Ask Any Woman

“What history teaches us about misogyny can be summed up in four words: pervasive, persistent, pernicious and protean.” ~ Jack Holland, A Brief History of Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice

Ask any woman if they’ve been harassed, demeaned, attacked, or assaulted by men and they will tell you, “Of course. Multiple times.” Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, women are not treated the same as men, and the sad thing is, most times they are held to a higher standard, even by other women, when they dare to aspire to a job usually held by men.

I know I told you I was taking this month off from writing posts here, but two videos came up in my YouTube feed yesterday about the election and how Vice President Harris is treated differently than ex-president Trump. One video points that out with examples. The other gives examples of people saying she’s not qualified for various reasons, all of which are not true. This one contains graphs so you can compare her qualifications to that of the last few presidents. Spoiler alert, she’s more qualified than almost any president in the history of our country.

I’m going to share one of my stories and then I’ll include the video clips here so you can watch and make up your own minds whether or not Vice President Harris is qualified for the job of President of the United States. I know not all of you who follow me are from the U.S., but I hope you will bear with me on this post and think about how pervasive, persistent, pernicious, and protean misogyny really is all around the world. We need to change that and one way is to start calling it out when it happens to us and the women around us. That’s what I’m doing here.

Here’s ONE of my stories. I graduated from high school in 1971. I didn’t want to go to college right away so I worked for four years. In 1975, at the ages of 22, I began my college career. I’ve always been interested in stories and spirituality, so I took Introduction to Religion that first semester and was hooked. I immediately declared Religious Studies as my major. It was a small Christian college sponsored by my church. I was the only woman in the program of maybe 15 religion students. The harassment began my second year of study. Every lunch and dinner, I’ve forgotten how long this lasted, I was confronted by a group of about three or four guys thumping their Bibles and telling me that I needed to change my major because women were not meant to be ministers in the church. None of the men were in any of my classes or program. They didn’t know what I was learning about how The Bible was written many years after the events, especially those of the New Testament. But none of that mattered to them. They thought, because they were men, they had the right to tell me what to do with my life. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t convince me and eventually quit harassing me probably declaring that I was going to Hell because of my defiance. (Please note that about four or five years after I graduated, my church began ordaining women ministers.)

Most of the time we don’t recognize misogyny because we’ve lived with it for so long. If you watch these two videos, feel free to leave a comment. And I’ll also suggest that you read A Brief History of Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice. There were times while reading it I was filled with rage, so be warned. It points out stark historical realities that are extremely disturbing.

Here are the videos. I don’t know if I’ll write a post next week. We’ll see if I get inspired. 

I hope you have a good week ahead. Please comment, or even share this post if you’re so inclined. Thanks for reading.