Women have been burned at the stake in one way or another for centuries. When women lead effectively, they are at particular risk. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been lauded as the most accomplished and influential Speaker in United States history. She is also subject to countless hateful and violent threats that are laced with misogyny. The January 6, 2021 mob at the Capitol meant to do her harm and they desecrated her office. On Oct. 28 this year, her husband was beaten with a hammer by a man who broke into their home and demanded to know, “Where is Nancy?”
Secretary Hillary Clinton may have won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election but she should have won the electoral vote by a landslide. The Left and the Right tore her apart as we neared election day. She was too feminist, too qualified, and too confident in her own abilities to be allowed to lead our country. The disastrous results are far from over. I cannot think of a clearer example of how large-scale misogyny hurts everyone.
Over 80,000 women were put to death between the 14th and 17th centuries in Europe for so-called witchcraft. Some of them were strangled prior to being burned, others were burned alive, and some were decapitated. Mobs would get into manic states and hunt them. Historians refer to this as gendercide since close to 80% of the executed “witches” were women. Natural disasters, the medieval warm period followed by the Little Ice Age, food scarcity, religiously-motivated wars and epidemics caused people to scapegoat independent women, healers and others who did not fervently support the Church. Sound a bit too familiar?
Today, the people who follow and support Trump do not seem to care that he is merely exploiting them for his own perverse need for power void of democracy. They scapegoat feminists, Jews, Black Lives Matter activists and immigrants for causing their problems rather than blaming shameless, greedy, mostly white male capitalists and their politician puppets who do their bidding as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
When women make progress, we are inevitably subject to backlash. Take the #MeToo movement. The very first major motion picture about a brilliant female classical music conductor has a deranged, morally depraved lesbian character as the lead. LGBTQ organizations would demand a boycott if the main character was gay or transgender in such a caricature. The film, Tar, has Cate Blanchett in the role. What a head-scratcher as she was vocally supportive of #MeToo and Time’s Up.
I have not seen the film, but I sense it will piss me off. The writer, Sarah Schulman, posted a review on her Facebook page. She wrote, “Wow, I have never seen something self-destruct that crazily. And I think the fatal flaw is that the creator hates the protagonist so much, and is so intent on punishing and humiliating her, that he blew up his own film … a film that starts out looking so progressive because it is about a great woman who is a lesbian, ends up pathologizing her completely and then punishes her relentlessly. There is no effort to have us understand her, or for her to understand herself.” She also wrote about the plot in detail to describe the persistent misogynistic messages that accumulate without explanation.
Mahsa Amini was a 22-year-old small town woman who died in police custody in Tehran (9/16/22). She was not political in life, but her leadership in death is remarkable. She committed the sin of wearing trousers that were not loose-fitting, and she was abducted by the morality police (aka the extreme misogyny police). Women who rode in the police van with her stated she was repeatedly beaten, and her mom insisted that she always wore her hijab correctly. Her death was no accident.
It is heartening to see young men with women bravely protesting in public. I wonder if they will continue to support the dignity and human rights of women or if this is a temporary reaction to the injustice. Sustainable change is contingent on the will and actions of good men.
Let’s put misogyny in its place — into the dustbin of history. We must recognize it in its many forms and not accept it as a given.
On an unrelated but timely note, be sure to thank election workers on Nov. 8. I served as a Warden for the first and sixth wards in Northampton, and I can attest that the workers are dedicated public servants. They believe in the voting process, and they assist voters to the best of their abilities. They fully deserve our gratitude and assurances of support.
J.M. Sorrell is a feminist at her core, and she strongly believes in public service and advocacy.