The long history of prejudice against women has been the focus of many academic studies, but until now there has been no attempt to collect actual examples of this prejudice. Now, the author has gathered together works that document the scorn and contempt for the 'weaker sex' that most women endured for generations until very recently. This is the work of leading members of the intellectual, social and political communities. They published their views in numerous prestigious publications. Fear of women's sexuality was a prime motivator of a great deal of prejudice whereby men, but not women, were permitted sexual dalliance without undue censure. Reading the unabashed bias against women so evident in these pages brings the entrenched misogyny of American society into vivid focus and makes one appreciate all the more the immense efforts of feminists who, for more than a century, have worked to overcome the stereotypes of 'womanly' behaviour long enforced by men.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Joshi starts his (yes, his) history of prejudice against women off with a bang. "And now bear with me . . . while I show you what you, dear ladies, cannot do." This, from -nineteenth-century Congregational minister John Todd's pamphlet entitled "Woman's Rights," presages the thrust and purpose of all the essays to follow. From Dr. Edward H. Clarke's flagrant disdain for female intelligence in an 1873 essay in which he opines that too much education robs the so-called more important female reproductive organs of the blood they need by channeling it to the brain, to Professor Stephen Goldberg's 1973 polemic regarding the "Inevitability of Patriarchy," Joshi's compilation of articles, excerpts, and treatises traces more than a century of the most vitriolic anti-feminist writings from preeminent scholars, clergy, physicians, and politicians. Anyone wishing to understand the overwhelming challenges faced by women's-rights activists from the movement's earliest days to the dawn of the Second Wave need look no further than Joshi's illuminating and downright infuriating examples of pervasively misogynistic thinking. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
S. T. Joshi (Seattle, WA) is a freelance writer, scholar, and editor whose previous books include God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong, H. L. Mencken on Religion, Atheism: A Reader, and Documents of American Prejudice.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
S. T. Joshi (Seattle, WA) is a freelance writer, scholar, and editor whose previous books include Documents of American Prejudice; In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women; God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong; Atheism: A Reader; H. L. Mencken on Religion; The Agnostic Reader; and What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays by Mark Twain.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Her Place,
By
This review is from: In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice Against Women (Hardcover)
This book is a very important compilation of the history of prejudice against women from prominent writers in the nineteenth century. Why is it so important? Because it is still relevant today!
Thank you, Mr. Joshi, for putting together this masterpiece for us. In my opinion, this book should be prominent in every home and used to open discussions with family members in an effort to get these prejudices out of our lives once and for all. This book is NOT for women only. It is definitely a book that lends itself for use in book clubs everywhere. Every page of this book is shocking. I consider this to be one of the best books I have read in a very long time. Jean Teebken
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Follows the actual examples of such prejudice rather than providing the usual overview of history,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice Against Women (Hardcover)
IN HER PLACE: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF PREJUDICE AGAINST WOMEN follows the actual examples of such prejudice rather than providing the usual overview of history: as such, it culls records from books, articles and scholarly monographs to provide evidence in dozens of works which document scorn and disrespect for women over the past two centuries. Don't expect to find the familiar here, either: much of the material has never been reprinted since its original publication and offers thinking from major members of the intellectual and social circles of their times for some major eye-openers.
Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If only such attitudes were merely history,
By viktor_57 "viktor_57" (Fairview, Your Favorite State, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice Against Women (Hardcover)
The specious male propaganda collected in this volume all attest to their writers' inabilities to see beyond their own narrow cultural biases and a willingness to accept the status quo as not only normal, i.e. natural, but socially desirable--society, of course, being defined on their terms. While we may expect such historical prejudice from turn of the century religious bigots, pandering politicians, and fashionable intellectuals, the pervasiveness and reflexive acceptance of male dominance found its way into so-called "scientific" writings of physicians and researchers. That some of the most vociferous opponents of female equality were the very women suffering oppression speaks not only to the strength of this cultural prejudice, but also to its defining role of the culture itself, so much so that a threat to the established inequality was a threat to the very core of life as they knew it.
As people came to discredit religious and social justifications for female oppression, "science" supplied the necessary differences and therefore rationale for the continued oppression of half the population. While males of our species are on average larger and stronger, mostly due to the influence of testosterone, and these differences may very well have been responsible for the earliest cultural prejudices, might does not equal right, and in an enlightened society, arguments that mistake what is with what ought to be, the naturalistic fallacy, would have no sway over rational people with the empathy and magnanimity to imagine a more just society. Though we may believe we have progressed beyond the chauvinistic attitudes displayed in "In Her Place", discrimination remains de rigueur in many occupations, schools, and social assumptions. For this reason it is instructive to recall the writings of chauvinists who were less restrained in their vitriol, because it is in those writings that we see most explicitly the prejudice which is today practiced more subtly, but nonetheless rooted in the same ignorance, fear, and hatred.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
