Off with Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power

by Eleanor Herman

In fact, I was reading Stacy Schiff’s lush, Pulitzer Prize–winning 2010 biography of Cleopatra.

An EXCELLENT read

“Patriarchy is the structural and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of masculinity. . . . [L]egislatures, political parties, museums, newspapers, theater companies, television networks, religious organizations, corporations, and courts . . . derive from the presumption that what is masculine is most deserving of reward, promotion, admiration, [and] emulation.”

The Patriarchy selectively punishes those women who challenge male power, who refuse to be silent, and who are insubordinate to the unwritten but well-understood rules.

There is a strong connection between a powerful woman, a man’s fury at having to compete with her, and his fear of a resulting psychological, intellectual, and/or physical impotence.

Another way to determine sexism is to examine the words used to describe her. Are they the vague, coded words for misogyny: unlikable, phony, shrill, inauthentic, unpresidential? Are they blatantly sexist terms such as whore, witch, and bitch?

In an astonishing coincidence, the creation myths of both the Bible and ancient Greece, arguably the twin pillars of Western culture, attribute all the world’s ills—death, war, plagues, tsunamis, dandruff, flat tires, acne, everything—to the woman. It’s all her fault.

Since thousands of years of history have judged all women by the badly behaved Eve, we might also deduce that all men are bumbling idiots, too stupid to question a terrible idea. But somehow that part got lost in translation.

And I oop

How strange it is that both God and god brought evil into the world by creating woman, according to the stories written by men. And that in both creation stories, women are created in a different way than men. God creates Adam out of the earth, but Eve is formed from Adam’s rib. Prometheus creates man out of his goodwill; Zeus creates woman to destroy the world.

Why do we so often still give appalling men a pass with “boys will be boys” and “it’s only locker room talk” while we demonize, belittle, shame, ridicule, vilify, slander, and silence women?

“There is good principle, which has created order, light, and man,” wrote the sixth-century BCE Greek philosopher Pythagoras, “and bad principle, which has created chaos, darkness, and woman.”

I don’t know about you but I quite like embracing my chaotic and dark energy lol

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.

The notorious legacies of most powerful women both ancient and modern are simply not deserved.

It’s hard to be a woman. You must think like a man, Act like a lady, Look like a young girl, And work like a horse. —Anonymous

Most historians agree that Anne’s crime was not adultery but ambition. It is perhaps not unexpected that the self-made men at Henry’s court—the butcher’s son Thomas Wolsey and the brewer’s son Thomas Cromwell, both of whom became the most powerful men in the country after the king—have never been accused of overweening ambition. They have usually been admired for their hard work, intelligence, and cunning to rise so high. Yes, yes, Wolsey was incredibly greedy, with numerous luxurious palaces, and had a mistress even though he was a cardinal. And to do the king’s bidding, Cromwell crafted edicts that ended up killing thousands of people. But never mind that. Boys always get a pass. Both men are seen as effective public servants.

It’s strange to think that a woman running for the second-highest job in the land should be humble, perhaps meekly cast her eyes down and shrink into the background, but such was the case.

Fourteen vice presidents had gone on to become president—Biden would become the fifteenth—so it’s strange to suggest the person Biden chose as his running mate should have had no aspirations in that direction. (Though, come to think of it, other vice presidents were shy, self-effacing characters, with no presidential ambitions of their own. Just look at Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the very definition of blushing, bashful fellows who positively wilted under any attention.)

Author not pulling any punches with this one holy shit 👀

“I’m a Black woman who’s in a conversation about possibly being second in command to the leader of the free world,” she explained, “and I will not diminish my ambition or the ambition of any other women of color by saying that’s not something I’d be willing to do.”

All hail Stacey Abrams

When Marcos attacked Aquino for having no political experience, she replied that she indeed had “no experience in cheating, lying to the public, stealing government money, and killing political opponents.” Marcos, she said, had too much experience.

That is SCATHING I love it!

It is a lesson many modern female politicians have learned: no matter what you do with your appearance, no matter whom you try to please, you will be harshly criticized.

“Every day of our lives, women are told we have to look a certain way,” Phillips continued, “our bodies need to be a certain size and shape, and yet if we live up to those standards we have become a massive distraction for the men around us.

