Jan Fable, MS, LADC
Fairfield Connecticut
203.255.5055

Short-term Counseling for Individuals and Couples;
12 Step Recovery Support and Intervention Services;
and Career Coaching

The Women's Page

In case you ever wonder why we women struggle to have healthy self-esteem, below
is a small sampling of what famous men have said about women throughout history


"One hundred women are not worth a single testicle." Confucius (551-479 BCE)


"The five worst infirmities that afflict the female are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy, and silliness... Such is the stupidity of woman's character, that it is incumbent upon her, in every particular, to distrust herself and to obey her husband." The Confucian Marriage Manual


"A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave." and "The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities - a natural defectiveness." Aristotle (384-322 BCE)


"In childhood a woman must be subject to her father; in youth to her husband; when her husband is dead, to her sons. A woman must never be free of subjugation." The Hindu Code of Manu (c. 100 CE)


"Among all savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman." St. John Chrysostom (345-407 CE)


"Men are superior to women." The Koran (c. 650)


"Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of, makes herself guilty of that many murders." St. Augustine (354-430 CE)


"Do you know that each of your women is an Eve? The sentence of God - on this sex of yours - lives in this age; the guilt must necessarily live, too. You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law." Tertullian in 22 CE


"Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not rule and command him." John Knox (1505-1572)


"The souls of women are so small that some believe they've none at all." Samuel Butler (1612-1680)


"What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to understand what a misfortune it is". Kierkegaard (1813-1855)


"It seems to me that nearly every woman I know wants a man who knows how to love with authority. Women are simple souls who like simple things, and one of the simplest is one of the simplest to give... Our family Airedale will come clear across the yard for one pat on the head. The average wife is like that. She will come across town, across the house, across to your point of view, and across almost anything to give you her love if you offer her yours with some honest approval." Episcopal Bishop James Pike in a letter to his son (1968)


"Let us set our women folk on the road to goodness by teaching them to display submissiveness." "Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman." St. Clement of Alexandria in 96 CE


In the year 584 CE, in Lyons, France, forty-three Catholic bishops and twenty men representing other bishops, held a most peculiar debate: "Are Women Human?" After many lengthy arguments, a vote was taken. The results were: thirty-two, yes; thirty-one, no. Women were declared human by one vote! Council of Macon


"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God and King of the Universe, that thou didst not create me a woman." Daily prayer, still in use, of the orthodox Jewish male

"If the tokens of virginity are not found in the young woman, then they shall bring her out of her father's house and the men of the city shall stone her to death with stones because she has wrought folly...so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you." Deuteronomy 22:20-21


"Woman should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children." and "If a woman grows weary and, at last, dies from child bearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing; she is there to do it." Martin Luther (1483-1546)

With thanks to Meg Bowman, a San Jose, California sociologist, who has created many theatrical productions for
feminists and humanist groups. The quotations above are from one of her productions called, "Why We Burn: Sexism Exorcised."




The Evil Behind the Smiles
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 31, 2008
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Western men who visit red-light districts in poor countries often find themselves surrounded by coquettish teenage girls laughingly tugging them toward the brothels. The men assume that the girls are there voluntarily, and in some cases they are right.

But anyone inclined to take the girls’ smiles at face value should talk to Sina Vann, who was once one of those smiling girls.

Sina is Vietnamese but was kidnapped at the age of 13 and taken to Cambodia, where she was drugged. She said she woke up naked and bloody on a bed with a white man — she doesn’t know his nationality — who had purchased her virginity.

After that, she was locked on the upper floors of a nice hotel and offered to Western men and wealthy Cambodians. She said she was beaten ferociously to force her to smile and act seductive.

“My first phrase in Khmer,” the Cambodian language, “was, ‘I want to sleep with you,’ ” she said. “My first phrase in English was” — well, it’s unprintable.

Sina mostly followed instructions and smiled alluringly at men because she would have been beaten if men didn’t choose her. But sometimes she was in such pain that she resisted, and then she said she would be dragged down to a torture chamber in the basement.

“Many of the brothels have these torture chambers,” she said. “They are underground because then the girls’ screams are muffled.”

As in many brothels, the torture of choice was electric shocks. Sina would be tied down, doused in water and then prodded with wires running from the 220-volt wall outlet. The jolt causes intense pain, sometimes evacuation of the bladder and bowel — and even unconsciousness.

Shocks fit well into the brothel business model because they cause agonizing pain and terrify the girls without damaging their looks or undermining their market value.

After the beatings and shocks, Sina said she would be locked naked in a wooden coffin full of biting ants. The coffin was dark, suffocating and so tight that she could not move her hands up to her face to brush off the ants. Her tears washed the ants out of her eyes.

She was locked in the coffin for a day or two at a time, and she said this happened many, many times.

Finally, Sina was freed in a police raid, and found herself blinded by the first daylight she had seen in years. The raid was organized by Somaly Mam, a Cambodian woman who herself had been sold into the brothels but managed to escape, educate herself and now heads a foundation fighting forced prostitution.

After being freed, Sina began studying and eventually became one of Somaly’s trusted lieutenants. They now work together, in defiance of death threats from brothel owners, to free other girls. To get at Somaly, the brothel owners kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter. And six months ago, the daughter of another anti-trafficking activist (my interpreter when I interviewed Sina) went missing.

I had heard about torture chambers under the brothels but had never seen one, so a few days ago Sina took me to the red-light district here where she once was imprisoned. A brothel had been torn down, revealing a warren of dungeons underneath.

“I was in a room just like those,” she said, pointing. “There must be many girls who died in those rooms.” She grew distressed and added: “I’m cold and afraid. Tonight I won’t sleep.”

“Photograph quickly,” she added, and pointed to brothels lining the street. “It’s not safe to stay here long.”

Sina and Somaly sustain themselves with a wicked sense of humor. They tease each other mercilessly, with Sina, who is single, mock-scolding Somaly: “At least I had plenty of men until you had to come along and rescue me!”

Sex trafficking is truly the 21st century’s version of slavery. One of the differences from 19th-century slavery is that many of these modern slaves will die of AIDS by their late 20s.

Whenever I report on sex trafficking, I come away less depressed by the atrocities than inspired by the courage of modern abolitionists like Somaly and Sina. They are risking their lives to help others still locked up in the brothels, and they have the credibility and experience to lead this fight. In my next column, I’ll introduce a girl that Sina is now helping to recover from mind-boggling torture in a brothel — and Sina’s own story gives hope to the girl in a way that an army of psychologists couldn’t.

I hope that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will recognize slavery as unfinished business on the foreign policy agenda. The abolitionist cause simply hasn’t been completed as long as 14-year-old girls are being jolted with electric shocks — right now, as you read this — to make them smile before oblivious tourists.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 1, 2009, on page A25 of the New York edition.


Links of interest to women



If you have suggestions for links to sites of particular interest to women, please send them,
along with their URL's to JFable at forhealing.org. Thank you.

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JanFable has worked as a psychotherapist for more than 25 years. She has a master's degree in counseling and is a Connecticut licensed drug and alcohol counselor. Her primary training is in Bioenergetic Analysis which deals with the whole person. She has extensive training in the treatment of dissociative disorders and trauma survivors and in using of altered states of consciousness in healing. She has also completed Level I and Level II training in Thought Field Therapy.

Jan's training and experience expanded.

Jan Fable
203.255-5055
Fairfield, Connecticut

If you want to contact me, you can email me at JFable at forhealing.org
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