Off With Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power

When CNN host Don Lemon said 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was past her "prime," he was taking a page from what Eleanor Herman has called the Misogynist's Handbook, a set of time-honored methods used to keep women in power in their place.

Imagine Donald Trump as a woman, called Donna. Would her boasts and insults have been seen as blunt, honest, and refreshing? Would Donna Trump have won the election? If Hillary Clinton had be Harry Clinton, would his thoughtful, circumspect answers to media questions have been seen as inauthentic, secretive, an untrustworthy?

History is chock-full of such misogynistic examples. Sexist tropes are far easier to understand than complex truths. From the palace to the White House, if you call them too old, too unattractive, too ambitious, too unfeminine, a witch, a bitch, a bad mother, a bad wife, you're done whatever it takes to keep them from competing with men.

In a story that is shocking, eye-opening, and a powerful force for change, Eleanor Herman writes with her signature wit and humor as she explores the patterns that have been operating for more than three thousand years—and are still operating today—while pointing out how society needs to tear up the Misogynist's Handbook and pave a way forward for women to take their full, and fair, place in poser once and for all.