# Another "Worst" Thread: 20th-Century Woman? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 1, 2005, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354 "2005-06-01T13:06:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/21 "2005-06-01T15:18:05Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > I’m a bit surprised nobody’s nominated Ayn Rand and Madalyn Murray yet. Don’t know enough about Ayn Rand, but Madalyn Murray O’Hare (I assume that’s who you mean?) was an abrasive bitch, but never really accomplished much of anything, good or bad. She bragged about getting prayer out of school—which in itself is a _good_ thing—but she was actually only one of several plaintifs. She was just the loudest. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/22 "2005-06-01T15:18:23Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > I’m a bit surprised nobody’s nominated Ayn Rand and Madalyn Murray yet. Well… It is “worst woman” and not “most toxic bitch.” 😉 Of the nominees so far, my vote is for Elena Ceaucescu. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/23 "2005-06-01T15:22:17Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > Wholesale destruction of communities, huh? Well, the chaos that engulfed the industrial north of England was probably matched by the social disruption in steel towns in the Mon Valley, just south of Pittsburgh, where I grew up. > > Towns lost half of their population and their entire industrial base inside of a generation. Property values collapsed, and with them the tax base. The business areas of these towns were depopulated too, and were given over to vagrancy, idleness, and crime. > > So I have a bit of an idea of what went down, trust me. > > Still, most of these economic dislocations weren’t the fault of either Thatcher or Reagan, painful as that might be to consider when we need to pin blame on people. Also, I’ve been to Romania, and have seen the impact of the decisions made by a pair of crackpot dictators who held centralized and unaccountable power that Reagan and Thatcher simply did not have. > > There is simply no basis for comparison between Elena Ceaucescu and Thatcher. Yes they were their fault. They controlled the social policies, they chose spending and tax priorities. I don’t subscribe to Marxist determinism. The Scandanavian countries seem to thrive without slashing and burning themselves, the Japanese still seem to be doing okay. Sure the USA had the same thing, probably worse. You too had a blind idealogue in command, or at least serving as a glove puppet. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/24 "2005-06-01T15:37:26Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > There is simply no basis for comparison between Elena Ceaucescu and Thatcher. I agree. Mrs. Ceaucescu was in a league of her own. Though I’ve not got a lot good to say about Indira Gandhi either. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/25 "2005-06-01T15:41:16Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > • **Eva Peron** You mentioned Eva Peron in the Mother Teresa topic as well as one of the few women you considered to be more evil. Could you specify what exactly she did that you feel was so harmful? I know plenty of people who dislike her, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone have such a low opinion of her as you appear to do. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/26 "2005-06-01T15:47:03Z")
[Myra Hindley](http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/moorsmurderers1.shtml) is the worst British woman in the 20th Century. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/27 "2005-06-01T15:52:06Z")
> [@Bippy the Beardless](#): > > [Myra Hindley](http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/moorsmurderers1.shtml) is the worst British woman in the 20th Century. Feh, she was an amateur—she only killed a handul of people. As for Eva Peron, it’s been a long time since I read a bio of her, but if I remember correctly (which I may not!), she funneled huge amounts of money away from Argentinean charities and public works into her own pockets; helped overthrow unions in the country; she and Peron aided and hid a lot of fleeing Nazis. On the other hand, she _did_ do a lot for the poor and for women . . . ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/28 "2005-06-01T16:20:03Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > [**Eve** looks forward to the Swimsuit Competition, in which Eva Peron will trounce Mother Teresa] [I can help you with one of the entrants, at least.](http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/peron/eva-peron.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/29 "2005-06-01T16:26:45Z")
> [@Metacom](#): > > Well… It is “worst woman” and not “most toxic bitch.” 😉 > > Of the nominees so far, my vote is for Elena Ceaucescu. Ouch. I need to clarify. I wasn’t nominating these two women. I was merely expressing surprise that no one had done so yet, considering how hated both of them are. And I’ll go with Elena Ceaucescu, too. A problem we’ve got here is that very few women hold the reins of political power as directly and completely as Hitler or Stalin, so they simply have far fewer opportunities for political mischief than men. Elena does seem to have crashed an all-boys club, though. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/30 "2005-06-01T16:40:27Z")
I’m going with Jiang Qing. Due to the opacity of Chinese politics, it’s difficult to tell exactly how much influence she actually had. But she clearly had some and the enormity of the crimes that occurred during her watch gives her a winning total even if she gets only partial credit for them. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/31 "2005-06-01T17:11:13Z")
That’s why I thought it came down to her or Ceaucescu. Ceaucescu was quite nasty, but was playing on a smaller stage. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/32 "2005-06-01T17:44:44Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > [I can help you with one of the entrants, at least.](http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/peron/eva-peron.jpg) Wow! That Mamacita Theresa was babe-licious back in the day! ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/33 "2005-06-01T20:26:27Z")
