A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice (40 page)

Moller Orkin, Susan,
Women in Western Political Thought,
Princeton University Press, 1979.

Moulton, Ian Frederick,
Before Pornography: Erotic writing in early Modern England,
Oxford University Press, 2000.

O’Shea, Stephen,
The Perfect Heresy: The revolutionary life and death of the medieval Cathars,
Walker and Company, 2000.

Paz, Octavio, translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane,
Conjunctions and Disjunctions,
Seaver Books, 1982.

Pearsall, Ronald,
The Worm in the Bud: The world of Victorian sexuality,
Pelican Books, 1969.

Pinker, Steven,
The Blank Slate: The modern denial of human nature,
Viking, 2002.

Pomeroy, Sarah,
Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves,
Schocken Books, New York, 1975.

Rich, Adrienne,
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as experience and institution,
W. W. Norton, New York, 1986.

Russell, Bertrand,
The History of Western Philosophy,
George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1946.

Shlain, Leonard,
Sex, Time and Power: How women’s sexuality shaped human evolution,
Penguin Books, 2003.

Stark, Rodney,
The Rise of Christianity: A sociologist reconsiders history,
Princeton University Press, 1996.

Stephens, Walter,
Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, sex and the crisis of belief,
University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Tannahill, Reay,
Sex in History,
Abacus, London, 1979.

Trevor-Roper, Hugh,
The European Witch-craze of the 16
^th
and 17
^th
Centuries,
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966.

Warner, Marina,
Alone of all her Sex: The myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary,
Vintage, New York, 1983.

Willey, David,
God’s Politician: John Paul at the Vatican,
Faber and Faber, London, 1992.

Wollstonecraft, Mary,
A Vindication of the Rights Of Woman,
with an Introduction by Miriam Brody, Penguin Classics, 1992.

Yalom, Marilyn,
A History of the Breast,
Ballantine Books, 1997.

1
.   See the statistical evidence in
The Blank Slate: The modern denial of human nature,
by Steven Pinker, Viking, 2002.

2
.   
Hesiod: Theogony/Works and Days[elip],
translated by Dorothea Wender, Penguin Classics, 1973.

3
.   Ibid.

4
.   
Helen: Myth, legend and the culture of misogyny,
by Robert Meacher, Continuum, 1995.

5
.   Wender, op. cit.

6
.   
Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves,
by Sarah Pomeroy, Schocken Books, 1975.

7
.   
The Epic of Gilgamesh,
translated by N. K. Sanders, Penguin Classics, 1960.

8
.   
Women in Greece,
by Sue Blundell, Harvard University Press, 1995.

9
.   The seventh-century poet Semonides wrote, ‘For Zeus designed this as the greatest of all evils: Woman/And bound us to it in unbreakable fetters.’

10
.   
The Tragical History of Dr Faustus,
by Christopher Marlowe.

11
.   
The Iliad,
translated by Richmond Lattimore, as quoted by Robert Meacher, op. cit.

12
.   
The Trojan Women,
translated by Gilbert Murray and George Allen, Unwin Ltd., 1905.

13
.   
Civilization and Its Discontents,
by Sigmund Freud, Dover Publications, 1994.

14
.   From the introduction to the
Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology,
Hamlyn, 1968.

15
.   Menander, quoted in
The Reign of the Phallus,
by Eva Keuls, University of California, 1985.

16
.   ‘A Husband’s Defense, Athens circa 400 B.C.’, quoted in
Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A source book in translation,
edited by Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, John Hopkins University, 1982.

17
.   Pomeroy, op. cit.

18
.   Ibid.

19
.   
Courtesans and Fishcakes: The consuming passions of Classical Athens,
by James Davidson, Harper Perennial, 1999.

20
.   Keuls, op. cit.

21
.   ‘Though wounded, battered, defeated and overcome by the javelins of the Classical heroes, by the moral indignation of the Fathers of the Church and numberless Christian defenders, by the fantastic spells and powers of Renaissance heroes, and by the boldness and greed of the early modern conquistadors, Amazons lived on to emerge again and again in Western culture,’ writes Abby Kleinbaum, commenting upon the extraordinary persistence of this myth, in
The War against the Amazons,
New Press, 1983.

22
.   Blundell, op cit.

23
.   The comedies of Aristophanes, also written during the fifth century, often play upon similar themes, with women defying the prevailing moral, social and political order. His work without question reflects the concerns, obsessions and preoccupations of the contemporary world. Since both tragedies and comedies share similar themes, we can assume the contemporary relevance of both.

24
.   
Antigone,
translated by E. F. Watling, Penguin Classics, 1947.

25
.   Ibid.

26
.   
Hippolyta,
translated by Judith Peller Hallet, Oxford Classical Texts, 1902–13.

27
.   Plato’s dualism was not new. In the sixth century
BC
, the philosophical school of Pythagoras drew up a Table of Opposites. The list comprised of ten pairs which Pythagoreans believed governed the Universe, such as good and evil, right and left, light and darkness, limited and unlimited, and male and female. The four elements into which the Ancients reduced all nature were also pairs of opposites: fire and air, earth and water. A habit of thinking viewed the differences between men and women as eternal and immutable opposites, and the source of an unending conflict.

