Welcome to the first blog on my “herstory” website.
Now, not to bore you with the debates and theories behind “herstory”, this blog is purely to explore the weird, wonderful, wanton, wicked, worldly, wealthy, wordy, and wretched womanly acts carried out in the past.
I did say I wouldn’t bore you with the debates, etc. on theories and debates, but I am.... but just briefly. I hope.
Now “history”... i.e. His-story is made from the English word His and Story. Now I realise that the word to mean History comes from the Greek word historia meaning to learn or seek out by questioning. It has no ancient etymology relating to the male pronoun “his” that we use. In fact, in many languages, the word history is feminine. In my limited knowledge, for example, the word for history in German is “die Geschichte” (female” and in French “l’histoire” (female). Many get up in arms about this saying that feminists are becoming over the top and overemphasise the way women get excluded from the past stories.
(N.B. There are often arguments that “herstory” is non-translatable into foreign languages and is a purely anglo-spoken pun. Indeed I agree. It is a pun. In fact, many words we use within the English language are drawn from foreign languages because there is no other term for it. This has never been a problem in the past.)
Where I do tend to agree is that the more serious hard-lined feminists, who take the view that women are marginalised to such a degree that in retaliation men should be excluded from the story. Now fighting tit-for-tat is not what I like to do. Women’s history has a strong history of its own, both written on and by women, and like so many histories whether it is political, social, economic, feminist, cultural histories... it is a rare case indeed, or perhaps rather a questionable historian, who can look exclusively at one type of history, as it were, and ignore the rest. History involves all of the above. To actively exclude any part is just foolish and pig-headed ignorance.
So, why do I call this blog “21st Century Herstorian”? Surely I am just being as pig-headed as I just have exclaimed other as being?!
Well, I did debate this.
Then I thought- hang on a minute: there is an element of a humorous pun about the word. Something which I think attracted me to the word above all the ardent feminist and wordy etymological arguments. Feminists can have a sense of humour. We can be witty. We can pun. And for me, this is exactly what it is.
I am a female “hestorian”. I like to look at women in history, but of course women have lived, loved and laboured with men, so who am I to exclude this crucial element of the past? Without men we would not be here. I like to think of myself as a “herstorian” mainly because I focus on women’s stories. On women’s lives. On female spheres of influence. It is for this reason that I use “herstorian”.
After a huge chunk of histories being based on men, battles and political intrigues completely excluding women... I want to regain some of that ground lost hundreds of years ago... lost by the chroniclers, lost by males who could write and were in charge of documenting current events which naturally excluded women in the men’s world that they knew... I am a woman of my time and this is my present historical recording of the past imparting some of my biased views (as a woman I might add!) on the past. All I can hope for is that I am not the last without a sense of humour and a sense of congenial but serious historical analysis.
And just to make a point that my sort of history is needed, just look at David Starkey.
I read an artilce sometime back. that really galvanised me in this endeavour. It was written by Sarah Gristwood responding to some very blunt David Starkey words. He claimed that there was a fraction of historians, who he particularly intimated were female and were writing women back into history and into a place where they had no importance or historical impact on the story.
Indeed, there have been a resurgence of historical novels written by women involving women whose stories have been sidelined in favour of the more flamboyant and more well documented stories of the males. No one can doubt the importance of Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. Whether fully accurate or not it imparted some hitherto uncommonly known facts onto the novel-reading public. It gave the woman’s side of the story. Then there is Alison Weir, historian and all round bad-ass of propagandising the female story. Rock on! Then there is Sarah Gristwood herself... we are a breeding ground. It is something that is popular and fascinating. Long may it continue to be so!
All I want to say is who has the right, or perhaps I should pun here, the write to history or herstory?
The answer: ANYONE!
So, here I am answering the call. And I will continue to do so. Who has the authority to distinguish who has the right perspective on the past? Who has the right facts? Who is the most biased? Can the bias help gain an understanding? Historians have debated this for years, and I have no doubt that they will continue to do so! And long may they to do so! The more histories and herstories we have the wider picture, views, ideas and possibilities of the past so we can see the many wondrous probabilities of a time long forgotten to us, where even then... had you asked them... they could not decidedly have given you the same answer across society. Therefore research, write, ponder...
For heaven’s sake, just look at the past and make up your own mind!
Love history, love herstory, love the past!
