The same is true for the digital vitriol lobbed at every woman who shares her story of sexual assault. And the same is true for daily restrictions on abortion, as states all across America find new and horrific ways to control female bodies. And when women speak out about these injustices and are told to smile, to shut up, or to stop being a “crazy girl,” it feels like an attack on women’s rights. When every woman knows a woman who has been sexually assaulted, but no man knows a rapist… it feels like an attack on women’s rights. We discussed Trump’s remarks that soldiers living with PTSD arenot “strong enough,” echoing medical and military attitudes from the previous century that associated male hysteria with WWI and “shell shock.” During the weeks running up to the election we veered from the topic of hysteria and discussed the history of gynecology and enslaved women as experimental subjects, sexual anatomy and disorders of sexual development, and queer and trans health care, but we still began each class by sharing recent developments from the campaign trail: Muslim registries, pussy grabbing/sexual assault, and bullying. While in 2013, Russian news reports suggested that members of the band Pussy Riot were “witches in a global satanic conspiracy in cahoots with the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” That should have been a clue to what would follow. In Poland, women who marched against a recent abortion ban were called feminazis, prostitutes, whores, witches, and crazy women. Upon closer investigation, this form of political slander was not limited to the current election season or the US. continue to do damage: in distracting us from the real problems and crises of modern society, in undermining a respect for evidence and truth, and in helping support an atmosphere of conspiracy and suspicion.” Prior to the existence of social media, Showalter presciently wrote, “hysterical epidemics. We discussed the brilliant literary critic Elaine Showalter whose book Hystories, written in the 1990s, focuses on end-of-the-millennium mass hysterias. How could we not compare the campaign season to the witch-hunts when folks at rallies started chanting “hang her in the streets” in addition to the by-then familiar “lock her up.” In short order, we witnessed a shift from the maligned diagnosis of a single individual to an all-out mass hysterical witch-hunt against a woman who dared to run for presidential office. In class, we continued to discuss the construction of she-devil, foul-mouthed Crooked Hillary who extremists berated with hashtags like #Hillabeast and #Godhilla and #Witch Hillary.

Good and mad