PDF Summary:Entitled, by Kate Manne

What do incels, “bathroom bills” regulating transgender people’s use of restrooms, presidential elections, abortion restrictions, and the Brock Turner case all have in common? According to philosopher Kate Manne in Entitled, each provides an example of “male entitlement”—men’s deeply ingrained belief that women must comply with traditional gender norms or risk being punished with everything from dismissal to violence.

Our guide explores Manne’s argument that society conditions men to feel that women must give them attention and admiration, sex, children, and care, while also staying out of traditionally “masculine” domains like power and knowledge. In addition, we examine Manne’s ideas about misogyny and how it’s enforced. Along the way, we situate Manne’s claims within the larger context of history and feminist philosophy, and examine whether they’re borne out by statistics, psychological research, and the law.

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Consensual Sex

Manne also argues that social and cultural conditioning frequently leads women to consent to sex they don’t want. Because women are socialized to be “good girls” who are helpful, polite, and sweet—especially around male authority figures—they may agree to sex to avoid hurting a man’s feelings or being labeled as rude. Manne says women’s sense of obligation to perform a feminine gender role even when they’re being mistreated is a type of internalized misogyny.

(Shortform note: Internalized misogyny occurs when women believe negative messages and stereotypes they’ve been taught about their gender, often resulting in them directing misogynistic behavior toward themselves and other women. Examples of internalized misogyny include women’s self-hatred, undervaluing of their own abilities, believing their worth is defined by their beauty, criticizing other women for not conforming to gender roles, and competing with other women for men’s approval. Researchers note that internalized misogyny is similar to the psychological phenomenon of learned helplessness, in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events makes people stop trying to control anything.)

Manne gives the example of “Grace,” a woman who claimed in an online publication that comedian Aziz Ansari repeatedly and forcefully pressured her for sex over the course of an evening in his apartment, despite her efforts to prevent this from happening. Manne notes that Grace received backlash for speaking out, with some commentators accusing her of trying to humiliate Ansari and ruin his career, and others saying the only thing Ansari was guilty of was not being able to read minds. Manne argues that this backlash is typical of how women are punished for refusing men’s advances or talking about men’s problematic sexual behavior.

(Shortform note: In the article about the experience, Grace told a reporter that she used nonverbal cues to convey how uncomfortable she was, such as repeatedly moving away from Ansari and removing her hand each time he placed it on his body. She also told Ansari, “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” She was particularly distraught by Ansari’s behavior because of how it contradicted his public persona as a feminist who respects women. Before the incident, Ansari often addressed sex and dating during his comedy routines, and he included an episode about feminism in his Netflix show, Master of None. Ansari responded to Grace’s allegations by stating that the encounter was consensual.)

Manne asserts that women who comply with men’s demands for sex even when they don’t want to are behaving similarly to the subjects of the 1960s Milgram experiment, which showed that most people feel compelled to comply with authority figures even when they’re uncomfortable doing so.

In the experiments, hundreds of subjects gave increasingly severe electric shocks to a stranger at the direction of another stranger, who wore a lab coat and was presented as a Yale researcher. (The shocks weren’t real, and the man receiving the shocks was an actor.) Even though the “victim” of the shocks screamed in pain and pounded on the wall—and even though the majority of the subjects expressed that they didn’t want to go on—they nonetheless continued to administer shocks that would have been fatal had they been real.

(Shortform note: Milgram claimed his experiment explained the behavior of Nazis, arguing that the subjects came to view themselves merely as agents blindly obeying authority without any personal responsibility for their actions. Other experts interpreted the experiment as proof of conceptual conservatism—the human tendency to hold onto established beliefs even when presented with contradictory evidence. This interpretation posited that the subjects had every reason to believe that scientists at a prestigious university were operating in compliance with the law and ethics, and wouldn’t allow torture to take place during their experiments. It was difficult for the subjects to let go of this belief when they were faced with contradictory evidence.)

