Katie what an incredible piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it. As a lover of history, I often find myself reflecting on the question; "who owns this history?" because inevitably it's not just those with power at the time, but it's those who have had power and incentive to change and shape it in the days and years after. I really enjoy your points here about how the patriarchy have owned this narrative on women. I think I'm going to need to read this again and again and reflect more on it!
I have thought about this long and hard over my lifetime (so far). One thing that popped into my head as I read this column today, was that so many men were killed in battles that only women were around to run the governments. Another thought was the "Celtic" (if there was such a thing) women who went into battle alongside men were naked like them, too.
Where does this leave us? The majority of white women who voted, voted for Trump.
Indoctrination and approval-seeking are in the mix of excuses. Girls don't want to be smarter than boys because they're afraid they won't have a boyfriend. Boys and girls are treated differently starting in the cradle and continues throughout life. blahblahblah
I'm with Katie, but don't know how to reverse this. Especially now, with the 'conservative-Southern Christian-Midwest agricultural' group running the show. They're wanting women to pop babies and have dinner ready at six. Yet, we can't live on one income. Double bind.
"I'll have a café-mocha-vodka-xanax-latte to go, please."
This is the sort of thing I think of when I hear someone say ‘but you can’t rewrite history’. What it boils down to, crudely put, is ‘the Victorians rewrote history the way we like it and now it’s going to stay that way’.
Great piece thanks. Just re your use of the word ‘craze’ - yo-yos were a craze, fidget spinners were a craze. I’m not sure burning millions of women (& others) to silence them and intimidate millions more into burying their wisdom can classify as a ‘craze’? Anyway, important framing - thank you! Also Medieval Women in their Own Words at the British Library here in London atm is an eye opener along these lines. Recommended!
Thank you so much for the recommendation! And I appreciate you pointing out that the word 'craze' isn't a great term to describe this systematic and brutal campaign. I agree.
It rings false. Most girls in school are bored by “mainstream” history because they know it is made up for only one reason, to glorify the guys. It should not take decades of personal research to discover our true histories.
Behind many male Nobel prize winners is a woman who freed up his time, who edited his papers, who provided a sounding board for his ideas (even Einstein talks about this!), who typed up his work, who submitted it to journals...
And an obvious reason why there are far fewer female Nobel prize winners is that men have always been far more less likely to play that necessary role (it's not that women can't do the work of generating ideas. But apparently doing so requires a lot of help, which women haven't had).
In this, Wikipedia article, they talk about a female macaque that is the first to learn to wash your sweet potatoes in water, then she teaches everybody else.
Somewhere out there, there’s an article about that female, and other female examples being the first to do things, I couldn’t find that article to show you, but I did try. anyway, I thought it was relevant to what you have written.
In that article that I couldn’t find, it seemed to show evidence that it’s usually young females that adapt to a new ways of doing things.
I haven't heard of this before, thank you for sharing! Some macaques are actually female-dominated (like Japanese macaques) so it's not that surprising that they play a significant role in shaping group behavior.
Love it! Reminds me of the chimp study. The scientist was welcome into the chimp camp (I call it Camp A) for a long time. One year the camp became overpopulated, so maybe half left to start Camp B somewhere else in the jungle. One day a male chimp stood up, beat his chest and made loud noises. All the males followed him on a journey toward Camp A. Along the way, they saw a male chimp and killed him. When they arrived at Camp A, they Camp B males killed all the Camp A males and kept the females and the land. SOMEBODY TELL ME WE'VE EVOLVED!
We should all be willing to accept all sources of history as valid, and all the people encountered in those stories as worthy of study and acknowledgement.
I LOVE your articles. Thank you for putting together such a well informed list of instances and for mentioning mah girl Aspasia who, along with Hypatia of Alexandria are too often forgotten!
Great history of women in fields most people would have once thought were just men jobs. Women have been at every type of occupation since the dawn of time. I hope this helps others see and understand how women can be apart in society in different ways we are not used to thinking.
The prevalence of powerful Greek goddesses in the pantheon of Olympic deities also offers a clue that, underlying the veneers of an often unrelenting male chauvinism, a deeper history may very well have accorded female elements and actors a much more central series of roles (in our understanding of the full universe of human experience) than many later, more narrow cultural expressions portray.
Females do very well today in contributing to society. Unfortunately with all the good achieved by our civil right project, they also gave us 3rd wave postmodernist radical feminism that manifested as woke. A toxic ideology that is a key reason why Democrats lost the election.
Katie what an incredible piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it. As a lover of history, I often find myself reflecting on the question; "who owns this history?" because inevitably it's not just those with power at the time, but it's those who have had power and incentive to change and shape it in the days and years after. I really enjoy your points here about how the patriarchy have owned this narrative on women. I think I'm going to need to read this again and again and reflect more on it!
Thank you for reading and for your kind words! I'm so glad this piece resonated with you.
I have thought about this long and hard over my lifetime (so far). One thing that popped into my head as I read this column today, was that so many men were killed in battles that only women were around to run the governments. Another thought was the "Celtic" (if there was such a thing) women who went into battle alongside men were naked like them, too.
