In this compelling, powerful book, highly respected writer and commentator Jack Holland sets out to answer a daunting question: how do you explain the oppression and brutalization of half the world's population by the other half, throughout history? The result takes the reader on an eye-opening journey through centuries, continents and civilizations as it looks at both historical and contemporary attitudes to women. Encompassing the Church, witch hunts, sexual theory, Nazism and pro-life campaigners, we arrive at today's developing world, where women are increasingly and disproportionately at risk because of radicalised religious belief, famine, war and disease. Well-informed and researched, highly readable and thought-provoking, this is a refreshingly straightforward investigation into an ancient, pervasive and enduring injustice. It deals with the fundamentals of human existence -- sex, love, violence -- that have shaped the lives of humans throughout history. The answer? It's time to recognize that the treatment of women amounts to nothing less than an abuse of human rights on an unthinkable scale. A Brief History of Misogyny is an important and timely book that will make a long-lasting contribution to the efforts to improve those rights throughout the world.

Misogyny Online explores the worldwide phenomenon of gendered cyberhate as a significant discourse which has been overlooked and marginalised. The rapid growth of the internet has led to numerous opportunities and benefits; however, the architecture of the cybersphere offers users unprecedented opportunities to engage in hate speech. A leading international researcher in this field, Emma A. Jane weaves together data and theory from multiple disciplines and expresses her findings in a style that is engaging, witty and powerful. Misogyny Online is an important read for students and faculty members alike across the social sciences and humanities.

Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs. Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 US presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget regarding Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women. ^l

In Holy Misogyny, bible scholar April DeConick wants real answers to the questions that are rarely whispered from the pulpits of the contemporary Christian churches. Why is God male? Why are women associated with sin? Why can't women be priests? Drawing on her extensive knowledge of the early Christian literature, she seeks to understand the conflicts over sex and gender in the early church-what they were and what was at stake. She explains how these ancient conflicts have shaped contemporary Christianity and its promotion of male exclusivity and superiority in terms of God, church leadership, and the bed. DeConick's detective work uncovers old aspects of Christianity before later doctrines and dogmas were imposed upon the churches, and the earlier teachings about the female were distorted. Holy Misogyny shows how the female was systematically erased from the Christian tradition, and why. She concludes that the distortion and erasure of the female is the result of ancient misogyny made divine writ, a holy misogyny that remains with us today.

An international survey of historical and contemporary attitudes toward women cites the roles played by such factors as radical religion, war, and disease while explaining how witch hunts, Nazism, pro-life campaigns, and other practices have placed half of the worlds population disproportionately at risk.

An engaging illustrated history of feminism from antiquity through third-wave feminism, featuring Sappho, Mary Magdalene, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Simone de Beauvoir, and many others. The history of feminism? The right to vote, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, white pantsuits? Oh, but there's so much more. And we need to know about it, especially now. In pithy text and pithier comics, A Brief History of Feminism engages us, educates us, makes us laugh, and makes us angry. It begins with antiquity and the early days of Judeo-Christianity. (Mary Magdalene questions the maleness of Jesus's inner circle: “People will end up getting the notion you don't want women to be priests.” Jesus: “Really, Mary, do you always have to be so negative?”) It continues through the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Enlightenment (“Liberty, equality, fraternity!” “But fraternity means brotherhood!”). It covers the beginnings of an organized women's movement in the nineteenth century, second-wave Feminism, queer feminism, and third-wave Feminism. Along the way, we learn about important figures: Olympe de Gouges, author of the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” (guillotined by Robespierre); Flora Tristan, who linked the oppression of women and the oppression of the proletariat before Marx and Engels set pen to paper; and the poet Audre Lorde, who pointed to the racial obliviousness of mainstream feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. We learn about bourgeois and working-class issues, and the angry racism of some American feminists when black men got the vote before women did. We see God as a long-bearded old man emerging from a cloud (and once, as a woman with her hair in curlers). And we learn the story so far of a history that is still being written.

