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Perpetuating the patriarchy: misogyny and (post-)feminist backlash

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Abstract

How are patriarchal regimes perpetuated and reproduced? Kate Manne’s recent work on misogyny aims to provide an answer to this central question. According to her, misogyny is a property of social environments where women perceived as violating patriarchal norms are ‘kept down’ through hostile reactions coming from men, other women and social structures. In this paper, I argue that Manne’s approach is problematically incomplete. I do so by examining a recent puzzling social phenomenon which I call (post-)feminist backlash: the rise of women-led movements reinstating patriarchal practices in the name of feminism. I focus on the example of ‘raunch feminist’ CAKE parties and argue that their pro-patriarchal dimension cannot be adequately explained by misogyny. I propose instead a different story that emphasizes the continued centrality of gender distinctions in our social normative life, even as gendered social meanings become increasingly contested. This triggers meaning vertigo, a distinct form of social anxiety and the reactionary impulse at the heart of (post)-feminist backlash. Meaning vertigo both complicates the answer to Manne’s main question—“why is misogyny still a thing?”—and suggests the need and opportunity for a different kind of feminist political intervention.

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Notes

  1. For a conceptual analysis of ‘backlash’ see Cudd (2002).

  2. Feminists have largely but never unanimously condemned these practices. For defenses of pornography see Cornell (2000), Kipnis (1998), Paglia (1992), Royalle (2000) and Willis (2014). For a recent feminist defense of pole-dancing see Holland (2010).

  3. The use of the parenthesis in (post-)feminist backlash distinguishes it from post-feminist backlash: backlash by those who do not identify as feminists and see feminism as redundant given the alleged reality of gender equality. Post-feminists see patriarchal behavior, like stripping, as an individual apolitical choice. For an example see Taylor (2006).

  4. The term is modeled on Manne’s use of ‘social vertigo’ in her book proposal and drafts, available online before the publication of Down Girl.

  5. For an account of ameliorative conceptual analyses see Haslanger (2012, p. 376).

  6. It also makes misogyny epistemically inaccessible, hard to diagnose and prosecute (Manne 2017, pp. 44–45).

  7. According to Manne, a patriarchal social environment is one where widely-supported, extensive institutions and social structures are such that “most men will be dominant over some woman or women” in virtue of their gender (Manne 2016).

  8. Manne argues that we should reserve public use of the term “misogynist” for “overachievers” in this category (Manne 2017, p. 66).

  9. Manne’s denial of a “universal experience of misogyny” means that “misogynistic forces can be distinctive for girls and women located in different positions in social space” (pp. 19, 64). This is a distinctively intersectional feature of her account.

  10. Manne calls these mechanisms ‘sexism’: “the “justificatory” branch of a patriarchal order, which consists in ideology that has the overall function of rationalizing and justifying patriarchal social relations” (p. 79).

  11. The women they lash out against do not have to be their new colleagues (pp. 20, 63, 68).

  12. Manne prefers not to describe the valorization of women who comply with patriarchal expectations as ‘misogyny’ “lest the label loose its affective connotations”. She considers “soft misogyny” as a better alternative (p. 192 fn 7).

  13. For another example of this approach see Joseph Heath on “The Myth of the Beauty Myth” (2000, pp. 368–370). For an articulation and critique see Allen (2008).

  14. The perceived violation may be in the past or merely foreseen. Misogyny may be pre-emptive (Manne 2017, pp. 19, 63).

  15. Women ‘calling out’ misogyny will be seen as withholding feminine attention, admiration and respect, stealing the ‘moral spotlight’ and refusing to be “moral listeners”. These are all violations of patriarchal norms (pp. 289–290).

  16. She suspects it will be a “piecemeal process”, a “messy, retail business that permits few wholesale answers” (pp. 29–30).

  17. Not all uses of raunch in feminist activism are part of ‘raunch feminism’. SlutWalks may be an example of a non-celebratory use of raunch.

  18. A similar point is made by Candida Royalle: “I wanted to make films that say we all have a right to pleasure, and that women, especially, have a right to our own pleasure” (2000, p. 54). See also Bright (1995), Califia (2000) and Rubin (2011).

  19. Matthew Kramer is also a co-founder of CAKE. Kramer rarely appears in press about the group and is reported to have joined his sister (Emily Kramer) and partner (Gallagher) at a later stage of the development of CAKE (Huang 2004).

  20. CAKE promoted a workshop at Princeton University, prompting protests and debate (Walker 2003; McGregor 2004; Renny 2003).

  21. The percentage of men at CAKE parties has been reported as, on average, 30–40% (Nie 2014).

  22. For a history and defense of the ‘feminist pinup’ see Maria Elena Buszek’s Pinup Grrrls (2006).

  23. ‘Tightlacing’, or ‘corset training’ is the practice of wearing corsets to cosmetically reduce one’s waist.