Entitlement to Police Women’s Bodies

Manne contends that men feel entitled to control what women do with their bodies, as evidenced most clearly by abortion restrictions, “bathroom bills” attempting to regulate transgender women’s use of public restrooms, and violence against transgender women. In particular, Manne argues that abortion bans are an extreme form of state control over women’s bodies and moral choices that society doesn’t allow in any other context. (For example, there are no laws prohibiting cheating on your partner.)

(Shortform note: Entitled was published in 2020, before the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion. Manne’s discussion of abortion bans was necessarily limited to legislation so restrictive that it effectively banned abortion; her arguments apply equally post-Dobbs, when many states ban abortion entirely. As of 2025, 13 states have a total ban, seven states ban abortion in the first six to 18 weeks of pregnancy, and 21 states ban abortion at some point after 18 weeks.)

She contends that the purpose of laws regulating abortion isn’t actually to protect “life,” but rather to control women. She says this is demonstrated by 1) the intentional misinformation surrounding abortion, 2) anti-abortion activists' failure to care about life in any context other than abortion, and 3) the way the Republican Party transformed abortion into a partisan, religious issue as a political strategy to win Christian votes.

Manne argues that anti-abortion activists promote misinformation about pregnancy and abortion. For example, the term “heartbeat law” is intentionally misleading because at six to eight weeks of pregnancy, when these abortion bans kick in, there is no heart, and there’s not even a fetus—there’s just a pea-sized embryo. Claims about late-term abortions are also misleading, as they make up less than 1% of abortions and are almost always due to fetal anomalies or the pregnant woman’s health issues.

(Shortform note: Many doctors note that the terms “fetal heartbeat” and “late-term abortion” have no clinical or medical meaning in the way they’re being used. At six to eight weeks, the only activity doctors can see or hear on an embryo’s ultrasound is a flickering of electrical activity and the noise of the ultrasound machine itself, not a heartbeat. Also, “late-term” would mean “past a woman’s due date,” a time when abortions are not performed. Doctors are more likely to refer to abortions in the second or third trimester as abortions later in pregnancy, which, as Manne points out, rarely occur.)

In addition, Manne says those who rally around abortion bans because they purport to care about “unborn children” seem to care very little about children once they’re born. Many abortion opponents don’t support laws protecting poor children, expanding affordable health care, or addressing maternal mortality rates.

Also, while many people say they are against abortion because of their religious beliefs, Manne writes that Republicans have manipulated Christian beliefs to serve their political agenda. During Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, Republicans tried to recruit Christian Democrats to their side by playing on fears of “immorality” using the “AAA” strategy: Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion. They attacked Nixon’s opponent as representing drugs, amnesty for Vietnam War draft dodgers, and abortion—which they condemned as contrary to traditional gender roles that required women to be wives and mothers. In other words, abortion was positioned as a violation of Christian family values.

History of Abortion in America: Protecting Life or Controlling Women?

Manne’s argument that the purpose of abortion laws is to control women, rather than to protect life, finds support in the broader history of abortion in America. From the 1600s through the late 1800s, abortion was common and noncontroversial in America. It was legal until “quickening,” defined as the time during pregnancy when a woman could feel fetal movement (usually at about four months). Reproductive care, including abortion services, was provided almost exclusively by women: midwives who used herbal and natural treatments to induce abortion. Half of all midwives were Black women.

Laws banning abortion only began to appear when the emerging American Medical Association, an organization consisting exclusively of white, male doctors, advocated for the legislation as a way to exclude women and other traditional healers from the medical profession. Wishing to corner the market on obstetrics and establish themselves as elite professionals, these doctors argued that midwifery was barbaric. They claimed that life begins at conception, rather than at quickening. The AMA’s campaign was successful; by the early 1900s, abortion was illegal in every state.

The emergence of abortion laws as a way to prevent women from providing medical services—rather than as a movement to protect “life”—supports Manne’s contention that such laws are designed to control women. The AMA’s portrayal of midwives as barbaric is also consistent with Manne’s contention that some advocates use misinformation and scare tactics to get abortion laws passed.

