Naming the Rot: Kate Manne Exposes the Lies Holding Up the Patriarchy
Courage often starts with saying the obvious out loud, unapologetically. Philosopher and author Kate Manne brings that rare, dangerous clarity, taking on the everyday cruelties of structural misogyny and the moral contortions America performs to pretend everything’s fine.
Manne, author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, and Unshrinking: How to Face Fat Phobia, challenges how we understand injustice. It’s not just “out there.” It’s built into our systems, our norms, even our language.
We don’t need to wait for sweeping reforms to act with integrity. Real change begins with small, daily acts of moral attention. What do we excuse? Whose pain do we ignore? What stories do we let slide by unchallenged?
Misogyny, Manne argues, isn’t just about hatred; it’s a control system. A mechanism of the patriarchy designed to punish women who won’t conform.
In Manne’s hands, philosophy isn’t abstract; it’s a wrecking ball. A tool for exposing rot and naming the machinery of oppression. Her message is clear: transformation begins with how we think, how we speak, and how we show up, for ourselves and for each other.
That’s the real work of justice. And it belongs to all of us.
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Andrea Chalupa (00:21):
Welcome to Gaslin Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it.
(00:36):
We are joined this week by the iconic Kate Manne, a philosopher who teaches at Cornell University's Sage School of Philosophy. Her books include "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny," "Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women," and her most recent, "Unshrinking: How to Face Fat Phobia." It was a National Book Award finalist. Congratulations, Kate.
Kate Manne (01:03):
Thank you.
Andrea Chalupa (01:04):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation, Kate Manne.
Kate Manne (01:06):
Thank you so much for having me. It's such a delight to be here.
Andrea Chalupa (01:09):
So we are speaking in the spring of 2025 in a country with a serial predator and a convicted felon in the White House, and I'm speaking to you as the mother of two little girls, and I've seen all sorts of aggressive behavior on the playground, especially by boys towards my daughters, and it's just a horrifying time to be a woman in America, a historically misogynistic country that we now know, and I'm speaking obviously in a time capsule to future historians who are looking back on us and piecing together how the Roman Empire of today, America. We had a chance to elect two overly qualified, overly prepared as the Czech Todd Industrial Complex called them, women as president of the United States, and instead we went for the Russian asset trader, serial accused rapist, let's just say.
(02:03):
And so this is where we are in this dangerous crossroads in history. How are you feeling being an expert, writing about this, researching this world? How are you staying sane and grounded in this climate and where do you see things in terms of how we got here and where we're headed?
Kate Manne (02:21):
Yeah, it is a really tough question to answer because I, to be honest, have felt really depressed to see this play out all over again. I mean, it's the most obvious thing in the world, but waking up every morning to the knowledge that, I mean not just accused, I think legally convicted rapist is the way I like to put it. He has been in civil court legally declared a rapist of E. Jean Carroll and America saw fit to elect this person who is not just personally such a misogynist but also is doing such harm to girls and women via the abortion bans that we're seeing enacted around the country that are increasing maternal mortality by a twofold rate.
(03:10):
We have seen reproductive rights just decimated at a speed that even to me who has been writing about this for over a decade, it's been something I've seen coming. But to see the speed of that decimation has been alarming. And I'm the mother of a five-year-old girl too. And to see everything really that I care about and want for her in this country just being attacked so viciously, it's really depressing. And so one of the ways, I guess ironically that I try to stay a little grounded is by being in touch with those feelings of profound institutional and federal betrayal and a profound sense of betrayal from the American people that seemingly cared more about the price of eggs -- and look what's happened there -- than they did about women going septic and parking lots and dying because they couldn't get access to reproductive care when they were having a miscarriage.
(04:07):
It feels really bleak and I'm just glad to be in solidarity with you and with your audience when it comes to not being cheery or rosy about it, not being gaslit about it.
Andrea Chalupa (04:22):
Yeah, I mean this interview could go several ways. It could be just us screaming at the void, which I would enjoy quite frankly. We've had several Gaslit Nation listeners, including men, point to your work, ask us to bring you on the show, and I've followed it closely. So it's just such a thrill to finally get to talk to you. And I feel like it's also the perfect timing. I am in New York City, we have the big mayor's race this year, and it's just like Andrew Cuomo, dear Lord who felt, how are we here again, so entitled to put his hand up an employee shirt. I wanted to ask, what is the logic of misogyny? What was it that you uncovered and what surprised you most in your research?
