when it comes to misogyny, we can focus on the hostility women face in navigating the social world, rather than the hostility men (in the first instance) may or may not feel in their encounters with certain women—as a matter of deep psychological explanation, or indeed whatsoever.

So women’s indifference becomes aversion; ignorance becomes ignoring; testimony becomes tattling; and asking becomes extortion.

sexism should be understood primarily as the “justificatory” branch of a patriarchal order, which consists in ideology that has the overall function of rationalizing and justifying patriarchal social relations.

She is not allowed to be in the same ways as he is. She will tend to be in trouble when she does not give enough, or to the right people, in the right way, or in the right spirit. And, if she errs on this score, or asks for something of the same support or attention on her own behalf, there is a risk of misogynist resentment, punishment, and

We should also be concerned with the rewarding and valorizing of women who conform to gendered norms and expectations, in being (e.g.) loving mothers, attentive wives, loyal secretaries, “cool” girlfriends, or good waitresses. Another locus of concern should be the punishment and policing of men who flout the norms of masculinity—a point that is

misogyny is primarily a property of social systems or environments as a whole, in which women will tend to face hostility of various kinds because they are women in a man’s world (i.e., a patriarchy), who are held to be failing to live up to patriarchal standards (i.e., tenets of patriarchal ideology that have some purchase in this environment).

misogyny’s essence lies in its social function, not its psychological nature.

All in all, I have tried in writing this book to let myself look long, hard, and awkwardly, sometimes from uncomfortable angles, and quite often painfully, in what felt like all the wrong places, in the wrong ways, at the wrong times, in the wrong order.

In many ways, this seems to be misogyny’s characteristic sentiment. It is punitive, resentful, and personal, but not particular. And the psychological targets of such attitudes may little resemble the actual victims.