While views on abortion fluctuated throughout much of the 20th century, it remained a largely nonpartisan issue. If anything, more Republicans were pro-choice than Democrats: In 1972, on the eve of Roe v. Wade, 68% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats believed it was a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy. In addition, evangelical Christians prior to the 1970s had diverse opinions about abortion, generally seeing it as a personal issue rather than a political one. As Manne describes, however, the largely pro-choice Republican Party took an antiabortion stance as a political strategy to win votes from Catholic Democrats—and later, Evangelical Christians.

In the 1970s and 1980s, some pro-life activists portrayed abortion as a human rights issue, comparing it to the historical dehumanization of Black and Jewish people. As Manne points out with respect to modern activists, however, the antiabortion activists of the ’70s and ’80s typically did not support any other human rights or civil rights issues.

Manne argues that there are similarities between antiabortion laws and state “bathroom bills” attempting to regulate transgender people’s use of public restrooms. Both are centered on a false notion of an “immoral” female perpetrator and an innocent victim. A cisgender woman who gets an abortion is seen as a baby-killer, while a transgender woman who uses a women’s restroom is seen as a predator seeking to abuse cis girls and women. (Shortform note: The term “cisgender” means a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth; “cis” is the short form of the word in the same way “trans” is the short form of transgender.)

Manne notes that cis men are much more likely than trans women (or cis men allegedly posing as trans women) to prey on someone in a public restroom. (Shortform note: In early 2025, the Trump administration issued two Executive Orders that deny the existence of trans people, prohibit federally funded schools from allowing minors to use restrooms that don’t match their anatomical sex, and state that trans women’s use of women’s restrooms is a risk to women’s safety. However, studies consistently find no evidence that allowing transgender people to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity results in increased harm to people who are not transgender. On the other hand, studies do show that bans on trans people’s use of restrooms that match their gender identity increase harassment and violence against trans people.)

Manne says transphobic men feel that presenting as female when you have (or used to have) male genitalia is a form of deception. These men feel entitled to know immediately whether a person can provide them with what they see as the primary services of womanhood: heternormative sex and biological children. This entitlement can lead to violence against trans women. Manne cites the 2002 case of Gwen Araujo, a 17-year-old trans girl who was murdered by four cis men (two of whom had previously had sex with her without realizing she was trans) after a forced search of her body revealed she had male genitalia.

(Shortform note: Lawyers for the men who killed Araujo attempted to invoke a “trans panic” defense, arguing that Araujo’s gender identity justified the murder. At the time, this defense was legal nationwide; it has since been banned in many states, but remains legal in at least half of US states. Meanwhile, other legislation targeting transgender people has increased. In 2023, states introduced over 550 anti-LGBTQ bills, more than 85 of which were passed. Most targeted transgender people specifically. During the 2024 election, the Republican Party spent over $82 million on anti-trans political ads. Anti-trans bills and discriminatory rhetoric have coincided with rising anti-trans violence: 1,850 incidents between 2022 and 2024 alone.)

Entitlement to Care

Manne argues that society’s expectations for heterosexual women require that they care for their male partners, their shared home, and their children. On the flip side, men are deemed entitled to receive care, both from the women in their lives and the entire medical profession; women, as caregivers, are not seen as entitled to receive care.

Domestic Work

Manne says that men’s sense of entitlement to their female partner’s domestic labor is so entrenched that women have been doing at least an extra month of housework and childcare every year since the 1980s, a phenomenon sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild called women’s second shift. (Shortform note: Hochschild coined the term “second shift” in her 1989 book of the same name. Recent studies show that American women spend 12.6 hours cooking, cleaning, and doing other household work (not including childcare) in an average week, while American men spend 5.7 hours.)

Worldwide, women do between two and 10 times as much domestic labor as men. (Shortform note: The Oxfam research cited by Manne notes that globally, care work may include taking care of the elderly and disabled, fetching water and firewood, cooking, cleaning, washing, and raising children. Over 40% of women worldwide can’t get jobs because they’re responsible for all the caregiving in the home, which can keep them stuck in poverty.)

