I don't want to rewrite my history books.

Dear gender,

            Elsa Barkley Brown thinks that your history needs to be rewritten.  She says that you cannot stand alone as a powerfully complete form of identification.  She says that you cannot be considered without also taking into consideration your colleagues, race, class, and sexuality.  What do you think?  Do you believe that you are a classification so strong on your own to tie together people coming from all parts of your colleagues’ spectrums?  Do you feel that you are compelling enough of a distinction to unite different people together who have led varied lives because many experiences may have been a result of your presence?  Is the life led by a female so distinct in opposition to the life of a male that camaraderie and political force can be harnessed without giving attention to the variation within a female experience?

            I think that in order for women to come together as a powerful group committed to bettering their lives and position in society they must do so as a cohesive group.  Surely there is difference amongst women, but that is true because there is difference between each individual.  Women of color and white women will likely have different stories to tell and lead different lives, but collectively women’s lives and the opportunities that shape them contrast sharply with the lives of men.  For this reason, we should put difference within you aside when you come up in important discussion.  Difference must be recognized, but why dwell on it? 

            Gender, don’t you feel underappreciated when the claim is made that you cannot survive as an independent?  The history of women should be told with you at center stage.  Your colleagues will play their part in the makeup of this history because they can’t seem to keep themselves out of the business of others such as yourself, but the notes they play in this history’s song should compliment the dominant melody that you mandate.  If the history of women was instead separated into the history of white women, black women, middle class women, working class women, and all the intersections between and beyond these things would get a bit noisy. 

            Yes the lives of working class black women had and continue to have impacts on the lives of middle class white women, but who really wants to hear about that?  I believe you, gender, are more simple to deal with and focus on.  We need to hear the stories of women as a collective group rising up in society and moving into the work force.  If we instead write about how white middle class women’s movement into the work force was only possible because of the work working class black women did to help them, some people might begin to feel a bit uncomfortable while reading this.  It is not my role to make people feel uncomfortable.  It is my job to tell a story as it happened, but only certain details are really important for me to carry out that job.  Everyone seems to be ok with me talking about you, but some of your colleagues cause some more problems that I don’t really care to deal with.  Young females learning about their history should be proud of the achievements they read about women before them accomplishing.  Why should they have to feel differently about these achievement based on their race or class?  Do those things really even matter nowadays? 

Regards,

An inquisitive historian who dislikes jazz