Damned Whores and God's Police

By Anne Summers

Sexual harassment, domestic violence and date rape had not been named, although they certainly existed, when Damned Whores and God's Police was first published in 1975. That was before the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 and before large numbers of women became visible in employment, in politics and elsewhere across society. It's hard to imagine an Australia where these abuses were not yet fully understood as obstacles to women's equality, yet that was Australia in 1975. It was in this climate that Anne Summers identified 'damned whores' and 'God's police', the stereotypes that characterized all women as being either virtuous mothers whose function was to civilize society or bad girls who refused, or were unable, to conform to that norm and who were thus spurned and rejected by mainstream Australia. These stereotypes persist to this day, argues Anne Summers in this updated version of her classic book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Jun 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781742247731

Reviews for Damned Whores and God's Police

[elizabethcromb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent presentation of the history of the role of women in Australian society and why we find ourselves in the situation that we were in the early to mid 70's. Interesting to read in 2019 knowing what has and has not changed since then.

[devil_llama · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It might seem like reading a 700 page book about women in another country halfway across the world would have little reward. In fact, I was worried that might be the case. I was wrong about that. In spite of the author's reiterating that this was the world of women in Australia, I found little unfamiliar. Oh, some of the phrases - our Madonna and Whore turned into Damn Whores and God's Police, but the roles and the rhetoric, the societal expectations and the demands made on women were more similar than different. The names of the early pioneers were, of course, not familiar, except when she was discussing the UK and US movements that inspired the Australian feminists. In the end, though, this book was perhaps too depressingly familiar. All that changes is the cities and states, the politicians, and the terms used for familiar objects. It is a valuable resource to look at ways in which seemingly ordinary things, like living in the suburbs, were turned into ways to isolate women and police their roles. Oh, and I do much prefer the term they use for domestic violence - wife bashing sounds so much more authentic than wife battering, and doesn't bring up those odd images of women deep fried by Long John Silver's.