Update: The author contacted me and told me that the galley I read and reviewed was changed significantly before publication and that many of my criticisms were addressed before publication. I will be reading the published copy soon and may revise my review. 

Down Girl is a measured consideration of misogyny, not as the simplistic hatred of women, but the structural, systemic structures and beliefs that serve to keep women down, in their place. It is an academic book, despite its title that suggests a more popular audience. Kate Manne lays the foundation thoroughly for her assertions and makes a persuasive argument for a more comprehensive understanding of misogyny. It just so happens that is the way many people, particularly women, are using the word anyway.

This is important and necessary work because just as with racism, there is concerted effort to define misogyny in the most limited, restrictive sense so everyone, even Elliott Rodger, the mass murderer who left a video manifesto explaining why he was setting out to murder women,, is acquitted of being a misogynist. With American opinion leaders arguing Elliott Rodger is not a misogynist, it reminds me of David Duke saying he is not a racist.

In Manne’s view, misogyny is not as much about hating women as it is about keeping women in the women’s sphere, where they gaze adoringly and defer to their men. It is about making sure women pay attention to men’s needs rather than fulfill their own, about making sure women don’t challenge men, or seek positions that are thought to be men’s jobs. There are mountains of depressing studies proving, again and again, that ambitious women are seen as dishonest, fake, cold, cunning, dishonest, and every other pejorative adjective you can recall from the 2016 election. Submit the same resume with a man’s name and a woman’s name, the man will be seen as more qualified. Preface the resumes with the information they have the same qualifications, the woman will be seen as unlikable. Does that sound familiar?



I agree with Kate Manne’s argument and think this topic is vital, but I struggled far too much reading Down Girl. It’s a book of philosophy full of the taxonomy of philosophy with sentences like “The implicit modus ponens here is too seldom tollensed.” or “”Quasi-contrapositive moral psychological claim”. This stuff makes me want to cry because it means that this book will not be widely read. This matters! Misogyny kills women, so why seek the smallest possible audience?

Manne also overused footnotes. She has endnotes for her sources and uses footnotes to make arguments and forestall critiques of her argument. She needs to just incorporate that into her text and not use footnotes to avoid reworking the text to address the critiques. There are pages that have more footnotes than text. It’s disruptive. In one chapter, there’s one narrative in text and another in footnotes. Just do two chapters or fight it out in the main text of the chapter.

Here’s the thing. I am smart and well-read and I came so close to giving up on this book time and time again…and this is a topic I care about and am very interested in. I recognize the bad cold I have been struggling with probably impeded my comprehension, but I asked my best friend, a college professor who teaches neuroscience to read it and she read and few pages and just shook her head.

This is not just Kate Manne’s fault. I have read her articles in magazines and know she is capable of communicating well. In this book, sometimes her humor and wit shine through. The whole thing with the footnotes? She needed some editor to tell her to cut it out.

It’s possible her desired audience is only other academics, but why give it the title Down Girl that calls up popular culture then? Besides, we need these ideas to get out of academia and into popular culture.

I received an e-galley Down Girl of from the publisher through NetGalley.

Down Girl at Oxford University Press
Kate Manne author site

There is plenty of great information here, but it is as dry as a desert.