June 1, 2020
A Cornell University feminist philosopher takes aim at male privilege in the age of #MeToo. Building on the ideas from her previous book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Manne expands her critique of "himpathy," her word for the sympathy given to "powerful and privileged boys and men who commit acts of sexual violence or engage in other misogynistic behavior." She's likely to make few converts, though, with a book that preaches too heavily to the progressive choir. Manne draws on decades of studies showing that Americans judge women more harshly than similarly or less competent men, which may interest Gen-Z readers more than their elders, most of whom will be familiar with much of the research. A larger problem is the air of special pleading. Manne argues that many men have "an unwarranted sense of entitlement"--exemplified by mansplaining, male hostility in online "incel" ("involuntary celibate") forums, and Brett Kavanaugh's "aggrieved, belligerent, and, at times, borderline unhinged conduct" at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings--while women are often deprived of "their genuine entitlement" to things such as political clout and adequate pain relief from doctors. Without convincingly reconciling those two positions, the author's polemical case also takes a shortsighted view of sexual double standards, genuflecting before recent feminist scholarship (from Patricia Hill Collins, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kimberl� Crenshaw, and others) and academic orthodoxies while ignoring landmarks like Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex. It's striking that this book--appearing just before the Aug. 26 centennial of women's suffrage--says so little about the contributions of earlier generations of feminists or philosophers. Hopefully in her next book Manne will extend her range and build on the potential she showed in Down Girl. A well-meaning but myopic view of sexual double standards in the U.S. and how they hurt women.
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Starred review from June 15, 2020
Cornell University philosopher Manne (Down Girl) delivers a hard-hitting and outrage-inspiring interrogation of the links between male entitlement, both individual and systemic, and misogyny. Addressing entitled male sexual behavior, Manne scrutinizes “himpathy,” “herasure,” and victim blaming in the public response to sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh and Stanford University student Brock Turner, and analyzes issues of consent and “social programming” in the viral New Yorker short story “Cat Person” and a woman’s account of her distressing sexual encounter with comedian Aziz Ansari. Manne also documents discrepancies in the medical care received by men and women, and claims that the assumption of the male body as a default leads health-care professionals to doubt women’s accounts of their own pain. In the political realm, Manne cites studies showing that women seeking power must be “exceptionally communal” to a degree not required of their male peers to explain the rise and fall of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign. Manne concludes with an avowal that girls and women are justifiably entitled to be valued, cared for, and believed, and gives readers a powerful framework for understanding and confronting challenges in their own lives. This incisive feminist treatise is a must-read. Agent: Lucy Cleland, Kneerim & Williams.
August 1, 2020
Having astutely explored the nuances of hostile treatment faced by women in her previous work Down Girl, Manne (philosophy, Cornell Univ.) now takes another angle on the social inequalities of gender by examining nine kinds of male entitlement and their effects. Most of the topics discussed throughout--the expectation that women should freely give housework, childcare, and sex and refrain from claiming positions of power and intellectual space--will certainly be known to readers familiar with the overall issue; indeed, several incidents in this book, such as the 2014 Isla Vista killings and the furor of the 2016 election, are ones that Manne has discussed more abstractly in her previous work. She also describes the influence of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, and continues the conversation on "himpathy," or sympathy towards male perpetrators of sexual violence, that began in Down Girl. Manne's philosophical approach provides valuable fresh insights, with the chapter on the disparity in health care being of note. VERDICT An effective text on how women are affected by the assumed privileges of men, and the structural forces that enforce and uphold those privileges.--Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA
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