Her-Story

Have you ever wondered how divergent history would be if it were written by women?  This is how I think our history might differ:

--Less talk of wars.

--Less gruesome details of war.

--More emphasis on relationships between people in history.

--More references to women and stories of women in history.

--Less talk of women in subservient terms and demeaning terms.

--More references to Heavenly Mother in scripture.

--History in general would hold fewer facts and more feeling.

--More attention to detail regarding just about any topic.

--More attention to the mistreatment of those in society who were considered "less than".

--More questions; Fewer answers.

--More talk of families and individuals, versus the collective whole.

--There would be less references to him, he, his, and MANkind and more references that used the terms she, her, and humankind.

--It would probably be a lot more interesting to women, but less interesting to men because women usually enjoy the details of people's private lives while men seem to be more interested in the blatant facts of an incident.  Sometimes while sitting in Sunday School, I feel like I could tear up from the painful boredom of whom begat whom, where certain people traveled, etc.  (My friend Annie's class is never boring, however)  My ears always perk up just a little bit more when we are talking about a specific person and getting to know them through scripture or when I can apply experiences from someone else's life to my own.  It's hard for me to find the same value in factual information.

Think how much the present might be altered had we more female voices recorded in history.  We would probably have many more female heroes to emulate today, and there most likely wouldn't have been as much discrimination against women in our more recent history because allowing women to speak way long ago would have shown that they were more honored than they actually were at the time, and that they had more control over their own lives.

Along with these wonderings, I often think how interesting it will be when I go to heaven and see all of the things in history re-played and am able to interpret the events and outcomes according to my own point of view.  And truth be told, I really wouldn't want history written completely by women because I think we really miss out when we hear it only from one perspective, as we do now.  Certainly there are benefits from a male perspective that perhaps women in general wouldn't have.  It does seem to be true that the person that tells history, holds a lot of control over which things are valued over other things, which things to include or leave out, and overall perspective of how the rest of civilization will be told of how history played out.  Women tend to value different things when telling a story so this leads me to believe that history would be very different from a female narrative.  Maybe this is why journaling is so important; it allows everyone to have their own perspective of events and how they occur.

Hmmm.  Just a thought.  Thanks for listening.