the wind in my hair and a fire within

The Annunciation by Russian artist Mikhail Nesterov

Had I expected this to get more than two notes, I would have linked a pdf of How To Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ instead of working under the assumption you all would know what I’m referencing, so here’s the text, belatedly.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised at anything on Reddit, but I’m sort of amazed the cut-off date is nineteen-freakin’-fifty. Apparently not only do Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, etc. not exist in their world, neither do L. M. Montgomery, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, the Baroness Orczy, Marjorie Allingham, Margaret Mitchell, oh, huh, not even Ayn Rand.

I mean it’s not even some bombastic claim like how supposedly male writers can’t make anything worthwhile, it’s just that female authors existed prior to 1950 and historically played a crucial role in novel-writing, which they did. Why is that such a bad thing for people to admit? Why is it so controversial?

In my experience, it depends on which breed of dumb we’re talking about. Either it’s controversial because you’re ‘trying to shoehorn in diversity,‘ or because you’re ‘trying to erase women’s oppression.‘

Good point. Though given that this was Reddit, I suspect it was the former.

Mary Shelley didn’t invent an entire genre to be discredited like this.

*old man voice* back in my day tik tok was a ke$ha song