Naming the Rot: Kate Manne Exposes the Lies Holding Up the Patriarchy

Gaslit Nation

Trump, Politics, Left, Democracy, Resistance, News, Society & Culture, Progressive, Liberal, Kendzior, Chalupa, Resist

4.8 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Courage often starts with saying the obvious out loud, unapologetically. Philosopher and author Kate Manne brings that rare, dangerous clarity, taking on the everyday cruelties of structural misogyny and the moral contortions America performs to pretend everything’s fine.

Manne, author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, and Unshrinking: How to Face Fat Phobia, challenges how we understand injustice. It’s not just “out there.” It’s built into our systems, our norms, even our language.

We don’t need to wait for sweeping reforms to act with integrity. Real change begins with small, daily acts of moral attention. What do we excuse? Whose pain do we ignore? What stories do we let slide by unchallenged?

Misogyny, Manne argues, isn’t just about hatred; it’s a control system. A mechanism of the patriarchy designed to punish women who won’t conform.

In Manne’s hands, philosophy isn’t abstract; it’s a wrecking ball. A tool for exposing rot and naming the machinery of oppression. Her message is clear: transformation begins with how we think, how we speak, and how we show up, for ourselves and for each other.

That’s the real work of justice. And it belongs to all of us.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker,
0:26.2	and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
0:33.7	The film The Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it.
0:36.7	We are joined this week by the iconic Kate Mann, a philosopher who teaches at Cornell University's Sage School of Philosophy. Her books include Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny, entitled How Male Privilege Hurts Women and her most recent, unshrinking,
0:58.0	How to Face Fatphobia. It was a National Book Award finalist. Congratulations, Kate.
1:04.1	Thank you. Welcome to Gaslit Nation, Kate Mann. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a
1:09.2	delight to be here. So we are speaking in the spring of
1:13.7	2025 in a country with a serial predator and a convicted felon in the White House. And I'm speaking to
1:21.9	you as the mother of two little girls. And I've seen all sorts of aggressive behavior on the playground, especially
1:28.7	by boys towards my daughters. And it's just a horrifying time to be a woman in America, a historically
1:35.8	misogynistic country that we now know. And I'm speaking, obviously, in a time capsule to future
1:41.7	historians who are looking back on us and piecing together,
1:45.1	like how the Roman Empire of today, America, we had a chance to elect two overly qualified,
1:51.7	overly prepared, as the Czech Todd Industrial Complex called them, women as President of the
1:57.1	United States. And instead, we went for the Russian asset trader, serial accused
2:01.7	rapist, let's just say. And so this is where we are in this dangerous crossroads in history.
2:07.6	How are you feeling being an expert writing about this, researching this world? How are you
2:13.7	staying sane and grounded in this climate? And do you see things like in terms of how
2:19.8	we got here and where we're headed? Yeah, it is a really tough question to answer because I, to be
2:26.8	honest, have felt really depressed to see this play out all over again. I mean, it's the most
2:33.1	obvious thing in the world, but
2:34.7	waking up every morning to the knowledge that, I mean, not just accused, I think legally
	...

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