🤦‍♂️#7: Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne - Book Summary & Key Takeaways

Hello courageous people and welcome to the seventh edition of the newsletter! ❤️🙏

This week, our featured book is in honour of International Women’s Day. (#IWD2022 #BreakThe Bias) 📚 It is Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne.

I think I say this every single week, but there was a lot in this and I have been extremely challenged in writing this summary so that it is approachable and digestible and most importantly, doesn’t alienate our male allies from reading.

So let’s jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.

❤️ A Special Note To Our Male Readers and Allies

By nature of being here and reading this, you are an ally. I need you to hear this and take it on board before reading on:

This is not an attack. This is not an implication that it is your fault or that you are individually responsible for causing the pain and challenges that we as women experience from these issues on a daily basis.

I know you are part of the solution and are willing to do the work.

This will be likely be a confronting and uncomfortable read. What I want you to remember, is that even more uncomfortable than reading these home truths is to live with them every day. I ask you to get a cup of coffee, take the ten minutes to read this in full and then decide what actions you are going to take to #BreakTheBias.

Thank you for being here. Onwards and upwards together! 🙌

What are we really talking about when we say Misogyny?

In the first chapter, Manne covers off this key question:

🙋‍♂️ What are the different ways in which Misogyny and Men’s Entitlement is expressed?

Each chapter focuses on a different areas in which men currently have priority of entitlement, including:

• 😍 Admiration

• 🛏 Sex

• ✅ Consent

• 💊 Medical Care

• 💪 Bodily Control

• 🧹 Domestic Labour

• 🧠 Knowledge

• 👨‍⚖️ Power

Each section that follows is an attempt to ensure these particular categories of misogyny and our experiences of them in our everyday lives are not denied and are not minimized.

The only way forward to is to recognise, resist and reform.

💊 Are women taken less seriously when we say we are in pain?

Unfortunately, yes. Here are some staggering statistics to start off:

• When the type and amount of pain medications women vs men received following abdominal surgery and coronary artery bypass grafts (where your breastbone is cut in half to access the heart 😱), men received more pain medication than women.

• In another study at a pain clinic, women were routinely prescribed different categories (like tranquilisers and antidepressants) of pharmaceuticals in lesser quantities than were men.

• Even in children, young boys were significantly more likely to be given codeine (stronger) where young girls were prescribed acetominophen which is available over the counter (similar to Panadol in Australia).

😫 What can we gather from this? That women are taken less seriously when they say they are in physical pain, and often described as being “hysterical and emotional”.

[If you want further proof, watch this video where Anthony Padilla spends the day with people who suffer from Endometriosis, featuring my friend Morgahna Godwin who unfortunately has enough experience with this to fill a book 😔]

💆‍♂️ Men, on the other hand when they say they are in pain, are extended the luxury of being taken at their word. That they must indeed be in pain, if they say they are.

💊 Takeaways:

• If a young girl or a woman says that they are in pain, believe them.

• Advocate for girls and women in medical settings to be taken seriously, escalating up the chain if adequate care is not being given.

🧑‍⚕️ How does gender bias appear in Medical Research, and how does that affect diagnoses and treatment for women?

Men have been the dominant subjects of almost every type of medical research.

Why? Because people who menstruate and have hormonal fluctuations over the course of the month us far too complicated to include in studies because we “ruin and skew” the results.

It is ongoingly assumed that men are the “default humans”, and that apart from our reproductive systems and average body size we are the same. And while the latter is true in a sense, there are some very real and very dangerous ramifications of this:

What this meant in practice, was that women who fell in the window of 130-149 milliseconds were missing out on CRT-D devices, which could decrease heart failure and risk of death by 75%. 

All because the research was standardised to mens’ bodies. Unfortunately this is just one example of a very long laundry list of similar occurrences in the medical field.

🧑‍⚕️Takeaways:

• Seek out health professionals who have a women’s specific focus, who are up to date with the latest research and limitations.

• Collectively, we need to advocate for and lobby for increased funding to correct for the gender bias in medical research.

💪 How does the regulation of women’s bodies indicate the levels of misogyny in our society?

When we are talking about the regulation of women’s bodies, at the fore of this is the decision making and laws around abortion:

In Australia, abortion was only just decriminalised in South Australia in 2021 🤯. Women suffer at the hands of these laws while men get off scot-free.

Case in point:

💪 Takeaways:

• Stop policing women’s bodies, or start policing men’s to the same extent.

🛏 We need to talk about Men’s Entitlement to Sex (and their Futures)

We are still suffering from a historical hangover in this particular arena. In 1736, judge Sir Matthew Hale pronounced:

“A husband cannot be guilty of rape upon his wife for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind to her husband which she cannot retract.”

Women have been fighting to get their rights back ever since. For example, in California to this day there are separate criminal offences for spousal vs non-spousal rape. Under the law, “Having sex with one's spouse without their consent is not recognized as a crime”, with a few wordy caveats.

