Mary Beard on Women and Power, with Miriam Gonzalez and Laurie Penny
Mary Beard\xa0is Britain\u2019s best known classicist. Widely admired for her scholarship and popular television programmes about the ancient world, she is also one of this country\u2019s most prominent feminists. By refusing to be cowed by the misogynistic trolls who have abused her on Twitter, she has become a heroine for our times.\n\n\nOn June 7th Beard comes to the Intelligence Squared stage to talk about the themes of her No. 1 bestselling book\xa0Women and Power: A Manifesto. Examining misogyny\u2019s deep cultural roots, she will explore the ways in which women have been excluded from power for thousands of years. Take the decapitated, snake-haired head of Medusa in Greek mythology \u2013 seen by Freud as a castrator figure. It has been used recently to demonise Theresa May, Angela Merkel, and in the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton, who appeared in a meme as Medusa, with Trump holding her severed head aloft. The message? That the ultimate way to silence a woman is to kill her. Beard will also highlight a passage in Homer\u2019s Odyssey, some 3,000 years old, where Penelope\u2019s son tells her to shut up and go back to her spinning and weaving because speech is \u2018the business of men.\u2019 Muted women, men as aggressors: the injustices that the #MeToo movement is addressing are millennia old.\n\n\nSo how do we combat misogyny in all its forms? Is the kind of collective action we have seen recently in the Women\u2019s March and #MeToo going to effect the change longed for by so many? Should women who seek political power simply accept the status quo and follow the male template, or do we need a radical rethink of the entire nature of power and spoken authority?\n\n\nBeard explored these urgent questions, in conversation with lawyer and campaigner\xa0Miriam Gonz\xe1lez\xa0and radical commentator\xa0Laurie Penny, with writer and broadcaster\xa0Afua Hirsch\xa0in the chair. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.\n \n\xa0See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices