tyrannosaurus-trainwreck:iamanathemadevice:HIstorian Suzannah Lipscombe responds to Mark Lawson’s po
tyrannosaurus-trainwreck:iamanathemadevice:HIstorian Suzannah Lipscombe responds to Mark Lawson’s poorly researched clickbait Guardian article, “Not in this day and age: when will TV stop horrendously airbrushing history?”From Downton Abbey to Call the Midwife and now Jamestown, period dramas always fall into the classic trap – characters with laughably liberal values for their day. Stop the madness, TV-makers!Idiot man“Women 400 years ago were human beings who objected to being sexually and physically abused? That’s unpossible!”It’s obnoxious to keep seeing fiction and pop nonfiction positing that things were just so unbelievably horrible for women back in the day that they were reduced to mute automatons who never dared twitch or blink without their husband or father’s say-so. The first thing it does is imply that women today are just soooooo fucking lucky that things aren’t worse, like in [foreign country we don’t like] or [time period the speaker doesn’t actually know shit about], which translates into the false assertion that there’s been all this fucking progress made. Which yes, there’s been progress made, but a lot of it’s been the result of a few things (reliable birth control, better medical care making childbirth and early childhood much much much safer) rippling out across the rest of women’s lives. And guess what? There are still enormous, organized social movements trying to undo all of that.The second thing it does is draw a neat curtain over the fact that women have been fighting for better behavior from men in general and equal treatment in the eyes of the law for hundreds of fucking years, so that each new generation of dudes can sigh theatrically and roll their eyes and stomp their feet about how modern women have gone too far with their complaints about whatever bit of inequality is being deemed “trivial” this time and talk about how they’re so pampered they wouldn’t know a real problem if it backhanded them and told them to get back in the kitchen. If you don’t realize it’s the same fucking tactics dudes have been using since the literal dark ages to avoid giving women their due, however small and limited a thing that may have been, you’re more likely to waste time and energy engaging as if they were arguing in good faith. -- source link