How is Rachel Carson the worst woman? I have to vote for Thatcher, too. That does not mean that I discount what Peron or the Chinese or Rumanian women did–I just think that Thatcher was more devious, more insidious and as such, has left a longer shadow. There are those who still think that she had the right ideas-god help us. I loathe her for not only her stand on social issues, but also environmental issues. but I loathe Reagan for the same reasons. Hey how about Nancy and her china? (just kidding). ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/34 "2005-06-01T22:25:13Z")
What about Imelda Marcos? ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/35 "2005-06-01T23:05:28Z")
**Carrie Nation.** Her religious temperance crusade led directly to a constitutional amendment establishing alcohol prohibition and the founding of a multimillion dollar illegal criminal enterprise, organized crime and the ascendency of J. Edgar Hoover. **Eunice Rivers.** Apologists have exonerated her 40-year role in the Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment. Me, I’m not so damn sure she deserves to be so damned unvillified. If you can damn a white man for conceiving it, and a racist government for endorsing it, you can damn well condemn a black woman for enabling it. **Leona Helmsley.** Certainly an unpleasant woman by many accounts. Honorable mention(S): **Mary Mallon** , who really needed to wash her hands, and **Mary Kate Villi _nee_ Letourneau** , who really needed to keep her hands to herself. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/36 "2005-06-01T23:16:49Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > And might I humbly suggest it depends on your perspective and whether one considers the Cultural Revolution the single-handed responsibility of Madame Mao, which she was not. And who says brutality and repression are the sole criteria? Destroying the social fabric of a once decent nation also counts. So the United Kingdon no longer has a social fabric? Ms. Mao helped to kill a number of people that might well have been greater than the entire population of the UK. I’m no Thatcher fan by any means, but people are allowing partisan politics to make them say crazy things. Margaret Thatcher is to Jiang Qing as a candy thief is to Ted Bundy. I admit Rachel Carson is a neat suggestion, inasmuch as her campaign against DDT has probably resulted in the deaths of 40,000,000 people or more, with no definable benefit. But Carson didn’t ban DDT, she just started the hysteria. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2005, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/37 "2005-06-01T23:36:15Z")
Oh shame on you, **RickJay**. Cite. The same Rachel Carson that TIME magazine said, "True, the damage being done by poison chemicals today is far worse than it was when she wrote the book. Yet one shudders to imagine how much more impoverished our habitat would be had _Silent Spring_ not sounded the alarm. Well crafted, fearless and succinct, it remains her most celebrated book, although her wonderful essays on the sea may be remembered longer. Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters. " ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2005, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/38 "2005-06-02T00:17:24Z")
[Victoria Price](http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_BPric.html) and [Ruby Bates](http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_BBates.html), the two little “innocent angels” who accused the Scottsboro Boys of gang-rape, come to mind. In addition to perjuring themselves and destroying the lives of the black men on that train, they made matters worse for blacks all over the country. (Ruby Bates to her credit later recanted her testimony, admitted perjury and worked for the release of the men; Price never did.) [Ilse Koch](http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t039/t03996.html), the _Bitch of Buchenwald_ who whipped concentration camp inmates with her riding crop and collected the skins of tattooed inmates. Georgia Tann (no really good web-sites that I could find, though she has many Google mentions), the fine smalltown Christian lady who superintended the Tennessee Orphans home and arranged more than 5,000 private adoptions, most of them involving bribes and babies taken from their birth-mothers with the flimsiest (or totally non-existent) evidence of abuse. There are detectives who specialize in reuniting children with the families they were stolen from by her. [Maude “Bambina” Delmont](http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/fatty_arbuckle/4.html?sect=13) is somebody I’d love to name (in fact I just did) because she’s one of the most gruesome American bitches (sociopath who destroyed the lives of Fatty Arbuckle and others through blackmail and framing) but her evil isn’t in it compared to the others. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2005, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/39 "2005-06-02T00:43:23Z")
**Askia** , who was Eunice Rivers? The cite I found on google froze up my computer so bad I had to restart, so I’m leary about searching again. Ooooh, here’s a good one: Anita Bryant! ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2005, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354/40 "2005-06-02T00:59:43Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Oh shame on you, **RickJay**. Cite. You must be joking. You aren’t aware that millions of people have died of malaria in the Third World since DDT was banned? Even today, after years of alternative means of trying to stop it, it’s still killing over a million people a year in Africa. Cite: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0612\_030612\_malaria.html](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0612_030612_malaria.html) DDT, on the other hand, almost eradicated malaria in a number of places. Malarial deaths were nearly eliminated in Sri Lanka and was used to eliminate it in southern Europe, the USA, and was wildly successful elsewhere: [http://www.malaria.org/DDT\_Guardian\_VIII\_99.html](http://www.malaria.org/DDT_Guardian_VIII_99.html) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/africa/1677073.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/africa/1677073.stm) And for what? So, allegedly, a few species of birds wouldn’t die and some fish wouldn’t go belly up? Let them die. I’d rather save a few hundred thousand African children. Against the absolute fact of millions of dead people, your rebuttal is a cite-free blowjob from something you pulled off the magazine rack? I still don’t nominate Carson though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-worst-thread-20th-century-woman/306354.md?page=3)