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I mentioned here many times that I consider the gender (sex) divide the greatest factor in our model of understanding modern political thought and action.
Background; middle-class male, young, Catholic family, Mediterranean, living in a big, poor city. Moved to Central Europe to work in a big èlite public institution with many young people, especially females. History of belonging to Marxist organisations in the past btw.
As a passionate about history, I normally talk about it, especially in a highly-educated environment where discussions about complex topics are the norm.
What I noticed in the past year it is astounding and moulded a lot of my thought. Every time I talk with women about history, and the topics fall on some past event/political regime/ideology/whatever, there is a lot of disinterest towards it from the women's side. Not disinterest in the sense of "I do not care", because as I said it is a highly-educated environment where being uncaring about this kind of thing is uncool, but disinterest in the sense of:
"I understand that in the past things worked a certain way, but the past is always worse than now because women had it worse".
From there, after it happened dozens of times with dozens of different women, I elaborated:
Women are the true accelerationist.
I could not elaborate or argue about past political or moral issues or ideologies or sovrastructures, because, from the other side, the argument is always that every behaviour or ideology of the past is ontologically evil because it discriminated against women.
I will never forget how when I was arguing about how 19th-century European states had probably a higher state-capacity than contemporary European states, I was accused of sexism because I expressed a preference for a non-contemporary political structure. The same happened when I mentioned how I admire Charles De Gaulle (because Macron, while being bad, is better than him because he is more feminist).
The most amazing moment was when I said to a group of women (yes, a lot of weird moments this year) that the loss of Church participation alienated a lot of people and diminished the sense of belonging and social participation of the community in the public thing. They agreed with me (!) but still for them, it is better now because they prefer a more isolated society but with more feminism.
Women are true accelerationist because the consequence of feminism has been a weirdo para-futurism philosophy but without fascism. Everything that can be conducted to the past is suspected as part of a reactionary plot to be judged on moral grounds. No detached interests in History per se, but only moral condemnation of everything that is not the "current year".
For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".
The biggest consequence of this sex divide is, imho, that a feminist liberal society has a huge gap in understanding the context when society begins to decline after drifting from some past ideology or structure. It is not possible for them that something contemporary can be worse than something present in the past.
I would like to receive some input on my "theory" from the residents of the motte, expressed in the English language which is better than mine.
PS: for people who are curious, I never received any sort of cancellation or consequence for my brazen rhetorical behaviour. Europe is not as woke as the US, and I am a kinda of "high-status male" for several reason, so I noticed that women tolerate way more whatever I say.
Your experience has been dissimilar from mine. A high level of interest in history is pretty rare in general, but personally I have encountered as many women who are really into history as I have met men who are really into history, and none of those men or women are ideologues. It seems to me that history has a relatively low gender gap compared to many other intellectual disciplines and that female writers about history are just as likely as men to be drawn to history by the wonder of contemplating different worlds rather than by any sort of political ideology. It is true that there are thousands of feminist history books written by women, but there are also thousands of Marxist history books written by men. Are women really more likely than men to look at history through an ideological lens?
Another thing which comes to my mind: aren't women the main consumers of historical dramas in both text and visual form? I do not think that most of them read those books and watch those shows because they want to get enraged by the lack of feminism in previous time periods. They read and watch them because they find themselves captivated by them.
In short, I question the idea that women in general engage with history mainly through leftist ideology. It has not been my experience. By the way, my personal experiences on this topic come from living in highly leftist-voting areas of the United States.
It is hard for me to understand why anyone at all, of either gender, would answer anything other than "now". And as a big history buff, the more I learn about history, the more strongly I feel that I would rather live now than in any previous historical era.
A female history buff here. I agree that "female writers about history are just as likely as men to be drawn to history by the wonder of contemplating different worlds rather than by any sort of political ideology". I personally love that about history. When you get far enough back things just were a certain way and no one tries to get all moralistic about it.
From watching Youtube historians, I do sometimes feel like women feel pressured by modern politics to make asides ("of course this is only what the white women of a certain class were wearing") but women feel more social pressure from negative comments, in general, I think.
There might be an illusion that women want to analyze history from a Marxian/feminist lens but that is what academia has done to the humanities and scholars having to be careerist to survive, it doesn't seem to permeate voluntary history enjoyment at all.
Yes, this.
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