by Kate Manne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 11, 2020
A well-meaning but myopic view of sexual double standards in the U.S. and how they hurt women.
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, Kimberlé 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.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984826-55-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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More by Kate Manne
BOOK REVIEW
by Kate Manne
by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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by Shavone Charles ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Leo Baker ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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