Kate Manne (04:58):
So the way that I think about misogyny is that it's not something men feel deep down in their hearts. It's something girls and women face. So what I have theorized is really a victim and target centered approach to thinking about misogyny where I think that there is this persistent myth that misogyny targets any and every girl or woman or at least women very generally, but on my construal misogyny is actually a lot more targeted because it has a particular social role. And the way I think about it is to put those two pieces together is misogyny is the hostility and hatred women face that serves to police and enforce patriarchal norms and expectations. So when you see someone like a Trump delivering vicious smack downs against women who compete with him against women who he perceives as insufficiently loyal and deferential, and when you see him doing so in ways that are distinctively or disproportionately gendered, that's misogyny taking place.
(06:06):
But I think crucially misogyny is something structural and systemic where we also see it in the kinds of facts that we've been talking about where girls and women are also not cared for and are systematically neglected and betrayed and instead of caring about say the victims of sexual assault or sexual harassment, we tend to side actually with the people, usually men who are perpetrating that misogyny. And that is kind of the flip side of misogyny that I call empathy where instead of holding someone like Andrew Cuomo accountable, we're like, well, shouldn't we move on? Shouldn't we forgive and forget poor him losing his political career and we completely lose sight of the people who should be our primary focus, which is the women that he has mistreated. So ...
Andrea Chalupa (06:59):
Who would you say to folks who are like, well, me too went too far, and it was like a witch hunt against men and you couldn't even hold a door open for a woman without being accused of something?
Kate Manne (07:11):
I mean, look, I think anyone is free to hold doors open for anyone else carrying anything large or awkwardly shaped. I have never actually seen anyone accused of misconduct for being polite. It didn't go far enough. And the truth of the matter is most of the men who came in for scrutiny in the Me Too era really had it coming after decades of misconduct, which they weren't held accountable for at all. And many of those men have made a sort of triumphant or semi triumphant comeback. You see people like Louis CK and Aziza mounting tours of their comedic tours on Netflix where the whole premise is I've been so canceled, but here they are with this incredibly lucrative and now they have a special angle in their shows to push, which is that they are emblematic of all these men who we're supposed to feel so sorry for.
(08:11):
So I just don't buy it. I think that there's this other aspect of it too where some of the men who were genuinely canceled in the Me Too moment were kind of past their prime from the perspective of late stage capitalism. And so the Harvey Weinsteins of the world were a bit disposable in a way that actually made it easier for people to move on from them because they were perceived as kind of old and also gross in certain aesthetic ways. But there are a ton of men who weren't actually held accountable and who have carried on with impunity or at least with fewer consequences than I think are merited consequences of a social kite. If you are not a believer in the carceral system, which is the camp I'm in as a feminist, I don't believe in the carceral system, at least in the United States, then social consequences are actually where it's at. Cancel can be good actually when they've done really bad things where I don't necessarily want them to go to prison, but I do want them not to have a platform anymore if they've been raping and sexually harassing women for decades.
Andrea Chalupa (09:20):
Absolutely. What do you think is driving the incel movement? Obviously women have made great strides. Women and men increasingly are splitting the housework, raising the children, certainly in far larger levels than my mother's generation. My mother's shocked seeing how much my husband does, Mr. Mom that I married, and he's just thrilled with the kids. Why wouldn't he be? It's like the joy of spending time with your own children or why else have children, and also you have women competing more with men for positions of power and visibility. So what do you think is ultimately driving this incel movement? We were talking before we started recording about the viral TV series at adolescents, which gives a shocking chilling look inside the mind of an incel and trying to treat that child and understand how he got that way. And so what is driving them and ultimately in your view, from all the research you've done, what do you think is the solution to treating this societal ill?
Kate Manne (10:25):
Yeah, I mean, this is such an important question because one thing we were talking about before we started recording is just the way that this TV show adolescence has created in a way a useful conversation around in cell culture, but it also misses a lot and it is at least worth raising the point that it wasn't until two male show creators created this very male-centered show that really focuses on the perpetrator much more than the victim of an incel-like murder. It wasn't until that point that we actually had the kind of cultural reckoning that feminists like me have been calling for over a decade. But I think what is behind it, and actually what the show missed in an interesting way is incel have this set of moral ideas at the core, this set of ideas that they are morally entitled to certain goods from girls and women and for anyone who I think most people will have heard the term in incel, but just in case anyone hasn't kind of absorbed all the cultural discourse around it, these are young men typically, almost inevitably men, and most of them are young and they're disproportionately white, although not all of them are who call themselves involuntary celibates and who hold that they have been deprived of things like sex, but also I think more insidiously love and sexual admiration and attention, hot women, hot in air quotes, whatever they consider to be hot, which means kind of conventionally attractive.
