Were the middle ages more democratic than modern times?

Traitorfish said:
Well, nobody's disputing that women are under-represented in historical documents, and it's certainly plausible that this may in some instances have been deliberate falsification. But it doesn't follow from this that women went virtually un-recorded, and what we know about Medieval women has been pieced together entirely from scribbles in margins. Consider, why would unscrupulous rulers need to falsify records of women, if nobody had the intention of recording them in the first place?

Again, we have texts written by women, and not all of them obscure fragmentary texts known only to scholars: Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies completed around 1405, is available as a mass-market paperback from Penguin. As the title suggest, the book is very much about women, and not only di Pisan's contemporaries, but about historical and semi-historical women, further indicating that the records of these women existed for her to draw on. This book is, granted, unusual, which is partly why it is so famous, but the fact it exists isn't compatible with a version of history in which women's experiences in the pre-modern world went completely unexpressed, only pieced together from scraps by modern histories.
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I see that your problem with my argument was based on how important should these women be so that they may be recorded in the history. Meanwhile my argument was emphasizing on the erasure of women's achievements in history. You see, of course I understand that there needs to be historical records on the first place in order for modern historians to find it and of course there only those who achieved splendidly only needs to be recorded. However history is still commercial.

What actually differs between damnatio memoriae and historical negotiationism/denialism/revisionism if not just on the methodology created for the same purpose? Indeed why would unscrupulous rulers need to falsify records of women if it is not other than to undermine, undersell these women's stories by deliberate falsifications and "under-representation" in order to erase these women from history.
 
Sickening said:
What actually differs between damnatio memoriae and historical negotiationism/denialism/revisionism if not just on the methodology created for the same purpose? Indeed why would unscrupulous rulers need to falsify records of women if it is not other than to undermine, undersell these women's stories by deliberate falsifications and "under-representation" in order to erase these women from history.
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So you persist in claiming there was some kind of conspiracy by rulers across multiple cultures, covering most of the world, for centuries and centuries, to silence women's stories?
 
Sickening said:
What actually differs between damnatio memoriae and historical negotiationism/denialism/revisionism if not just on the methodology created for the same purpose? Indeed why would unscrupulous rulers need to falsify records of women if it is not other than to undermine, undersell these women's stories by deliberate falsifications and "under-representation" in order to erase these women from history.
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innonimatu said:
So you persist in claiming there was some kind of conspiracy by rulers across multiple cultures, covering most of the world, for centuries and centuries, to silence women's stories?
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Moreover, a conspiracy that was at once so effective as to warp the historical record, but too impotent to prevent entire books written by women from being handed down to the present.
 
As with all claims of this kind, the question is: which rulers are we talking about, and what evidence is there that they did this? Without evidence it's just speculation, no matter how plausible (or otherwise) it may be thought to be.
 
innonimatu said:
So you persist in claiming there was some kind of conspiracy by rulers across multiple cultures, covering most of the world, for centuries and centuries, to silence women's stories?
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Traitorfish said:
Moreover, a conspiracy that was at once so effective as to warp the historical record, but too impotent to prevent entire books written by women from being handed down to the present.
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It isn't a conspiracy when it always happening all the time. that one might say that it is the nature of men. I mean silencing women's achievements is always what men do when they don't have the competence. Just saying. :rolleyes:

What would happen to Elizabeth I if she were to be wed ? What about Catherine the Great of Russia if she were remarried to Potemkin ? They were great because they are smart enough to acknowledge that guys are actually useless.
 
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Sickening said:
It isn't a conspiracy when it always happening all the time. that one might say that it is the nature of men. I mean silencing women's achievements is always what men do when they don't have the competence. Just saying. :rolleyes:

What would happen to Elizabeth I if she were to be wed ? What about Catherine the Great of Russia if she were remarried to Potemkin ? They were great because they are smart enough to acknowledge that guys are actually useless.
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Elizabeth's sister, Mary I, and cousin, Mary of Scotland, were both married, and we've heard of them. It's true that widows like Catherine seem to become prominent actors more often than married women, but that seems to be more likely due to the European legal systems extending them more individual freedom of action, and therefore allowing them to become actors, or to become actors in ways that would be more readily appreciated by onlookers, than because of some concerted effort to obscure them. Married women could not as often sign contracts or hold property, so their names do not appears as frequently in the record; it is not the case that they were signing contracts and holding property, but these records were all, for some reason, falsified after their deaths.

Unmarried and married women faced greater legal and social restraints than widows and other independent women, such as holy women, so often their actions were not legally their own, but were carried out on behalf of sons and husbands and fathers, but that doesn't mean they didn't act, or that it wasn't recorded, simply that it was recorded in conformity with the legal and social norms of the day. It requires a degree of interpretation by historians, but that's more or less the entire business of being a historian.
 
Sickening said:
it is the nature of men. I mean silencing women's achievements is always what men do when they don't have the competence.
/.../
They were great because they are smart enough to acknowledge that guys are actually useless.
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Indeed it is one of the great paradoxes of the world that men, so useless and incompetent in general, managed to oppress and silence women with such brutal efficiency.
:rolleyes:
 
Yeekim said:
Indeed it is one of the great paradoxes of the world that men, so useless and incompetent in general, managed to oppress and silence women with such brutal efficiency.
:rolleyes:
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You don't understand the rationality of it, this is obviously because women are masochistic and like to be brutalized and oppressed. But now their centuries old cunning plan has been exposed!

