It may be really late at night, right, but I’ve been thinking again.
I’ve been reading articles on the idea of ‘masculinity’ in medieval Europe for my course, and in the chapter I was studying the author was describing dominant and subordinate sorts of masculinity (after pondering the idea that…
History is just a collective memory. People “make” history (i.e. are remembered), by making a change, be it winning a battle, overthrowing a leader, or even making a peaceful protest. The important thing is that they have taken a decision to make a change - they are being active, not passive.
And surely, a more dominant, or “masculine” person is more likely to make a change; the submissive, by definition, accept what exists already, and do not make a change.
I think the point here is not “history only remembers the masculine”, so much as “history only remembers the dominant, who we commonly associate with masculinity” :P
Perhaps an interesting question to come from this is “Are men seen to be dominant because they often take a more pivotal role in history, or do men often take a more pivotal role in history because they are more dominant?”
