The Indivisible Truth Brigade has a new campaign focused on disinformation about women, and about the pretenses among misogynists to try to disguise that reality. There is nothing new here. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks held to a superstitious hypothesis about “hysteria” among women that has only recently been discarded in medicine, but continues to underly most of the modern disinformation on women in every context.
The oldest record of hysteria dates back to 1900 BCE when Egyptians recorded behavioral abnormalities in adult women on the Kahun Papyrus.[7] The Egyptians attributed the behavioral disturbances to a wandering uterus – thus the condition later being dubbed hysteria.
The ancient Greeks accepted the ancient Egyptians' explanation for hysteria; however, they included in their definition of hysteria the inability to bear children or the unwillingness to marry.[8]
Currently, most physicians do not accept hysteria as a medical diagnosis.[5] The blanket diagnosis of hysteria has been fragmented into myriad medical categories such as epilepsy, histrionic personality disorder, conversion disorders, dissociative disorders, or other medical conditions.[5][6] Furthermore, lifestyle choices, such as choosing not to wed, are no longer considered symptoms of psychological disorders such as hysteria.[5]
Some of the major disinformation is explicitly political, including the biological nonsense that life begins at conception, and therefore contraception is abortion and therefore murder.
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Gendered Disinformation: Tactics, Themes, and Trends by Foreign Malign Actors
This next issue cuts close to the political, so I am going to be extra-careful.
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