(12:14):
Then ideally blonde, someone who could confer on them social sexual status. So these young men feel like they have been wronged morally by the fact that women haven't turned up on their doorstep ready and willing to give them what they think these women owe them, what they think these women are morally obligated to deliver, where one of the reasons the show adolescence wasn't, it had good points, but it wasn't nailing the phenomenon is that the incel character of Jamie actually doesn't have any of those moral ideas about why his murder victim, Katie did him wrong. He doesn't have that idea. He just kind of randomly stabs her after he felt belittled by her and they in fact turn her into a mean girl who called him an incel and thus turned him into one somehow, which is not typically the way this kind of bullying goes.
(13:12):
It's intra masculine bullying that tends to lead to men feeling as young men that they need more social and sexual status via women's attentions. So at any rate, when it comes to this kind of complex phenomenon of incel and the moral ideas at the heart of it, we really need to combat it with other better moral ideas, like the idea that women are not obligated to provide sex, love, care, and attention, and that men are not entitled to it, that this is, it's perfectly possible to be someone who would like more of a dating life, would like more sex, whatever. But that's a bummer. It's a disappointment. It's not like a betrayal that you've been wronged or that as Elliot Roger, the kind of patron saint of in insults put it, it's not that you have been done a grave injustice at all.
Andrea Chalupa (14:05):
What do you see the trend being now is there's this hope in the younger generations that come up that they're going to be more tolerant, more progressive, more idealistic, and that it's the job of the young people to come in and force our society to confront itself and move towards greater progress. But now we're seeing this big gender divide between Gen Z women and Gen Z men, and you're like, okay, the species is going to die out. And so what are you seeing? What is the reality on the ground and why is it because these young men who's radicalizing them, who's telling them you are entitled to sex and affection and from the opposite sex?
Kate Manne (14:53):
I mean, it's people like Andrew Tate. So a lot of this radicalization I think is happening online and is algorithmically driven
Andrea Chalupa (15:02):
By the tech giants, mark Zuckerberg, Google with YouTube. And then X.
Kate Manne (15:06):
Yeah, YouTube, the particular offender X, absolutely. I think that these are huge technologically driven problems that are not going to be solved technologically because tech giants do not want them to be solved. I mean, this is a lucrative thing to be able to draw young men down a rabbit hole content wise. And the social ills are just not something that YouTube or Facebook Meta X care about whatsoever. I mean, yeah, and just look at who's in charge and you kind of see a story about why. So I think that, yeah, part of it is technological and part of it too is a kind of cultural narrative that a lot of this content is picking up on, that young men have it so bad today that they really are owed more, that there isn't enough for them in the week of feminist social progress, and that the answer lays in the right rather than the left.
(16:15):
And that is so alarming and so insidious, and it does strike me as a really hard problem to solve because it's not a problem that there is a huge amount of social momentum going towards solving, if anything, this is benefiting the powers that be in terms of, I mean, this is why young men ended up breaking for Trump in ways that were surprising and really beneficial relative, I should say, to what was expected in terms of voting patterns. And that huge gender divide between young men and young women is also going to lead to enormous social problems, as you point out for this generation.
Andrea Chalupa (17:03):
Yeah, it's really something. I remember going online during the 2024 election and seeing these young men snickering over Kamala Harris and saying, "I cannot believe she keeps going on and on about abortion. It's like, who cares?" They're laughing at her for making abortion one of her key priorities in this election at a time when as you pointed out, women are dying and we don't even have the accurate numbers on how many are dying. And these young men were just snickering at this and being like, she's so out of touch. And that was one of those lack of empathy, a lack of empathy. It's like, how do I, your mother, this is maternal healthcare. Your mother needed to have this option in order to deliver you safely, first of all. And then it's sort of like, how can you not see that this is a sign of a larger danger, that if the Republicans get back into power, they're not going to stop at reproductive healthcare. This is going to come for you too. In other ways, it's just a lack of imagination and a lack of empathy or a dangerous thing. And that's what these young men are carrying.
Kate Manne (18:06):
And I think some of it might be this image of women who want abortions as kind of feckless, selfish, like all of these misogynistic tropes that are culturally salient, where as you just pointed out, so importantly, I believe that abortion is just a hugely important, right for anyone. And I think any woman is entitled to have an abortion, and that should be completely uncontroversial, at least in the first trimester. However, I think what some of these people genuinely don't get is that if you're having a miscarriage, even if it's a wanted pregnancy, the standard of care is to evacuate the uterus, and that's what needs to happen to stop miscarrying. People who are pregnant, typically women in the second trimester from going septic, but because the fetus often has a heartbeat at that point, this kind of standard of care is not being followed in states like Texas and other red states resulting in skyrocketing rates of death from sepsis.
