Reading Corner: Mary Beard, Women and Power

Earlier this spring, I had the pleasure of reading Mary Beard's new book, Women and Power: A Manifesto. In this short volume, Beard brings together two talks she gave on women, speech, and power, expanded to include anecdotes from her own experiences being attacked for speaking out. Beard argues that in the Greco-Roman world, speech was a public act and therefore the domain of men. To be a good citizen of the Greek polis or the Roman republic, a man had to participate in public life. That meant giving political speeches. Since women were not involved in politics, public speech became equated with male speech. As Greco-Roman ideas became the foundation of Western culture, the gendered nature of speech became part of its fabric as well. Fast forward to the twenty-first century and women are still being castigated for speaking out in public: they are too shrill, prone to hysterical outbursts, not authoritative enough. These stereotypes continue to play out in our political arenas every day. By illuminating the origins of our gendered ideas about speech, Beard's work helps make them more easily recognizable.

I found its message particularly compelling because I read it for the first time while watching the aftermath of the Parkland shooting unfold. A group of teenagers, victims of a terrorist act, who were still deep in the throes of mourning for their friends and teachers, chose to reinvent their tragedy as an moment to speak out, to make change, to ensure that no other group of students would experience the same shock and grief. The bravery and eloquence of these students should have been celebrated - and was, by many - yet an alarming number of people chose instead to denigrate them for speaking out. They were mocked for their appearance, their scholastic records, their sexual orientation. They were called names. Lies were spread about them. They were accused of being actors, rather than real children turning tragedy into opportunity.

Why did this happen? One clear reason is that they were being heard. They were speaking out on a divisive issue in American politics in a way that was gaining support for their cause. Gun-advocates, particularly the National Rifle Association, stooped to insulting these teenagers in order to distract from the ground they had been gaining in the gun-control debate.

Having read Beard's story of the dominance of the masculine voice in western politics, I have to wonder if there isn't another side to this. Beard begins her book with a story from the Odyssey, in which the adolescent Telemachus performs a song that his mother Penelope does not like. When she asks him to sing something else, Telemachus tells her to shut up and go back to her weaving (an acceptable occupation for a Greek woman). Beard explains that Telemachus, though a boy, is staking a claim to adult manhood. He says, "speech will be the business of men," staking his own claim for membership in that masculine, public arena while denying his mother access to it. This is a liminal moment for him, as he leaves his boyhood behind and claim his manhood. Because Penelope obeys him, and the men present listen to him, Telemachus' bid for inclusion is a success. For the Parkland students, however, I think the opposite is true. Like Telemachus, they are adolescents who are trying to participate in the adult arena of politics. Unlike Telemachus, the powers that be in that arena do not like what they have to say. Thus, the Parkland students are being painted as incapable of participating in public speech. Their voices are being labeled as immature and therefore unworthy of attention. A young man like David Hogg is not being allowed, like Telemachus, to take up his adult male political voice because his message is not a generally-acceptable one.

As Beard's work shows us, the methods being used to silence Hogg and his classmates are not new - these tools of oppression were developed thousands of years ago. They continue to be used because they work. But there is a bright spark of hope here for those not in power. In the twenty-first century, those in political power are no longer in exclusive control of the political arena. Unlike in ancient Athens or Rome, where there were a few, tightly controlled places to speak and be heard by many, the advent of the internet and social media has provided countless outlets for public speech and dozens of ways to magnify oppressed voices so that they can be heard. The fact that the Parkland students are still around, still in the spotlight, despite this campaign against them indicates that the stereotype of masculine political speech is breaking up. Its proponents are putting up a fight, but the cracks in its facade are widening. Let us hope that, soon, the exclusively masculine public speech Beard describes may truly be history.