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

by Eleanor Herman

“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 is that it doesn’t hate women in general. It is actually quite fond of those of us who keep within its proscribed bounds, where we will be loved and praised for our gracious acceptance of its rules and regulations.

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.

many of us lovely wives and daughters are comfortable nestled in our proper places within the Patriarchy, cherished, feeling safe and protected by a system we understand. Many of us feel as threatened by the upheavals of societal change as men do, even if these upheavals are to our ultimate benefit. Change is scary.

And when many of us see a woman who doesn’t fit in, doesn’t even try to fit in, it’s disconcerting. It threatens the status quo we are comfortable with. She is breaking the rules, violating time-honored traditions. She isn’t being caring, supportive, loving. She is selfish, domineering, threatening, a slut, a bitch.

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.

And so all of humanity was consigned to toil, pain, and suffering for eternity because of a woman’s unnerving ambition to venture outside of her place.

“And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devils’ gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.”

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.

But women were the only ones who nourished life in their bodies and brought it forth, just as the earth brings forth grains, vegetables, and fruits. And indeed, the reason women worked with crops may not have been solely due to their physical limitations in hunting mammoths, but because they could conjure life from the earth, just as they conjured it from their own magical bodies during the miracle of childbirth.

The unceasing rhythm of women’s bodies was magically in sync with the moon itself, the divine mistress of the tides.

“Woman was an idol of belly-magic. She seemed to swell and give birth by her own law. From the beginning of time, woman has seemed an uncanny being. Man honored but feared her. She was the black maw that had spat him forth and would devour him anew. Men, bonding together, invented culture as a defense against female nature.”

Women’s terrifying, destructive power must, therefore, be curbed, caged, constricted, diminished, kept in its place. Otherwise: She eats the apple. She opens the box. She unleashes her fury on the Gulf of Mexico. All hell breaks loose, and we are doomed.

“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.”

Catherine murmured, “I am crushed to death in the ruins of the house.”

“the more a woman is in service to someone else” the more likable she is.

like to say that it’s a good thing when we cry because policy-making is better when you have emotion about it. I think this whole myth that you have to be dispassionate, that you can’t feel things, was constructed by men in power and is an excuse for why we have bad policies. But when you feel the pain of a family not having health care or losing their home or being in poverty or losing a child to police violence, you are more inclined to address it.”

men think, “Why is my mother mad at me?” or “She reminds me of my angry third-grade teacher.” A forceful woman mirrors a Jungian archetype—an ancient, universal symbol buried deep in the human subconscious—which strikes horror and fear into the hearts of men.

Subconsciously, they believe they are in trouble, and it outrages them. Their hackles rise. Any woman who causes this reaction, which offends all patriarchal norms of men reigning supreme, must be aggressive, angry, obnoxious, bossy, and complaining. A shrew, a fury, a harpy, a termagant.