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The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller:

“For the person who, as a child, had to hide her true feelings from herself and others, this first step into the open (Expressing her truth) Produces much anxiety, yet she feels a great need to throw over her former restraints. The first experiences do not always lead to freedom but quite often lead instead to a repetition of the person’s childhood situation, in which she will experience feelings of agonizing shale and painful nakedness as an accompaniment to her genuine expressions of her true self. With the infallibility of a sleepwalker, she will seek out those who, like her parents (Though for different reasons), certainly cannot understand her. Because of her blindness caused by repression, she will try to make herself understandable to precisely these people — trying to make possible what cannot be.”

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The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller:

“It is very fortunate when our older children become aware of what we were doing and are able to tell us about it. We are then given the opportunity to recognize our failures and to apologize. Acknowledging what we have done may help them, at last, to throw off the chains of neglect, discrimination, scorn and misuse of power that have been handed on for generations. When our children can consciously experience their early helplessness and rage, they will no longer need to ward off these feelings, in turn, with the exercise of power over others.”

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The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller:

“Disrespect is the weapon one the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings, which could trigger memories of events in one’s repressed history. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and covert exercise of power over the child by the adult.”

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The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller:

“The grown son will idealize his mother, since every human being needs the feeling (And clings to the illusion) That he was really loved; but he will despise other women, upon whom he can take his revenge in place of his mother. ANd the humiliated grown daughter, if she has no other means of ridding herself of her burden, will revenge herself upon her own children.”

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The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller:

“The child must adapt to ensure the illusion of love, care, and kindness, but the adult does not need this illusion to survive. She can give up her amnesia and then be in a position to determine her actions with open eyes. Only this path will free her from her depression. Both the depressive and the grandiose person completely deny their childhood reality by living as though the availability of the parents could still be salvaged: the grandiose person through the illusion of achievement, and the depressive person through her constant fear of losing ‘love.’ Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact.”

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Kızarmış Palamutun Kokusu, Engin Geçtan:

“Bu şehrin bir yerlerinde akrabalarım yaşıyor olmalı, bazılarıyla on iki yıl önce ailemin cenazesine geldiğimde karşılaşmıştım, belleğimde iz bırakmaksızın bir kez daha geçmişe gömüldüler. O gelişimde Fenerbahçe’ye gidip, çocukluğumun geçtiği bahçeli evin yerine babamın ölmeden önce yaptırdığı sevimsiz apartmanla ilgilenmem gerekmişti. Kendi tarihime kendim sırt çevirdiğim için, tarihimin yok edilmiş olmasına isyan etmeye hakkım olmamalıydı, ama bunu başaramadım. Sonradan anladım ki bana göre, sırt çevirme hakkı yalnızca bana ait olmalıydı, tarihim bulunduğu yerde beni beklemeliydi, dönsem de dönmesem de. Wong’un dükkanında yaşadıklarımdan sonra zaman zaman zihnime uğrayıp giden sorular beni rahatsız eder olmuştu. Geçmişin kaydını siler gibi yapıp yeni ve beyaz bir sayfa açabileceğime inanmamın bir yanılgı olup olmadığını kendime ilk kez soruyordum. Willy’nin, köklerime dönmenin mutluluğuyla ilgili sözleri belki bunun için beni rahatsız etmişti. Çünkü yaşadığım şey, tekrar kavuşmanın mutluluğu değil, yadsımaya çalışmış olduğum geçmişime karşı duyduğum suçluluktu.” (17)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“It makes sense that we would see symptoms of deprivation mindset in this regard following the advent of feminist social progress in supposedly post-patriarchal settings. When demand for her attention exceeds supply on a grand scale, it is not surprising to find practices of men trying to turn the heads of women previously unknown to them — via catcalling and wolf-whistling and various forms of online trolling (from the patently abusive to ostensibly reasonable demands for rational debate, which unfortunately sometimes result in her being belittled, insulted, or mansplained to). In public settings, she is told to smile or asked what she’s thinking by many a (male) stranger — especially when she appears to be ‘deep inside her own head’ or ‘off in her own little world,’ i.e., appearing to think her own thoughts, her attention inwardly, rather than outwardly, focused. These gestures are then supposed to either make her look, or else force her to stonewall — a withholding, rather than sheer absence, of reaction. So her silence is icy; her neutral expression, sullen. Her not looking is snubbing; her passivity, aggression. 

