Kate Manne’s first book, 2017’s Down Girl, eloquently re-defined misogyny as a shock collar designed to keep women in their place—but it was only meant for academia. She thought perhaps 100 academics, at best, would read it. Instead the feminist philosopher found mainstream success for coining the term “Himpathy” and providing the world with a new framework to understand misogyny and sexism, exploring a society in which women must only vy for “feminine-coded goods” or be punished otherwise. Her new book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, out August 11th, is the natural progression of those claims—and, in the week in which Kamala Harris became the first woman of color to ever be nominated for vice-president, could not come at a better time.
Vanity Fair: What’s Entitled about?
Kate Manne: The wrongheaded sense of entitlement on the part of men (particularly privileged men) to sex, most obviously, but still more insidiously, to things like love, affection, admiration, consent, power, and claims to knowledge. It’s also about women’s pseudo-obligation to provide men with these goods, and our being deprived of things we are genuinely entitled to, like support, equality, and medical care.
What do you mean by Entitled, especially when it comes to men and misogyny?
I think there are various near-synonyms we use to get at the concept of entitlement, like what someone is owed or has a right to. The connection with misogyny is that when women deny men what they are wrongly deemed entitled to, she will often face misogynistic threats and punishment.
In your chapter on the entitlement to power, you quote research that investigated why women in power are so off putting even next to an equally or lesser accomplished man. “Even when unequivocal evidence exists that a woman is successful in male gender–typed work, she faces career-hindering problems in work settings—problems of being disliked and interpersonally derogated. Such problems stem from a perception that a woman who succeeds in such a position must be lacking in “communality.” So, what does being perceived as “communal” entail?
I think for women that’s the condition under which highly competent women’s power can become palatable. If she’s perceived as highly oriented to caring, giving, serving others, and as attentive to every other individual in her jurisdiction. So obviously that has implications for politicians in as much as their power as women can be tolerated if they’re both perceived as highly competent and extraordinarily caring.
Do you think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the one example that’s been able to do this? To fit into this tiny model?
Yeah, I think she’s a really interesting figure because she’s highly polarizing along these lines. I think she’s perceived as highly communal on the left, and the left loves her for it, and I think she’s perceived as anything but communal on the right by people who perceive her as trying to take away their freedoms or privileges. So, it both explains why she’s loved in some circles, and really despised in others.
Is what the left values as communal different from what the right values as communal?
Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean if someone is on the right then they’re upholding “family values”
They’ll be pro-life…
Exactly, so all of that can seem like communal-spiritedness, and on the left that usually won’t pass muster. So in effect, right-wing women are often perceived as communal just because they are bastions of patriarchy, and I think this helps explain why right-wing women are quite well tolerated and their power is often quite palatable in rightwing circles.