Where does this leave us? The majority of white women who voted, voted for Trump.
Indoctrination and approval-seeking are in the mix of excuses. Girls don't want to be smarter than boys because they're afraid they won't have a boyfriend. Boys and girls are treated differently starting in the cradle and continues throughout life. blahblahblah
I'm with Katie, but don't know how to reverse this. Especially now, with the 'conservative-Southern Christian-Midwest agricultural' group running the show. They're wanting women to pop babies and have dinner ready at six. Yet, we can't live on one income. Double bind.
"I'll have a café-mocha-vodka-xanax-latte to go, please."
I'll take one of those lattes, too.
This is the sort of thing I think of when I hear someone say ‘but you can’t rewrite history’. What it boils down to, crudely put, is ‘the Victorians rewrote history the way we like it and now it’s going to stay that way’.
Exactly. It's not rewriting history, it's discovering how much of it has been hidden, distorted, or ignored over time.
Great piece thanks. Just re your use of the word ‘craze’ - yo-yos were a craze, fidget spinners were a craze. I’m not sure burning millions of women (& others) to silence them and intimidate millions more into burying their wisdom can classify as a ‘craze’? Anyway, important framing - thank you! Also Medieval Women in their Own Words at the British Library here in London atm is an eye opener along these lines. Recommended!
Thank you so much for the recommendation! And I appreciate you pointing out that the word 'craze' isn't a great term to describe this systematic and brutal campaign. I agree.
History that excludes women is….boring.
It rings false. Most girls in school are bored by “mainstream” history because they know it is made up for only one reason, to glorify the guys. It should not take decades of personal research to discover our true histories.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/144744.Women_of_Ideas
Behind many male Nobel prize winners is a woman who freed up his time, who edited his papers, who provided a sounding board for his ideas (even Einstein talks about this!), who typed up his work, who submitted it to journals...
And an obvious reason why there are far fewer female Nobel prize winners is that men have always been far more less likely to play that necessary role (it's not that women can't do the work of generating ideas. But apparently doing so requires a lot of help, which women haven't had).
Too true! Makes me thing of Katrina Marcel’s “Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?” https://g.co/kgs/MvFFbhu!
Care has been underrated, marginalised, and unevenly distributed for far too long!
https://open.substack.com/pub/theuntethereddilemma/p/mythic-truisms-and-the-marginalisation?r=1f7q2z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
ha, exactly. Wealth of Nations was a looooooOOOOOOng book!
Totally! He could have done with some tighter editing, and a few more pictures and jokes imho 🤣
In this, Wikipedia article, they talk about a female macaque that is the first to learn to wash your sweet potatoes in water, then she teaches everybody else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect#:~:text=According%20to%20Watson%2C%20the%20scientists,stream%20or%20in%20the%20ocean.
Somewhere out there, there’s an article about that female, and other female examples being the first to do things, I couldn’t find that article to show you, but I did try. anyway, I thought it was relevant to what you have written.
In that article that I couldn’t find, it seemed to show evidence that it’s usually young females that adapt to a new ways of doing things.
I haven't heard of this before, thank you for sharing! Some macaques are actually female-dominated (like Japanese macaques) so it's not that surprising that they play a significant role in shaping group behavior.
Love it! Reminds me of the chimp study. The scientist was welcome into the chimp camp (I call it Camp A) for a long time. One year the camp became overpopulated, so maybe half left to start Camp B somewhere else in the jungle. One day a male chimp stood up, beat his chest and made loud noises. All the males followed him on a journey toward Camp A. Along the way, they saw a male chimp and killed him. When they arrived at Camp A, they Camp B males killed all the Camp A males and kept the females and the land. SOMEBODY TELL ME WE'VE EVOLVED!
We should all be willing to accept all sources of history as valid, and all the people encountered in those stories as worthy of study and acknowledgement.
I LOVE your articles. Thank you for putting together such a well informed list of instances and for mentioning mah girl Aspasia who, along with Hypatia of Alexandria are too often forgotten!
Thank you, I love to hear it!! I would give an arm and a leg to be able to host a dinner party with all the incredible women from ancient history.
Great history of women in fields most people would have once thought were just men jobs. Women have been at every type of occupation since the dawn of time. I hope this helps others see and understand how women can be apart in society in different ways we are not used to thinking.
Great piece! Thank you.
Thank you!
I love this!
What a great piece. Thank you so much for writing this 🙏
Thank you so much for reading!
The prevalence of powerful Greek goddesses in the pantheon of Olympic deities also offers a clue that, underlying the veneers of an often unrelenting male chauvinism, a deeper history may very well have accorded female elements and actors a much more central series of roles (in our understanding of the full universe of human experience) than many later, more narrow cultural expressions portray.
Females do very well today in contributing to society. Unfortunately with all the good achieved by our civil right project, they also gave us 3rd wave postmodernist radical feminism that manifested as woke. A toxic ideology that is a key reason why Democrats lost the election.