If History, Why Not Herstory?

Just think about it all.  About the past, about that is, well, history – Julius Caesar and Robinson Crusoe and 1066 and all that sort of stuff.  And global warming.  Well indeed, believe you me, right since the very first day that it all began, whatever has happened, whatever soever at all, then either God did it (or some variation upon that theme) or else we did it.

 Hence and thus, apart from those aforementioned acts of God (or of god if you don’t believe that the big G exists; I admit he has been getting some pretty bad press lately), though I can assure you that either way the acts so attributed to him/her/it verily did happen and verily will continue to happen regardless – you know, mostly either various vagaries of the weather, that is usually too much of something, e.g. wind, water, heat, or too little of the same, well of water and heat anyway, I don’t know that too little wind ever gave anyone much angst, except maybe the ancient mariner and any other ancient similarly becalmed in the doldrums, or untoward and inconvenient interruptions, disruptions and/or eruptions of the earth’s crust and the sorts of generally undesirable sequellae of these geological ructions, such as volcanoes (irrespective of whether previously considered dead, or just feigning death, that is merely sleeping and quietly biding their time, or still alive) giving off such general nuisance material as steam, hot rocks, boiling lava and messy ash, avalanches, landslides, mudslides and a tsunami or three, unexpected and unanticipated areas, indeed often vast swathes, of terra firma becoming suddenly decidedly less firma, whereupon which the odd (though the not so odd are not immune) buildings, bridges and the like perched thereon being quite likely to fall over, fall down, fall whatever, often at less than convenient times – well then, apart from all of that, “the rest”, as they say (whoever they may be), “is history”.

 Not true, though, not true at all!  “History” is just the half of it.  And they – probably the same they, though one can never be absolutely certain – are mostly to blame.  Mostly, I say, because the they who wrote it all down, and nowadays how else would we know about it anyway unless someone had gotten down to writing it down, or perhaps up to writing it up, have been predominantly of the male of the offending species, with their undeniable if not unforgivable penchant for preferring to write about, and thus for the rest of us to know about, the activities of predominantly only that same androgynous half of the population.

 But, pray tell, hasn’t the other half, or actually rather slightly more than half, of the same species been up to the same tricks all that time?  Haven’t they, and here “they” is clearly defined anatomically as those so gynaecologically blessed, haven’t they also been starting and stopping sundry families and dynasties and alliances, and/or starting and, rarely, stopping all sorts of nasty wars, genocides and ethnic cleansings, (I grant you likely to have been with considerably less raping and pillaging and generalized mayhem than that for which their brothers are to blame) and/or gallivanting all over the globe looking for foreign (foreign = anything not belonging to us) rivers, mountains, jungles, whole continents even, and better still discovering previously undiscovered hidey-holes and those hiding in them (whether such indigenes actually wanted to be discovered, by some other mob, that is, for they have already discovered themselves, or not) and/or designing, building and copping flak over all sorts of great big, bold structural things (the bigger and the bolder the better) and/or painting pictures, sculpting sculptures, making merrie musik and various additional  artistic endeavours and/or inventing the wheel, the horse collar, the computer chip and assorted other very clever thingummies (with the more successful of which either to cure and feed whole nations or to destroy them) and/or any of all the other “stuff” of history, of the minutiae of which professional historians (also of course, as the name implies, predominantly male) love to fight about?  And have been fighting about it ever since they began writing about it.  Probably even before that.  Well, fess up, haven’t they?  OK then, so where is “Herstory”?

 Aha! (Or similar exclamation of surprise and suspicion.)  Aha again.  Now Pandora’s box is opened, along with a good few cans of worms, thus letting the cat out of its bag (though why this particular cat was all bagged up in the first place is hard to say; or perhaps just hard to explain) and unleashing what might in due and inevitable course become a veritable flood of righteous female indignation.  Which is likely to drown the cat anyway, so that problem is fixed.  The worms, though, are a different matter.

 And now from me the answer?  Right?  No, wrong!  Again.  Absolutely wrong.  For I am just one, and a very minor one at that, of that same slightly-in-the-minority group now clearly and readily available to be blamed for this, that and every other misfortune that has befallen, is befalling and/or is likely to befall the human species (and all of our evolutionary cousins, that is every other species, as well – and not forgetting outer space and the rest of the environment) since the year dot.  Otherwise known as history.  So of course I don’t have the answer.  Not likely.  I am just a poor and humble bloody male.

 Now hey there, hang on sisters.  Wait a frigging minute.  I have opened the floodgate for you.  Isn’t that worth something?  Lay off me and my brethren for a while and get on with your job.  You want to know which end is really up – and I guess has probably been up ever since the whole sorry mess began – then go take pencil in hand, or laptop on lap, and write up your own bloody story.  Though, in parentheses, I do concede that your version is indubitably likely to be a tad less bloody than ours.  Nevertheless, in consequence ladies forget re-writing history.  Just write herstory.