How Entitled Moms F*ck Up America

The Ballad Of Subdivision Sarah.

Within this understanding, someone who loves their wife can absolutely be part of the larger misogynistic world order, because misogyny isn’t always about direct action, but reaction — and the way women internalize or anticipate that reaction ahead of time. It shapes a world in which women are conceived of as “givers,” admirers, supporters, and self-sacrificing, and when they fail to serve that role, there are consequences. “She is not allowed to be in the same ways as he is,” Manne writes. “She will tend to be in trouble when she does not give enough, or to the right people, in the right way, or in the right spirit.”

Misogyny is outward hostility, then, but it also the feeling of shame, the fear of social shunning and loss of status, and the threat of desolation. You can see how women themselves — particularly white, straight, able-bodied women who are interested in maintaining their relative power within the status quo — both passively and actively participate in misogyny.

As Manne points out, “the misogyny of the most powerful white men — who are least subject to moral and legal sanctions and, indeed, may inflict harm with impunity — clearly harms vulnerable women disproportionately. But it is we, as white women, who tend to enable it, in ways that may be more or less connected with the aim of self-preservation.” Ivanka and Melania Trump, then, but also progressive white women who are loosely mad about the patriarchy but not quite ready to dismantle it if it also means dismantling the other hierarchies that privilege them.

That would be from here, which is a very strong Anne Helen Petersen Sunday email thread about “soft misogyny.” If you scroll down to the bottom of that pull quote, I call those people “Subdivision Sarah.” They are privileged, no doubt, and their Instagram is often awash in progressive ideology and BLM stuff, but they don’t really want to do anything, because they live in the “right” neighborhood, surrounded by like-looking, like-earning, and like-minded people (some of whom are actually friends!), and tearing down everything means that their little corner of the universe has to be disrupted in the process.