Silencing Women's Speech

Описание: A Sumerian law called for crushing a woman's mouth with a brick, for "disrespecting" a man. Ancient and medieval conventions ordered women to keep silent. The European witch hunts targeted women; the accusation that a woman could magically harm others from afar, by her evil thoughts, and thus deserved to be hounded, beaten, tortured, killed, or shunned. Coercing speech in the torture trials. Scoring aboon the breath: cutting a woman's face "above the mouth," so drawing her blood would break her spells.

The Witch's bridle / Scold's bridle / branks: headcages with a metal gag, for public humiliation, and also Schandmasken: "shame masks." "Swimming the witch," "ducking the scold" (epithet for an outspoken woman). Women Possessed; exorcism as a rite of male domination. Witch accusations by possessed children in the Salem hunts.

Imprisoned women who wrote or embroidered appeals for justice. Testimony of abused women from mental prisons, workhouses, and enslavement. Acts of speech as madness; inquisitors are replaced by psychiatrists, with their own forms of torture: ice baths, immobilization, insulin shock, electroshock.

Gagging, bridling, or torturing a woman's tongue in the anti-suffragist backlash. Men's words in women's mouths: media elevating select women to voice patriarchal views. Male domination of public discussions. Attacks on female journalists, internet influencers, members of parliament. Physical attacks on women who say No. Chup raho: "Be quiet."

New Left attacks on women's speech, igniting an explosion of female protest in the 2nd Wave. Rightwing backlash gains ground: Limbaugh invents the "feminazi," followed 30 years later by self-styled antifascists calling feminists "Nazis." Resurgence of witch hunt memes: "Burn TERFs," "punch TERFs," along with rape and death threats, directed at female targets, with impunity.

Threat from the far right and christian nationalists, who want women barefoot and pregnant, and back in the home, but are trying to turn feminist concerns into a wedge issue. Their long game leads to a fascist Gilead.

Women will not be silenced.