Off with Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power
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Clearly, it is not always misogynistic to criticize women in power.
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For one thing, are critics analyzing her actions, her experience, her speeches, promises she failed to keep, shady deals, disastrous consequences, downright lies?
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“He should show a little modesty.”
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“Lock her up!” is, in fact, only a slightly more civilized version of “Off with her head!” and “Burn the witch!”
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On January 6, 2021, rioters invading the Capitol in Washington, DC, were aiming to hang Vice President Mike Pence for a specific action: counting the Electoral College votes and confirming the election of Joe Biden. But their virulent hostility toward Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was for a far more amorphous crime, that of being a left-leaning female with great power.
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Good girls don’t want to be like her. More than that: good girls want to tear her down. And the virulence of our misogyny might just equal the depth of our jealousy.
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Who live with mortal men and bring them harm.
Sakota Blevins
Even in the beginning women are portrayed to have an otherworldly and detrimental power over men
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How strange it is that both God and god brought evil into the world by creating woman, according to the stories written by men.
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Why are we so eager to blame a woman rather than admit to the shortcomings of men?
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What we do know for sure is that over time, the Patriarchy tore down women’s life-giving magic, as it had to if it was to gain absolute control.
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For millennia, the most resounding theme of the Patriarchy among Greeks, Romans, Christians, and pretty much everybody else has been that good women stay home and be quiet.
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When a woman in power wields it unwisely, as in these three cases that occurred within a decade, there is a great delight in her train wreck, a deliciously satisfying I told you so. But the patriarchal reaction is even harsher when she wields her power wisely, disproving the age-old stories of female incompetence, making the Patriarchy wrong.
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But her astonishing success proved misogynistic assumptions wrong, and something had to be done to trash her reputation forever.
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Which is why, as far back as we can go in recorded history, ambitious women had to pretend they actually weren’t. That they were merely trying to be helpful and dutiful, feminine qualities applauded by the Patriarchy and unpoliced by the handbook.
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Modest, humble, unambitious, and dignified, she would be easy to manipulate, the power brokers assumed, and would put up no resistance when they kicked her out of office. They were wrong.
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“Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.”
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To prevent more such monstrous women grabbing for power, he literally erased her.
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Fifty years after Anne’s death, Catholic propagandist Nicholas Sander published a book during the reign of her Protestant daughter, Elizabeth I, whom he despised.
Sakota Blevins
Why do men take these women's power so personally? Is it a feeling of inadequacy that gender norms forces upon them? Is it true that everyone suffers from the Patriarcy?
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As queen, Anne focused on helping the poor, promoting religious reform, and sponsoring impoverished scholars.
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Frustration fueled her temper.
Sakota Blevins
Female rage
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Keenly aware of the king’s disappointment in Anne for lack of a son, as well as his interest in one of her ladies-in-waiting, a demure little thing named Jane Seymour, Cromwell concocted a story of Anne’s infidelities with five men, including her own brother.
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licentious