In 2007, when UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith spoke of terrorist bombing attempts in London, the Sun reported, “Jacqui Smith, the new home secretary, made her first Commons statement yesterday to the great admiration of some, not so much for what she said as for the amount of cleavage she had on display.” The Daily Mail described the offending bosom as a “rather middle-aged, squeezed together line of amplitude, about three inches long. . . . A little desperate, if anything, and designed to draw the eye down from the face and slim the chins away. Certainly not sexy.” The Sun ran an article titled “Best of Breastminster,” which rank the “ministerial boobs.” The resulting uproar became known as the “tempest in a D-cup.”

This makes me so ANGRY. She was talking about TERRORISM and all you can think about are her FATTY MILK SACKS WTF

Women who are considered feminine will be judged incompetent, and women who are competent, unfeminine,” she wrote. “Women who succeed in politics and public life will be scrutinized under a different lens from that applied to successful men.”

A woman’s menstrual cycle was a monthly reminder of her power to bring forth life, a raw, primeval power men did not have, and could never have, no matter how brave or skilled in battle, no matter how many dangerous animals they speared and brought back as meat. And this mysterious female power must have scared the bejesus out of them.

In the Middle Ages, many believed that menstrual blood would burn up any penis it came in contact with.

Man I wish we had that superpower that’s freaking awesome

Marry she must, of course. For one thing, if a healthy young woman did not have sex, it was believed that “the unruly motions of tickling lust” could cause “naughty vapors” to rise from her private parts to her brain, resulting in pimples and insanity.

Oooooooooh my god, not pimples! Anything but PIMPLES

Elizabeth’s solitary forty-five-year reign was the most peaceful and successful, both domestically and internationally, in the history of the nation. It was so successful, in fact, that it scared men. So they wrote her off as an exception, a miracle, a one-off, an example of God’s grace. And sank even further into their derision of women’s hormones.

Because of the age-old belief of women’s fluctuating hormones and wild moods, those in public office are often judged far more harshly for expressing emotion than men doing the exact same thing.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent. —Madeleine Albright, first woman US Secretary of State

Mary Beard, professor of classics at University of Cambridge, has traced the general revulsion to women’s voices across the centuries in her engrossing book Women & Power.

Another book on my TBR (and my wishlist!)

The water nymph Daphne, fleeing from her suitor Apollo, called on her father to help her resist the god’s rape. Her father, a river god, quickly turned her into a tree, whereupon she could only helplessly wave her branches to attract attention, making no sound other than a gentle rustling of her leaves. Apollo loved her more than ever. According to Bulfinch’s Mythology, he said, “Since you cannot be my wife, you shall assuredly be my tree. I will wear you for my crown. I will decorate with you my harp and my quiver . . . and, as eternal youth is mine, you also shall be always green, and your leaf know no decay.” And Daphne, now changed into a (completely mute) laurel tree, “bowed her head in grateful acknowledgment.”

Never go to Greek mythology for “strong female characters”

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women whose speech was deemed “riotous” or “troublesome” would be sentenced to wear for a period of hours a scold’s bridle—a kind of iron chastity belt for the mouth. A metal cage surrounded the lower face, and a bridle bit was pressed against the tongue, preventing speech.

These were often used during witch trials (so the person on trial couldn’t defend themselves against the charges)

It is likely that men don’t like women’s voices because deep down there’s the feeling women shouldn’t be talking to begin with. And as deputy prime minister, second-in-command to a man, Gillard’s voice was less irritating than when she was raised to the top job. Because the problem was not her voice. It was her position. And it’s much easier to say we don’t like a particular voice than acknowledging we don’t like the fact that a woman is talking.

As the feminist author Kate Manne wrote in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, “When a woman competes for unprecedented high positions of male-dominated leadership or authority, particularly at the expense of an actual male rival, people tend to be biased in his favor, toward him. That is, there will be a general tendency, all else being equal, to be on his side, willing him to power, and this in turn predictably leads to biases against her. So when she speaks against or over him, by disagreeing with him, interrupting him, laughing at his expense, or declaring victory over him—it would be natural for her voice to be heard as grating, raspy, shrill, or otherwise painful sounding. We do not want to hear her say a word against him, so she becomes hard to listen to.”

“No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public,” said Susan B. Anthony, the pioneering women’s rights activist, at the end of her long career. “For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized.”

And the intangibility seems to be the point. Because the thing people just can’t quite seem to put their finger on may be their own misogyny. The likability issue is used by those who are sexist—including a great many women—and simply can’t admit it to themselves or anyone else.