(19:10):
For people in this position who again, are not the people seeking elective abortions as important a sector as that is, and as valid as I believe that is, these are people who often had badly wanted pregnancies and now need to be cared for so that they can just remain alive for themselves, for their families, for other future children they might want to have. There's something really tragic about it, and you're quite right that there just isn't amazing statistical data collection on this. I mean, we have some of it, and what we have is very alarming that maternal mortality rates are now twice in red states. What they are in blue states, so double, but a lot of maternal mortality committees are being dissolved or they're not actually collecting this data for often very suspicious and spurious reasons as Jessica Valenti among others have been reporting on and sounding alarm bells about for now years. And yeah, I don't think that there is a lot of empathetic focus on people in these predicaments who again, are typically women with this idea that, yeah, it's somehow abortion is about selfishness rather than this is healthcare and this matters for people who are people, namely women and others who can get pregnant.
Andrea Chalupa (20:36):
Yeah, my second baby was a high risk pregnancy, and the doctor sat me down and said, you're not flying and you might have to be on bedrest and you might bleed out. We might have to give you abortion to save your life. And it was just like healthcare, simple healthcare, simple healthcare. There's no issue. My husband was fine with it, everyone was fine with it. It was just obviously we hope for the best and the best happened and we had a healthy pregnancy and baby, but my life could have been in danger. And I had already one child and my husband, and so I had dependent emotional financial dependence. So the number of people who are so ignorant on that still, and they just see it as a culture war, a lot of this just feels like it's numbing folks and they're just treating it like a blood sport, a game,
(21:22):
But certainly the Trump voters where they're not making a connection to people's lives and livelihoods. And that's why you have all these MAGA regret viral videos that are going on that's like, oh, the leopard's eating my face. Shocker. And so I wanted to ask you ultimately, if we know what the source is, it's big tech that doesn't care. They want to create conflict, they want to create engagement, and the majority of these engineers in this across the big tech industry tend to be white men. And the counter philosophy to you, you're in the Jedi sphere philosophy today, and then the Darth Vader, the sit realm of anti You philosophy is coming out of the tech world with the Curtis Jarvin. These are software engineers. You have these Google and other big tech software engineers writing these manifestos against diversity against the woke virus, woke being just empathy.
(22:20):
Let's try to give people vulnerable groups, historically marginalized groups, a helping hand and support and attention, all these built-in biases in how we make decisions. And white men tend to get instant credibility and instant confidence and an instant leg up. And that works like a compound interest. And I understand that we're dealing in a time with unchecked oligarchy. The Reagan revolution run amuck, and so white men are hurting too. That is a fact. And they're sort of blaming us and the immigrants for that instead of the white men that got us here. And so my big question buried in this to you, is it enough for us? So the big tech giants are not going to come save us. And I know this, I've talked to some of these software engineers at a holiday party right after the 2024 election, I met a software engineer in charge of algorithms or on the algorithm team for YouTube.
(23:10):
And the first thing I said to him was, congratulations on the fascism. And here was somebody who, a young white male in his forties, I don't think he sees himself as a fascist. And he was laughing and just having a good time talking to me as I was grilling him and trying to get his secrets on how to choose this algorithm for myself. And he was making the argument that they are trying to make their YouTube is putting in some effort, they are trying to be aware and sensitive, but when word got out, who he was and what he did that he got circled by women like me. And so the conclusion was, you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough. And he felt talking to him is very clear that he was detached as somebody that just makes the fascism trains run on time. But don't get mad at him. He's just the train conductor.
(23:55):
And I'm sure this is a guy that did not vote for Trump. I'm sure some of them did across that industry, but he personally did not. It's just a job he's clocking in. He needs his 401k. So with that level of apathy, detachment, it's just a muddy machine, right? Corruption is an industry. So if industry is not going to step in, certainly this administration Congress are not going to step in. We still have states with power, we still have so-called blue states across the union. And what we need now are the states to step in as much as they can with legal cases or legislation. And also something as simple as what the Canadians do. I was in Canada and I was shocked to see a commercial, a public service announcement telling Canadians, Hey, pay someone a compliment. It really makes them happy, makes them smile. And I'm like, oh my God. So that Canadian nice that you're all known for, your government cultivates it. Maybe we should too. The Americans should probably think of that. And so I feel like it's as simple as Gretchen Whitmer and the other solidly democratic governors just launching public service announcements in their states saying, Hey, dads, don't raise an asshole. Raise your son to respect women and to treat women as a human being and not an object for your instant gratification. I feel like that's what we need now is that level of public campaigning.
