(via brain-food)
"It is hard to be precise about the origins of a prejudice. But if misogyny has a birthday, it falls sometime in the eight century B.C. If it has a cradle, it lies somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. At around that time in both Greece and Judea, creation stories that were to acquire the power of myth arose, describing the Fall of Man, and how woman’s weakness is responsible for all subsequent human suffering, misery and death. Both myths have since flowed into the mainstream of Western civilization, carried along by two of its most powerful tributaries: In the Jewish tradition, as recounted in Genesis (which a majority of Americans still accept as true) the culprit is Eve; and in the Greek, Pandora.” (pg. 12)
The Greeks are the first colonists of our intellectual world. Their vision of a universe governed by natural laws that the human intellect can uncover and comprehend is the basis on which our science and philosophy rest. They created the first democracy. But in the history of misogyny, the Greeks also occupy a unique place as the intellectual pioneers of a pernicious view of women that has persisted down to modern times, confounding any notion we might still have that the rise of reason and science means the decline of prejudice and hatred."
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Holland, Jack. A Brief History of Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice. Constable & Robinson. 2006. (pg. 53)
(via killyourenemies)
