Women & Power, A Manifesto by Professor Mary Beard fell through my letterbox today and, coincidentally, for the first time a woman has been chosen for the Parliamentary role of Black Rod – it’s only taken 650 years.
Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and after highly successful TV series is the UK’s best-known classicist. Disgracefully, she is probably equally well known for the utterly foul abuse she has suffered on social media.
Initially her offence was her lack of a hair-do and make-up, and choice of clothes as she taught us about the Romans on telly. Things took an astounding turn for the worse after she suggested that the alleged strains on public services in Boston, Lincolnshire, by immigrants might be exaggerated on a BBC current affairs programme.
As she has commented, the treatment meted out to her would “put many women off appearing in public”. Stopping women speaking in public and the misogyny shown towards those who do is the subject of her short but straight-talking new book we opened with. The professor points to almost the very beginnings of Western literature for the first example of man telling a woman to shut up, in Homer’s Odyssey, almost 3,000 years ago.
Shut up and go to your room, Mother
While Odysseus the Greek king of Ithaca was gadding about the world and taking his own sweet time coming home after the Trojan Wars, his wife Penelope held the fort at home. She has to fend off a different kind of army – one of would-be suitors. When she is not amused to hear that ‘army’ being entertained by songs of how long it was taking the Greeks to return home, her son Telemachus tells her to return to her room and loom as “speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me the most of all; for mine is the power in this household”. And off she goes.
There is a straight line between this and the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, telling Labour Member of Parliament Angela Eagle to “calm down dear”, during a heated debate in Paliament about reforms to the National Health Service – a patronising slap-down made famous the odious film maker Michael Winner. You can watch it in all its glory below.
The attempt by the Speaker in the US Senate to silence Democrat Senator Elizabth Warren is in this fine tradition too. When she tried to read out a letter from civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and Republican of Kentucky, exercised his procedural right to cut short Senator Warren’s speech on the Senate floor in February 2017.
She didn’t go quietly. In fury at her resisting his instructions, the mighty McConnell fumed, “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted”. What a gift to the Twitterati; an instant rallying cry for the many who were underwhelmed by a powerful man telling a woman to button it. To add insult to injury, Senator Warren was citing Martin Luther King, Junior’s widow and in effect, Mitch the Mad was silencing her too.
And yes, that episode is where we got the name, but not the idea, for this website from.
Professor Beard goes on to say in Power & Woman that in support of Senator Warren, Bernie Sanders and other senators read out Ms Scott King’s letter without being excluded by Mitch the Magnificent. The professor’s book not only traces women being silenced through the ages in Western history and literature, but also the evil that is caused by those who don’t comply.
Her manifesto is that as women are not perceived to fit into power structures, then it’s high time we redefined what power is.
Having the door slammed in your face
Which brings us to Black Rod and the British love of pantomime and dressing up. The most exciting part of being Black Rod is the they get to bash on the door of the House of Commons, wait for it – with the eponymous black rod – to summon MPs to attend the House of Lords for the State Opening of Parliament which kicks off with the Queen’s Speech.
Black Rod has the door to the House of Commons slammed in their face and has to knock three times to gain entry – you’d have thought they’d have had a woman from the word go. The two refusals to allow Black Rod admission are to remind everyone that the Commons are not at the beck and call of the Lords Now after 650 years it will be a woman – Sarah Clarke is leaving her job running the Wimbledon tennis championships to become The Lady Usher of the Black Rod early next year.
She’ll have a staff of 30 behind the scenes in the House of Lords to organise various ceremonial events. No doubt her experience from dealing with all those fragile egos at Wimbledon will come in jolly handy.
Professor Beard’s book should give us all pause for thought – a terrific, not only blue-stocking filler!
The Persistent Woman 