The true insult of Dutton's "Mad fucking witch" accusation to female journalism

I didn't fully understand (as a mere male you know) the full impact of the "witch" insult to women until today reading an article about it. Indeed I much more understand now the offence PM Gillard took at being called a witch. She was a fememist as well as our PM, even to the point of rejecting gay marriage at the time simply because it was marriage, which she didn't agree with.

To be called a witch in such circumstance was anathema to her, and I understand today must have caused deep offence. 

Dutton however went even further with his insult of the female journalist, calling her a "mad fucking witch". "Mad"/crazy adds a further dimension to the insult. I'd say "fucking" does too. Fucking relates to the womb, and note where the word hysterectomy comes from:

Being “crazy” is an insult that can be levelled at men or women, yet there are distinct cultural attempts to categorise “madness” as a uniquely feminine trait. Women are frequently described as “hysterical” when engaging in passionate debate or responding to a distressing situation. 

The word is used far less often for men and there is good reason for that imbalance. The term “hysteria” derives from the word “hystera”, relating to the uterus, or “belonging to the womb”. 

For several thousand years, the very condition of having a womb and giving birth to children or, conversely, failing to bear children or have sex, were thought to cause a disease unique to women. An entirely imagined disorder lead to women being institutionalised, treated with hysterectomies, or, as Rachel P. Maines details, subject to “pelvic massage” by a doctor until they experienced orgasm. 

When women are flippantly labelled as “mad”, it is not a gender neutral sleight. The very state of being a woman has been long associated with mental illness. Similarly, women are also more commonly linked with supernatural evil. As June Leishman and Catherine DiDomenico propose, groups who hold a weak position in society are “simultaneously feared”. Cultures that socially disempower women are more likely to fear them as “evil” and accuse them “of employing witchcraft”. 

During the Salem witchcraft trials and witch hunts that took place over centuries in Early Modern Europe, women were burned, hanged, and drowned on suspicion of their ability to cause illness or death through magic. These murders show the baseless fear of women wielding power that transcended that of the men who controlled the societies in which they lived. The Conversation

This is on par with calling gays "faggots". Faggot is from times past when the bundle of sticks became a burden, and was related to women.. Can anyone imagine in this day and age a front bench gov minister calling a journalist a "mad fucking faggot"? It appears the societal putting down of gays has much in common with the putting down of women.

Yes folks, us gays today in fundie land get blamed for just about everything that the fundie churchies can't control. We can make natural disasters just by being us! Our marriages will bring down the pillars of society! We can doom nations just by loving who we love! We are apparently the sign of the end times just by being us! We're going to bring back an imaginary sky person because we're us! Oh the power we wield! (allegedly). *sheesh*

Dutton should have been turfed with the xmas trash too.