So here we are in March and I forgot, but was rather
capriciously reminded that this month is women's history month. We just
finished black history month, and I managed to get through it without being
bothered everyday about how special the month was while being simultaneously
reminded about how it should be extra special to me, the white man, since I am
after all the root cause of black injustice today. No, the month came and went without a hiccup
and without the shaming to which I in the past had been privy. I guess racism
isn't thriving in this country anymore, and people are becoming complacent with
the fact that there are different demographics within the population and that's
okay.
I wish I could say the same for the sexes.
Aside from the fact that we are exaggerating the accomplishments
of women in history, I would like to focus on something specific that is new
this year, namely on the accomplishments of a few unbeknownst bad women and how
they are being portrayed as great and historical.
Ching Shih, this woman was one of the most successful and
feared pirates in history. I guess piracy is now a notable human achievement.
Piracy aside, what else did she do? Nothing. So her most notable accomplishment
was crimes of mythical proportion. We aren't even trying to re-write her
history like we do with so many women of historical note, we are just flat out congratulating
her on being a notorious criminal like Aileen Wuornos.
We
don’t recognize men of similar historical significance like Vlad III,
Omar al-Bashir, Augusto Pinochet, or even Hitler , but here we are recognizing a woman for the evil
that she did and pretending that this terrible female historical figure is a
positive role-model for women. This proves something interesting about proponents
of women's rights in our country, that they are less interested in what women
actually do, and more interested in 1-uping the men. So-and-so was a criminal
and a tyrant, whose contribution to history was only negative, yet we are to
believe that this is some great accomplishment because it was grander than the
men of her time. Pirates were criminals, menaces, malevolent forces that have
no place in civil society, yet here we are recognizing and celebrating one
because she was a woman who was on top.
I hear
all too often how all the evil perpetrated the world over is done by the acts
of men and men alone, yet this only sheds more light on the fact that women are
just as bad, and worse considering Ching Shih was even more terrifying
than the male counterparts of her time.
So why bring it up if it hurts the usual
narrative of “man devil, woman saint”? I bet I know why. Because they can and
no one dares challenge them. The fact that feminists can gloat about perpetrating
evil or women who have perpetrated evil, without fear of reprisal or even an
objection, demonstrates a certain degree of privilege that currently is not
afforded to any man in our society. These women think they are untouchable, and
I wonder what could have possibly given them that idea? Maybe this grandiose
behavior stems from the fact that society has let them get away with so much already
that they no longer live in fear of retaliation for anything they do? Considering how they are treated in a court of law, I
think that to be a valid assessment. Consider also how they have persuaded the
social and political narrative to believe some of the most asinine ideas. Wage
gap, rape-culture, patriarchy theory, all of course debunked over and over (and over, and over, and over), yet these ridiculous ideas
still persist.
Another
reason is that women like men are corrupted by the same ideal, namely writing
history as a story about the winners, focusing on the people they like with praise,
adulation, and a bias spin on all their deeds as great accomplishments, while
doing the opposite for those they detest. We call it a neutral stance, yet all
too often we are trying to convince people to our version of the past. Case in
point, the deliberate exaggeration of women during women's history month. Like
Hedy Laamarr who we are crediting with the invention of Wifi, Bluetooth and
GPS, despite the fact that such technology was already in development, and that
all she did was come up with the idea of 'frequency hopping', a mere piece of
the puzzle that contributed to today's technology. Same thing with Top Secret Rosie's,
who are being credited with inventing the first computer, but did no such
thing. They computed, that's it. Something that has been done since the advent
of mathematics in academia.
Women’s
history month is the culmination of all the hard work of feminists and women's
right's advocates since the movements second wave because after decades of
re-writing the social narrative convincing society that women were oppressed
and held back, they are moving on to history and changing it to herstory. This
completely defies the current social narrative because we believe women were
only oppressed throughout history. Bring
notable women to light will demonstrate that they were allowed to contribute to
society and take an active part in history, which will mean that they were not
being oppressed in the process anymore than any other demographic. So when it
becomes proof that the theory of female oppression was nothing more than a
myth, it won’t matter because women have established their unquestioned
position of authority in society to the point where it's almost criminal
to question it.
It was all a very clever plan, and I'm sure in light of the truth, there will
still be those who pretend that though women were free to act and be part of
history, they were still somehow oppressed, just like a wealthy middle class
woman is still somehow oppressed while a homeless man is privileged.
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