But an ice queen, a bitch, a temptress — or an angel, for that matter — each has something in common: they are human, all too human, female characters.” (176)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“On my analysis, misogyny’s primary function and constitutive manifestation is the punishment of ‘bad’ women, and policing of women’s behavior. But systems of punishment and reward — and conviction and exoneration — tend to work together, holistically. So, the overall structure features of the account predict that misogyny as I’ve analyzed it is likely to work alongside other systems and mechanisms to enforce gender conformity. And a little reflection on current social realities encourages pursuing this line of thinking, which would take the hostility women face to be the pointy, protruding tip of a larger patriarchal iceberg. We should also be concerned with the rewarding and valorizing of women who conform to gendered norms and expectations, enforce the ‘good’ behavior of others, and engage in certain common forms of patriarchal virtue-signaling — by, for example, participating in slut-shaming, victim-blaming, or the Internet analog of witch-burning practices. Another locus of concern is the punishment and policing of men who flout the norms of masculinity — a point that is fairly well-recognized and, up to a point, well-taken. Least widely discussed by far are the positive and exonerating attitudes and practices of which the men who dominate women tend to be the beneficiaries.” (192-3)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“[W]hen it comes to recognizing someone as a fellow human being, the characteristic human capacities that you share don’t just make her relatable; they make her potentially dangerous and threatening in ways only a human being can be — at least relative to our own, distinctively human sensibilities. She may, for example, threaten to undermine you.

What flows from this? [...] The capacity for empathy and the associated tendency to form altruistic dispositions can still be allowed to hold. But these dispositions will have to compete with, and may arguably be canceled by, the dispositions associated with various hostile stances. For example: the stance toward one’s purported enemies, which comes with a disposition to try to destroy them; the stance toward one’s seeming rivals, which comes with a disposition to try to defeat them; the stance toward one’s recent usurpers, which comes with a disposition to try to turn the tables — that is, to undermine and again surpass them; the stance toward those perceived as insubordinate, which comes with a disposition to try to put them in their place again; and the stance toward someone perceived as a traitor, which comes with a disposition to try to punish them for desertion. Many of these number among misogyny’s most characteristic maneuvers, tellingly.” (148-9)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“...to stave off the shaming gaze of the elite liberal insider, who espouses antiracism, feminism, and other forms of that most hated of credos, political correctness. (Lock her up. Contain her. Sever the sightlines. Prevent her ascendency.)

So-called political correctness — I was immediately inclined to say. And so, for that very reason, you can see something of what may have been incensing Trump’s supporters, once ignited. Our acts are acts of political correction. They often commit us, whether we like it or not, to taking the moral high ground, however uncomfortably. We can talk about loving the sinner and hating the sin. But how do we love those who hate us so badly?

I found it hard to know what to say to the Trump supporter during the lead-up to his election — the people Clinton held were either to be pitied or lumped into the ‘basket of deplorables,’ their being ‘irredeemable.’ (This being an impolitic moment on her part, for which she later apologized.) The implication was that she looked down on all of them. That seemed to many, me included, to be clearly the wrong stance. But what would be the right one? [...]

Whatever the case, those whose racism and misogyny we take it on ourselves to denounce can hardly be counted on to thank us for a moral epiphany that never arrives. And they will often become defensive, resentful, and more entrenched in their attitudes than ever — and wind up caught between feeling shame-faced and silenced. Of course, as I’ve just shown, there are some escape valves. (127)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“[I]f patriarchy is anything here and now, that is, in cultures such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, I believe it consists largely (though by no means exclusively) in this uneven, gendered economy of giving and taking moral-cum-social goods and services. 

Consider then that the flipside of an entitlement is, in general, an obligation: something he is owed by someone. So, if a man does indeed have this illicit sense of entitlement vis-à-vis women, he will be prone to hold women to false or spurious obligations. And he may also be prone to regard a woman’s asking for the sorts of goods she’s supposed to provide him with as an outrage, or a disgrace. This would be analogous to the waitress asking for service from her customer, after having failed to take his order. Not only is it a role reversal, but it’s likely to prompt a ‘who does she think she is?’ kind of sentiment: at first resentful, then scandalized, if she doesn’t respond to feedback by looking duly chastened and ‘lifting her game,’ so to speak. There’s something especially vexing about someone who is shameless not only in shirking their responsibilities, but who appears blithe and unapologetic when they effectively turn the tables. They’re not only failing to do their job; they’re demanding that others return the non-favor --- or asking them to do their job for them. They’re feckless, careless, irresponsible, and so on.” (107)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“For even as people become less sexist --- that is, less skeptical about women’s intellectual acumen or leadership abilities, and less inclined to buy into pernicious gendered stereotypes about women’s being overly emotional or irrational --- this does not mean that feminism’s work is done. On the contrary, misogyny that was latent or lay dormant within a culture may manifest itself when women’s capabilities become more salient and hence demoralizing or threatening. And this may result in more or less subtle forms of lashing out, moralism, wishful thinking, willful denial, as well as the kind of low-grade resentment that festers and alights on effigies and scapegoats.

