On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

by Elise Loehnen

The devaluation of the feminine can be traced to the emergence of monotheism; its demonization of the goddess and a maternal, nature-oriented worldview; and the rise of Christianity.

When Pope Gregory preached about the Seven Deadly Sins for the first time, he assigned these vices to Mary Magdalene and branded her a whore, conflating Mary Magdalene with the “sinful woman,” the presumed prostitute who appears in Luke 7 and anoints Jesus’s feet with oil. In that commingling, Pope Gregory made Mary the embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Professor Silvia Federici reminds us that gossip originally meant god-parent. It was a positive term, suggesting a close, emotional bond. But in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, gossip became a negative, reason enough for murder. She writes, “In 1547, ‘a proclamation was issued forbidding women to meet together to babble and talk’ and ordering husbands to ‘keep their wives in their houses.’ ” Professor Maria Tatar elaborates in The Heroine with 1,001 Faces, “What is gossip’s greatest sin? One possibility is that gossip knits women together to create networks of social interactions beyond patriarchal control and oversight. It can be seen as counter-discourse that operates against prevailing communal norms, a strategy for collecting talk in the form of compelling stories that can be parsed and analyzed to turn into useful sources of wisdom and knowledge.”

Because it requires us to own our wanting, envy is the fulcrum, or hinge, for all the other Deadly Sins: To voice desire, to want something, is the first expression of agency. Want is an essential verb—this compulsion to get our needs met, to wish for opportunity and excitement, drives us forward. It’s the initial step on the path to asserting yourself.

Wanting, in many ways, is humiliating. For one, it suggests you think you’re deserving, that you’re worthy. It connotes arrogance, or pride. There is no reliable model for women to understand what it looks like to know what you want and to go after it without slamming into the assignation of “selfishness.” We are conditioned to believe that selfishness is bad, immoral, wrong; that we must step back, serve through compliance.

We need pride in our unique talents to deliver them to the world; when we feel shame in developing our powers, they die on the vine.

I cannot liberate you; you cannot liberate me. But if you liberate yourself, perhaps I can model my freedom after yours.

Despite the stats that suggest the reverse, in Jessica Nordell’s book The End of Bias, she reports that parents google “Is my daughter overweight?” at twice the rate that they search “Is my son overweight?” Chillingly, she also reports that parents search “Is my son gifted?” at two and a half times the rate that they search “Is my daughter gifted?”

Bader makes the brilliant connection that our fantasies don’t necessarily invoke what we like or what we want—they are mental stimulation, not reality—but do illustrate what’s required to feel safe enough to get turned on. In his view, many women who fantasize about being dominated might be culturally programmed with the idea that they are “too much.” In a fantasy, if they are being bossed, there is no way they can be accused of overpowering the other.

Susan went on to offer that anger is an essential intelligence and that our collective practice—not just for Type Ones—is to understand when anger is running us rather than informing us. When it informs us, it is a drive shaft of compassion and care; when mined for its lessons, metabolized and transmuted, it is the energy that changes the world. When properly expressed, it cleanses, leaving the foundation for new growth and fresh starts, a revitalized postpatriarchal landscape.

If you look at national statistics, it appears that sadness is a problem for women, that women are far more depressed than men. According to data from the National Institute of Mental Health, the prevalence of major depression in women was 10.5 percent in 2020, versus 6.2 percent for men.[*2] But this statistic offers a limited perspective. Women are more equipped for our sadness, though that doesn’t make us more sad. In I Don’t Want to Talk About It, perhaps the landmark book on male depression, therapist Terry Real asserts that the men in his practice are no less affected by depression; it just manifests differently. He argues that many men are struggling with undiagnosed “covert” depression, which is often paired with an addictive defense. After adding up all the mental illness stats—affective disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse disorders, and personality disorders—he found the totals evened out. While women officially overindexed on depression, men made up significant ground in substance abuse and personality disorders.

To reclaim my selfhood, I needed to grant myself permission to credit and celebrate myself (and explore my pride), pleasure myself (and allow my lust), feed and secure myself (and permit my gluttony and greed), assert my needs (and listen to my anger), relax and rest (and indulge sloth), and determine exactly what I wanted and then go after it (and make use of my envy).

Mary Magdalene represents all women—the way we’ve been stripped of our authentic worthiness, left to plead for redemption. She was the rightful first apostle, Jesus’s best student, who was then dethroned and debased by all of Christianity, abandoned to a sordid legacy as the penitent prostitute and the carrier of the seven sins, representing impure thoughts transformed into unholy desires.