Call it misogyny

Abstract

Misogyny is a weighty term. Its affective power invokes spectres of rape, sexual assault, hate-fuelled insults and gas-lighting. Its presence in nearly every culture on the planet haunts our pasts and frames our presents. Aiming to build an understanding of misogyny for our future social justice efforts, I look to Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, where she dusts off an old definition of misogyny as the hatred of women to describe it as the enforcement branch of a patriarchal society, a renewed engagement for feminists and activists alike. In particular, this framing provides opportunities to examine misogyny from an intersectional lens, including its intersections with race, gender and sexuality. For example, through stories such as that of Pamela George, an Indigenous woman from Regina, Saskatchewan who was murdered in 1995, I argue that it is crucial that we recognise the collusion between settler colonialism and misogyny. Or in the case of transphobic comedian Dave Chapelle, we must understand the interplay of heteronormativity and cisnormativity in propping up transmisogyny. Consequently, I argue that an intersectional logic of misogyny provides not only a shift but a tipping point for feminist and queer movements to come.

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