10 Of The Most Ridiculous Things Ever Said About Women In History

This post was originally published on Bustle. By JR Thorpe Luckily for any student of laughing-at-ridiculous-sexism (which is one of the best academic pastimes), there are many candidates for Most Stupendously Silly Statement Made About Women In The History Of Humankind. What about the Victorian medical specialist William Acton's proclamation in 1857 that "the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feeling of any kind"? Or televangelist Pat Robertson's much more modern, but no less astonishing, tirade that "feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians"? Ah, the joys of being a woman: basically, throughout 98 percent of human history, it's involved being told insulting and ridiculous things by members of the opposite sex. But there are some examples so spectacular, so influential and/or so maddeningly daft that they deserve a special place in our hearts. They need to be gold-plated and put above everybody's bedstead, under the title "This Is Why We Need Feminism". And this is only the stuff we know; ancient Mesopotamians or lost civilizations now long dead may have had even more hilarious opinions about women's weaknesses, inability to have their own emotions, or think in straight lines. (I don't know what precisely is so excellent about straight lines, myself, but I'm not an all-knowing man.) So here,...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news