Perhaps the most unlikable thing a female can do is complain of sexist treatment. Such behavior often doubles the injuries sustained: first, the sexism itself, and second, the accusations of “playing the woman card” for special treatment, of being a whiner, a liar, a complainer, not being a team player, and having no sense of humor. A 2001 study published in Feminism & Psychology found that pointing out sexism made the women who did so “liked less” by men than when they sucked it up.

“Why is it,” she said in an interview for this book, “that when women raise an issue of inequality we are called out for whining and complaining? When women point out that they receive worse treatment from their doctors, they are told to shut up, deal with it, don’t rock the boat? When women raise issues, we shove them back into their hole and tell them to get over it. Why are we not interested in hearing their stories?”

Why is it when a woman is confident and powerful, they call her a witch? —Lisa Simpson

When she died in 2013 at the age of eighty-seven, “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” became a top hit in Britain, seventy-four years after it first appeared in the soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz.

That…is so disgusting?? I may not have agreed with everything Thatcher put into play (I say that like I’m British or was even alive during her time in office) but the DISRESPECT

What is at the root of calling women witches? Probably the same thing as the cause of misogyny itself. Magic is a sign of great, dangerous power that must be carefully controlled. The magic of bringing forth human life has always been a woman’s sole prerogative, the connection of her body to the phases of the moon a dark and troubling mystery. And the powerful sexual desires women arouse in men render them vulnerable, not in control, and hating the cause of those desires that weaken and distract. To transform such physically and intellectually superior beings as men into lustful fools, women must be using dark magic.

Historians estimate that in the witch hunts of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries—during which somewhere between 60,000 and millions of innocent people were burned alive or hanged—eighty percent of those executed were women. The definitive treatise on witchcraft, the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of Witches, informs us, “Three general vices appear to have special dominion over wicked women, namely, infidelity, ambition, and lust. Therefore, they are more than others included towards witchcraft, who more than others are given to these vices.” As the inquisitors explained, “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.” (And men are, as we all know, generally uninterested in sex.)

Just as there were no male Furies or harpies, there is no masculine word that exactly equates to witch. We don’t picture a warlock with warts, green skin, and chin hairs, wearing a pointed hat and flying around on a broom. We don’t see him stirring a bubbling cauldron in Macbeth and eating children in Grimms’ Fairy Tales. “Wizard” brings up images of tall, stately, powerful men with shining white beards, like Gandalf or Dumbledore.

How odd that we have made absolutely no progress since John Knox wrote in his 1558 First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women that any woman who dared “to sit in the seat of God, that is, to teach, to judge, or to reign above a man” was “a monster in nature.”

Ocasio-Cortez uttered an epic ten-minute takedown that will live as one of the most brilliant feminist speeches of all time alongside the Misogyny Speech of Julia Gillard. “This harm that Mr. Yoho tried to levy at me was not just directed at me,” she said calmly. “When you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters. . . . I am here to say, that is not acceptable. . . . Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man. And when a decent man messes up, as we all are bound to do, he tries his best and does apologize,” she said.

The use of bitch to refer to women started in the fifteenth century, right around the same time as witch hunting, oddly enough.

In the 1760s, the renowned misogynist King Frederick the Great of Prussia had three dogs—bitches all—that he named after Europe’s three most powerful women: Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, French royal mistress Madame de Pompadour, and Austrian empress Maria Theresa. He was delighted that when he snapped his fingers, the bitches came running.

That’s how it started?! Ugh, MEN

Interestingly, the use of the word bitch more than doubled between 1915 and 1930, a time when women in the US and many other nations received the right to vote, according to a 2014 Vice story by Arielle Pardes. Clearly, the more agency women have, the bitchier they become.

Women who sleep around in this city are called sluts. Men are called senators. —Pat Schroeder, Colorado congresswoman, 1973–1997

No one is sure exactly when Mary Magdalene became a prostitute, but it was probably some five hundred years after her death. In a church actively entrenching itself in misogyny, this powerful figure in Jesus’s ministry needed to be diminished and silenced.

the apostle Junia, whom Paul hailed in Romans 16:7, was transformed into Junias, a male name that incorrectly persists in some Bibles today. The mosaic of Bishop Theodora in the ancient Roman church of Saint Prassede has had the feminine ending of her name scratched off, leaving poor Bishop Theodo wearing a woman’s headdress. But as it would have been awkward turning Mary Magdalene into Marvin Magdalene, they turned her into a whore—the best way to take down a powerful woman since time immemorial.