Often the face of evil
NPR asks an always-timely question: Why Are Old Women Often The Face Of Evil In Fairy Tales And Folklore?
Because everybody* hates old women.
Typecasting is one explanation. “What do we have? Nags, witches, evil stepmothers, cannibals, ogres. It’s quite dreadful,” says Maria Tatar, who teaches a course on folklore and mythology at Harvard. Still, Tatar is quick to point out that old women are also powerful — they’re often the ones who can work magic.
Well, “powerful” until they’re killed at the end. Not a particularly desirable brand of power.
Tatar says old women villains are especially scary because, historically, the most powerful person in a child’s life was the mother. “Children do have a way of splitting the mother figure into … the evil mother — who’s always making rules and regulations, policing your behavior, getting angry at you — and then the benevolent nurturer — the one who is giving and protects you, makes sure that you survive.”
Veronique Tadjo, a writer who grew up in the Ivory Coast, thinks there’s a fear of female power in general. She says a common figure in African folk tales is the old witch who destroys people’s souls. As Tadjo explains, “She’s usually a solitary woman. She’s already marginal. She’s angry at something — at life, or whatever — and she will ‘eat’ — that’s the expression — people’s souls, in the sense that she’s going to possess people and then they die a terrible death. And everybody knows it’s the witch; it’s the old woman.”
As I’ve mentioned, we’re seeing a lot of that in the commentary on Germaine Greer. Even PZ – whom I would have expected to know better – went there:
My personal feeling is that Greer really is saying hateful crap, and my sentiment favors booting her antiquated butt off the campus.
Boot all the antiquated females butts off everything. Get them out of public life. They’re the face (and butt) of evil, so get rid of them.
*Everybody in the Anglophone world, that is.
Some group or other will ‘No Platform’ PZ Myers for writing ‘hateful crap’ in due course. He won’t be able to speak at a University afterwards. Why not?
I hate to be all evo-psych but:
1. Social animals respect the older females. Even in species thought to be male-dominated, the older females have been found to control the social dynamic and therefore able to decide what males are in charge and who is demoted or ostracised.
2, The best explanation we have so far for menopause is it allows women to become grandmothers, creating a social class of women less burdened, whose experience is used to help the family thrive. This elevates their potential status further.
But once humans got property, the males wanted to control it. You don’t want to build a city and then get kicked out because the old women are angry that you dumped the daughter of one for the less-interested granddaughter of another. So the cultural vilification of old women began as a way to changing matriarchy to patriarchy. Teach the children that old women are scary and they won’t listen to their wisdom.
It worked so well, that it is often still working. Except we still have some contrary impulses. When the nation cheered for Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearing, it was in no small part because her face was our grandmother, or favorite teacher, being patient *for now* even when faced with ridiculous behavior.
I’m really surprised that PZ posted that, given that Greer wasn’t even planning to talk about transgender issues. In effect, he’s supporting comprehensive bans on speakers based on unrelated opinions.
To be fair to PZ, he says “I don’t know”. It’s a pretty weak-arse position to take though.
As for Greer, I’m really only familiar with some of her radio and TV appearances and second hand descriptions of her writings. To me she seems strongest when discussing clear cut male/female power dynamics. Her stance on FGM re cultural practice is just fucked, her stance about trans women not actually being women is problematic at best and her denial of discrimination against trans people/transphobia as a thing is pig headed wrongness. I’m sure there are somethings I would agree strongly with her about and other areas where we would disagree (I’m sure I’d get an earful in fact).
All that said, in a University context I am very much loath to see no platforming occur. Physical safety should be an absolute. However, emotional or intelectual safety are another matter. If someone else curates your emotional and intelectual experience for you, you are their vassal. Willingly perhaps, but a vassal nonetheless. Some of the most formative experiences of my life invovled listening to people I regarded as having hateful views.
A University should be a place where ideas compete. A speaker with views you don’t like gets invited? Go, debate them, organise protests, hand out flyers, organise a speaker who will counter the view (or speak yourself). Better yet, pressure the University/Department who invited the speaker to create a forum in which the poor idea is placed under the microscope.
One absolute though. No speaker who requires segregation of attendees by sex, race, religious belief etc, should ever be allowed to have their way in that manner. The baseline for any such event should be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with any local laws that ADD to that protection overlaid.
I wasn’t unfair to PZ. My point wasn’t about the post as a whole or whatever his position might be on Greer, it was about his saying “my sentiment favors booting her antiquated butt off the campus.” It’s just more of the familiar knee-jerk hatred of old women, and I’m fucking sick of it. (Which is just too damn bad, because it’s not going anywhere. But I can register my objection.)
MrFancyPants,
Why so? Given that the objection is based on (see comment #41 on the featured post) the two ideas that “Trans-exclusionary views should have no place in feminism or society.” and that “Allowing Greer a platform endorses her views, and by extension, the transmisogyny which she continues to perpetuate.”, then even not including transgender issues when talking about women is seen as exclusionary.
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Ophelia, I see your point. He could easily have called the belief antiquated, rather than the person.
Ophelia, I wasn’t accusing you of being unfair to PZ. In fact I wasn’t actually accusing anyone of being unfair to him. If anything I was damning him with pretty faint praise.
I totally agree that the use of ‘antiquated’ is ageist and unneccessary. It’s just as much a form of discrimination and othering as referring to a persons sex, race or orientation. It’s also just as saturated into our langauge and culture as those forms of discrimination and tends to be part of the water we swim in. Which is probably why PZ made the comment without thinking anything of it as to many people it would just seem a turn of phrase.
PS, having tipped over 50 I have noted that while not quite being rteated as antiquated, I’m definitely seen as being in a different category to young now. I don’t like it at all.
It’s not the most fun thing about getting older, that’s a fact.
John Morales:
But not all of her views. This is the sort of blanket statement that makes no sense. Walt Whitman was a self-professed, vocal racist who referred to freed slaves as “baboons”, and yet I’m fairly certain there continue to be poetic analyses of “O Captain, My Captain!” within the context of discussions on slavery and Lincoln.
MrFancyPants, sure. Strictly, it’s a form of the genetic fallacy by appeal to consequences.
Nonetheless, it is their professed belief.
So do we, in your opinion, bow to that belief and express only the thoughts that they deem suitable? I don’t think you’d say so, John Morales.
I’ve had numerous numerous online run-ins with PZ over the past few years, so I’m not the most likely person to defend him, but I do think when he used the word “antiquated” he was referring to Greer’s ideology, not her biology.
No, PZ referred to her antiquated BUTT…not her ‘antiquated ideas’. Attacking someone for their age is little different from attacking someone for their sex.
Don’t like the guy at all.
No, he was absolutely not saying “my sentiment favors booting her antiquated ideas off the campus.” He was saying what he did in fact say – “Greer really is saying hateful crap, and my sentiment favors booting her antiquated butt off the campus.” It’s crystal clear: she says hateful crap, therefore, his sentiment favors booting her antiquated butt off the campus. Kicking her physical butt, which is antiquated, off the campus.
I’ve never said anything like that about for instance trans women. I dislike rhetorical violence, and I’ve grown to dislike it even more intensely over the past 4.5 years as so much of it has been directed at me. Yet for some reason it’s fine for PZ to talk like that about a woman, while it’s not fine for me to ask what we’re talking about when we talk about identifying as something.
I think the best answer to this question was whoever said: ‘Because they were written by women’. The recent no-platforming kerfuffles seem to add weight to that view.