OMG Whores! A term paper inspired rant.
A couple of weeks ago I was telling two friends of mine about the incredulous comments a young gentleman made when I told him about my interest in gender history ("So what's your paper about?" "The role of women in Macedonian society." "You're gonna be glad once it's over and done with, right?" "Um, actually I think it's a cool topic." "... seriously?"). One of them then explained to me that was only a natural reaction since a man couldn't possibly be interested in those womanly things.
......... sure. All this dish-washing and knitting and sewing business can't compare to healthy virile activities like hunting and war-making and, I don't know, burping.
I considered briefly to take it as a sarcastic comment. Mais non, ma chère, as Hercule Poirot would say. Judging from tone and facial expression, it only was your normal case of internalized misogyny. E. hit the nail on the head when she said, "It's sort of sad when people hate themselves so much", after talking about the vitriol and contempt women so often display for their own sex. I'm not even going to argue why the above statement is bullshit. No. Wait. Actually, I am. This statement is bullshit because:
a) following that logic, I'm not supposed able to be interested in the, oh, about 98% of history that is male-dominated because I'm a woman. Well, that would explain the habit of mansplaining battles to me. (Oh sure, do go on, it's such an enlightening experience since my lady parts render me incapable of comprehending all this manly military business. Idiot.)
b) see, a military reform is not interesting per se. What do I care if some dude ordered his soldiers to use another kind of spear more than two thousand years ago? Not much, I can tell you. I do care, however, if that new equipment (and some other changes) transformed an until then weak and ineffective army into a military force to be reckoned with, thereby stabilizing the king's internal position, consolidating unstable borders, and laying the basis for expansionist visions his predecessors would have never dreamed to achieve. For in that case, my friends, that military reform tells us something about the structure and functioning of the society in question.
So where do the women come in here, you ask? Clearly, women are not military reforms, nor are the two of them comparable. (No, seriously. It's mostly because women are human beings, you know.) But here's the deal with history: if a woman comes into power, there's something terribly, terribly wrong. It's a sure sign of crisis, crisis meaning that oh noes! nobody with a penis is available or suitable to rule. And when we ask ourselves: Why was there a crisis? Why did the system break down? What happened that a woman was considered the lesser of two evils? What did her contemporaries think? How much did their approval and disapproval depend on the behaviour of said woman? They are revealing, these questions, in that they show how a society worked and when it failed, which norms existed and what happened when they were disregarded, in short: the structure and functioning of the society in question.
And that is why gender history is as real and important as any goddamn fucking battle.
c) Olympias. That woman was fierce. Your arguments are invalid.
Now that we've established that, we can talk about what woman history is: Sad. Sad and depressing in its repetitive ugliness. I've, so far, covered West European history from about 1400 BC to 1500 AD (summarized in a nutshell), and it's so much the same it has become some sort of bitter injoke between E. and me in lectures. Oh, there was this woman! And then she was raped! Married off to some ugly old dude! Raped again! Raped some more! Died in child birth/was brutally murdered! But (say the contemporaries) it's all her fault because of her seductive womanly guiles! Take, for instance, Herodotus. Herodotus, wildly entertaining, Herodotus, the Father of History. Let's see what he has to tell us about the origin of the Persian Wars. Apparently it was because the Phoenicians kidnapped Io! And then the Greeks kidnapped Europe and Medea and then Alexander "made prize of Helen"! Yes, let's hear the insights of Herodotus:
Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. (Hdt. Hist. I)
Yeah, why even bother about these whores. They secretly wanted it all along!
As a (baby) historian I'm supposed to keep my distance, but I'm sick of it. Sick and tired and no, I can't keep my distance, because it's disgusting and revolting and everytime I hear or read something along these lines, I puke a little in my mouth. Even when, or precisely when, you look at women who held (temporarily) some power, it's always the same slut-shaming and victim-blaming and general bashing pattern going on for about three thousand years of human history. Three thousand years. And holy shit, that makes me so angry and sad and angry I'd spout an incoherent string of colourful expletives if asked about my feelings on this.
