And those cases make it really stark. At certain times, men get away with rape and murder with complete impunity. And then there are other cases I look at that suggest that even men who are much lower down the class hierarchy are also subject to some of the same privileges. So in the case of Randy Vanett, whom I looked at, he is very much a working-class white man who admitted to rape: he admitted to having sex with his sometime girlfriend while she was unconscious.
So I think those kinds of cases show that some of the same privileges do attend men who are not as powerful in those other dimensions. But the simplest cases are certainly ones where you have class, race, and gender privilege all working in tandem. You dedicate the book to your daughter, and end with things that she should know about privilege.
How would your book have been different had you had a son? I think about that a lot. It can be done, because it is done all the time.
And I wish I knew the answer to that question, and how to go about it. But I am looking forward to learning more from parents of boys who are thinking really hard about that question. Yes, as we were saying, convincing people that they are born with privileges, and that they need to be aware of them and try to make it so their privileges extend to more people, is hard because there is such an unwillingness to think of yourself in that way.
Are those two different visions? I tend to think sometimes that we have a pretty direct choice about who to sympathize with more in a scenario. Do we sympathize with a male rapist for the loss of his bright future or do we sympathize more with his victims?
Well, I think often sympathy—and more so empathy—involves looking at a situation from a certain perspective, and, to put it metaphorically, we only have one set of eyes. So looking at it from his perspective, the loss of his bright future, effectively renders us insensitive to the question of, well, what was it like for her in that scenario as his victim? And going through the process of reporting it and having a rape kit taken and using testimony.
It reorients us from the default perspective, which was that of her rapist, Brock Turner , to her perspective, which is really powerful as well as fair and poignant.
It really is a more radical thing—thinking about what she went through and prioritizing her as a victim, as the object of our sitting sympathies. But, on the other hand, we still have emotional limits.
In a case of rape, it makes sense that we should sympathize with the victim. Is there a danger that this approach will be too punitive, and that society generally should be willing to show sympathy to people who do bad things?
In terms of criminal justice more broadly, there has been a push to show the same sympathy for nonwhite people who commit crimes, for example, that we have always shown to white people. So I am saying that criminal law is a pretty different context than media discussions or initial reactions to someone telling you a crime was committed against them. There are interesting cases where, within a friend group, a man is accused of raping a woman in the friend group, and it is a common experience that people are disbelieving or more sympathetic toward him.
And in that kind of context, I think it is pretty clear you should sympathize with the victim first and foremost. I suppose it gets complicated in the criminal-justice context when you have victims speaking at a sentencing, or their families speaking, which has its own racial issues and problems. There are at least some disadvantages to having victim-impact statements, because as moving as they can be, they can also be a source of introducing biases, and they can slightly mislead us as to what the point of the court case is.
Having said that, we should add that entitlement in relationships is a mental thing so there can be an error in evaluating it from a superficial perspective. It is simple: there are things that can be expected in relationships and if you are harping on those and demanding them as a right, you cannot be wrong. You are in fact, entitled to things like faithfulness, honesty, communication and someone who actually makes the effort to make things work.
In a way, this can be called a healthy entitlement mentality. If, on the other hand, things that should be seen as privileges are being seen as rights, the mentality becomes flawed.
This is where guys come in. Relating to sex in a relationship [not marriage] as a right is wrong. If a girl chooses to give it, it is a privilege. Whether dating or married, having a woman make meals for you is [arguably] a privilege. Because anyone can and should cook, especially in modern families where both partner work and pitch in with the same effort all round. And more importantly, as said here in this piece , because cooking is not, and should no longer be seen as an inherently-feminine skill.
In all, for relationships and marriages to be different and less resentful than the marriages of older generations, a better balance needs to be found and struck between what to feel entitled to, and what to be thankful for in a relationship.
We would love to hear what you think about the content on Pulse. And what we believe they're for is to provide the sorts of goods that we think men are entitled to. Those goods include sex. But even more than that, Manne argues, people believe men are entitled to deference and praise. Involuntary celibates, or incels , for example, are men who form communities to complain about the fact that women will not have sex with them.
But Manne points out that their real complaint is often that they are not receiving the right kind of attention from the right kind of women. Elliot Rodgers, an incel who killed six people in Isla Vista, California, in , recorded misogynist rants about how "popular kids … looked down upon me.
For men like Vanett and Rodgers, entitlement can lead to violence. But while too much entitlement is bad, a lack of entitlement can almost be worse. Misogyny can make men feel entitled to women's care and veneration. But, Manne says, it is can also lead to women being treated as if they are not entitled to kindness, or consideration.
Women still do a disproportionate share of housework. Female candidates for president are still seen as overly ambitious compared to their male competitors. Culturally, men are seen as entitled to free time at home, or to presidential dreams.
Women are not. Manne notes that women, and especially Black women, are not even always entitled to medical care. She cites Diane E. Hoffmann and Anita J.
Tarzian's paper " The Girl Who Cried Pain ," which concluded that men often receive more pain medication than women for the same conditions. The frighteningly high maternity mortality rates for Black women are in part the result of ideas about who is and is not entitled to speak on medical matters.
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