Kate Manne (25:14):
I am so with you. Where my mind immediately goes is parents and schools as an antidote to some of the online radicalization because this can really be done at a familial and local level. And part of it is, I think this is picking up speed, at least in my parenting circles, the idea of social media and phone pledges where you pledge. I mean, I've done this now, my husband and I pledged just two days ago to not give our daughter a phone until she's 16, which I'm very on board with. Yeah, I mean, I'm dubious about some of the powdered reasons for that, like the Jonathan Heights of it all. But I think there are very good reasons in addition to not so good reasons to resist the kind of spaces where before you have fully formed self-regulation and critical thinking skills, you're being exposed, especially for young boys to content that you're just not able to think about reasonably and rationally yet until you have more by way of education and life experience and critical thinking skills and just sort of rational bandwidth.
(26:29):
I think that there is a big role for that together with the positive message that sex education can take this on and sometimes does nowadays where the message isn't just like, here's how you put a condom on a banana. Sex is crucially about two enthusiastic consenting partners or however many you want, I guess. But this is about respecting someone, doing something intimate with them that requires caring for them no matter how casual the relationship and all of these kinds of messaging that yes, can be awkward, but I think parents and schools need to be talking about sex. They need to be talking about pornography and the fact that young people are practicing very dangerous sexual practices like strangulation during sex. That's hugely on the increase because of seeing porn that shows this act to be normal and sexy, when in fact it's detrimental to the oxygenation of blood in the brain and has this terrible health consequences for women.
(27:39):
So this kind of, again, just one piece of a million that needs to be talked about and really on the curriculum, it's just an example of what we could be doing in terms of combating misinformation and sheer misogyny via sex education and via healthy conversations about what does healthy sex look like, what does basic respect in a relationship look like? What are the warning signs and what is the nature of domestic violence? All of this stuff should be something that a kid leaves their high school experience knowing. And I think, yeah, that is at best patchy at the moment.
Andrea Chalupa (28:24):
We have to have these conversations and parents have to be trained.
Kate Manne (28:27):
Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (28:28):
Given resources and support networks to have these conversations. I know there's an ickiness around them
Kate Manne (28:34):
Sure.
(28:34):
Because no one wants to have these conversations. And with our oligarch prison that we're increasingly trapped in and automation and AI coming for now, white collar jobs, I think parents are going to get squeezed working harder than ever, juggling jobs, searching for jobs. It's extremely stressful
(28:50):
So of course, putting your kid in front of a screen, you don't have time to deal with them overworked and tired, and there has to be some sort of safety net, whether it's self-organized among grassroots groups or nonprofit coalition building or states putting out the resources for this, there needs to be a network effect. Now community, because industry is not there at all. In fact, they're criminal in how they're behaving, and this administration and Republicans are famously criminal.
(29:22):
And so it's really time for the grassroots groups, the local grassroots groups, the coalition building really take off now for this because it's extremely dangerous, the very fabric of our society, what they're basically doing is ensuring that MAGA stays even long after Trump is gone and it's raising a new generation Trump to come into power and feel emboldened by an Elon Musk.
(29:45):
So it's not enough that we defeat these guys politically in the short time we have left. It's the legacy. They're training a new generation of scumbags, and that's what we need to be vigilant of and have a solution for aggressively now today. And it's so odd because in some ways I've been at this for so long, being a woman, being female out in public and having opinions, I know what it feels like. And I remember when I was coming into the world coming of age, Christopher Hitchens, one of the most influential thinkers in western culture, even today long after his death, he wrote an essay for Vanity Fair called Why Women Are Just Not Funny.
(30:26):
Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (30:26):
It's so bizarre to read considering there's just been so many blockbuster comedies and comedy specials led by women. When Melissa McCarthy played Sean Spicer, when Trump won first Trump term came around that reset everything in America that was like the resistance was on. And so women obviously are dominating TikTok. All the viral videos I see are women just being ridiculous and doing things that has traditionally are not considered very womanly, and it's just the norm. And so I am very heartened that a lot of younger men like Gen X millennials and Gen Z are growing up seeing women just be totally bat shit crazy and going viral for it in all the best ways. Half the videos my husband shows me, I just even more than half are like, look at this. This is hilarious. You have to see this. And it's always a woman.
Kate Manne (31:17):
Yeah. Yeah.
(31:19):
So it's weird because we've made a lot of progress culturally. The pop charts are dominated by women. And then I took my kids on a road trip and we stopped off at a random McDonald's and everywhere across this McDonald's was Angel Reese, WNBA star. And so finally the WNBA and women's soccer are commanding larger audiences, larger salaries for the players. And then of course, we had two women come extremely close to be president of the United States, and before they weren't even considered as serious contenders. We needed to have some cookie cutter, John Edwards with that right haircut and only 2.5 kids.
(31:57):
So we have made strides, right? That's such a mindfuck about this is so many genies have come out of the bottle. Men have embraced how cool it is to be parents and have that intimacy of closeness, physical closeness with your own child and really have a hand with that raising the child. There's a study that couples, heterosexual couples that share the housework, share the child rearing, have more sex, they have a better stronger marriage. And then you have stories of men who are having these dad clubs where they get together and they go cruising with their strollers and they have so much fun meeting other dads sea change. All of this is revolutionary. And so how do you make sense of that? The massive progress, but then all the scary backlash.
