so since i really really like history and think writing about history is fun (like… as fun as writing about anything for a grade gets, but), i thought i’d share my overall writing process with you guys to help out anyone who needs it!!
1. ask yourself: what are you even writing about? there are two main types of history essays: one where you’re examining some sort of shift, or change over time, usually a shift in how people view a certain thing/topic/issue, and one where you’re looking at the effects of one cultural/economic/social element, and how it affected/presented itself in only the time when it took place. i’m gonna call these the shift and the isolated occurrence, respectively. your first step is to identify which type of essay you’re writing.
how to approach the shift: ask yourself what changes, what stays the same, when do the changes occur, and why. you can think of this essay as a cause and effect essay. you’re going to look at the overall shift over a long period of time, and several turning points for that shift. overall, what changed and why? in those specific moments, what changed and why?
how to approach the isolated occurrence: figure out what social, political, or economic phenomenon you’re looking at. ask yourself how that occurrence manifests itself in different populations (by age groups, gender, race, region, socioeconomic class, etc). in a nutshell, your essay is going to be about what the shift meant in general for EVERYONE it affected, and what it meant for the different populations you chose to examine.
2. gather your sources. i’m gonna assume you’re writing your academic history for school, so these are gonna be “course” centric.
textbook. probably the least “respected” source, but you just want to get this essay done, and you don’t particularly care about being respected by historians, so you can use your textbook for anytime you’re talking about dates or really general, really vague background information.
extra readings. most history teachers tend to print stuff out and give it to you to read. those are fair game. use ‘em, but be careful – if they’re excerpts from another textbook, use them like you’d use your textbook. if they’re from something more specific (i.e. an entire book on the subject, instead of a paragraph on the subject from your textbook), you rely more heavily on the source.
other primary sources. your textbooks and readings are probably going to quote some people who were there. you want to quote some people who were there, too! diary entries, journals, and letters are all incredibly helpful, and you can google that sort of thing pretty easily to get great sources!
things historians have written. that thing you’re writing about? someone probably writes about that for a living. it’s always a good idea to use historians and their works.
works from the period. art, literature, prose, music – we use them to express ourselves and our ideas. if its from the period you’re writing about, it will tell you something about people/people’s feelings on things from the period, and is a primary source!
major legal writings. if the government is based on it or wrote it, it’s a solid source.
3. write your thesis. you’ve read step 1. you know what you’re talking about. so tell everyone what your talking about, and, most importantly, what it did/what it means for us now, in a broad, broad sense. for example, roe v. wade literally made abortions legal in the us. but what roe v. wade REALLydid was allow women to have greater ownership of their own bodies and choices, and greater independence. see? your thesis is where you should be broad.
4. write the essay.
introduction. add some historical context. basically, explain what events or movements led up to the thing you’re talking about. then give ‘em your thesis. then do that thing your english teacher probably doesn’t want you to do where you list how you’re going to prove your thesis. then hit enter.
body paragraphs. with shifts, it’s best to organize them chronologically. with the isolated occurrence, it’s best to organize them based on population group. in these paragraphs, you’re providing evidence that will justify your thesis, so each paragraph should work to make a point that strengthens/supports your BIG point (thesis). make sure you have some cold-hard facts or sources and interpretations of those facts and sources in each paragraph.
conclusion. restate the thesis. and LET PEOPLE KNOW WHY THE THING YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT IS RELEVANT TODAY. that’s the biggest part of your whole essay, trust me. history is essentially the study of what got us where we are. if you don’t talk about the present in your essay about the past, you’re doing it wrong. (NOTE: if you’re writing about something that you can’t make relevant to anything today, connect it to something major that happens after the times you talk about in your essay.)
This week I had a lovely conversation with an older dyke who reminded me how much a lot of people have always hated TERFs and SWERFs.
She was talking about the time in the 1970s and 1980s when she was a young radical dyke and how many of the awesome dykes in the radical scene were trans women. So I asked her if there was ever any problem with TERFs and SWERFs. She didn’t know those words so I described them. Her reply was (paraphrasing a longer conversation):
“Oh, you mean the political lesbians? That’s what we called them at the time, no one really considered them radical. They hated everyone. They hated bisexual women who dated men. They hated us leather dykes and kinky dykes because they thought we were ‘copying the patriarchy’, they hated trans women. None of us in the radical scene liked them. A lot of them later left and admitted that they were straight but were presured to identify as lesbians in that group because being a feminist to them meant cutting all ties with men. They were like a cult. They often lived together and if you didn’t walk the political line you were dead to them. Intense stuff.
”
And like, I know her memories don’t have global relevance and there have also been places where TERFs had a much more prominent impact on the local radical women’s community, but still, to hear how despised these TERFs have always been by these truly radical dykes cheered me up a lot.
You mean to tell me, that hating TERFs is literally lesbian culture?
Jup, and actually it has been since TERFs first got started.
TERFs began to colonize the RadFem identity as early as 1973 at Radical Feminism’s biggest event: the West Coast Lesbian Conference. The conference was specifically trans-inclusive, but TERFs disrupted the event, demanding that trans attendees be removed. TERF icon Robin Morgan incited violence by telling the TERFs to “deal with” a trans women who was known to be in attendance.
