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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

A thread about annyoing re-writings of history

218 replies

Sakura · 01/10/2010 06:31

Just thinking about how feted male authors/artists/scientists/revolutionaries in our culture and how female equivalents are ignored. Dworkin wrote of how good writing by women is despised, not in a romantic way, but actually despised.

I opened up Sep 27 2010 issue of Newsweek today and saw this enormous 5 page article called Men's lib. IN the first paragraph:

...As the U.S evonomy has transitioned from brawn to brain over the past three decades, a growing number of women have gone off to work....

Immediately this paragraph denies the brawn of domestic drudgery that women have undertaken, the fact that women worked in the factories for a pittance, that they were the cheap labour that drove the industrial revolution, that they did the back-breaking work of carrying water, hoeing, harvesting and cooking..that today women still get the low-status manual labour and that while men do carry out manual labour, a hell of a lot of men have kept the cushy, light, prestigious jobs for themselves.

In one fell swoop, the sentence denies Herstory with a rewriting of history. How often does this "mistake" happen on a daily basis? Does it serve to brainwash the new generation of men and women that women only started working after the fifties when men finally "allowed" them to Hmm ?

OP posts:
kickassangel · 08/10/2010 01:53

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kickassangel · 08/10/2010 02:39

ok, have now read & digested the thread.

not much to add really, have never heard of most of these women!! (v ignorant about feminism, and i went to an all-girls school)

BUT it has reminded me of one of my friends. she studies & writes about maritime history. her niche is the social impact of britain being a maritime nation. her books are just not given the same respect that the male version of history is.

this always really angers me. tbh, which political party is in power makes v little difference to me, whereas running out of bread does.

it may sound trite, but few of us are 'movers & shakers' of the world - it is the day-to-day life that matters to us. so, our version of history IS the real one, not the big events. think back to big world events that you remember - not many of them will have had much direct effect on you, yet they are the ones that get mentioned - and they are nearly all about male experiences.

i'm not sure that i'm explaining it well, but i just get so annoyed about how the focus is on 'big' things, when our daily lives actually matter so much more.

Sakura · 08/10/2010 02:43

And I find daily life so much more interesting. It's fascinating to go to to an ancient village, or old thatched cottage and see how people used to live, how they used to cook, imagine how they used to think.
So much more fascinating than Colonel X killed Y amount of men on day X

OP posts:
kickassangel · 08/10/2010 02:47

obviously the big things matter too, but so often they are a result of a build up of smaller stuff. then the effect they have is exaggerated.

seriously, the more i read on here, the more i want to look at my life & cry. i seriously wonder if i should bugger off to live on my own sometimes - a modern day dame julian of norwich.

Unprune · 08/10/2010 07:44

I am just totally fascinated by 'daily life'. My grandmother lived a life that doesn't exist any more. Every time I see her, she tells me more and more fascinating details (she lived in a poor NE Scottish fishing town - on the face of it, not exciting, but really interesting in terms of how you just survive). I'm desperate to sit down with her and catalogue it, but how do you do that? It's just patronising. Her life was awful, and I'm not sure she would want to remember it for me.

Unprune · 08/10/2010 07:45

"the more i want to look at my life & cry"
I know exactly what you mean. It can be bloody depressing, can't it?

Sakura · 08/10/2010 10:25

Well, cry then.. and then change something

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Sakura · 08/10/2010 10:28

As if I know what I'm doing...!!
I'm stuck in a rut ATM because kids are teeny, but there's no way I'm going to be living like this forever.
I'm going to go on a homestay in a random country, Italy, I think, for a year. If the marriage survices that, then it was meant to be. And if it doesn't, well then I'LL know..

OP posts:
sethstarkaddersmum · 08/10/2010 10:34

Unprune - can I make a suggestion re recording your grandma's memories? I agree that 'tell me about your hard hard life' would sound really patronising but IME older relations are interested in explaining the family history, who was related to who etc, and the explanatory details about what the work involved etc would sort of slot in around that.
recording would be best but just get a notebook and write things down if you can't do that, you won't regret it.

Unprune · 08/10/2010 10:54

I know - I always feel like going in with a tape recorder would be akin to walking in dressed in a black cloak and tolling a large bell Confused
But the 'I want to write it down before it all gets forgotten' line would be good.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 08/10/2010 12:08

Unprune - if she's telling you lots of things it's because she doesn't want it to be forgotten. This is how women's history has always been preserved, we don't get the books and the newspaper obituaries and the plaques commemorating our lives, we get granddaughters if we're lucky to tell the stories to. Get a dictaphone and ask her about her mother, or her grandparents, and go from there.

