Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

misogyny upholds the social norms of patriarchies by policing and patrolling them; whereas sexism serves to justify these norms—largely via an ideology of supposedly “natural” differences between men and women with respect to their talents, interests, proclivities, and appetites.

Such objectifying forms of treatment can seemingly serve not only as punishment but also ways of defusing the psychic threat that certain women pose.

For, while a man’s not being boring will scale with relative ease to a larger audience, a woman’s developing a relationship with each student obviously won’t. And, beyond a certain point, it will simply not be feasible.

misogyny primarily targets women because they are women in a man’s world (i.e., a historically patriarchal one, among other things), rather than because they are women in a man’s mind, where that man is a misogynist.

Eviction is a ubiquitous problem for black women, one that sociologist Matthew Desmond takes to be the undernoticed analogue of mass incarceration for black men, which constitutes a deep source of systemic injustice and disadvantage.

Even if women like Clinton aren’t subject to false beliefs or defunct gendered stereotypes per se, they may be viewed and treated in a hostile way precisely because of their manifest competence.

When one’s effigy is one’s body, one burns right along with it.

when it comes to misogyny, we can focus on the hostility women face in navigating the social world, rather than the hostility men (in the first instance) may or may not feel in their encounters with certain women—as a matter of deep psychological explanation, or indeed whatsoever.

sexism should be understood primarily as the “justificatory” branch of a patriarchal order, which consists in ideology that has the overall function of rationalizing and justifying patriarchal social relations.