S3 Ep7: Sarah Ruden: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women

I wrote recently about how men are using AI to prop up their belief in their own superiority. This propaganda is nothing new. Men have, for thousands of years, used every tool at their disposal to spread false ideas about women’s inferiority and demonic nature.

Sarah Ruden is a translator, a classicist, and the author of Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women. She came on the podcast to discuss her new book, which outlines how popular literature and culture have long normalized women’s subjugation by spreading lies about women.

We ended up having a sprawling conversation during which we talked not just about this book, but about her translations work, Biblical views of womanhood, and so much more. It was such a treat to get to pick such a brilliant mind. No matter what you’re interested in, I think you’ll find something compelling in this episode.

A few of the topics we discuss include:

• The long history of constraining women’s reproductive rights in service of men, including anti-abortion poems by the poet Ovid.

• The alliance between anti-abortion ideology and authoritarianism.

• Why history is more than a set of facts, and why it matters who tells stories from the past.

• What Sarah has learned as a translator of the Biblical Gospels, and why good translations are so crucial to our understanding of the world. Sarah talks specifically about how the canonical translations of the Gospels suppress women’s point of view and demean women.

• Why our beliefs do not spring up out of nowhere. Not only is propaganda everywhere, but it has always been everywhere.

• The similarities between red pill bros and the men who have translated sacred texts and beloved secular literature.

• The line from Roman anti-abortion rhetoric to the rhetoric of today’s far right, including a focus on genocide.

• The role of anti-abortion politics in imperialism.

• Why the anti-abortion movement has co-opted the Holocaust to justify extreme violence.

• The Catholic church’s shift toward more flexibility on everything except for abortion.

About Sarah Ruden

Sarah Ruden is a leading translator of the ancient literature of the West. In a career spanning both essential Greek and Roman Classics and sacred literature, she has set new standards for accuracy, stylistic integrity, and accessibility. Her work, including cultural and human-rights journalism, is deeply concerned with questions of power and truth, in accordance with her Quaker faith. She has won Guggenheim, Whiting, and Silvers grants, and numerous other awards.She has a PhD in classical philology from Harvard University.

Her latest book, Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women, came out March 3rd. You can find this wonderful book, as well as several of Sarah’s other books, in the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.