After Misogyny: Can constitutional democracies get past male overempowerment?

Constitutional Crisis Hotline co-host Julie Suk argues in a new book that misogyny is the overempowerment of men and the collective overentitlement of society to women’s forbearance, pain, and sacrifices for the common good. Misogyny not woman-hatred alone; it is the legal structure that enables that hatred and extracts benefits to society at women’s expense. In this conversation, occurring in the moment that Donald Trump was finally indicted for concealing his hush-money payments to a porn actress, and a federal judge in Texas invalidated abortion pills, Deb Tuerkheimer and Julie Suk explore how this reframing of misogyny sheds light on abortion bans, and how women in U.S. history and around the world today have sought constitutional changes to reset male entitlement and power.

 

Deborah Tuerkheimer Class of 1967 James B. Haddad Professor of Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Tuerkeheimer is a former prosecutor and leading expert on the law of sexual assault. She is the author of the landmark book Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers (2021) and co-author of the textbook Feminist Jurisprudence: Cases and Materials. 

 

Read Julie C. Suk’s book, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It (2023).