Kate Manne’s Gone Girl has a lot to recommend it. Among its merits is a direct and accessible style and Manne’s original and insightful takes on a number of topics, including some we might have thought were pretty shopworn by now. Manne is also an insightful reader of fiction and a writer who moves between literature, philosophy, and politics with agility. Overall though, the book is an uneven work in my view, and frequently frustrating. 

First the good. Down Girl is centered around an “ameliorative analysis” of “misogyny”, which extends its accepted meaning to include what seems missing. Manne claims misogynistic behavior is too often understood as an expression of hatred of women, which makes it both less prevalent and harder to identify than it should be. Better, Manne argues, if “misogyny” can include acts of men (and women) who don’t hate women, and who may more often than not treat them well, but who under certain circumstances treat women badly. So it is that she arrives as her by now well publicized view that misogyny enforces gender roles by punishing and discouraging violations of still prevalent behavioral expectations for women, particularly as these serve to preserve status and privilege for men.

Manne spends two chapters explaining and defending this analysis and I think she mostly succeeds. Along the way she makes some telling distinctions between sexism and misogyny, provides examples of the sense of entitlement men feel for the care and attention of women, and the grisly kinds of backlash (perceived) violations of those expectations can evoke.

The rest of the book is largely devoted to putting this new understanding of misogyny to work. Sometimes the results are very good. Chapter 5—“Humanizing Hatred”—challenges the nearly unquestioned assumption that misogyny de-humanizes or ‘objectifies’ women. Manne’s criticisms of this view are original and powerful—she argues that misogyny is often triggered instead when women are viewed as a threat or rival, something that assumes their full agency and humanity. Manne’s position is well argued and worthy of serious consideration by those, like me, who have tended to hold maybe a little lazily to the more familiar position. 

The less successful parts of the book include a chapter with an extensive discussion of  “himpathy”, a neologism Manne adopts to name greater sympathy for male perpetrators of assaults on women than for their victims. Here Manne’s tendency to be rather loose about defending critical empirical claims is starkly visible. Manne relies on two ‘case studies’ to make her case that himpathy is a pervasive from of misogyny, but they seem particularly ill-chosen for the purpose. One is the widely publicized case of Brock Turner, and the other is the less widely known but even grimmer case of Daniel Holtzclaw. The former gained notoriety when given a shockingly light sentence after being convicted of raping an unconscious woman. The latter was a former college football player turned cop who was convicted of a number of rapes. The problem with both cases as examples of himpathy is that things did not go well for either man when their crimes were uncovered, and it is far from clear that they enjoyed a great deal of sympathy relative to their victims. It is true that Turner enjoyed a shorter prison term that he deserved, but that’s about all himpathy seem to buy him. His college and athletic careers were ended, he will be listed as a convicted sexual offenders for the rest of his days, and his name as far as I can tell invokes disgust at its mere mention far more readily than sympathy. For his part, the himpathizing judge was promptly voted out of office by a wide margin of voters, male and female. Holtzclaw fared worse. While he claims to have seen jurors shedding tears over his conviction, he was still on his way to a 236 year prison term. 

Turner did garner some sympathy from his judge, family members, and friends and this was arguably at the expense of his victim—so it seems plain that the phenomenon Manne is describing is real. But Manne wants to establish that himpathy is quite pervasive and systematic. She repeatedly says things like “our loyalties often lie” with rapists, and at one point she characterizes “our” (American? Australian? Western?) culture as “himpathetic.” But Manne makes no attempt to establish just how common sympathy for rapists actually is compared to sympathy for their victims, how common it might be among those with no reason to be partial to the rapist, or what accounts for the lack of sympathy for rapists in other cases. As clever as the term is, little is done here to establish that this is a particular pervasive or effective way in which gender norms are enforced. 

The next chapter targets a much discussed article by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning which contrasts ‘dignity’, ‘honors’, and ‘victim’ cultures. In the latter adopting the mantle of a victim can be a way asserting a kind of righteousness, and the author’s suggest this attitude is in ascendence. Manne looks to vindicate women who present themselves as victims of harassment or worse, but her defense is oddly elusive. She seems content to establish that accepting victimhood might have a rational basis and serve legitimate ends, which is hard to argue, but how this addresses Campbell and Manning is unclear. On a positive note, the chapter does give Manne a chance to discuss an interesting novel—which she does well. 

The final chapter turns to politics and considers Donald Trump’s election as president. Trump is grotesque and an easy target—criticizing him would be boring were it not for the (horrifying) fact that he is president. Manne ably makes the case that misogynistic attitudes contributed to Trump’s victory and details the many ways in which Hillary Clinton was treated by badly the media and by many politicians, and the vile ways in which she was often treated by Trump. Little of what Manne offers here is horribly original though, and Manne’s suggestion that Clinton (like Julia Gillard in Australia some years earlier) was treated shabbily on account of her violation of gender norms depends on a selective reading the historical record. Every prominent politician is treated badly for all manner of reasons—it would take a lot more to show Clinton was treated particularly badly for a specially bad kind of reason. A lot went into the disaster that was 2016 and I find accounts like Manne’s reductionistic and one dimensional. 

The politics of the final chapter (and the rather gloomy Conclusion) are a constant presence in this book, and something I found to be a distraction. Manne talks in familiar ways of a ‘patriarchy’ that exercises pervasive and extensive agency. Accounting for undeniable progress in women’s right shows the power of this patriarchy to be curiously patchy and unpredictable. Still things like “the logic of patriarchy, hence misogyny, very much includes a commitment to gender binarism…as well as an anti-trans metaphysics of gender, a heteronormative view of human sexuality…as well as ideals of love which make monogamy compulsory” (26) are common. I find this kind of language close to meaningless, and would argue such claims and analyses contribute nothing to the book—where Manne is good she has no need of it. Those partial to this style of feminism will welcome the many signals that Manne is thoroughly on their side (Manne’s political positions never, ever surprise) but I think it often leads Manne the philosopher astray. Though rightfully hesitant to get into the business of ascribing motive and belief in the earlier parts of the book, Manne shows no such care when it comes to conservatives, those who oppose abortion, and Trump voters, all of whom are confidently ascribed uniform and base motives. All this risks limiting her audience to an already converted choir while driving away readers who might stand to learn from her.