Response to Gender History

I have not really thought too much about gender history in my studies, so this was uncharted territory for me.  I actually found it quite interesting in that this field seems ultimately to follow the prevailing way of thought that exists within the historian community in addition to the greater society at large.  In the first article written by Joan Scott, she challenged the orthodox view of feminists and conservatives alike in relation to “women’s studies” by transforming the debate into a discussion of gender.  I really liked her charge to gender historians “to scrutinize our methods of analysis, clarify our operative assumptions, and explain how we think change occurs” (p. 1067).  This challenge is to me the quintessential statement on how we should study all fields of history, not just in relation to gender.  In my opinion, Scott’s Unanswered Questions article, while informative and critical, just did not meet the same muster as the Gender article.  Maybe it was a furtherance her part to challenge others to scrutinize, clarify, and explain, but it seemed to conform more to modern societal norms than the Gender article.  However, she was just asking probative questions, so maybe I didn’t delve into the article deep enough.   

Toby Ditz’s article about the fragile masculinity of 18^th Century Philadelphia merchants was a practical application of Scott’s challenge to gender historians.  He used primary sources from personal correspondence and newspapers to prove his theory.  However, I think that like many other instances of this type of historical writing, he put too much of a modern spin on his interpretation and therefore failed to convince me that these merchants were reaffirming their weak masculinity by making their “villains” feminine.  Like his reference to the to “merchants frequently castigat[ing] one another using insulting epithets of “rogue,” “knave,” “rascal,” and “vagabond”” (p. 59).  These words were common insults in the 18^th Century and have no real gender implication that I can discern.  Moreover, his main point about the feminization of nature to justify a shipwreck is my opinion is a bit of a stretch.  While I do not disagree that there was a feminization of adversaries existed, I think it was more a sign of the times than an effort to subjugate women and if it was then one only has to look at our own modern society to see that the tables have turned.  Indeed, now traditional thought is described disparagingly in terms of “sexist” and “macho” and those that espouse those thoughts are considered “Neanderthals,” “stupid,” and “haters.”  Hence the cycle continues.