How We Teach Our Kids That Women are Liars.

[seabeyond]

No one says, “You can’t trust women,” but distrust them we do. College students surveyed revealed that they think up to 50% of their female peers lie when they accuse someone of rape, despite wide-scale evidence and multi-country studies that show the incidence of false rape reports to be in the 2%-8% range, pretty much the same as false claims for other crimes. As late as 2003, people jokingly (wink, wink) referred to Philadelphia’s sex crimes unit as “the lying bitch unit.” If an 11-year-old girl told an adult that her father took out a Craigslist ad to find someone to beat and rape her while he watched, as recently actually occurred, what do you think the response would be? Would she need to provide a videotape after the fact?

It goes way beyond sexual assault as well. That’s just the most likely and obvious demonstration of “women are born to lie” myths. Women’s credibility is questioned in the workplace, in courts, by law enforcement, in doctors' offices, and in our political system. People don’t trust women to be bosses, or pilots, or employees. Pakistan’s controversial Hudood Ordinance still requires a female rape victim to procure four male witnesses to her rape or risk prosecution for adultery. In August, a survey of managers in the United States revealed that they overwhelmingly distrust women who request flextime.

It’s notable, of course, that women are trusted to be mothers—the largest pool of undervalued, economically crucial labor.



"Amongst all the savage beasts none is found so harmful as woman." -- John Chrysostom

“What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. One must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil." -- St. Albertus Magnus

“Women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.” -- Martin Luther

“I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children.” -- Augustine

While most religious leaders aren’t going around spouting overtly denigrating opinions about women, many, through default and tradition, casually and uncritically expose children to religious texts that are fundamentally misogynistic. I have to believe that most Sunday school lessons are not concerned with deconstructing, say, the creation story, a seminal text in our culture whether you are religious or not. Religious misogyny is tied to institutional power that ends up in children and women being impoverished and dying.

http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2013-11-how-we-teach-our-kids-that-women-are-liars#.Uo-OAbsoqdI.twitter

it wasnt in hof. so here it is. it was in gd.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024082855

thanks redq, i wasted at least an hour, looking and re looking.

[cinnabonbon]

1. I'm glad you posted it here, too

It's one of those articles that should be in HoF, even if they're posted in GD.

[seabeyond]

2. thank you. i think. needs to be easy to find.

i kept referring to it in hof and spent a lot of time looking, lol. yes, it belongs here, too.

[cinnabonbon]

7. Exactly! I think the more information we have here

the easier it will be to craft good arguments based on it. And besides, it is very interesting reading material.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. The Buybull is pretty anti-women, too.

[JDPriestly]

4. I'm a woman. I have always felt that people trust me.

My children accuse me of being too honest and too law abiding. They kind of joke about it.

I guess my experience is not typical. Or do other DUers feel they are not trusted?

I've never wanted to be in an executive position in which I had to direct other people. I like working on my own projects or with others as a team, so I don't know about whether people would trust me to lead them. I don't think I make much of a leader. I don't enjoy it.

[sheshe2]

5. Sad but true, it is alive and well today.

From the excerpt below, one would have to have shut out everything that the GOP has been saying about women over the past few years. They keep ratcheting up the rhetoric.

They say they need to reach out to women to get their vote, then they turn around and backhand them across the face.

Is it really surprising to anyone that a Santorum staffer said, in the run up to the last election, that women shouldn’t be President because it’s against God’s will? What about the “news commentator” who thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to vote? The Senate candidate who thinks rape is a gift from God? Or the Senator and presidential aspirant who thinks it’s just another form of conception? Or the doctor who thinks women deserve to die for having abortions? How about the nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia who thinks fetal birth defects are punishment for parents' (read: mothers’) sins? If women die bearing children, so what, that’s what we’re here for.

Even if we insist on not talking about the degree to which legislators' religious beliefs inform their political actions, it is obvious that they do. An entire political party’s “social policy” agenda is being pursued under a rubric that insists women need “permission slips” and “waiting periods.” The recent shutdown? Conservatives holding the country hostage because they want to add anti-abortion “conscience clause” language to legislation. Whose consciences are we talking about? All the morally incompetent and untrustworthy men who need abortions?

It’s no exaggeration to say that distrust of women is the driving force of the “social issues” agenda of the Republican Party. From food stamps and “legitimate rape,” to violence against women and immigration policy. “We need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that’s the way nature made it,” explained the man who penned Arizona’s immigration law. “Men don’t drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do.” I could do this ad infinitum.

The pervasive message that women are untrustworthy liars is atomized in our culture. There is no one source or manifestation. It fills every nook and cranny of our lives.

http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2013-11-how-we-teach-our-kids-that-women-are-liars#.Uo-OAbsoqdI.twitter

Thanks for the OP, seabeyond.

[CSStrowbridge]

6. There was a "study" done...

There was a "study" done to look at the number of false rape accusations. The people doing the "study" assumed any time a woman didn't report the rape with 24 hours, she was lying. You can see why I put "study" in quotes. This "study" is used a lot of MRA types.

Joseph DiBenedetto said in the Daisy Coleman case, "I'm Not Saying She Deserved To Be Raped, But..." and that got a lot of press. What didn't get a lot of press was in that same interview, moments before, he said she might have lied about being raped, to avoid being punished for staying out late.

The "some girls rape easy" quote from the GOP candidate, Rep. Roger Rivard, is another high profile example.

And of course, any time someone uses the term "legitimate rape" or something similar is implying the same thing.

[ismnotwasm]

8. We need more of this

Lies about gender start from the moment they say "it's a girl" to paraphrase Shirley Chishom

[seabeyond]

9. point thank you. and we will start with me. nt

[JoeyT]

10. And when we're not teaching them that women lie,

we're teaching them they're untrustworthy for other reasons. Usually either that women are mentally imbalanced as a group, or that they lack the capacity to gather information or make a judgement about or based on that information. (Crazy or stupid) Both of which tie in nicely for misogynists to the "women lie" meme to either give it some extra kick, or to act as a shield against accusations of misogyny.