Unprune · 08/10/2010 19:11

I must.
If nothing else, she speaks a sort of dialect that is dying out. I suppose because the words describe things that exist less and less, in part.

OnceUponA · 08/10/2010 19:29

Just managed to read the entire thread, phew. Wish I had been here when it began. Unprune- I did that with my grandmother, got her to tell us about her life and family history. It's incredible to own this tape of her history even though she is now gone.

One woman who writes some fantastic historical articles about women is called Ingrid Sharp- has anyone ever read some of her work? I think it is what has most shaped me as a feminist

books.google.de/books?id=9BD_mT783vgC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=Dangerous+Women:+Woman+as+Sexual+Criminal+in+Weimar+Germany&source=bl&ots=Uiatb-Q9YL&sig=8D_90zZ8WSccl2bjY9IBL9SWO48&hl=de&ei=d2KvTJyKM4WTswaKg7XJDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Dangerous%20Women%3A%20Woman%20as%20Sexual%20Criminal%20in%20Weimar%20Germany&f=false

OnceUponA · 08/10/2010 19:30

Sorry what a horrendous link! Sould have done a fancy link to it Grin

Sakura · 09/10/2010 09:10

What stories prompted you to approach your grandmother, OnceUponA? MUst have been fascinating. WHat kind of stories did she tell?

OP posts:
Sakura · 09/10/2010 09:13

What was fascinating in that link was that a widow was regarded as dangerous because she was sexually awakened, so prostitutes used to wear a widow's veil as a sign of their trade.
Some cultures are so messed up when it comes to women's sexuality, aren't they.
I should imagine that many a widow has had to turn to prostitution under patriarchy Sad

OP posts:
Sakura · 09/10/2010 09:15

sorry- not all prostitutes were widows, obviously, but they used to wear the black veil to people would know what they did. There is a link there between death and women's sexuality, as though the two are intertwined Hmm Shock Angry

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EdgarAllInPink · 09/10/2010 13:15

My grandmothers world has pretty much perished.....one set of grandmothers bing intellectuals trained as nurses (one went to Oxford in 1926 (Lady Margarets i think) which was prettyrare..)

they died before i was old enough to really converse with them.

sakur widows also had some level of financial independence - the 'merry widow' of Chaucer had good reason to be cheerful...

StewieGriffinsMom · 19/10/2011 12:09

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

wicketkeeper · 19/10/2011 14:47

Thanks for bringing it to our attention Stew.

messyisthenewtidy · 19/10/2011 20:38

Yea -thanks for rebumping thread! The thing that annoys me the most is that I have had to teach MYSELF women's history - because no one bothered to teach me at school. When I asked my history teacher what women did "in the olden days" he just shrugged and said "well I'm sorry to say this but they just looked after the children".

This opinion is SO damaging and the everyday lives of women, from textiles, working in the fields / factories to maternity death rates NEEDS to be taught, not just to girls but to boys too, so they will not turn into the entitled eejits who, like some I have known, have turned to me and said "But women didn't do anything" - Even frikkin Caitlin Moran believes that women did "fuck all" and she's a feminist!

I think that many of us (I certainly did) fall into the patriarchal trap of believing that if it's not an invention or discovery, it's not worthy of reporting and I would get hung up on proving that women did make discoveries and the such to prove that they were worthy of being included, but like Sakura said upthread the "daily life" of how we lived is fascinating and should be studied more.

Actually I've learned tonnes on women's history from the feminist section, so thanks! [hwink]

EllaDee · 20/10/2011 00:12

Oh. Sad

I clicked on this thinking what a brilliant title, saw the OP was sakura and was about to post being thrilled she was back.

Ah well, still nice to have it bumped, thanks SGM.

StewieGriffinsMom · 20/10/2011 10:34

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KRITIQ · 21/10/2011 21:44

Thanks for the bump up - really interesting contributions here. Lots of food for thought. Has MN got any way to make threads "sticky," or put really good ones in an archive so they don't fall off the cliff?

EllaDee · 21/10/2011 21:50

Ooh, is she checking PMs/watching threads? I'm so glad to know that. Smile