This topic came to my mind while listening to a YouTube video today about why people don’t wear hats anymore. It mentioned the tradition of women having to cover their heads in church.
That made me remember something my mother told me about the early days of her Jehovah’s Witnessing about the conducting of home bible studies. Now, normally, during services, female Witnesses do not have to cover their heads. But she told me that while leading home bible studies during the 50’s and 60’s, female Witnesses would cover their heads if there was no male Witness to lead the study group. Just the leader of the study. Just to show humility. And of course in deference to Paul’s words about “not allowing a woman to teach”.
At the time I heard this sometime in the 70’s, it blew my tiny little mind. In fact, I thought the practice so stupid that it may be the very first time I ever dared to question the Witness faith about anything, leading up to my atheism of today.
Anyway, would anyone else like to post about really egregious examples of misogyny, from past or present? This could get heated, I imagine, but what the hell, go for it.
Perhaps it’s too on the nose, but what is currently happening in Iran goes way past misogyny in my book It’s unfortunate that women there can’t grab their daughters and just leave… but unfortunately, it’s not that simple,
Growing up in Taiwan in the 1990s, people would often remark to my mother, “How fortunate you are, you have 3 sons!” (as if my sister, standing there, weren’t there. Our family was one daughter and three sons.) That may be pretty mild, maybe a “micro-aggression” in today’s terminology, but rankled my sister pretty hard.
My Wife was buying a car once and brought along her then boyfriend. They where talking to a salesman and my (now Wife) the then boy friend excused himself to use the restroom. The sales agent folowed him in the the lavatory and tried to convince him that his girlfriend doesn’t know what she was doing and should buy the car.
I’ve always been amused that Christians and Jews use the same Scripture passage to conclude that women should cover their heads but men shouldn’t, and that men should cover their heads but women shouldn’t.
For other bits of misogyny, it’s a pet peeve of mine that women of any age routinely get called “girls”, but men hardly ever get called “boys”. Similarly, a particularly attractive woman is a “babe” (infant), but a similarly attractive man is a “hunk” (large piece of something).
I have definitely seen Jewish women with their hair at least covered. Don’t know which branch.
Not that Judaism does not have plenty of super-misogynistic elements, like the infamous prayer, “Blessed art thou, O God, for not making me a Gentile, slave, or woman.” Assuming that is real. [ETA found it!: ברכות השחר (בלדי) – ויקיטקסט] Or that women do not count for the purposes of a quorum.
The book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” by Caroline Criado Pérez has many examples of misogyny and plain old bias in modern society. Some of them are :
Heart attack symptoms are different in men and women, but most posters / visuals teach symptoms for men only.
Women are under-represented in clinical trials and hence the science behind dosage / side-effects for women are often on shaky grounds. Many current drugs were approved by FDA more than 30 years back when this bias was more prevalent. For example Ambien dosage was halved by FDA for women, when they found that the approved dosage had far more negative effects on women.
Car seat belts were never designed for women. Women do not find them comfortable.
Women are more likely to die in car crashes because the dummies used in US car crash tests are modeled after men.
AI voice recognition works better for men
The keyboard design on a piano is better suited to the average man’s hand and penalizes women
…
There are too many to write down and it is a book very much worth reading.
I question this. The admonition about women not teaching is in First Corinthians: Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head - it is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
I don’t think very many Jews cite Paul as scriptural authority.
When my ex-wife gave birth to our eldest daughter, she was understandably worried about many things, including various phenomenons… down there. The (female) nurse answered all her questions while looking exclusively at me. I quickly pointed towards my then-wife and said “She’s the one you must talk to”.
Is this because clinical trials in the past deliberately selected men, or is it because the average woman is less likely than the average man to sign up for a clinical trial? Or something else?
When my (now ex-) wife and I married in 1984, both of us owned houses as separate estates. She and her daughters moved into mine — there was more room — and since the housing market was in a bit of a slump we rented hers out. A couple of years later we sold hers, and it turned out that even though we had made no changes to the title, I had to sign the paperwork as well.
After another couple of years we sold mine, and my signature was the only one required. Apparently a holdover from the “good old days” when a married woman couldn’t own property on her own — she being quasi-property herself — but it still rankles.
There is plenty of misogyny in Judaism, but honestly, i read that text as an acknowledgement of misogyny. It thanks God for not having put you in a difficult position.
Another example, I remember a Candid Camera episode from the 60’s where they had a woman in a pilot’s uniform walk through a crowded airport departure room and board the plane. The passengers freaked the fuck out. A WOMAN flying a passenger plane??? Omigod!!!
A stewardess who was not in on the joke wondered on camera how she was going to calm everybody down, and seemed shaky herself at the situation.
And these were WWII aged people who must’ve known about WASPS during the war. Huh.
Ah, so it also acknowledges racism. You know, I don’t consider the acknowledgement of slavery in the bible not to be an endorsement of it. Same with racism and misogyny.