Off With Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power

In the sixteenth century, Mary I of England burned some three hundred Protestants as heretics during her five-year reign, earning herself the sobriquet “Bloody Mary.” Yet her father Henry VIII executed some seventy thousand people during his thirty-eight-year reign for a variety of offenses, mostly treason and heresy. No one ever called him “Bloody Henry.

When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch. —Bette Davis

In an election, if you are married, you are neglecting him; if you are single, you couldn’t get him; if you are divorced, you couldn’t keep him. If you’re widowed, you killed him. —Barbara Mikulski, US Senator from Maryland, 1987–2017

As the feminist author Kate Manne wrote in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, “When a woman competes for unprecedented high positions of male-dominated leadership or authority, particularly at the expense of an actual male rival, people tend to be biased in his favor, toward him. That is, there will be a general tendency, all else being equal, to be on his side, willing him to power, and this in turn predictably leads to biases against her. So when she speaks against or over him, by disagreeing with him, interrupting him, laughing at his expense, or declaring victory over him—it would be natural for her voice to be heard as grating, raspy, shrill, or otherwise painful sounding. We do not want to hear her say a word against him, so she becomes hard to listen to.

If women started emulating Elizabeth’s strength and independence, who would marry them, have sex with them, birth their babies, and cook them dinner? She had single-handedly proven everybody wrong by showing that a menstruating, menopausal, or old woman could run the country better than any man.

Another method to identify misogyny is to picture a well-known politician as belonging to the opposite sex and see where that takes you. For instance, imagine Donald Trump as a woman. Let's call her Donna. During the 2016 presidential election, Donna Trump said the exact same things as her male twin, Donald, did in real life. Orange-faced, sporting a fantastically cantilevered helmet of yellow hair, she hid her weight under baggy, navy-blue pantsuits. Bellowing from the podium, she was angry, boastful. Only SHE could save the country. She called people nasty names, made fun of handicapped reporters and Gold Star Families, and refused to turn over her income tax returns. She lied and/or exaggerated on a daily basis. She had been married three times and cheated on all three husbands. She bragged about grabbing unsuspecting men's penises. Would Donna Trump have been viewed as blunt, honest, and refreshing? Would SHE have won the election?