ladybusiness | (Reply)

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I just finished reading this, and I agree with everything you say about it.

I've been through a version of this before; I'm old enough to remember the Great Female Fighter Controversy in the SCA. The reason women can now put on armor and fight in the tournaments right along with the men... is because back in the 70s, women did the research and went back to the original sources and proved that yes indeed, We Have Always Fought. We proved that women in armor were period, dammit, and the PTB had to acknowledge it.

Does that mean that Hurley's essay was unnecessary? Not in the least. For one thing, the SCA controversy wasn't something that got out much into the world beyond -- but more importantly, when you're fighting a persistent false narrative, you have to have the counter-evidence presented over and over again, because otherwise it just... fades away. Hurley herself notes this phenomenon in one of her essays, where she talks about the male bloggers who say, "Women don't blog! If they did I'd know about it, and I don't," and the female bloggers come out of the woodwork and bash them about the head and shoulders, and they say, "Okay, I guess women do blog" -- and then 6 months to a year later it's all to do over again because they've forgotten. So it's important that we continue to have well-researched works that combat the erasure of women (in any capacity, not just as fighters) from history. Keep bashing them about the head and shoulders over and over again, and maybe eventually it'll stick.