Not so long ago I watched a news piece on a Swedish channel- probably TV4. It was lamenting that the history books are biased towards men, which is to say that not many female figures feature prominently in history books. The claim was that even in more recent times, men get more mention in the media and history books, and sports in particular were mentioned as one arena in which men get more attention even though there are many prominent sportswomen.
The implication seemed to be that the history books have to be re-written in order to include more women. This would, naturally, come at the expense of many of the towering male figures that we have had. It is the leftist's creed all over again: If the truth doesn't fit, we must re-write!
As I have previously mentioned, feminism is the lens through which much of Swedish debate takes place. That men feature more prominently in history books because the major events of human history have been shaped by men seemed not to interest the makers of that piece, for the opinion did not even make a mention. That we would have to dislodge real historical figures to invent false ones does not seem to bother these people, nor is the fact that history ought to be the study of what has been, not what we would like to have been.
I would like to make it clear that I do not for one moment think that history books are skewed towards men and against women. That history books are skewed we know very well, but claiming that there is a bias against women is as absurd as claiming that they are biased towards humans and against animals; or less hyperbolically, at least as absurd as claiming that there is a bias in favour of adults over childen. History books can be skewed in favour of or against people for various reasons, and normally the victors get to write history books: "History is written by those who have hanged heroes", the narrator of "Braveheart" says very presciently.
However, be that as it may, the main protagonists of the main events of human history - until at least very recently - have almost invariably been men. History has been written by warriors and conquerors, by warrior kings and maybe even warrior poets, but the warrior has been at the forefront and men will almost always make better warriors - save for one exception of which I know, to which I shall return presently.
So the theory that women have been edited out of history books is patently absurd.
Nonetheless, it did get me thinking of one thing, and that is that there is a community, and a rather large one at that, in which men and women are held in equally high esteem, and have been held so for as long as one cares to remember. The list of these protagonists is not dominated either by men or by women, and women have been esteemed members throughout all the ages. This community is, of course, the Communion of Saints.
In this communion we also find our warrior poets (if there is such a thing), our warrior kings and even our warrior priests. We even have a warrior virgin - the most esteemed Jean d'Arc. If one ever wanted to highlight an all-conquering woman then surely Jean d'Arc would tower above all of them. Tales of her achievements absolutely beggar belief: She was as good as any warrior, and better than most yet one finds very little mention of her. That must have more to do with the fact that in the end she was another loyal daughter of the Church, a young maid who wanted nothing more than a quiet life in the quiet village, a woman who despite that put her duty towards God before everything else. That she was French in a mostly Anglo-Saxon narrative doesn't help; for sure there would be much more of her if she had been an English-speaking woman.
She will not do, however, and neither will all the other women we proudly revere as our sisters and mothers in the faith, our torchbearers on Earth and our intercessors in Heaven, because you see, if feminism is the lens through which all political discourse takes place in Sweden, anti-Christianity - and especially anti-Catholicism - is the creed which holds all the contradictions of Swedish political discourse together. When feminism runs out of fashion - and it probably will - then (if the very same people who shape public opinion get to decide), the fashion will just shift onto something else equally un-Christian. I am tempted to write "more un-Christian" but it is not apparent to me whether there exists such a thing.
So all our female saints, from the young to the elderly, will be edited out of history books, and proudly so by these people, because writing about them does not fit into the anti-Christian creed of the modern political establishment and its minions,. What they want is one which lures gullible women into thinking that women have always been oppressed by the patriarchal and paternalistic Church and that they have to buy into every debasing fashion that is drudged along nowadays to avoid getting back to 'the dark old ways'.
That is the real tragedy of history books.