The discrepancy is particularly pronounced if a heterosexual couple has children. Studies consistently show that even when both partners work full-time jobs, women do twice as much childcare as men—and the childcare that men do usually involves activities like playing with the kids. In contrast, the childcare women do involves responsibilities like bathing the kids or getting them ready for school.

(Shortform note: As Manne alludes to, this inequity also results in what some have called a free time gender gap. American women generally have about 13% less leisure time than men to do things like socialize, pursue their interests, or just relax. Among parents, mothers have 17% less free time than fathers.)

While some people claim that women are naturally better at childcare, Manne cites studies showing that when men are the primary caregivers for their kids, their brains change to become more like those of women who are primary caregivers. (Shortform note: These studies indicate that what makes someone an effective caregiver is simply being a caregiver: The more time fathers spend caring for their newborns, the more their brains change (as demonstrated by activity in their amygdala) to become attuned to the needs of their children and sensitive to their health and safety.)

Manne notes that a woman’s domestic labor doesn’t just encompass everything she gets done, but also includes keeping track of and preparing for everything that needs to be done for everyone in the family: making appointments, making grocery lists, remembering where everything is, delegating tasks, knowing what needs to be packed for trips, and more. These are all forms of emotional labor.

(Shortform note: Emotional labor is the unpaid, often invisible, mental and emotional work women do to keep relationships, households, and even workplaces running smoothly. It can encompass everything from initiating and navigating difficult relationship talks with your male partner to remembering your husband’s relatives’ birthdays. Emotional labor falls to women in part due to the stereotype that women are better at handling emotions and relationships than men. However, experts say that these abilities are not determined by sex, but are gender roles imposed by society to free up men for other tasks.)

Solutions to Gender Inequity in Domestic Work

Experts agree that without women’s free domestic labor, whole economies would collapse—yet individuals and governments frequently undervalue this work. Gender inequity in unpaid care work contributes to women making less than men, having fewer opportunities for job advancement, or leaving the workforce entirely. The solution, say many, is to create more public services and infrastructure to support women.

In the US, 78% of women are in the labor force. Most Americans no longer believe that a “woman’s place” is in the home, taking care of the children and domestic duties. However, experts argue that American laws and policies have not caught up with this reality. For example, the US is the only high-income country in the world that doesn’t provide paid leave for new parents. Childcare is expensive (a year of it can cost as much as a year of college) and difficult to come by. Experts advocate for government policies that could create more gender equity in domestic labor and childcare, such as paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers, subsidized childcare, and flexibility in work structures.

Medical Care

Manne writes that women’s pain and medical issues are often ignored, underdiagnosed, and undertreated compared to men’s—even though women tend to be more sensitive to pain than men (and experience more painful conditions unique to women). Women’s physical pain is much more likely to be treated as a psychological issue than men’s pain. Manne points to studies showing that men are given more pain medication than women for the same painful operations. When it comes to boys and girls who experience pain after surgery, boys are more likely to be given codeine; girls, Tylenol.

Manne says the health care industry takes men’s pain more seriously than women’s pain in part because it deems men less likely to complain about pain and more deserving of prompt, effective treatment when they do. However, there is very little evidence that men are actually more stoic than women.

(Shortform note: One of the studies cited by Manne also examines the reasons for the discrepancy in men and women’s treatments for pain. It finds that one reason doctors discount women’s pain is that they perceive women as overly emotional or hysterical. On the other hand, the report also finds that women are perceived as better able to tolerate pain than men, in part due to their ability to endure childbirth. Regardless of these conflicting perceptions, the report concludes that all of the reasons why doctors discount women’s pain are based on gender stereotypes, rather than objective evidence.)

