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Herstory
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| Secrets of times gone by |
"Herstory" is a neologism "women's history," a variant of the Marxist "people's history"; while a people's history professes to reinterpret history from the perspective of workers and/or common men, a herstory professes to reinterpret it from the perspective of women. Most feminists don't use it.
Etymology
The term is an illustration of its coiners' belief that regular history is heavily slanted toward men's point of view, a "systemic bias" reflected in the term history, which they seem to have simply assumed was a portmanteau of "his story". It is not.
It so happens that the English word history is a loan word, derived directly from the Latin historia, which is itself a loan word from ancient Greek.[1] After all, all Latin-based languages are spelled similarly (and word itself is feminine!) yet the masculine possessive pronouns are not "his" in those languages. On the other hand, the English word his is derived from a proto-Germanic root,[2] and is not in the least etymologically connected to the first three letters of history. They just happen to sound the same, and only in English. The origin of this term is a testament to the intellectual laziness and self-centered worldview of extremists in any field, who are quick to grab hold of anything that seems to support their point of view but reluctant to examine it critically.
Well-known herstorians
- Robin Morgan, who coined the term.
Herstorians primarily known for herstorical work rather than political activities
See also
References
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