ENTITLED BY KATE MANNE
2025-01-07
(IMG) Book cover: Entitled by Kate Manne. Subtitle: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. Shows a picture of two playing cards; the King of Diamonds sits atop, mostly-covering the Queen of Hearts beneath.
I just finished reading Kate Manne's Entitled. I can't remember where I first
heard about it or why I opted to buy a copy, but it had been sitting in my
to-read pile for a while and so I picked it up last month to read over the
festive period.
The book takes a pop-sci dive into research around male entitlement and the
near-universal influence of patriarchal ideology. It's an often bleak and
sometimes uncomfortable read: Kate Manne draws a line connecting the most
egregious and widely-reported abuses of power by men to much-more-commonplace
"everyday" offences, many of which are routinely overlooked or dismissed. The
examples she provides are a sad reminder of quite how deeply-embedded into our
collective subconscious (regardless of our genders) are our ideas of gender
roles and expectations.
It's feels somewhat chastening to see oneself in some of those examples,
whether by my own assumed entitlement or merely by complicity with problematic
social norms. We've doubtless all done it, at some point or another, though,
and we don't make progress towards a better world by feeling sorry for
ourselves. By half way through the book I was looking for action points that
never came; instead, the author (eventually) lays out what she's doing and
leaves the reader to make their own decisions.
The vast majority of the book is pretty bleak, and it takes until the final
chapter before it reaches anything approximating hope (although the author
refrains from classifying it as such), using Manne's then-imminent parenthood
as a vehicle. She finishes by talking about the lessons she hopes to impart to
her daughter about how to thrive in this world, which seems less-optimistic
than discussing, perhaps, how to improve the world for everybody, but is still
the closest thing it delivers to answering "what can we do about this?".
But I suppose that's the message in this book: male entitlement is a product
of our endemic patriarchy and, try as we might, it's not going away any time
soon. Instead, we should be picking our battles: producing a generation of
women and girls who are better-equipped to understand and demand their moral
rights and of men and boys who try to work against, rather than exploit, the
unfair advantages they're afforded at the expense of other genders.
That I'd hoped to come to the end of the book with a more feel-good outlook
betrays the fact that I'd like there to be some kind of magical quick fix to a
problem that I've certainly helped perpetuate. There isn't, and that's a let
down after the book's uncomfortable ride (not a let down on the part of the
book, of course: a let down on the part of the world). The sadness that comes
from reading it is magnified by the fact that since its publication in 2020,
many parts of the Western world and especially Manne's own USA have gotten
worse, not better, at tackling the issue of male entitlement.
But wishful thinking doesn't dismantle the patriarchy, and I was pleased to
get to the back cover with a slightly sharper focus on the small areas in
which I might be able to help fight for a better future. A good read, so long
as you can tolerate the discomfort that may come from casting a critical lens
over a society that you've been part of (arguably it could be
even-more-important if you can't tolerate such a discomfort, but that's
another story).
(In 2025 I'm going to try blogging about the books I read, in addition to
whatever else I write about. Expect an eclectic mix of fiction and
non-fiction, probably with a few lapses where I forget to write about
something until well after I'm deep into what follows it and then forget to
say anything about it ever.)
LINKS
(HTM) Kate Manne