Manne also observes that medical research and training often assume that a male body represents a typical human; many medical studies are still performed exclusively or primarily on men. This can result in doctors failing to catch serious problems like heart attacks in women because women’s symptoms are different from men’s. Similarly, treating men as the “standard” can mean women don’t get the benefit of important new medical developments because research performed primarily on men deems those developments unnecessary for women.

(Shortform note: Inclusion of women in clinical trials has expanded in recent decades. Medical research rarely included women before 1993, when Congress passed a law requiring it. As of 2019, about 40% of medical trial participants are women. Women of color are particularly underrepresented in clinical trials. In addition, many studies that include women do not analyze sex as a variable and suggest that their results apply equally to men and women.)

Entitlement and “Masculine” Gender Roles

Just as society expects women to provide men with certain “feminine” services, says Manne, so too are women excluded from the traditionally “masculine” domains of knowledge and power.

Entitlement to Knowledge

Manne argues that some men believe they are the exclusive repository of knowledge on any given subject. They take the approach that not only are women’s thoughts or opinions wrong, but women shouldn’t be speaking (or writing) at all. To illustrate this point, Manne points to the behaviors of mansplaining and gaslighting.

Mansplaining is a term that became popular following the publication of author Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me.” In it, she describes an incident in which, upon learning that she’d written a book about photographer Eadweard Muybridge, a man she’d just met pontificates at length concerning an important book about Muybridge. When he finally realizes that Solnit is the author of the very book he’s explaining to her, he’s shocked. This is mansplaining: when a man explains something to a woman in a way that presumes she knows nothing about a topic she’s an expert in.

(Shortform note: Solnit’s 2014 essay was later anthologized in a book by the same name. In it, Solnit argues (much like Manne after her) that our culture’s longstanding pattern of devaluing women is rooted in the deep-seated belief that men have the right to control them. Solnit explains that this belief manifests in behaviors ranging from mansplaining to violence against women, all of which exist on the same spectrum.)

Manne notes that the term gaslight originated from a 1938 play called Gas Light and its two movie adaptations. In the play, a husband tries to drive his wife crazy by (among other things) telling her she’s imagining things and hiding items that he then accuses her of losing. He does this to obscure his criminal activity: He killed the former owner of their house for her rubies, but then was unable to find them, so he sneaks around the attic every night looking for the gems.

The wife notices that each night after her husband disappears, the gaslight dims; just before he reappears, the light becomes bright again. This indicates that her husband has turned on a light in the attic during his absence. However, her husband’s constant undermining of her perceptions makes her question everything she knows, even her own observations. This is the phenomenon we now call gaslighting. Manne notes that the wife feels it’s impossible to challenge her husband because she’s made to feel crazy if she tries.

(Shortform note: In the 1944 American film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman, the connection between the gaslights dimming and the husband’s gaslighting behavior is more direct: When the wife notices the gaslights dimming, the husband tells her that she’s imagining it. The movie gave rise to many copycats; by the 1950s, the term gaslight had entered popular culture. Today, it’s defined as the act of psychologically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, including doubting their own thoughts, perceptions, and memories.)

Manne argues that while both mansplaining and gaslighting are a product of men feeling entitled to be the sole possessors of knowledge, gaslighting is more egregious because men who engage in it exercise complete control over another person’s reality—in effect substituting a man’s understanding of reality in place of a woman’s.

(Shortform note: Gaslighting is now generally recognized as a form of emotional abuse used by one partner in an intimate relationship to exercise dominance and control over another. It usually occurs over a lengthy period of time and gradually increases in intensity, with the abuser manipulating their partner’s reality by undermining their thoughts and feelings. Examples of gaslighting include an abuser repeatedly denying that they’ve said or done something that they just finished saying or doing, accusing their partner of being too sensitive or overreacting for simply having feelings, or blaming their partner for the abuser’s own actions or feelings—for example, by having an emotional outburst, then claiming, “You made me do it!”)

