A review by goosemixtapes
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

EXTREMELY good book. manne's basic thesis is that misogyny isn't a personal hatred of women that some men harbor because of psychological issues, but an intricate and structural system forcing women into the role of Giving (attention, affection, power, etc; sometimes, in the worst circumstances, their lives). it's not that men don't see women as human--it's that they see them as "human givers," and women who refuse to play this role are punished. i knew a lot of this already, but manne is an excellent writer who lays out her argument with careful and incisive craft and very readable prose. her writing can be a little dense at times (especially when manne, a philosophy professor, dips into academic philosophy), and sometimes it gets repetitive (as many of these chapters are adapted from disparate essays and thus cover some overlapping ground), but i was honestly never bored; this book spent 300 pages rearranging my brain and fine-tuning my understanding of misogyny and structural oppression in general.

probably the most salient lacking point is (and manne admits to this up-front) that a lot of the specific examples focus on white cishet women, because that allows for the examination of misogyny without other compounding oppressions. honestly, this didn't totally bother me, because one book can only do so much, but i would love to see manne's theories critiqued or built on by women of color and trans women. that said, for what it aims at, this book is brilliant, and i highly recommend it even to people who already know that misogyny is real and bad; the clarity and depth of its argument makes it well worth the time.