"In two essays, Mary Beard addresses the misogynists and trolls who mercilessly attack and demean women the world over, including, very often, Mary herself. 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? Mary Beard is the author of Confronting the Classics and SPQR. She is a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge"--Provided by publisher.
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Details
ISBN: 9781631494758 (hc.)
Physical Description:printxi, 115 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
Edition:First American edition.
Publisher:New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.
General Note: "A version of 'The Public voice of women' first appeared in the London Review of Books, 20 March 2014; 'Women in power' was published, also in the London Review of Books, 16 March 2017, Both were lectures presented by Mary Beard in the LRB Winter Lecture series."--Title page verso.Includes index.
Formatted Contents Note: The public voice of women -- Women in power.