Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne (audiobook)

 genre: nonfiction

My 20 year old daughter told me I needed to read this book as soon as it came out, and truthfully, I never would've done so otherwise.  It's so disheartening to read about the general struggle of women to get and keep any kind of power both in public and private spaces.  I wasn't wrong when I guessed this book wouldn't make me any happier about the place of women in this world.  Kate Manne doesn't mess around with laying bare the may ways in which men can feel entitled - entitled to police (or use) women's bodies, entitled to power in the workplace, entitled to being knowledgeable about any subject - and how it is not only men that reinforce this entitlement.  Our society is so seeped with these ideas, it is so ingrained in how we work, that even women will defend men when they behave in this entitled way.

It's a hard listen - and I certainly couldn't have my little kids around because of the often sexual nature of the subject.  The final section about women in politics was both timely and very interesting.  I finished feeling disturbed and sorta helpless but also just more AWARE and able to articulate and name something I'd noticed and was discomfited by but never examined.  This is an important book.