Entitlement to Power

Manne notes that people are much more comfortable with male leaders than female leaders. She cites studies showing that, all other things being equal, people see men as more competent in leadership positions than women. What’s more, people tend to dislike women in traditionally male leadership roles simply because they’re successful. However, if study participants are told that both a male leader and a female leader are helpful and community-minded, participants are more likely to choose the female leader as a boss and to judge her more likable.

(Shortform note: Interestingly, participants in these studies concluded that the “helpful” woman was the preferable leader not only when they were explicitly told she was community-minded, but also when they could infer it from her identity. Specifically, negative viewpoints of women in leadership roles were mitigated when study participants knew the women were mothers.)

Manne argues that the double standard around leadership means that male politicians can get away with being jerks, while female politicians are punished if they display any anger or lack of compassion. A female politician can be successful only if she’s seen as authentically caring and compassionate. Manne argues, however, that this can be difficult to accomplish because both authenticity and compassion are open to interpretation.

Manne gives the example of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was widely perceived as kind and a team player at the beginning of her presidential campaign (she even made personal calls to small donors to thank them for their campaign contributions). However, every minor misstep she made was criticized. Manne opines that Warren may have lost the most support when she and Bernie Sanders disagreed about something Sanders said during a private meeting. Manne argues that even though their disagreement was a classic “he said-she said” scenario, Warren was likely perceived as attacking Sanders and challenging his authority.

(Shortform note: The double standard applied to US presidential candidates isn’t limited to the quality of compassion. Studies show that voters value stereotypically masculine traits like assertiveness and strength, and they prefer that female candidates stick to issues traditionally associated with their gender, such as health care or education. Female candidates who display traditionally masculine qualities can be penalized by voters for violating gender norms. In addition, women candidates often face extra scrutiny over their appearance, their ability to balance career and family, and their emotional expressions. Elizabeth Warren herself noted that men found it unappealing when she was angry; they frequently told her to smile more.)

When it comes to the presidency, US voters consistently choose a male candidate over a female one, even if it means voting against their own party. Manne notes that the concept of a woman being “unelectable” to the presidency is in some ways a self-fulfilling prophecy: If people believe a woman is “unelectable,” they won’t vote for her, and then she becomes unelectable. Manne cites a June 2019 poll finding that most people planned to vote for Joe Biden, but if they could have anyone they wanted as president, they’d choose Elizabeth Warren.

(Shortform note: While the US has never had a woman president, the women who’ve been nominated by a major party—Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024—have come unusually close to their opponents in the popular vote. Clinton won 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump, with approximately 48% of the popular vote to his 46%. Harris won 48.3% of the popular vote to Trump’s 49.8%. In contrast, the gap in the popular vote in recent elections between male candidates was wider, with both Biden in 2020 and Obama in 2012 receiving about 51% of the popular vote against their opponents’ 47%. This suggests that a large portion of the American public not only believes a woman is electable, but is also willing to vote for her.)

Valid Entitlement

Manne says that while she’s focused on men’s unjustified entitlement to women’s services, there are forms of valid entitlement that she hopes women and girls can reclaim. Inspired by the imminent birth of her daughter, Manne writes that she wants her daughter to feel entitled to:

• Being believed and cared for when she expresses her needs or desires, whether emotional or physical/medical
• Bodily autonomy, including consent to being touched, consent to sex, and reproductive choice
• Shared domestic labor
• Feeling unself-conscious about her body
• Being LGBTQ
• Speaking up and sharing her knowledge
• Not feeling required to change herself to please others
• Being powerful, but also being allowed to make mistakes

Manne concludes that we are all obligated to fight for a world in which women and girls are no longer subject to male control and entitlement.

(Shortform note: Manne notes that she has no interest in taking away valid forms of entitlement from men, only in ensuring that women have the same rights. In this sense, she echoes feminist movements throughout history. From the first wave of feminism in the late 19th and early 20th Century, which sought women’s right to vote; to the 1960s campaigns for equal employment opportunity, equal pay, and equal access to housing and credit; to the #MeToo movement’s 2017 call for women’s right to be free from sexual violence, women have long fought for their equal economic, political, and social rights.)