But my rant is actually not quite about that stuff at all. It’s about history, and this notion that History Is Authentically Sexist. Yes, it is. Sure it is. We all know that. But what do you mean when you say “history?”
History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.
History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.
—
tansyrr.com» Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That. / A great post from Tansy Rayner Roberts; read the whole thing, share it. (via gwendabond)
Yes, exactly!
(via malindalo)
Yes. This reminds me of my perpetual frustration with that “well-behaved women rarely make history” thing - not the original quote, the “rah-rah for social rebels” way it’s used. Originally, it’s about how the lives of most women, women who weren’t The Special Woman, Not Like Those Other Girls, but who mostly tried to do what they were supposed to, those lives get ignored and were often unrecorded, the women washed out of history for their trouble.
(via anghraine)
YES THIS.
And then the problem gets compounded in microcosm thanks to the wealth of classic, respected and popular male-authored SFF novels which elide the presence and importance of women in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY that the historical record does, so that people who grow up reading those novels subconsciously learn that both history AND fantasy are inherently masculine spaces.
And with far too many of those people, you can’t win: because on the one hand, they think it’s implausible to cast female characters in what they perceive to be traditionally masculine roles, but on the other, they find it boring and irrelevant to focus on female characters occupying what they perceive to be traditionally feminine roles. Realism to them - both as relates to history, and to imaginary spaces - therefore amounts to the studied absence of women.
(Source: tansyrr.com, via anghraine)
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