The head of “The Penitent Magdalene” by Donatello https://www.artchive.com/artwork/the-penitent-magdalene-donatello-c-1453-55/
JD Vance is working hard to show that hatred of women is a central message of the Trump campaign. We might say at this point it is a key plank in their platform.
Recently, Vance posted a 2007 video clip of Caitlin Upton, a former South Carolina beauty contestant who became an internet meme after her rambling response in a Miss Teen USA competition. Upton was cruelly mocked at the time, and she has revealed how harmful to her and her family that was.
The point of Vance’s use of the clip seemed to be to shame and ridicule presidential candidate Kamala Harris before her first major TV interview.
Beauty contests are ways to sexually objectify and exploit women. Exploiting one woman’s pain to ridicule another is the height of misogyny. Vance’s self-defense that he was “having some fun” is the standard “can’t you take a joke?” reply to women who object to be shamed and ridiculed.
Mary Magdalene knows something about this. In the New Testament she is last at the cross and first at the tomb. She speaks with the risen Jesus, a criterion for becoming an apostle. This is, if you are a male disciple.
So how did Mary Madalene become the most famous prostitute in history?
She was framed.
The early medieval church trashed Mary Magdalene’s reputation as an apostle, that is, as a resurrection witness and made her into a prostitute. What happened was that toward the end of the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great “preached a homily…that established a new Magdalen for western Christendom.” The Pope proclaimed “'We believe that this woman [Mary Magdalen] whom Luke calls a female sinner, whom John calls Mary, is the same Mary from whom Mark says seven demons were cast out.'
In other words, Gregory collapsed into one individual the identities of three distinct women described in the gospels. The Pope identified Mary of Magdala, a woman who figures prominently in the crucifixion and resurrection stories, as a whore. There is absolutely no evidence at all for this identification in the New Testament.
As I have written before on the calumny of the Church's creation of the Magdalene as repentant prostitute that it was a way to exclude women from religious leadership in the Jesus movement.
Vance’s crude mocking of Caitlin Upton in a beauty contest answer to shame and ridicule Kamala Harris was a way to sexually objectify her and show she cannot possibly hold the highest political leadership position in the country.
Mary Magdalene as the repentant prostitute (see famous Donatello statue above) has stuck around in history because it is so useful for shaming and blaming women and thus rendering them second class human beings.
The film industry has helped a lot with this, pushing a “Pretty Woman” version of Mary Magdalene from Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
But perhaps the most recent damning (meant in both senses, that is, both critical and damned to hell) film portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute is Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, the highest grossing R rated movie ever.
It is horrifyingly violent.
Sexual shaming and blaming often goes hand-in-hand with justifying violence against women.
Remember, a jury has found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll case.
When you see politicians or the church hierarchy shaming and blaming women, know that they do not mean to protect women from degradation and violence.
They are inviting it.