The first comprehensive undercover look at the terrorist movement no one is talking about. Men Who Hate Women examines the rise of secretive extremist communities who despise women and traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spider web of groups. It includes eye-opening interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement, and the men fighting back. Women's rights activist Laura Bates wrote this book as someone who has been the target of many hate-fueled misogynistic attacks online. At first, the vitriol seemed to be the work of a small handful of individual men... but over time, the volume and consistency of the attacks hinted at something bigger and more ominous. As Bates went undercover into the corners of the internet, she found an unseen, organized movement of thousands of anonymous men wishing violence (and worse) upon women. In the book, Bates explores: Extreme communities like incels, pick-up artists, MGTOW, Men's Rights Activists and more The hateful, toxic rhetoric used by these groups How this movement connects to other extremist movements like white supremacy How young boys are targeted and slowly drawn in Where this ideology shows up in our everyday lives in mainstream media, our playgrounds, and our government By turns fascinating and horrifying, Men Who Hate Women is a broad, unflinching account of the deep current of loathing toward women and anti-feminism that underpins our society and is a must-read for parents, educators, and anyone who believes in equality for women. Praise for Men Who Hate Women: "Laura Bates is showing us the path to both intimate and global survival."—Gloria Steinem "Well-researched and meticulously documented, Bates's book on the power and danger of masculinity should be required reading for us all."—Library Journal "Men Who Hate Women has the power to spark social change."—Sunday Times

Until now the advent of Western romantic love has been seen as a liberation from—or antidote to—ten centuries of misogyny. In this major contribution to gender studies, R. Howard Bloch demonstrates how similar the ubiquitous antifeminism of medieval times and the romantic idealization of woman actually are. Through analyses of a broad range of patristic and medieval texts, Bloch explores the Christian construction of gender in which the flesh is feminized, the feminine is aestheticized, and aesthetics are condemned in theological terms. Tracing the underlying theme of virginity from the Church Fathers to the courtly poets, Bloch establishes the continuity between early Christian antifeminism and the idealization of woman that emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In conclusion he explains the likely social, economic, and legal causes for the seeming inversion of the terms of misogyny into those of an idealizing tradition of love that exists alongside its earlier avatar until the current era. This startling study will be of great value to students of medieval literature as well as to historians of culture and gender.

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week A virulent strain of antifeminism is thriving online that treats women’s empowerment as a mortal threat to men and to the integrity of Western civilization. Its proponents cite ancient Greek and Latin texts to support their claims—from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius—arguing that they articulate a model of masculinity that sustained generations but is now under siege. Not All Dead White Men reveals that some of the most controversial and consequential debates about the legacy of the ancients are raging not in universities but online. “A chilling account of trolling, misogyny, racism, and bad history proliferated online by the Alt-Right... Zuckerberg makes a persuasive case for why we need a new, more critical, and less comfortable relationship between the ancient and modern worlds in this important and very timely book.” —Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey “Explores how ideas about Ancient Greece and Rome are used and misused by antifeminist thinkers today.” —Time “Zuckerberg presciently analyzes these communities’...embrace of stoicism as a self-help tool to gain confidence, jobs, and girlfriends. Their adoration of men like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Ovid...is founded in a limited and distorted interpretation of ancient philosophy...lending heft and authority to sexism and abuse.” —The Nation “Traces the application—and misapplication—of classical authors and texts in online communities that see feminism as a threat.” —Bitch Media

A brilliant, impassioned, unflinching account of the firestorm of #MeToo, how we got there, and where we must now go. In Women, Men, and the Whole Damn Thing, author David Leser presents an essential and incisive investigation, unearthing the roots of misogyny, its inextricable links to the patriarchy, and how history brought us to the #MeToo movement and the wave of incandescent female rage that is sweeping the world. Crucially, he also interrogates his own psyche, privilege, and culpability as he bears witness to the “collective wound of the world” and asks how we can move towards healing and profound and permanent change. This book calls on men (yes, all men) to be accountable for their contribution to the continuing oppression of women by the patriarchal structures that have dominated our culture historically and through to the present. He argues that misogyny and female oppression is the greatest moral issue of our times and we are all responsible for dismantling the structures which cause such oppression. This book is his journey into how to grapple with both the personal and collective aftermath of #MeToo and the new future. Including interviews with Tina Brown, Zainab Salbi, Marlene Schiappa, and Helen Garner, among other globally recognized names, Women, Men, and the Whole Damn Thing is a bold, honest, and self-searching global overview of the cultural moment of misogyny that we exist in and, perhaps, a way to move forward.