See, this is not a black and white revisionist tale about women being the better rulers because women are good and men are evil. Most women who had access to power were proud and strong-willed, cunning, ruthless and often cruel - they had to be in order to survive in a patriarchial world. But, and that is the essential point, their cruelty didn't differ from that of their men, and yet it's always portrayed as something outrageous and shocking. Women aren't supposed to thrive for power, they're supposed to be docile and nice. (Anything else would be just dangerous, wouldn't it?) If they're not, it's because of their feelings as well. So, say, if Alexander the Great has a Macedonian general killed because his influence and power pose a threat to his accession to the throne, it's strategy; if his mother Olympias does the same with the seventh wife of her husband because her influence and power pose a threat to Alexander's accession to the throne and subsequently her own position at the court, it's obviously sexual jealousy:
[...] as Olympias had felt no less resentment at her divorce, and the preferment of Cleopatra to herself [...] Next she forced Cleopatra, for whose sake she had been divorced from Philip, to hang herself, having first killed her daughter in her lap, and enjoyed the sight of her suffering this vengeance, to which she had hastened by procuring the death of her husband. (Just. IX.7)
Ancient historians really hated Olympias due to their bewilderment at the comparatively influential position of women in Northern Greece kingdoms in general. (Which is kind of easily explained: A king needs heirs to the throne, that's why he needs babies, that's why he needs women to make babies with, that's why they couldn't dismiss women as easily as in democratic Athens for instance.) Anyway, they got extra creative with her; my personal favourite is the story where she drags the other wife over a burning brazier.
With other women, it's mostly just that they're whores: From Roman to medieval empresses, they're portrayed as promiscuous adultresses, lead by salaciousness and extravagance. Didn't you know, ladies? A life of debauchery is only a sign of power and royal legitimation if a man leads it. It doesn't matter if you really cheated on your husband or had an affair with your smoking hot bishop or gave blowjobs to half a Roman legion. Perhaps you did, perhaps you didn't. These stories don't care about the truth - they exist to belittle and demonize you, to diminish and distort your role in history. They fit into this narrative we have that a woman can either be a docile wallflower or a power-crazed harpy, exactly because they're easy on the mind in that catchy, colourful way.
The really sad thing is, however: these are current narratives. A man is a ladies' man, a woman a slut. Some woman enjoy to be groped. What did she expect wearing that skirt, anyway? If you wear that shirt you don't need to be surprised if people stare at your boobs. Don't be so emotional. You're really oversensitive, aren't you? Let me explain that to you, little girl. Women don't do these kinds of things because they're nicer than men. She's such a bitch, only a woman can be so mean. I can go on and on and on. We've all bought into these narratives at one point in our life, we've all adopted them without further thinking. If you take one step back, for a day or two, and just observe what happens around you; how you react to women, how men react to women, how women react to women; how men are portrayed in media, how women are portrayed in media - you're going to notice them. They're still here. And that's a shame.
......... sure. All this dish-washing and knitting and sewing business can't compare to healthy virile activities like hunting and war-making and, I don't know, burping.
I considered briefly to take it as a sarcastic comment. Mais non, ma chère, as Hercule Poirot would say. Judging from tone and facial expression, it only was your normal case of internalized misogyny. E. hit the nail on the head when she said, "It's sort of sad when people hate themselves so much", after talking about the vitriol and contempt women so often display for their own sex. I'm not even going to argue why the above statement is bullshit. No. Wait. Actually, I am. This statement is bullshit because:
a) following that logic, I'm not supposed able to be interested in the, oh, about 98% of history that is male-dominated because I'm a woman. Well, that would explain the habit of mansplaining battles to me. (Oh sure, do go on, it's such an enlightening experience since my lady parts render me incapable of comprehending all this manly military business. Idiot.)
b) see, a military reform is not interesting per se. What do I care if some dude ordered his soldiers to use another kind of spear more than two thousand years ago? Not much, I can tell you. I do care, however, if that new equipment (and some other changes) transformed an until then weak and ineffective army into a military force to be reckoned with, thereby stabilizing the king's internal position, consolidating unstable borders, and laying the basis for expansionist visions his predecessors would have never dreamed to achieve. For in that case, my friends, that military reform tells us something about the structure and functioning of the society in question.
So where do the women come in here, you ask? Clearly, women are not military reforms, nor are the two of them comparable. (No, seriously. It's mostly because women are human beings, you know.) But here's the deal with history: if a woman comes into power, there's something terribly, terribly wrong. It's a sure sign of crisis, crisis meaning that oh noes! nobody with a penis is available or suitable to rule. And when we ask ourselves: Why was there a crisis? Why did the system break down? What happened that a woman was considered the lesser of two evils? What did her contemporaries think? How much did their approval and disapproval depend on the behaviour of said woman? They are revealing, these questions, in that they show how a society worked and when it failed, which norms existed and what happened when they were disregarded, in short: the structure and functioning of the society in question.