Women are sometimes told they need to be twice as good as men, all else being equal, in order to be just as respected, successful, admired, and so on. Whether or not this is in fact necessary, given whatever kinds of sexism may or may not be in play, it is certainly not sufficient. And, sometimes, it’s not even clear what would be. Such excellence in a woman may have the opposite effect on some people, resulting in her being a polarizing figure. In other words, women may be penalized for being too qualified, too competent. People may be ‘taken aback,’ and unwittingly engage in post hoc rationalization to make sense of their inchoate feelings of suspicion or consternation.” (101-2)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“There’s a common assumption on the left that the right seeks to punish women for having sex outside of marriage --- and that abortion is therefore largely a matter of policing women’s bodies and controlling their sexuality. Doubtless these motives are part of the murky mix. But if that was all there was to it, then why prohibit access to abortion for women who were the victims of rape and incest? Yet this remains a commonly endorsed prohibition. According to a recent Gallup poll, almost one in five Americans said in 2016 that abortion should be illegal under any circumstances, which would rule out even ‘life of mother’ exceptions. So it is hard to credit the idea that this is about saving lives either. Yet, if it was about preventing abortions as such (the thought being that letting one or two persons die is better than murdering a fetus or even an embryo), then why not do everything in one’s power to make available those many --- and often cheap --- forms of contraception that demonstrably do not allow fertilization to occur? But this is manifestly not happening, as we see in the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014).

So there’s a puzzle: what are women held to be guilty of doing or being?

Withholding and failing to give, I think; being cold, callous, and heartless; neglecting their natural duty to provide safe haven and nurture, by evicting a vulnerable being from their rightful home, their birthright. Hence women who seek abortions, even to save their own lives, are a blank canvas on which to project a set of grievances borne of unmet felt needs in turn borne of a sense of entitlement.” (99)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“Misogyny attempts to force women back into it [”their place”], or to punish them for desertion. Alternatively, it may punish women for taking men’s place, or trying to. It does so via hostile treatment enacted by individual agents as well as collective or group activity, and purely structural mechanisms. It comes in a range of flavors, from sheer nastiness and aggression to pointed indifference and stony silence, among other possibilities. For the prospect of hostility of any such kind can be an effective deterrent in being aversive to human beings, in view of our social nature. People in general, and arguably women in particular (in often being socialized to be particularly agreeable), do not want to lose others’ respect or approval or to be shunned, shamed or excluded. We may also need other people’s help, cooperation, and protection in the future. So the prospect of widespread hostility can be an especially effective deterrent to women who might otherwise engage in bad (or, rather, “bad”) gendered behavior, or alternatively fail to provide certain feminine-coded goods and services.” (84)

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Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne:

“[S]exist ideology will tend to discriminate between men and women, typically by alleging sex differences beyond what is known or could be known, and sometimes counter to our best current scientific evidence. Misogyny will typically differentiate between good women and bad ones, and punishes the latter. Overall, sexism and misogyny share a common purpose --- to maintain or restore a patriarchal social order. But sexism purports to merely be being reasonable; misogyny gets nasty and tries to force the issue. Sexism is hence to bad science as misogyny is to moralism. Sexism wears a lab coat; misogyny goes on witch hunts.” (79-80)

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How Should A Person Be?, Sheila Heti:

“I stood up from my table and saw through the window the night sky and its stars. I went out from my room and left through the front door and went into the street. I looked up at the sky. There were all those stars with nothing around them, protecting them. They were up there and I was down here. And into my head came the idea of fences; how when you have something you value, the next thing you have to do is build a fence around it. As it was said, Tithes are a fence for wealth. Vows are a fence for abstinence. Silence is a fence for wisdom. These fences do not protect what we value from other people, like those fences that prevent things from being stolen away. These are fences against our own selves, against what in our selves can chase what we value away.

I told myself, Catalogue what you value, then put a fence around these things. Once you have put a fence around something, you know it is something you value. Put a fence around what you want to make holy, and crown it with the seventh day. Crown it with rest. The fence and the rest make it holy.

I did value Margaux, but only now, thinking about fences, did I understand something I had not before: Margaux was not like the stars in the sky. There was only one Margaux --- not Margauxs scattered everywhere, all throughout the darkness. If there was only one Margaux, then there was not going to be a second one. Yet in some strange way, somewhere inside me, I’d always believed that if I lost Margaux, I could go out and find the next Margaux. 

Now it seemed so horrible to me. And didn’t it explain everything? But I had never wanted to be one person, or even believed that I was one, so I had never considered the true singularity of anyone else.

I said to myself: You are only given one. The one you are given is the one to put a fence around. Life is not a harvest. Just because you have an apple doesn’t mean you have an orchard.

You have an apple. Put a fence around it.

Once you have put a fence around everything you cherish, then you have the total circle of your heart.” (259-60)

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How Should A Person Be?, Sheila Heti:

“SHEILA THROWS HER SHIT

Now it was time to write. I went straight into my studio and thought about everything I had, all the trash and the shit inside me. And I started throwing that trash and throwing that shit, and the castle started to emerge.

I had never wanted to uncover all the molecules of shit that were such a part of my deepest being, which once released would smell, forever, of the shit that I was, and which nothing --- not even exile --- could ever make disappear. But I threw the shit and the trash and the sand, and for years and years just threw it. And I began to light up my soul with scenes. 

I made what I could with what I had. And I finally became a real girl.” (251)