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Sometimes, I hear in gaming and the fantasy genre in general, ‘yes, but women couldn’t do that in those days, so you can’t do that with your character!’
Yes, a limited view of history applied to made up stories to justify suppression of the female voice in modern media. The fact is, there were amazing women doing amazing things that they ‘shouldn’t have done’ thanks to that limited view of history. Which makes me sort of wonder, but I’m not going to expound on ‘why.’
Instead, I think we should all celebrate ‘why not’! So here’s what I propose. Fridays, right before the weekend and many people head off from their real jobs to write or game, lets remind them with a collection of women kicking history in the ass with their sheer awesome. I’ll be trying to post one weekly on G+ or here. You do the same. Like a cat meme, with more purpose.
Don’t know where to start?
*Try here.
*http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com/
There are some great podcasts on the subject, as well as just crawling around in Wikipedia for a while. So, go, your turn, share the love and rock the history hard. Please, steal this idea, you’re welcome to it.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Sweet idea.
In doing my labour studies classes this semester, I was constantly introduced to literature about brave and radical women. I was also constantly introduced to analysis of the ways that those women were systemically edited out of history.
Thanks for giving me a channel/prompt for sharing those names.
I’m really excited about Agnes Smedley – often cited as the first feminist-proletariat writer, Agnes was brilliant in her ability to clearly express the interrelations of different types of oppression. She was a political activist, a groundbreaking author, a journalist in China during their civil war, an advocate of numerous progressive causes, and a ComIntern spy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedley
January 8th, 2012 at 4:47 am
Lots more interesting women at http://www.lothene.org/others/women.html too.
I started researching it years ago after being told that I shouldn’t do re-enactment combat because “women couldn’t do that in those days”…