactly would that even look like in a sane person? What reason could someone have for hating all and only women? (Maybe there are misanthropes but presumably what makes the misogynist a misogynist is that they hate women as such but not men as such, for example. Otherwise, one is simply a misanthropist.)
So how can we provide a more sensible account of misogyny than the naive conception? We should provide such an account since the term is used in a number of linguistic communities and charity demands giving such an account of this usage rather than taking the conservative's easy way out and claiming that misogyny is merely the feminist's boogeyman.
Manne's proposal is that misogyny is the policing of traditional gender roles and the norms and expectations that govern these roles: one is rewarded for conforming to those gender roles and policed when transgressing them. The point of the policing is to keep those roles/norms in place. And those norms are not symmetrical in who they benefit. Fundamentally, the norms that govern traditional gender roles view women as givers and men as takers: women are to give attention, affection, admiration, sympathy, sex, children, nurture, security, soothing, and comfort, while men are entitled to take power, prestige, public recognition, rank, reputation, honor, respect, money, status, including the status conferred by having a high-ranking woman's loyalty, love, devotion, etc. (p. 130).
What form of behavior does this "policing" take? All sorts. And Manne investigates a number of them in detail using a range of case studies. (Some of the case studies are extreme cases--such as Rush Limbaugh--but it makes sense to use such extreme cases for pedagogical purposes as sometimes the most extreme cases set out the phenomenon most clearly--a point which I think applies to a number of her choice of cases to discuss.) Many times the policing involves denigrating women who, for example, are asking for those things that are traditionally men's to take or refusing to give in accordance with traditional gendered norms. For example, women who move into a traditionally male-dominated area are often subject to harsh treatment for behaviors for which men wouldn't be. And the rationales given, when pressed, for the harsh treatment often come back to a feeling or sense that the woman is "up to something" or is in "seems suspicious" in some unspecified way. As Manne sees it, such rationalization are often post hoc and suggest that what is really going on is that people feel the violation of a norm and then search, unconsciously, post hoc, for a reason for that feeling. (Post hoc rationalizations are a kind of phenomenon that have been well-documented in the cognitive sciences.) This is why rationalizations for why a particular woman who is transgressing a traditional gendered norm are often flimsy and don't stand up under scrutiny. Perhaps, Manne wonders, this is a common reaction to the violation of norms per se and not specific to the violations of gendered norms (p. 61). It should be noted, however, that there is a broader sense of "policing" that includes not only the harsh treatment of women who violate norms, but also the rewarding of women who don't. Both of these function as policing in a broader sense, although it is the harsh treatment that is most relevant to misogyny.
This account of misogyny makes misogyny a property of social environments: misogyny only exists against a backdrop of gender roles and the norms and expectations that govern those roles. Thus an action that polices those norms so as to keep them in place counts as a misogynistic action. Notice how Manne's conception contrasts with the naive version outlined above: on Manne's account misogyny is a social property rather than an individualistic psychological property. In philosophy lingo, misogyny supervenes on social systems rather than individual brains. (More accurately, she attempts to carve a middle way between individualism, on the one hand, and a purely structural account, on the other--p. 74.) This enables her analysis to avoid the problems that attach to the naive conception--in particular, the issue that misogyny becomes epistemically inaccessible and the issue that misogyny ends up being something irrational. Contra epistemic inaccessibility, Manne's account of misogyny makes some fairly specific testable predictions that allow us to verify its existence:
- we should expect that insofar as women tend to conform to traditional gender roles, they will be seen as "good" women and not subject to harsh treatment (Manne considers high-powered conservative women as a good test case here that supports her theory--p. 115)
- we should expect that insofar as women do not tend to conform to traditional gender roles, they will be seen as "bad" women and subject to harsh treatment
In addition, Manne's account, unlike the naive conception, explains how it could be that the misogynist can love (some) women even while hating (certain other) women. Misogyny isn't only for the irrational and insane, as the naive conception makes it out to be. Misogyny is perfectly rational--logical--from a patriarchal perspective:
Whatever the case, it would make little sense in view of the aims of patriarchal ideology to try to rid the world of women--or even, in any straightforward sense, to relegate them to the ghetto. Women are thoroughly integrated into prototypical patriarchal households, where they are tasked with a wide range of critical domestic, social, emotional, as well as (hetero)sexual, services. Such women are too useful to the dominant for all women to be dispensable--or even for spatial segregation to be capable of serving dominant needs and interests (p. 53).
As I've mentioned above, misogyny doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. So when it does raise its ugly head, it will do so to different degrees based on the different kinds of cases. Individuals will be subject to misogyny to varying degrees, depending on their social position; and individuals will exhibit misogyny to varying degrees, depending on the extent to which they enforce traditional gender roles (unwittingly or not).
Manne does many other interesting things in the book, but I take the above to be the most central. Here is a smattering of other interesting points she makes:
- Misogyny does not dehumanize women. Rather, it recognizes their humanity. Dehumanizing others isn't required in order to treat human beings very badly. Rather, sometimes it is the very humanity of others that is a threat to us. Thus, just because we recognize women's humanity doesn't mean we treat them well. If a woman really were a mindless creature incapable of agency, there's be no need to police patriarchal norms. Because she isn't, there is a need. (Chapter 5, esp. pp. 147-148)
- Miranda Fricker's concept of "testimonial injustice" is used to help explain why patriarchy and patriarchal norms are so hard to challenge (p. 218). W/r/t misogyny epistemic injustice can help to explain why misogyny is a self-masking phenomenon.
- Patriarchy hates victimhood because it takes away from patriarchy's claims to be ministered to by women. If there are these other "victims" that have a legitimate claim to be ministered to, then there's fewer women to minister to our [patriarchy's] needs (pp. 234-235).
- student evaluations show different patterns of criticism: males are criticized for being boring while females are criticized for not being caring enough (p. 268). Manne points out how although boringness can "scale" (fixing it for one fixes it for all), caring can't (since ministering to individuals' needs takes time).
- We too easily exonerate men while blaming women (esp. those who violate traditional gendered social norms) or ignoring women's suffering. One especially brilliant point on this topic (ch. 6) is that we sometimes have this picture of the rapist as this evil person and since little Brock isn't an evil person, it can't be that he is a rapist. "The idea of rapists as monsters exonerates by caricature" (p. 199). There's a kind of converse point here, too: we sometimes view victims as having to be blameless, so if someone isn't totally blameless, then they can't be a victim (p. 225). In both cases, the reality is much messier than we would like to believe.
And there's lots of other really interesting stuff, too. But I'm sure to have forgotten some of it. Not surprising since the book was packed with many interesting arguments, analysis, and data.
Comments
Post a Comment