Opinion: How misogyny is already shaping the presidential race
Sen. Elizabeth Warren , who is running for president, at a campaign stop in Selma, Ala., on March 19. By Paul Waldman Paul Waldman Opinion writer covering politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer March 25 at 4:00 PM Imagine you were the mayor of a city of around 100,000 people, the 301st largest in the United States. One day, you thought to yourself, “I’m smart and competent. I have lots of thoughts about how to improve things. Sure, I’m only 37 years old, but I’ve got talent and energy.
I don’t mean this as a criticism of Buttigieg. He has a lot to commend. But Buttigieg is enjoying a hearing, including lots of positive media coverage, that no woman in his position could possibly be granted. That case came up in a recent conversation I had with Kate Manne, a Cornell philosophy professor and author of “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.” As Manne points out, when each woman currently running entered the race, a fatal flaw was quickly identified: Warren’s Native American ancestry, Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s treatment of her staff, or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand being, well, too ambitious .
Manne's conception of misogyny isn't as simple as the way we usually think about it, as just a hatred of women. Instead, she sees misogyny as a system that enforces patriarchal values, punishing women who step outside the norms of that system and the roles they've been assigned. And few things pose as much of a challenge to the patriarchy as a woman seeking the most powerful position in the country.
“Women who go head-to-head with men for male-dominated positions are in a really bad spot,” the Cornell professor told me. “It’s striking that a lot of the areas where women have made enormous gains like education don’t involve head-to-head rankings of men and women or boys and girls. It’s just about how well you do on a particular test or essay, or what grade you get overall,” without situations in which one female is judged against one male.
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