And that is why gender history is as real and important as any goddamn fucking battle.
c) Olympias. That woman was fierce. Your arguments are invalid.
Now that we've established that, we can talk about what woman history is: Sad. Sad and depressing in its repetitive ugliness. I've, so far, covered West European history from about 1400 BC to 1500 AD (summarized in a nutshell), and it's so much the same it has become some sort of bitter injoke between E. and me in lectures. Oh, there was this woman! And then she was raped! Married off to some ugly old dude! Raped again! Raped some more! Died in child birth/was brutally murdered! But (say the contemporaries) it's all her fault because of her seductive womanly guiles! Take, for instance, Herodotus. Herodotus, wildly entertaining, Herodotus, the Father of History. Let's see what he has to tell us about the origin of the Persian Wars. Apparently it was because the Phoenicians kidnapped Io! And then the Greeks kidnapped Europe and Medea and then Alexander "made prize of Helen"! Yes, let's hear the insights of Herodotus:
Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. (Hdt. Hist. I)
Yeah, why even bother about these whores. They secretly wanted it all along!
As a (baby) historian I'm supposed to keep my distance, but I'm sick of it. Sick and tired and no, I can't keep my distance, because it's disgusting and revolting and everytime I hear or read something along these lines, I puke a little in my mouth. Even when, or precisely when, you look at women who held (temporarily) some power, it's always the same slut-shaming and victim-blaming and general bashing pattern going on for about three thousand years of human history. Three thousand years. And holy shit, that makes me so angry and sad and angry I'd spout an incoherent string of colourful expletives if asked about my feelings on this.
See, this is not a black and white revisionist tale about women being the better rulers because women are good and men are evil. Most women who had access to power were proud and strong-willed, cunning, ruthless and often cruel - they had to be in order to survive in a patriarchial world. But, and that is the essential point, their cruelty didn't differ from that of their men, and yet it's always portrayed as something outrageous and shocking. Women aren't supposed to thrive for power, they're supposed to be docile and nice. (Anything else would be just dangerous, wouldn't it?) If they're not, it's because of their feelings as well. So, say, if Alexander the Great has a Macedonian general killed because his influence and power pose a threat to his accession to the throne, it's strategy; if his mother Olympias does the same with the seventh wife of her husband because her influence and power pose a threat to Alexander's accession to the throne and subsequently her own position at the court, it's obviously sexual jealousy:
[...] as Olympias had felt no less resentment at her divorce, and the preferment of Cleopatra to herself [...] Next she forced Cleopatra, for whose sake she had been divorced from Philip, to hang herself, having first killed her daughter in her lap, and enjoyed the sight of her suffering this vengeance, to which she had hastened by procuring the death of her husband. (Just. IX.7)
Ancient historians really hated Olympias due to their bewilderment at the comparatively influential position of women in Northern Greece kingdoms in general. (Which is kind of easily explained: A king needs heirs to the throne, that's why he needs babies, that's why he needs women to make babies with, that's why they couldn't dismiss women as easily as in democratic Athens for instance.) Anyway, they got extra creative with her; my personal favourite is the story where she drags the other wife over a burning brazier.
With other women, it's mostly just that they're whores: From Roman to medieval empresses, they're portrayed as promiscuous adultresses, lead by salaciousness and extravagance. Didn't you know, ladies? A life of debauchery is only a sign of power and royal legitimation if a man leads it. It doesn't matter if you really cheated on your husband or had an affair with your smoking hot bishop or gave blowjobs to half a Roman legion. Perhaps you did, perhaps you didn't. These stories don't care about the truth - they exist to belittle and demonize you, to diminish and distort your role in history. They fit into this narrative we have that a woman can either be a docile wallflower or a power-crazed harpy, exactly because they're easy on the mind in that catchy, colourful way.
The really sad thing is, however: these are current narratives. A man is a ladies' man, a woman a slut. Some woman enjoy to be groped. What did she expect wearing that skirt, anyway? If you wear that shirt you don't need to be surprised if people stare at your boobs. Don't be so emotional. You're really oversensitive, aren't you? Let me explain that to you, little girl. Women don't do these kinds of things because they're nicer than men. She's such a bitch, only a woman can be so mean. I can go on and on and on. We've all bought into these narratives at one point in our life, we've all adopted them without further thinking. If you take one step back, for a day or two, and just observe what happens around you; how you react to women, how men react to women, how women react to women; how men are portrayed in media, how women are portrayed in media - you're going to notice them. They're still here. And that's a shame.