This book is about male entitlement that stems from the fact that women are expected to give traditionally feminine goods (such as sex, care, nurturing, and reproductive labor) to designated, often more privileged men, and to refrain from taking traditionally masculine goods (such as power, authority, and claims to knowledge) away from them. These goods can in turn be understood as those to which privileged men are tacitly deemed entitled, and which these men will often garner himpathy for wrongfully taking from women. She introduces and defines the concept of himpathy as the way powerful and privileged boys and men who commit acts of sexual violence or engage in other misogynistic behavior often receive sympathy and concern over their female victims.

Entitled tackles a wide range of ways in which misogyny, himpathy, and male entitlement work in tandem with other oppressive systems to produce unjust, perverse, and sometimes bizarre outcomes, so that within this system, women are often unfairly deprived of their genuine entitlement to both feminine-coded and masculine-coded goods. While Kate Manne acknowledges the idea that sexism gives rise to and works hand in hand with misogyny, her focus in this book is more on misogyny than sexism, which she takes to be the theoretical and ideological branch of patriarchy, such as the beliefs, ideas, and assumptions that serve to rationalize and naturalize patriarchal norms and expectations.

Entitled is comprised of ten chapters each is designed to show that an illegitimate sense of male entitlement gives rise to a wide range of misogynistic behavior. When a woman fails to give a man what he is supposedly owed, she will often face punishment and reprisal—whether from him, his himpathetic supporters, or the misogynistic social structures in which she is embedded. The first chapter titled Indelible—On the Entitlement of Privileged Men, serves as an introductory chapter, where she examines the the Kavanaugh case as a highlighting example of the phenomenon of himpathy and argues about the nature and function of misogyny, which, she describes as “the law enforcement branch of patriarchy” (p. 7). 

The second chapter, titled Involuntary—On the Entitlement to Admiration, is designed around the stories of women, who suffered the violence wrought by male entitlement. She uses the concept of incel to crystallize some men’s toxic sense of entitlement to have people look up to them steadfastly, with an admiring, loving gaze and to target and even destroy those who fail, or refuse, to do so. She argues that these men’s sense of entitlement to such affection and admiration leads them to commit acts of domestic, dating, and intimate partner violence. She concludes that incels are oblivious to the inner lives of women—that they regard women as mindless, thing-like, subhuman, or as nonhuman animals, they resort to violence when she either leaves, or threatens to leave, a relationship—thus provoking jealousy, rage, and feelings of abandonment in her male partner or ex-partner.

In Chapter Three, titled Unexceptional—On the Entitlement to Sex, through the stories of women, who are the victims of date rape, Manne argues that himpathy goes hand in hand with blaming or erasing the victims and targets of misogyny and that for many girls and women, particularly those who

are oppressed along other axes, such as race, class, sexuality, and disability, not only does their rapist or abuser often go unpunished; the women themselves may be punished for protesting this injustice.

The next chapter titled Unwanted—On the Entitlement to Consent tackles the question, why a woman would act against her own will in pleasing a man’s sexual desire only to avoid seemingly trifling social consequence. Through the stories and testimonies of women, she shows just how difficult it can be for a woman to resist a sense of male sexual entitlement that she has internalized, on his behalf. She offers an account of conformation to explain why women regard men’s potentially hurt feelings, especially when they are sexual feelings and why we regard women as so responsible for protecting and ministering to them. 

In the fifth chapter, rightly titled as Incompetent—On the Entitlement to Medical Care, she adresses the disturbing fact that women in general, and Black women in particular, routinely encounter medical professionals who regard them as hysterical, and subsequently treat their pain with skepticism, prescribing them less pain medication with opioids, and more antidepressants and giving them more mental health referrals. Through the experiences of mostly black women, she concludes that the health of women—especially nonwhite and poor women—matters very little. 

In Chapter Six, titled Unruly—On the Entitlement to Bodily Control, she discusses the issue of abortion through the Alabama State’s attempted abortion ban at 2019. She argues that the state’s policing of pregnant bodies as a form of misogynistic social control, one whose effects will be most deeply felt by the most vulnerable girls and women is simply indefensible.

Chapter Seven Insupportable—On the Entitlement to Domestic Labor is designed around the question “why don’t men do more?” She argues through some real life experiences of married couples, that many a woman unwittingly echoes and validates her male partner’s illegitimate sense of entitlement to her labor, and to his leisure time. Her point is that a woman is entitled to more than just “help” or “support” from a male partner. Moreover, she is entitled to as much rest and leisure time as he is for her own sake, not just for the sake of becoming a better caregiver.

Following chapter titled Unassuming—On the Entitlement to Knowledge investigates domestic violence from a different angle, what she calls mansplaining as an entitlement of the epistemic variety, which relates to knowledge, beliefs, and the possession of information, even when men are less knowledgeable than women are. She claims that mansplaining typically stems from an unwarranted sense of entitlement on the part of the mansplainer to occupy the conversational position of the knower by default as being the one who dispenses information, offers corrections, and authoritatively issues explanations.

Next chapter, Unelectable—On the Entitlement to Power considers the common fact that regardless of their own gender, people tend to assume that men in historically male-dominated positions of power are more competent than women, unless this assumption is explicitly contradicted by further information. She investigates, through a series of real life experiences of women, the basis of the bias against women who occupy historically male-dominated power positions and how and why women’s power can sometimes be well tolerated.

The closing chapter Undespairing—On the Entitlement of Girls is a combination of both a personal epilog, as she was expecting to give birth to a baby girl at the time the book was written, and also a hopeful and undespairing outlook on the entitlement of girls in a seemingly hostile world, where , girls and women are all too frequently punished for not giving a man what he is tacitly deemed entitled to. 

Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women seems to be a companion to Kate Manne’s previous remarkable book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, where she gives an abstract and theoretical account of misogyny. Entitled reveals boldly how an illegitimate sense of male entitlement gives rise to a wide range of misogynistic behavior through the investigation of real life experiences and court cases of women. She then continues in witty and genuine prose to offer a vision of a world in which women are just as entitled as men to our collective care and concern, as she portrays the future of her own daughter. This book is a very likely candidate to be a bedside book of every woman, as much as, I believe it will be useful for any class in social studies, moral philosophy, feminist philosophy and psychology of women. 

 

Prof. Dr. Kamuran Elbeyoğlu, Girne American University, Psychology Department, Turkey

Categories: Ethics

Keywords: feminism