Probably should put a sarcasm warning before someone complains...
 
The problem with the idea of "deleting" history is that most medieval kings and emperors DID NOT HAVE THE MEANS to do so completely, regardless WHAT was the subject.

Qin Shihuang wanted to delete all previous mention of mathematics to prove himself was the originator of knowledge. That didn't work, despite the massive bookburning that accompanied the construction of the (First) Great Wall.
On Friday the 13th, the Templars across France were seized on the joint orders of the Pope and the King of France. Despite this, their great fortune was never expropriated by the French state.

In practice, what is more likely to happen is that a woman leader who defied male norms would be described as a harlot, witch, evil manipulator, assassin, [insert meme here] after her death by her political successors. This is what China did to Wu Zetian and Dowager Cixi. This is how English Protestants referred to Mary, Queen of the Scots or Joan of Arc. Not only is this less time-consuming (and thus, more efficient) for the ruler, it just as easily accomplishes the necessary political task of legitimizing his rule to both the elite and the people. Why waste more resources to achieve the same goal?

Yes, most male leaders who followed such powerful women weren't as competent or as intelligent as their mothers. To believe all of them, despite this general lack of competence, could somehow display a sudden competence at erasing history, defies logic.
 
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formerdc81 said:
The problem with the idea of "deleting" history is that most medieval kings and emperors DID NOT HAVE THE MEANS to do so completely, regardless WHAT was the subject.

Qin Shihuang wanted to delete all previous mention of mathematics to prove himself was the originator of knowledge. That didn't work, despite the massive bookburning that accompanied the construction of the (First) Great Wall.
On Friday the 13th, the Templars across France were seized on the joint orders of the Pope and the King of France. Despite this, their great fortune was never expropriated by the French state.

In practice, what is more likely to happen is that a woman leader who defied male norms would be described as a harlot, witch, evil manipulator, assassin, [insert meme here] after her death by her political successors. This is what China did to Wu Zetian and Dowager Cixi. This is how English Protestants referred to Mary, Queen of the Scots or Joan of Arc. Not only is this less time-consuming (and thus, more efficient) for the ruler, it just as easily accomplishes the necessary political task of legitimizing his rule to both the elite and the people. Why waste more resources to achieve the same goal?

Yes, most male leaders who followed such powerful women weren't as competent or as intelligent as their mothers. To believe all of them, despite this general lack of competence, could somehow display a sudden competence at erasing history, defies logic.
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I mean, that was exactly what I wrote on my previous posts and what was argued was the validity and the level of importance to note that men has been attempting on deleting/downplaying women's significance throughout history.
 
formerdc81 said:
On Friday the 13th, the Templars across France were seized on the joint orders of the Pope and the King of France. Despite this, their great fortune was never expropriated by the French state.
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It kind of was, Philip erased his debts.
 
formerdc81 said:
what is more likely to happen is that a woman leader who defied male norms would be described as a harlot, witch, evil manipulator, assassin, [insert meme here] after her death
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Still happens as is in people humming and singing "ding dong, the witch is dead" after Margaret Thatcher died.

 
You could make the same claim about any of those other historical women (that it was just their political enemies who used that language). I don't remember Reagan's death drawing the same vitriol.
 
Reagan wasn't nearly as divisive as Thatcher, for non-gender-related issues. Reagan had no equivalent of the miners' dispute, in which Thatcher's policies left entire communities economically devastated in ways from which they have never recovered. Thatcher called her opponents in that dispute the "enemy within" and treated them accordingly, and they have not forgiven her for it.
 
Plotinus said:
Reagan wasn't nearly as divisive as Thatcher, for non-gender-related issues. Reagan had no equivalent of the miners' dispute, in which Thatcher's policies left entire communities economically devastated in ways from which they have never recovered. Thatcher called her opponents in that dispute the "enemy within" and treated them accordingly, and they have not forgiven her for it.
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The United States also has no equivalent to Thatcher's mishandling and escalation of the Troubles. Public celebrations of Thatcher's death were mostly places with strong trade union traditions, large Irish Catholic populations, or both. Mouthwash is fond of explaining all politics in terms of tribal conflict: it's easy enough to explain this within that framework, without resorting to convoluted accusations of leftist hypocrisy.
 
There was the whole AIDS thing though. The early 2000s were a very different time in the US. Public reactions to HW’s and McCain’s deaths, for instance, haven’t been so uniformly glowing.
 
Traitorfish said:
Mouthwash is fond of explaining all politics in terms of tribal conflict: it's easy enough to explain this within that framework, without resorting to convoluted accusations of leftist hypocrisy.
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can i have one thread where i'm not called a nazi

Owen Glyndwr said:
There was the whole AIDS thing though. The early 2000s were a very different time in the US. Public reactions to HW’s and McCain’s deaths, for instance, haven’t been so uniformly glowing.
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That's not how I remember HW's death. In fact, I recall most commentators giving explanations for why every side of the aisle seemed to genuinely mourn him.
 
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Mouthwash said:
can i have one thread where i'm not called a nazi
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Nobody said anything about Nazis. "Tribal conflict", here, is really just a colourful way of describing a view of politics as the collision between competing interest-groups.
 
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