(32:47):
So I think mean that's so astute because the progress and the backlash are actually in lockstep. So instead of thinking of it as a kind of linear narrative where we take two steps forward and one step back, I like Tressie McMillan card's metaphor for this, which is like the Doey do dance, where precisely the fact that we've made rapid egalitarian and feminist social progress means you get the backlash because women are doing all these incredibly cool things and some men are doing incredibly cool egalitarian things and living in new, and as you say, revolutionary ways and thinking in ways that are incredibly revolutionary. I see this in my friends and my students, certainly in my husband, there are these incredibly progressive and impressive men as well as non-binary folks too, who are doing it differently, and that makes some people crazy. So I think seeing the progress in the backlash is actually kind of entangled is where I come down on this.
(33:51):
And I would say that I think the parenting piece of it is complex because I think there is this perception that dads are a lot more involved, and it's certainly true that some dads are incredibly involved. I too have a husband who's a co-equal parent, maybe even more active and parenting than I am, which is incredible. And that was just not a thing 30, 40 years ago. And at the same time, on average, although men spend more time parenting than they did in the nineties, the second shift problem where women are actually doing twice as much domestic and child rearing labor compared to men, that figure hasn't budged in 25 years. So women are still doing way more. There's still a massive gap at home, including in child rearing that I think is incredibly unfair. And I have been sort of circling around this problem lately because many of the worst white oligarchs that we've been talking about are also needleless, like I'm thinking of the JD Vance and the Musks and to some extent Trump.
(35:03):
And at the same time, they are creating conditions where healthcare is atrocious for people who get pregnant. Women get totally inadequate support in early nurturing of infants. There is no social safety net, and they're kind of being these archetypes of men who do nothing to help at home, thus emboldening a generation of the men who are refusing to do their fair share and who are skewing that average in ways that are not reflective of the men who are doing their bit and more. So yeah, I look at the social conditions together with the wage gap for people who get pregnant again, usually women and it's way to be ISTs and make conditions so unconducive to wanting to have children or more children that we should go on strike. I really think a sort of antinatalism of the moment makes sense where we should strike and not have children or more children unless we desperately want to. In which case, of course, that's its own, that kind of intense desire creates its own reasons. But if you're on the fence or you're like, am I obligated or I'm ambivalent, should I, should I not under the current conditions, hell no. This is terrible.
Andrea Chalupa (36:25):
Absolutely. And Trump's like, we'll give you $5,000 if you get knocked up. And it's like, good luck with that. That won't even be for the hospitals stay in some states. And it's just so much like Romania at the end of the dictatorship in Romania towards the collapse of communism, and it's obvious why it collapsed. Ceaușescu banned abortion, put a quota, women have to have four children, and we're going to have your gynecologist check you make sure that you are going at it and that you're trying. And then of course, maternal deaths skyrocketed, and then the orphanages became overrun with some of the most abysmal, evil scenes of neglect in human history. So that's really the end game of their stupidity, of their hypocrisy, what they're pushing and the level of ignorance. So obviously in dictatorship, they go after this dumb, mindless, anti-intellectual brawny, Braun, manly man.
(37:22):
Putin did it with his shirtless photos. Trump did it with his Mussolini glow, his orange glow and so on. And women and trans people and gay people are all targets of that. Basically anyone who challenges the cruelty that they're trying to romanticize the fascists. And so they're anti blatantly anti-empathy. Is this, what we're stuck with is this just human nature throughout history, large, obviously we've had matriarchal societies, we've had egalitarian societies throughout history, they have existed. This isn't sort of a one size fits all way of organizing. So society, the one that we're under globally with patriarchy being largely the norm everywhere, but throughout history, there have been strong chapters of alternatives to show that people find what's best for them and they innovate in different ways. But unfortunately, we got kind of trapped under patriarchy becoming the norm. And as much as we want to convince ourselves that humans are evolving and we're progressing and we're trying to build a fair and more inclusive society for our nations and the world, the global of nations, ultimately the gravity of human nature seems to prevail like Putin and Russia. They're acting like how the Mongols were other groups of people that just saw conquest for the sake of conquest as just natural to them.
(38:50):
And so is this just where we are? Are we going to be, are my great great, great great great great granddaughters going to be having podcasts, the brain chips, their brain chips going to be podcasting against the patriarchy. You know what I mean? This is ever going to go away.
