Commentary on Historical and Modern Silencing of Women in Politics and Society

especially those whose voices might disturb the peace a€" has always been that things will go better for them if they keep their mouths shut. In my forthcoming book about the political consequences of womend€™s rage, I write about a 16th-century torture device called the brank, which was used to muzzle a defiant or cranky woman by keeping her head and jaw clamped in a metal cage. Some of the iron bridles included tongue depressors; some of those had spikes on the bottom to pierce the flesh. When I visited the Tower of London last year, during the week that followed the publication of stories about Harvey Weinsteinde€™s serial sexual predation a4€" told at long last by women whose tongues had been loosed 4€" I saw an internally spiked metal neck collar on display. It was labeled a A4€ecollar for torturea€ and described as something to be A4€eput around the necks of scolding or wayward wives.a€","type":"text"}, {"identifier":" anf-body- 9","inlineTextStyles": [{"range": {"length":1363,"start":0},"textStyle":"_ anf-ts- 11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout", "role":"body", "text":"The censure of women who open their mouths in dissent or dissatisfaction or anything less than grinning compliance with the power structures that subjugate them is so common as to be the stuff of everyday catcalling. And we dond€™t just hear the reminders a4€" A€eCome on, baby, smile a€" you look so pretty when you smiled€ a4€" on the street. During the 2016 primaries, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough chided Hillary Clinton, after a set of primary victories, a€esSmile. You just had a big night.ad€ And in 2018, commenting on Nancy Pelosid€™s grim visage during Trumpd這s first State of the Union, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on CNN, a€el think she should smile a lot more often.a€ When women like Pelosi and Clinton do open their mouths, theyd€™re quickly cast as shrill and monstrous harpies. Do a Google image search of any powerful women in politics or public life, and youd€™ll see that their ideological opponents love to show pictures of them with their mouths open, mid- yell, the very act of making a loud noise a sign of their unnatural tendencies; itd€™s no accident that when he was asking to have her removed from Kavanaughd€™s confirmation hearings two weeks ago, Orrin Hatch referred to a protester yelling about health care as a 4€eloudmouth.d€ The best way to discredit threatening women is to capture them giving loud voice to something that we might imagine is uncomfortable to hear.", "type"™:"text"}, {"additions": [{"URL":"https://apple.news/AsphunM9BOTqQUAJuthZQug" ," range": {"length":4, "start":757},"type"™:"link"}],"identifier":" anf-body- 10", "inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":868,"start":0},"textStyle":" anf-ts- 11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout", "role":"body","text":"And the best way to silence them 4€" besides literally covering their mouths, as Kavanaugh is alleged to have done to Ford, as he was trying to rip her clothes off a4€" is to ensure that their voices are considered illegitimate. There are a number of mechanisms with which to accomplish that. Bruenig writes of Wyattd€™s economic precariousness, especially compared to the wealth and social stature of the young men who assaulted her. Wyatt, and Ramirez, considered themselves to be outsiders, who had to work to fit into comparatively more privileged circles. To be Aa€ethe popular girl,da€ and d4€eone of the cool kids,a€ Wyatt told Bruenig, she often drank and took drugs. Ramirez described feeling like a social outsider at the party of the wealthy, elite frat guys at Yale; she participated in a game in which she was directed to drink to the point of incapacitating drunkenness.","type":"text"}, {"identifier":" anf-body- 11i","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":480,"start":0},"textStyle":" anf-ts- 11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout", "role":"body","text":"There are other qualities women are told to cultivate if they want to be liked and accepted: pliability, friendliness, flirtatiousness, sexual availability, forgiveness. Is it not devilishly grotesque that each and every one of these traits can be used to discredit their claims of having been preyed upon? Dond€™t believe her 4€" she was drunk, she was flirting with me, she slept with so many people, hered€™s a photo of her smiling with me a year later, and now she says I raped her?", "type": "text"}, {"additions": [{"URL":"https://apple.news/A6D1goKj zQ3WXnIPhpDBFXxXg", "range": {"length":14,"start":308},"type":"link"}],"identifier":" anf-body- 12","inlineTextStyles": [{"range":{"length":665,"start":0},"textStyle":" anf-ts- 11"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout", "role": "body", "text":"We cannot even begin to assess how many stories women dond€™t tell because they were drunk, or young, or had been playing along right up until the moment of assault, or had acquiesced to an assault because they felt they had no choice. This last dynamic was key to the horrifying tale, also told this week, by Laura Knoblach, the daughter of a Minnesota legislator who she said molested her from childhood. Once, she told reporters, when she was 15, her father asked if she liked the way he touched her, and shed€™d been too afraid to say anything but yes. Knoblach, like Wyatt, had told her story repeatedly throughout the years, but no one 4€" until now a4€" had listened.","type":"text"}, {"identifier":" anf-body- 13","inlineTextStyles":[{"range":{"length":691,"start":0},"textStyle":" anf-ts- 1i"},{"range":{"length":14,"start":676},"textStyle":" anf-ts- 10"}],"layout":"bodyContentLayout", "role":"body","text":"The number of these stories HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028443