When a group of TERFs tried to physically assault the trans woman, Radical Feminists stepped in to protect the trans woman. Instead of beating the trans woman, the TERFs instead beat the Radical Feminists. After the TERF violence, the conference still voted to remain a trans inclusive space, but the trans woman left the conference
voluntarily to avoid further TERF violence and disruption to the conference.
Perhaps the most iconic Radical Feminist institution was the Lesbian Separatist music collective, Olivia Records. This collective is largely responsible for the rise of women’s music movement of the 1970s. The Collective was trans-inclusive and even helped trans women access trans medical care. TERF icon, Janice Raymond discovered this and began a campaign against Olivia and the trans member of the Collective. This resulted in numerous death threats to the Radical Feminist members of the collective and credible armed death threats against the trans woman. Moreover, TERFs threatened to financially destroy Olivia Records for being trans inclusive with a boycott.
Even though Olivia voted to remain a trans-inclusive space, the trans woman left the Collective to avoid further TERF violence and disruption to the Collective.
[…]
Most of the media coverage around the MWMF casts this as a RadFem/Lesbian/Woman vs Trans issue. It’s not. The MWMF has come to represent a more nuanced struggle between TERFs who target both Radical Feminists and trans people in the name of Radical Feminism. The evidence reveals that almost from the start, the chances were that “there is still a better than 999 in 1000 chance that most Festigoers would welcome trans women”.
Moreover, the evidence reveals that the most iconic Radical Feminist institutions were designed to be trans-inclusive, until TERF violence forced trans people to choose between their own safety, the safety of Radical Feminists, the institution itself and leaving the space. As has always been, TERF aggression comes wrapped in the guise of Radical Feminism, for the purpose of colonizing Radical Feminism.
did you know that in 1953 eisenhower issued an executive order which banned gay people from being employed in government
and it was specifically to root out lesbians who enjoyed the job security of government work
“To protect their careers, lesbian government workers moderated their behavior to avoid suspicion. They refused to socialize with other lesbians in public, attended social functions with gay men as their ‘dates,’ and carefully chose their wardrobes and makeup to project a feminine persona. Male employees who resented reporting to a female boss could trigger an investigation into her sexuality.” – Robert J Corber “Cold War Femme”
this era was called the lavender scare and was both a direct result of mccarthyism and the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness during ww2. over 10,000 lesbians and gay men lost their jobs and as a result the daughters of bilitis (the first ever lesbian activist group in the u.s.) formed in order to protect themselves and gay men
“When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.”
Do you ever think of how many little pockets of queer community there /must/ have been throughout history, even if we don’t know about it? Either because it was too dangerous to leave any written records, or they got lost, or it was just a bunch of queer people who found each other accidentally bc queer people seem to naturally gravitate towards each other. But we’re so good at carving out little pockets in which to live and be ourselves, even when the world has hated us and done its best to repress us and kill us and pretend we don’t exist. We’ve always been here and as much as I love hearing stories of queer people from history, I know that’s just a FRACTION of the queer people who existed together and supported each other throughout history.
x-men’s inherent flaw in its storytelling is that it always has mutants with useful powers telling mutants with actual curses to be proud of their powers
“you should embrace your gifts” says Orgasm Dude, the dude with the power to give anyone an orgasm
“yeah thanks” says Will Explode If He Gets A Boner Man
Isn’t this literally the Rogue subplot of X-Men 3?
“Is it true, there’s a cure?” says Everyone I Touch Dies
“There’s nothing to cure” says Weather Lady Who Was Worshiped As a God
It’s not a flaw, it’s a reflection of real life, the way everything is in x men
It’s like a white gay man who lives in a liberal city telling a black trans woman in a deep red state that she should be proud and out of who she is despite that her life expectancy and safety are not the same as his
It’s like someone with mild autism telling someone with severe schizophrenia that they are fine the way they are and don’t need treatment
All marginalized groups are not the same, and all people are not the same, and Storm telling Rogue she doesn’t need to be fixed is referencing people who can get by with their minority standing telling people who will literally not survive how to feel and think just because they are also a minority
Yes yes & more yes
I had a comment about the X-men but it’s not as importent as that comment
One of the questions to prepare to discuss for my first seminar of PQM is ‘What makes a minority?’
And completely accidentally, while I was re-familiarising myself with my dissertation, by reading my Lit Review, I came across a wonderful sentence written by G. Pandey:
violence ‘is implicit in the insistent construction of permanent majorities and minorities, based usually on supposedly immutable racial, religious or ethnic differences, and in the construction of particular, special kinds of minority.’
Reading that sentence was like a ‘lightbulb’ moment. I produced the following sentence myself:
A minority is a construction in opposition to, and created by, a perceived majority, which has real physical, emotional, mental, societal, systematic, systemic repercussions upon the person and/or people who have been told that they form that minority.
It’s obviously not a perfect sentence, there are things that could probably do with more explaining, and the way it takes away all agency from the perceived minority is problematic to say the least. It might work better if I edit it with a suffix ‘or who claim that minority status themselves in opposition to a constructed majority.’ But it is a working understanding, and I think taking this, or something similar into my first seminar will at least provide a talking point.
failed2be-chill 