Kate Manne (39:05):
I really hope not. I mean, it's a question I wrestle with constantly, Andrea, because yeah, you're right that there have been exceptions of course to patriarchy, but it is so prevalent and it's so dominant and it's so old. It's about as old as agriculture to the point where we don't even really know why patriarchy, a lot of other forms of oppression. We have a pretty good answer to how they arose and why. And that's true of fat phobia. We know it comes from a mixture of classism and anti-blackness. It's kind of an 18th century invention in its modern incarnation, and it's contingent, and I'm pretty sure we can undo it, although maybe not anytime soon. But yeah, patriarchy is entrenched. But I think what gives me some hope at the kind of micro level or the kind of very contemporary moment level is seeing the huge repudiation of Trumpism in Canada and Australia.
(40:06):
I mean to see Philip Dutton, the aspiring prime minister of Australia, who was a little Trump lose his seat as MP, which is really unusual. He didn't even win his seat. And to see a woman, a disabled woman who was really cool and running as labor MP oust ton from his seat, I think says something about the fact that there's always going to be both these moments of intense backlash and romanticism, but there's also going to be people who push back vigorously against that. And so I would like to think that even if we're not making anything like linear progress, we've still made tremendous progress in some ways over the last century or so. And I think that it is so hard to undo and dismantle patriarchy, but that work is being done and people are fighting. We're fighting as hard as we can, and in some ways I end up being not a glass half full or glass half empty person, just a kind of, I'm thirsty person. I'm committed to the fight, and that's all we can do. I can't pretend to know what the future holds, but I don't think it's inevitable. I'm not fatalistic about any of this. And I think that in some ways, if you take a very combination of looking at the fighting now and the ways in which we've made a lot of progress quickly, historically, there are grounds for modest hope that the fight isn't futile. Let's put it that way.
Andrea Chalupa (41:48):
That's great. And I wanted to ask you also, Trump is back. I think some people saw that as inevitable. Merrick Garland did Jack All. We were very early on the show and calling that out as a danger to the world, and Biden obviously had his shortcomings. We've documented him on the show and now here we are. And the media, of course, played their role in helping bring Trump back and normalizing his behavior. We included coverage on the show, protests outside the New York Times saying, wake the fuck up. What are you doing? He's back after trying to violently overthrow our democracy on January 6th, Trump is back as commander in chief and accepting a jumbo jet from one of those Middle Eastern dictatorships. I forget which one off the top of my head, but here we are.
(42:38):
So I wanted to ask you, obviously we need to get through this. It's all hands on deck. We need to just channel our rage into political action and to keep fighting and raising our voices despite the threats, despite their bullshit, but if we manage to defeat him again, meaning he doesn't cling on for life because they're already saying Trump 2028, and we get a small D Democrat back who believes in the Constitution and enforcing it, what in your view does accountability look like? What would you like to see play out to ensure that we don't go the Merrick Garland route again?
Kate Manne (43:12):
Oh, that's a good question. Gosh, I've barely thought about it. I mean, I would love to see that airplane returned to Qatar, I think it is.
Andrea Chalupa (43:19):
Yeah,
Kate Manne (43:21):
That would be nice. Rather than…
Andrea Chalupa (43:22):
One of them, I'm sure he's going to get more. He's getting a whole collection of airplanes.
Kate Manne (43:26):
Trump's presidential library, AKA, just belonging to Trump personally, words fail me.
Andrea Chalupa (43:34):
It's like a car collection in a private zoo, just like the oligarchs and Ukraine, Russia.
Kate Manne (43:39):
Here's the thing. There is this very tempting idea within philosophy that you can't really flourish if you're horribly immoral. That in a sense, crime doesn't pay when it comes to wellbeing and that people who are really truly evil or even just not good people aren't truly flourishing and doing well in the world and having good lives, and I think that's a consoling fantasy. I think there's probably no form of accountability either in terms of legal accountability, which is as far as I can tell out the window, or just some people might believe in the kind of accountability of the soul that when people do real harm and when they are just cruel for the sake of it. Like you said, the targeting of trans people is such a good example of this cruelty for its own sake. Here are people who are living their lives and just going about their business and being who they are, and it is absolutely no one's business and it should bother nobody, and it should just be a basis for solidarity and community and affection. Here are people who are helping to dissolve the gender binary that's so pernicious and who are helping to combat the kind of policing of gender that hurts everyone, I think.
Andrea Chalupa (45:00):
Believe absolutely. I feel more liberated with trans liberation.
Kate Manne (45:05):
A hundred percent. This is a cause very dear to my heart because some of my nearest and dearest are trans and non-binary, and I want to believe in a part of myself that someone like Trump will pay in his soul for being so just horrible to good folks who are just living their lives, but I don't really believe it. I think that he's probably going to die rich and happy and will be remembered by some as a great president, and that is sickening, but maybe it can help us get more invested in other things like sort of less the revenge slash retribution fantasies that I certainly have. I'm not above, but wouldn't it be amazing to have a world that had just kind of moved on and where his name was an afterthought and where a sort of distant memory in ways that it felt like was possible during the Biden administration, at least to some extent.
