October 25, 2024
This was a continuation of our last lecture, so more about gender history, but weirdly enough it didn’t touch on anything queer related at all, which is what I was looking forward to as a queer person but it is what it is.
He started the lecture by asking “is the revelation that of women’s power/agency/status in the Middle Ages empowering to women today?” The general consensus was that it can certainly show that things now do not have to be the way they currently are. He then told us a personal story about when he was in France many years ago to illustrate that paternalistic attitudes still permeate French society: he went to restaurant to meet his girlfriend (now wife) and saw her sitting at a table surrounded by men, I guess they were flirting with her and she was trying her best to handle them. The second they notice my professor they immediately apologize to him, respecting his “ownership” over her. He is not an intimidating guy at all, and it would’ve been four on one byway, but they still backed off for him (he made the comment about his stature, not me, although I agree that he is not physically imposing).
Next we talked about Joan Scott. I made sure to check the slides for this sections because my notes seemed to be lacking but said slides aren’t help fill out this section so I guess I was on the right track. I think Scott focused on gender and the politics of history (which was a piece we had to read for class), and she pushed the idea of writing not only a history of women, but a new history in general. Gender vs Sex, the English language s finicky because “gender” is used to refer to both the social and biological definitions. Again, women’s history is about women’s social experiences, while gender history is based around language and rhetoric. Gender historians are interested in politics. Like “why did the French Revolution allow divorce?” Previous divorce laws were too related to the Old Regime so it was all just thrown out. Is that true? Who’s to say, because this was the answer I was given. Please don’t shoot the messenger, but I do appreciate further information and corrections.
Anna Clark is a Gender historian tat wrote “Struggle for the Breeches” which he had to read a very long excerpt for class. It was another version of E. P. Thompson’s book, because Marxist historians seem to struggle with covering women in working class movements. To me it would depend on the Marxist, but what do I know. Chartists wanted the cote; men, women, and children all worked in the textile factories. Women engaged with chartist politics during this time and Chartists would begin to use more gendered language like “breadwinner’s wage”or instead of “living wage.” Chartists do not want to compete for wages and factories were not a place for women, thats what they argued. A respectable household has a woman taking care of the home while the husband works. Workers were not considered respectable because they get drunk with their workmates and cannot provide for their families. How does this narrative affect E.P. Thompson’s story of the working class? Well, it showed that the Chartists were very sexist just to make a few gains, male workers would even side with “the man” in certain ways to push female workers out.
Apparently Anna Clark was one of thee peer reviewers of my professor’s new book, and he said it was fantastic expect he missed some crucial gendered elements with regard to one of the chapters.
We ended the class by looking at gendered analysis of different events. The great cat massacre had male workers committing violence against feminine cats. The Ottawa trucker protest: the Marxist analysis would be that it was a working class protest and problems with wages, the Gender analysis would be that a lot of big masculine trucks were used and Trudeau is considered a feminine man that they want to oppose (and fuck, based on their flags which my professor poked fun at). Do I think the Marxist analysis is right with regard to the Ottawa truckers? No.