SHUT UP!

SHUT UP!

‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’

As a starting point, and for a bit of a change, let’s begin on a pious note, with a biblical quotation. The ponderous words above are allegedly those of St Paul writing to his follower Timothy, a missionary. In fact, we may actually be looking at an early example of fake news as there is some debate about the authenticity of the epistle. But hey, when did a questionable piece of information ever stop anyone for relaying it (and in this case literally) as gospel truth?

Ways of silencing women have persisted since the year dot. In Women and Power Mary Beard describes what she calls the first example in Western literature of a man telling a woman to shut up. In The Odyssey, when Penelope enters a public area of the palace to make a complaint, her son, Telemachus, tells her to be silent, return to her own rooms and do women’s work, reminding her that public life is the exclusive reserve of men.

And so it goes on - and on and on. In life, religion, politics, literature, music and art, women have been told to know their place and keep their mouths shut. Hamlet told Ophelia to ‘Get thee to a nunnery’ and of course religious enclosure was a useful method for getting women out of the way. In 1620, for example, strict enclosure was enforced in Florence, with the Pope declaring that ‘Women must be governed and cannot govern themselves’.

The latest heinous example is that of the new law enforcement procedures announced by the Taliban in Afghanistan. We will spend a bit more time on that later (you may need to arm yourself with a stiff drink first).

Engines of punishment

In 1666, Margaret Fell (often known as the ‘Mother of Quakerism’) wrote Women speaking Justified, a pamphlet in which she challenged the laws against women preaching in public. She was in prison at the time because of her religious convictions and she wasn’t released until 1688. A decade or so earlier, Dorothy Waugh had endured the horrible punishment of being ‘bridled’ for the crime of preaching in the marketplace in Carlisle. Her first-hand account is chilling. She was detained like this for three hours, with a charge of two pence for anyone coming to see her.

‘That which they called so was like a steele cap…..which was a stone weight of
Iron…& three barrs of Iron to come over my face, and a piece of it was put in my mouth, which was so unreasonable a big thing for that place as cannot be well-related, and so I stood their time with my hands bound behind me with the stone weight of Iron upon my head, and the bitt in my mouth to keep me from speaking’

The madwoman in the attic

Another method for shutting up women was used during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Psychiatry was a new and developing science and theories about reproductive organs controlling women’s minds made them particularly vulnerable to being wrongfully committed as insane. A domineering and controlling husband or father who considered his wife or daughter to be a nuisance, or an embarrassment could obtain authorisation for her confinement. Independence and defiance were morally and socially unacceptable, and unfeminine – a threat to Victorian values.

But there were courageous women who defiantly and persistently challenged their diagnoses, refusing to conform to requirements and expectations. Several accounts, like The Bastilles of England (1883) by Louisa Lowe, How I escaped the Mad-doctors, by Georgina Weldon (1879) and A Blighted Life by Rosina Bulwer Lytton (1880) helped to expose these iniquitous confinements.

The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

And so, we turn to Afghanistan, where the Taliban have recently released an updated version of their laws on virtue and vice. The morality police (the Mustahabeen) enforce these laws, which are exceptionally harsh. Certain children’s games are forbidden, images of human beings are prohibited and men are not allowed to shave their beards. But the harshest laws are reserved for women. They are ordered to cover their faces and bodies completely and not sing or speak in a way that they can be heard outside of their family. Participation in public life is banned, there is no education for girls beyond the sixth grade and access to the judiciary is denied.

Breaking the silence

‘We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.’ (Ursula K Le Guin)

We have heard the voices of Dorothy Waugh and others who wrote accounts of their ordeals in previous centuries. A few weeks ago, during the Olympic Games, Manizha Talak, a breakdancer, made the decision to stage a demonstration against the silencing of Afghan women. Wrapping herself in a burka, with a slogan emblazoned with a demand for freedom, she knew she would be disqualified, but said: ‘What is more important, my dream or the women of Afghanistan?’ And earlier this month, in Albania, a conference for 130 Afghan women enabled them to raise their voices and speak about the future of their country.

Rebecca Solnit’s essay on silence and powerlessness sums up the importance of having and using our voices:

‘Having a voice is crucial. It’s not all there is to human rights, but it’s central to them, and so you consider the history of women’s rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence. Speech, words, voices sometimes change things in themselves when they bring about inclusion, recognition: the rehumanisation that undoes dehumanisation.’

-----------------------------

September update on our MK Fawcett campaign for a Safer, Healthier, Fairer Milton Keynes

• We have circulated background papers with baseline evidence of the need for making MK Safer, Healthier and Fairer
• We have had a preliminary meeting with Emily Darlington MP to discuss the issues raised in our campaign
• We have arranged a meeting with Chris Curtis MP and Callum Anderson MP for the end of September, and plan to have similar discussions with them
• We are monitoring and collecting further evidence to support our work
• We will continue to promote the manifesto campaign and encourage people to become more engaged with the political process

We will include an update in every blog. Thank you for supporting us in our campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights.

To see the papers we have produced, or if you have any queries, please contact us at miltonkeynesfawcettgroup@gmail.com