(46:03):
I mean, not to underestimate the huge harms and ills of Trump 1.0, but there was a sense that maybe it could just be a historical blip that, again, not to underestimate the way this costs some people so much including their lives, but the fact that we now have Trump 2.0 I think points to the way that not only did some people not want to hold him accountable, they wanted to reward that cruelty in ways that in a way, that's what I find more difficult to reckon with the way that even if he himself isn't held accountable, there are people and will probably always be people who admire that kind of cruel, strong man leadership and who want an authoritarian state in ways that don't make self-interested sense. They don't make moral sense, they don't make economic sense. I can't in a way make sense of it other than by thinking of it as this kind of just death throws of patriarchy.
(47:10):
You see a man who's just so fucking entitled and who takes everything he wants, including grabbing pussies with impunity, and you think good. You think good. And this is emboldening to me personally. Yeah, and you don't have to worry about the culture will protect exactly, and you don't have to worry even about people shaming you because I think one of the biggest appeals of Trump is that he's appealing to people who feel shamed by liberals for not using the right terminology or for being implicitly or sometimes explicitly bigoted. And so instead of sitting with that shame, that I think is perfectly fine to have some moral shame and to sit with it and wrestle with it and think, what could I do better? And then lift your head and try to find community with people trying to do better too. That's sort of central to the efforts of those of us who are white and involved in anti-racist struggle, but instead of feeling that shame and using it to do something forward looking and constructive, they're fleeing from shame to the extent of wanting the most shameless man on earth to be president.
Andrea Chalupa (48:19):
Final question. Despite all this, what is giving you hope?
Kate Manne (48:23):
I would say the kind of local sandbagging efforts. So I wrote a piece on my substack just after the Trump election, is there hope, define hope. And I think hope has been written a lot about in philosophy by excellent philosophers such as Katie Stockdale and others, and also by Rebecca Solnit, who I'm a huge fan of. But I think of hope as something which is very much about, we have to define what the hope is for and about. So when people say, do you have hope? And they don't specify the propositional object of the hope, it gets a little vague. It's like, well, I don't have hope that things are going to get better over the next three and a half years, but I do have hope that we can not have the level of decimation that we would have, were it not for our resistance efforts.
(49:14):
So I have hope that we can kind of make the damage less terrible, that we can do both some damage control and also some harm reduction if we fight really hard at the often local level to fight these kinds of, I think, real systemic evil that are targeting people who again, just are living their lives trying to get things like healthcare, education and adequate access to opportunity instead of seeing ourselves as hoping for an improvement in justice. I think we can hope for things not backsliding as radically. So that's what I hope for and that's what keeps me fighting.
Andrea Chalupa (50:00):
Thank you for coming on Gaslit Nation. You always have a home here.
Kate Manne (50:04):
Thank you so much, Andrea. I'm so grateful for all you do and are in the world and so grateful to your audience too, for caring about how we are doing in the world and how to combat gaslighting of a political nature.
Andrea Chalupa (50:21):
Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up at the truth teller level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can also give the gift of membership all summer long. Gaslit Nation created with Love and Anger has been presenting a special series featuring leading experts on how to smash the patriarchy and the oligarchy to make the world safer for everyone. Trump didn't happen overnight. Let's plant Seeds of Hope together for the hottest of hot takes. Join the conversation at the Gaslit Nation salons every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern. I'll be there with our global community of listeners. Come for deep dives into the news. Learn from fellow listeners and share what's happening in your corner of the world. Can't make it live. Recordings of our Monday salons are available on Patreon, along with our monthly Gaslit Nation book Club, access the Salons bonus shows.
(51:26):
Add free episodes and more at patreon.com/gaslit. That's patreon.com/gast. Thank you to everyone who supports the show to help you Crane with urgently needed humanitarian aid. Join me in donating to Razom for ukraine@razomforukraine.org to support refugees in conflict zones. Donate to Doctors Without borders@doctorswithoutborders.org and to protect critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry. Donate to The Orangutan project@theorangutanproject.org. Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our editing wizard is Nicholas Torres, and our associate producer is Carlin Daigle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and don't forget to check out our Patreon. It keeps us going. Original music and Gaslit Nation is composed by David Whitehead, Martin Berg, Nick Farr, Damian Ariaga, and Carlin Dagel. Our logo design was generously donated to us by Hamish Spice of the New York Based Firm order. Thank you so much.
(52:36):
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