  24. For a discussion, contextualization and qualified defense of this burlesque revival see Jacki Willson’s The Happy Stripper (2008).

  25. Baumgardner further claimed that “even though a Cake party might look like a male fantasy, it's a zone where women are in control of their behaviour” (Krum 2006).

  26. Levy (2005) thinks of raunch feminism in this way. For similar analyses see McRobbie (2009, p. 3), Siegel (2007, pp. 10, 157–158), Paul (2005, p. 112) and Krum (2006), the Princeton protesters against the “self-objectification of women” in Walker (2003) and Murphy (2011, 2013). For criticisms of Levy see Baumgardner (2011, pp. 59–64) and Jessela (2005).

  27. G-String Divas is “a late-night ‘docu-soap’ Nevins executive produced, which treated audiences to extended showings of T & A sandwiched between interviews with strippers about tricks of the trade and their real-life sexual practices” (Levy 2005, p. 91).

  28. Beyoncé’s 2014 performance at the MTV Music Video Awards famously featured both a “stripper’-like pole-dancing performance” and the word ‘FEMINIST’ “glowing in neon lights behind her” (Hobson 2016, p. 20; Zeisler 2016, p. xi). For a defense of Beyoncé’s engagement with oversexualized imagery see Hobson (2016) and Zeisler (2016, pp. 111–114). For criticism see hooks (2014). For discussions of Cyrus and Minaj see Wang (2015), Orenstein (2016, pp. 25–32) and Grigoriadis (2015).

  29. Crop tops (revealing bare midriffs) with explicitly feminist messages have become a fashion trend endorsed by young celebrities like Demi Lovato, Vanessa Hudgens, Willow Smith and Ariana Grande (Miñoza 2017; Johnson 2015; Wass 2017; Zhao 2015). The phenomenon is related to ‘Crop Top Day’, a protest action against sexist school dress codes started in Toronto by student Alexi Halket, in 2015 (Deschamps 2015; see also Orenstein 2016, pp. 7–9).

  30. For examples and discussion see Dunham (2017), Phelan (2016) and Sekyiamah (2017). For uses of the ‘nude selfie’ in contemporary feminist art see Leah Schrager’s work (Lehrer 2017). For a contemporary popular feminist project that uses female nudity in a similar celebratory way see actress Caitlin Stasey’s online project “Herself” (2018).

  31. One could compare feminism, on this reading, to environmentalism in corporate ‘green-washing’.

  32. Kramer’s gender studies thesis was reportedly on “how the power dynamics of sexuality should ideally allow for both men and women to explore, express and define sexuality for themselves” (Levy 2005, pp. 78–79).

  33. Publicity photographs seem to show a (perhaps self-conscious) racial/ethnic diversity at parties (Sales 2002).

  34. A more nuanced version of this may be the ‘cool girl’ or a light ‘female chauvinist pig’ (Levy 2005, p. 93). These are women who distance themselves from ‘girly girls’ and become ‘honorary men’, signaling their allegiance to patriarchal figures by behaving like them in important respects. This can be done apolitically, but can also be couched in feminist rhetoric.

  35. Haslanger explains socially embedded agency in the following way: “the terms of our action and interaction are not up to us as individuals. What is valuable, what is acceptable, even what we do, and want, and think, depend on cultural frameworks of meaning” (Haslanger 2013, p. 7).

  36. The protests surrounding the Rolling Stones’ controversial Black and Blue billboard, in 1976, were an example of this turn (Bronstein 2008).

  37. For other articulations of the ubiquity and importance of gendered social meanings see Witt (2011), Butler (1987) and Alcoff (2005).

  38. They would constitute perhaps an idiosyncratic or obsolete code of conduct.

  39. This possibility with regards to gender more generally is suggested in Haslanger (2012, p. 254).

  40. Efforts towards moral reform are important. They can certainly accompany the project I am gesturing towards.

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Acknowledgements

A special thanks to Ishani Maitra, Sydney Keough and Johann Hariman for extensive comments and discussion on the early drafts of this paper. Thank you to Mercy Corredor, Eduardo Martinez and Eli Lichtenstein for helpful feedback and suggestions. Finally, thanks to an anonymous referee and to the audiences at Michigan, Claremont McKenna, Syracuse, Temple, at the 2017 Critical Social Ontology Workshop and the Feminist Utopias Conference at the University of Iceland.

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  1. Philosophy Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Filipa Melo Lopes

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Melo Lopes, F. Perpetuating the patriarchy: misogyny and (post-)feminist backlash. Philos Stud 176, 2517–2538 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1138-z

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