At long last, Mary Beard addresses in one brave book the misogynists and trolls who mercilessly attack and demean women the world over, including, very often, Mary herself. In Women & Power, she traces the origins of this misogyny to its ancient roots, examining the pitfalls of gender and the ways that history has mistreated strong women since time immemorial. As far back as Homer's Odyssey, Beard shows, women have been prohibited from leadership roles in civic life, public speech being defined as inherently male. From Medusa to Philomela (whose tongue was cut out), from Hillary Clinton to Elizabeth Warren (who was told to sit down), Beard draws illuminating parallels between our cultural assumptions about women's relationship to power-and how powerful women provide a necessary example for all women who must resist being vacuumed into a male template. With personal reflections on her own online experiences with sexism, Beard asks: If women aren't perceived to be within the structure of power, isn't it power itself we need to redefine? And how many more centuries should we be expected to wait?
I really loved how unapologetically angry Mary Beard is about the silencing of women - unlike a lot of contemporary feminist works, she doesn't pander to the #NotAllMen crowd. I thought the framing of the book was really clever, too - she's a classicist and she very credibly wove the modern silencing of women (specifically social media abuse) in with ancient examples in order to show that, for all the progress we've made... not much has changed. For something called a "manifesto", however, I didn't think the call to arms was terribly strong - I was expecting something a bit more powerful there. I think both essays were great and really got to the heart of why it is so difficult for women to truly have power in society, but I was just hoping for a little more.