Oftentimes, where an accusation is made and criminal proceedings are pursued by the victim of sexual assault, favour flows in a landslide towards the word of male perpetrator rather than the female victim, based off centuries of male entitlement, and supporting systems and laws.

🛏 Takeaways:

• Historically, men have been entitled to sex and we are still experiencing the painful fallout from this.

• We need legal reform, and to believe survivors and victims.

🥺 What is Himpathy?

It is too often considered unconscionable that a man would have to respond to serious, credible accusations of sexual assault. Think back over recent years to Brett Kavanaugh (now a Supreme Court Judge) in the USA and Christian Porter (previous Attorney-General) in Australia.

In the case of Brock Turner—aka the Stanford Sexual Assault Case, also featured in Edition #1 of the newsletter—Judge Persky was extremely concerned that a lengthy sentence would have a “severe impact” on his future and sentenced him to only six months, of which he served three.

The real question is, what about the woman he victimized? What about the other people he may victimize going forward?

Why does his future (🙄) get the highest priority in this equation? Especially given the nature of this case, where there were two credible witnesses to the assault and a mountain of physical evidence.

🥺 Takeaways:

• Stop engaging in Himpathy.

• Call out Himpathy when we hear it in conversation or see it in the media.

🧹 Is parity of domestic labour moving in the right direction?

In short—no. Men’s contributions in the domestic labour department have been shown to have stagnated over the past twenty years, while there was an increase just prior to that.

An Oxfam report in 2018 stated that on average, women undertake twice as much unpaid care work as men, valued at $10 trillion annually.

At our current rate of improvement, it is forecasted to take another 75 to 200 years before domestic parity is reached.

Men also have been shown to overreport their contributions, often with the “fun” part of parenting—aka playing with the kids—becoming included into their allocated hours of “domestic labor”.

Parts of this domestic labour also includes emotional labour, aka the anticipatory work, schedule keeping and making appointments. Manne notes that on top of this emotional labour also sits the management of feelings around these tasks:

🧹 Takeaways:

• If this is a struggle in your household, I would encourage you to read Chapter 7 of the book, pages 119 - 136.

🧠 Let’s talk about Male Entitlement to Knowledge.

I know I, like every other woman, have found myself in the situation many times before where a man has assumed he is the expert on a subject which I was more qualified to be speaking on, yet I ended up on the receiving end of his knowledge download.

This experience was referred to beautifully in the book, describing a woman in these situations as:

This particular expression of misogyny is perhaps one of the most frequently seen and most tolerated in our society. We need our male allies to pull themselves up on this behaviour as well as calling it out when demonstrated by others.

🧠 Takeaways:

• If you are a man entering a conversation with a woman whom you have never met before - check yourself. Actively remind yourself that she may know more than you.

• Men, repeat after me: “A woman is not an empty vessel to be filled with your wisdom and knowledge.”

• Call out this behaviour when you see it.

🤔 Is Entitlement a bad thing?

No! It really isn’t.

The problem is not the Entitlement itself, the problem is that men get to enjoy and assert their Entitlement in many more settings, to a much higher degree than do women at the moment.

Unfortunately it still needs to be asserted to the highest degree that as women:

💥We are entitled to feel physical pain.

😩We are entitled to feel emotional pain.

💊We are entitled to receive the appropriate care, nurturing and soothing for that pain.

💪We are entitled to be believed.

✋We are entitled to our bodily autonomy—to when, where and how people touch us.

🙅‍♀️We are entitled to say “no”.

👶We are entitled to full control over our reproductive capacities.

🤰We are entitled to decide whether or not we want to bear children.

🎤We are entitled to advise society where it has been going wrong.

🧹We are entitled to support from our partners in fulfilling life’s responsibilities.

👩‍💼We are entitled to be ambitious.

👓We are entitled to be elected to office.

🧠We are entitled to know things and feel comfortable and confident explaining them to others, especially men.

🙋🏻‍♀️We are entitled to take up space.

💃We are entitled to be loud.

💜We are entitled to the full spectrum of expressing our sexuality.

👊We are entitled to not change or tailor our reality to make someone else feel more comfortable.

🙌We are entitled to compete with men and win or outrank them.

👩‍⚖️We are entitled to positions of power and authority. 

Finally, I will leave you with this quote:

I hope this has been helpful to you! As always, I am here for you and am happy to provide a willing ear if you have any thoughts or reflections bubbling up after reading.

Until next week,❤️🙏 Eleanor

This is a public post. If it has been useful to you, why not share it with a loved one - especially a man in honour of #IWD2022! 🤗

Additional links and resources:

If you are struggling, please reach out to a support service or professional:🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services

🖥 Kate Manne’s Website with interviews and other resources

🐥 Twitter - Follow Kate Manne - 55k followers

Next week’s book:

Coming out next Friday 18th March 2022 is edition #8, featuring:📚 It Didn’t Start With You🖋 by Mark Wolynn

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