28
.   As quoted in
An Introduction to Western Philosophy: Ideas and arguments from Plato to Popper,
Anthony Flew, Thames and Hudson, 1989. Popper’s
The Open Society and Its Enemies
is a critique of the political and social thinking of Plato and Marx.

29
.   
The History of Western Philosophy,
by Bertrand Russell, George Allen and Unwin, 1946.

30
.   
The Republic,
translated by H. D. P. Lee, Penguin Classics, 1955. All quotes are from this edition.

31
.   In the parable of the prisoners in the cave he conveys his vision of the falseness of the world as perceived by the senses. Imagine that the prisoners have been there since childhood, chained together. Near the opening, a fire is blazing and people pass on a raised road between the fire and the prisoners. As the world goes by outside, the prisoners see nothing of it but its shadows flickering on the cave wall. Because they know no better, they mistake this for reality. In the same way as the prisoners are deluded by shadows of a reality they have never directly perceived, we who know the world only through the senses know nothing of the World of Perfect Forms, absolute and eternal, of which the world of the eyes and ears, of taste and of touch, is merely a shadow. The philosopher is equated with a prisoner who has escaped the cave and seen the world beyond it.

32
.   Russell, op. cit.

33
.   Keuls, op. cit.

34
.   ‘On the Generation of Animals’, quoted in
Misogyny in the Western Philosophical Tradition, A Reader,
edited by Beverley Clack, Routledge, 1999.

35
.   
Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: a source book in translation,
by Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, John Hopkins University Press, 1982.

36
.   Pomeroy op. cit.

37
.   
Too Many Women?: The sex ratio question,
by Marcia Guttentag and Paul Secord, Sage Publications, 1983.

38
.   From
Lysistrata,
in
The Complete Plays of Aristophanes,
edited by Moses Hales, Bantam Books, 1962.

39
.   Lefkowitz and Fant, op. cit.

40
.   Ibid.

41
.   Ibid.

42
.   Ibid.

43
.   
The City of God,
translated by Gerald G. Walsh et al, Image Books, 1958.

44
.   
Roman Women: Their history and habits,
by J. P.V. D. Balsdon, Harper and Row, 1962.

45
.   Livy,
The Early History of Rome,
translated by Aubrey de Sélin-court, Penguin Classics, 2002.

46
.   
Civilization and Its Discontents,
Sigmund Freud, Dover, 1994. The flame survived until
AD
394, when the Christians, now rulers of Rome, ordered it to be extinguished. It took sixteen years for the ancient prophecy to come true. In
AD
410 Rome fell to an invading army of Visigoths.

47
.   
Jugurthine War, and Conspiracy of Catiline,
Sallust, translated by S. A. Handford, Penguin Classics, 1963.

48
.   Ibid.

49
.   Ibid.

50
.   Egyptian women, like those of Mesopotamia, were known for their elaborate make-up. Make-up is first mentioned in a Mesopotamian text dated to 3000
BC
.

51
.   
Roman Women,
Balsdon, ibid.

52
.   Shakespeare,
Antony and Cleopatra,
Act 2, Scene 2.

53
.   Lefkowitz and Fant, op. cit.

54
.   Ibid.

55
.   
Women and Politics in Ancient Rome,
by Richard A. Bauman, Routledge, 1992.

56
.   Livy, op. cit.

57
.   Pomeroy, op. cit.

58
.   Bauman, op. cit.

59
.   Macrobius, quoted by Bauman, ibid.

60
.   The psychiatrist Frank Caprio, quoted in
Nymphomania: A History,
by Carol Groneman, W. W. Norton, 2000.

61
.   Groneman, ibid.

62
.   Ibid.

63
.   Translated by Rolfe Humphries, Indiana University Press, 1958.

64
.   Ibid.

65
.   Tacitus,
The Annals,
translated by Michael Grant, Penguin Classics, 1956. Outrageous marriages were far from unknown in Ancient Rome. In the reign of Nero, one aristocrat who had already shocked public opinion by fighting as a gladiator, married his boyfriend. Nero himself put on a bride’s veil and married one of his male lovers.

66
.   Ibid.

67
.   
Agrippina: Sex, power and politics in the early Roman Empire,
by Anthony A. Barrett, Yale University Press, 1996.

68
.   Tacitus, op. cit.

69
.   Bauman, op. cit.

70
.   Agrippina wrote an autobiography, detailing her life and the misfortunes of her family, probably just a few years before her death. Unfortunately, we only know about this unique document from a few references in Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, both of whom used it as a source. We glean from this that Nero was a breach birth, probably the reason why his mother had no more children.

71
.   Juvenal, op. cit .

72
.   
Apulieus, The Golden Ass, A New Translation,
by E. J. Kennedy, Penguin Classics, 1998. The jackass, who is the human hero metamorphosed, afraid that once he has finished with the woman, he too will be eaten by the lions, decides to escape before he has to perform.

73
.   This comes from a Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiastes, discovered in the twentieth century, and quoted by Russell, op. cit.

74
.   
A History of Christianity,
by Paul Johnson, Simon and Schuster, 1976.