About

Kate A. Manne has been teaching at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University since 2013. Her research is primarily in moral, feminist, and social philosophy. She has authored the book 'Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny,' which offers a systemic exploration of the nature, function, and social dynamics of misogyny in contexts such as the US, the UK, and Australia. Her work has been widely reviewed and recognized, with her book selected as a Book of the Year by various outlets and included among the Dozen Most Memorable Books of 2017 by The Washington Post. Her latest book, 'Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women,' was released in August 2020. Manne has also published scholarly papers on the foundations of morality, emphasizing the role of bodily imperatives and social norms in moral claims. She defends Bernard Williams-style reasons internalism, arguing that moral claims are only reasons if agents can rationally recognize them as such. Additionally, she regularly writes opinion pieces, essays, and reviews on moral and political topics for venues including The New York Times, The Boston Review, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Art history
• Epistemology
• History
• Library science
• Law

Selected publications

• Ordinary Cruelty: Explaining Misogyny without Dehumanization

  Journal of the American Philosophical Association · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that interpersonal cruelty can often be explained in ordinary moral terms in conjunction with facts about social hierarchies. Specifically, I argue that misogynistic cruelty often stems from the sense that certain women are wrongdoers; it often stems from the sense that certain, privileged men are entitled to violate women; and it often stems from the sense that, at least when they threaten such men, women simply do not matter. Misogynistic cruelty is thus more a product of moral vilification, entitlement, and devaluation than dehumanization proper. I explore the implications for the need to posit dehumanization as a mechanism to explain cruelty elsewhere.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ameliorating Misogyny

  2024-09-25

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Kate Manne (1983–) is an Australian philosopher and professor at Cornell University. In this excerpt from her book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Manne redefines misogyny. She argues that the term should not be understood principally as a form of hatred directed at some or all women by particular individuals but rather as the central enforcement mechanism for upholding the male-dominated, or “patriarchal,” social order. As such, she argues that misogyny is ultimately about policing women's behavior, specifically by directly punishing those “bad” women who challenge patriarchy by violating its norms, beliefs, and power relations and indirectly by rewarding those “good” women who conform to it. Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach

  PublisherDOI

• Moral Gaslighting

  Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume · 2023 · 26 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Epistemology
  • Psychology

  Abstract Philosophers have turned their attention to gaslighting only recently, and have made considerable progress in analysing its characteristic aims and harms. I am less convinced, however, that we have fully understood its nature. I will argue in this paper that philosophers and others interested in the phenomenon have largely overlooked a phenomenon I call moral gaslighting, in which someone is made to feel morally defective—for example, cruelly unforgiving or overly suspicious—for harbouring some mental state to which she is entitled. If I am right about this possibility, and that it deserves to be called gaslighting, then gaslighting is a far more prevalent and everyday phenomenon than has previously been credited. And it can also be a purely structural phenomenon, as well as an interpersonal one, which remains a controversial possibility in the current literature.

  PublisherDOI

• Origin, Impact, and Reaction to Misogynistic Behaviors

  Stance An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal · 2021-04-06

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Kate A. Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, where she has been teaching since 2013. Before that, she was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows (2011–2013), did her graduate work at MIT (2006–2011), and was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne (2001–2005), where she studied philosophy, logic, and computer science. Her current research is primarily in moral, feminist, and social philosophy. She is the author of two books, including her first book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and her latest book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. Manne has also published a number of scholarly papers about the foundations of morality, and she regularly writes opinion pieces, essays, and reviews in venues—including The New York Times, The Boston Review, the Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

  2020 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Political Science

  "An urgent exploration of men's entitlement and how it serves to police and punish women, from the acclaimed author of Down Girl, which Rebecca Traister called "jaw-droppingly brilliant." In this bold and stylish critique, Cornell philosopher Kate Manne offers a radical new framework for understanding misogyny. Ranging widely across the culture, from the Kavanaugh hearings and "Cat Person" to Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Warren, Manne shows how privileged men's sense of entitlement--to sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, medical care, bodily autonomy, knowledge, and power--is a pervasive social problem with often devastating consequences. In clear, lucid prose, she argues that male entitlement can explain a wide array of phenomena, from mansplaining and the undertreatment of women's pain to mass shootings by incels and the seemingly intractable notion that women are "unelectable." Moreover, Manne implicates each of us in toxic masculinity: It's not just a product of a few bad actors; it's something we all perpetuate, conditioned as we are by the social and cultural currents of our time. The only way to combat it, she says, is to expose the flaws in our default modes of thought, while enabling women to take up space, say their piece, and muster resistance to the entitled attitudes of the men around them. With wit and intellectual fierceness, Manne sheds new light on gender and power and offers a vision of a world in which women are just as entitled as men to our collective care and concern"--

• Replies to Commentators

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Art history
  PublisherDOI

• <i>Down Girl</i> Précis

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2020-07-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Melancholy Whiteness (or, Shame‐Faced in Shadows)

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2018-01-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ameliorating Misogyny

  2017-11-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract According to the positive “ameliorative” analysis of misogyny developed in this chapter, misogyny is primarily a property of social environments in which girls and women are prone to face hostility because of the enforcement and policing of patriarchal norms and expectations—e.g., insofar as they are deemed guilty of violating patriarchal law and order. Alternatively, women may be singled out and treated as representative targets, as Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke indicate. Because misogyny functions to uphold or reinstate male dominance, we would hence expect misogyny’s primary targets to be certain kinds of women: those who challenge or disrupt existing gender hierarchies. But virtually any woman is potentially the target of misogynist aggression. Since any woman can typically stand in imaginatively for a whole host of others, they may serve as an outlet for many different grudges. Expressions of frustration, protest, lashing out, and “punching down” behavior are further possibilities.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2017-11-22

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Considers three cases in which we not only need to name a problem to do justice to girls and women, but in which male dominance is actively tied to blocking and preempting the term’s usage, or rewriting her mind to engineer agreement (known as “gaslighting”). Introduces the practices of silencing—in particular, “testimonial smothering”—theorized by the philosopher Kristie Dotson as a way of understanding what is at stake in analyzing terms such as “strangulation” versus “choking,” “rape,” and, it is subsequently argued, “misogyny.” Clarifies the book’s aims, methods, limitations, and notable omissions. Goes on to introduce a way of thinking about the logic of misogyny in functional terms—and hence, in this case, political ones. On the ensuing account, misogyny is a system that serves to enforce and police gendered norms and expectations to which groups of girls and women are subject under historically patriarchal orders, given the intersection between patriarchal forces with other systemic forms of domination and disadvantage, oppression and vulnerability.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brianna Lopez

  Johns Hopkins Medicine

  1 shared

• David Sobel

  Syracuse University

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Book of the Year by Carrie Tirado Bramen for Times Higher Ed…
• included among the Dozen Most Memorable Books of 2017 by Car…
• Five Best Books on Cruelty and Evil by Paul Bloom for Five B…
• Big Summer Reads for 2018 by Kerri Miller (MPR News)
• award for ‘Down Girl’ (unspecified)