Conceptualizing misogyny as affect and emotion

Abstract

This article argues for a concept of misogyny as socially produced negative affects and emotions mobilized towards women that normalize not only hierarchical binary relations between men and women but also hierarchical relations between men. The article draws upon Samantha Wrisley's critique of Kate Manne's influential definition of misogyny as a patriarchal enforcement mechanism. Manne dismisses as naïve the commonplace definition of misogyny as hatred of women because, she claims, it focuses on individual psychology. However, sociological analysis of affect and emotion does not require concern with the individual psyche. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work on racist affects and emotions, this article argues that misogynist affects and emotions produce masculine subjects in opposition to feminine subjects and a masculine hierarchy that ranks men according to their ability to dominate women and resist their wiles. Misogynist affects and emotions may be directed at anything or anyone coded feminine, not only at women who challenge patriarchal privilege. As illustrative examples of how misogynist texts produce male supremacist subjects and social hierarchies, this article analyses two texts by mainstream public figures: JD Vance's infamous ‘childless cat lady’ comments, and Jeremy Clarkson's call for Meghan, Duchess of Sussex to be paraded naked through British streets and pelted with excrement. The article also analyses texts by prominent manosphere figures Paul Elam and Andrew Tate. In line with Wrisley's suggestion that misogyny implicates an amalgam of emotions, this analysis shows how misogyny combines contempt, fear and desire. Furthermore, anxiety about falling for women's wiles and contempt for men who do so proved an equally important theme. Thus, these texts show how media, political leaders and influencers propagate misogynist affects and emotions that normalize hierarchical relationships between men and women, and between men.