Bitchy History - Episode 18： How Did America Get Here – The Romanticization of History

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Bitchy History, the irreverent history podcast that really doesn't understand why historians have to keep explaining that the past really wasn't a better time to live in for anyone but white straight men. 0.59

00:00:11.040 But here we are! 0.57

00:00:17.460 Before we get into this episode, I want to announce that I just released a book that I co-wrote.

00:00:21.840 It's available as an e-book on Amazon right now, and I'll post a link to it on bitchyhistory.com.

00:00:26.740 It's not history related, but it is based on textual analysis of popular culture, which is kind of a side hobby of mine if you haven't noticed.

00:00:34.620 The title is Pop Culture Tarot, Learning the Tarot Through Your Favorite Fandoms, and it will also be available as a print-on-demand version later this week.

00:00:42.080 So if tarot is something that you have even a passing interest in, or you just obsessively love to read textual analysis of fandoms like Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you should definitely check it out.

00:00:54.300 And now on to the history, or in this case, the analysis of how overly romanticized versions of history are a problem for society.

00:01:01.360 This entire episode actually began as a TikTok video where I was responding to a viral TikTok by another creator,

00:01:08.040 which I still to this day cannot decide if she was legitimately having a breakdown about how much she hated her job, 0.96

00:01:13.820 or if she was just trying to go viral by saying some truly out-of-pocket shit about feminism. 0.99

00:01:18.140 but that's neither here nor there really 0.97

00:01:20.160 because her complaint is one that mirrors

00:01:22.180 a lot of actual rhetoric that comes out

00:01:24.080 of the anti-feminist movement today

00:01:25.640 the idea that feminism has been harmful for women 0.90

00:01:28.360 that women were better off

00:01:30.020 before the women's live movement 1.00

00:01:31.480 whoever fought 0.93

00:01:36.020 for women to get jobs 0.94

00:01:39.340 why? 1.00

00:01:46.340 why did we do that?

00:01:48.140 I am so tired.

00:01:52.880 I want to just put my feet up.

00:01:55.840 Like, I am...

00:01:57.240 Oh my god.

00:01:58.820 I pointed out in my response to this TikTok,

00:02:01.020 which is actually pinned at the top of my TikTok account if you'd like to watch it,

00:02:04.600 that this is a wildly skewed perspective on what it was like for women

00:02:08.060 before we fought for women to get jobs. 1.00

00:02:10.760 It's true. 1.00

00:02:11.460 Living in the modern world is exhausting. 1.00

00:02:13.280 The economy is dog shit. 1.00

00:02:14.620 The housing and rental market is dog shit wrapped in cat shit. 1.00

00:02:17.300 and I work three jobs, none of which include health insurance. 1.00

00:02:21.000 This shit sucks. 0.99

00:02:22.700 But that doesn't mean it would suck less if I didn't have my autonomy as a woman, 1.00

00:02:26.180 and it definitely doesn't mean that life for women before we got the right to have bank accounts and credit cards

00:02:31.080 and not be fired just because we got pregnant was some pie-in-the-sky fantasy

00:02:35.200 where we sat back with our feet up and ate bonbons all day.

00:02:38.660 To start with, let's take a look at what life was like for women in the Western world during the Middle Ages.

00:02:44.460 Unless you were one of the very privileged few women who came from extreme wealth and

00:02:48.080 had servants to see to their every need, you were working to support yourself and your

00:02:52.000 family throughout history. 1.00

00:02:53.620 Women have always been intrinsically important to the financial stability of their homes.

00:02:58.180 Women made up a significant portion of the labor force in the Middle Ages, even if their 0.99

00:03:01.940 work was mostly confined to the household because of the public sphere, private sphere 0.97

00:03:06.060 separation that was prevalent during this time.

00:03:08.820 However, men's work and women's work often did have a lot of crossover.

00:03:12.460 For instance, farm labor would have fallen under domestic labor just as much as it did men's work. 0.99

00:03:18.040 Women participated in harvesting and herding animals, 0.99

00:03:20.840 and household labor, the main area of women's work, was grueling to say the least. 0.99

00:03:25.560 It encompassed everything from child rearing to gardening, processing and preserving food, 1.00

00:03:30.160 baking and cooking, spinning, weaving, and clothing manufacturing,

00:03:33.920 foraging, and tending all of the smaller animals like chickens, pigs, and goats.

00:03:38.220 Then, as populations grew and land grew more difficult to get,

00:03:41.320 it became more difficult for a family to be supported on farming alone, and a commercialized 1.00

00:03:45.940 economy began to grow up which would allow women's work outside the home to grow. In a commercialized 1.00

00:03:51.160 economy, women made butter, cheese, soap, and cloth that was sold at local markets. Women, both married 1.00

00:03:56.560 and unmarried, also began to be hired in the service economy far more often. Women worked for 0.99

00:04:01.700 wealthy families as wet nurses, nannies, cleaners, cooks, and in many other domestic roles. On top of 1.00

00:04:07.740 the very real financial responsibilities of women during this period, the duties of wife and mother 0.95

00:04:12.200 took their toll as well. Women would have an average of six to seven pregnancies during their 0.94

00:04:16.620 lives, a condition that isn't without extreme dangers today with modern medicine. But even 0.97

00:04:21.400 worse, the infant mortality rate was abysmally high. 25% of those babies would die before the

00:04:26.840 age of one, another 12.5% of children died before the age of four, a mental and emotional toll that

00:04:32.380 would no doubt have weighed on mothers at the time. And then on top of all of that, women lived in a 0.69

00:04:37.420 patriarchal society that undervalued them and saw them as second-class citizens. I've already talked

00:04:42.420 about the practice of coverture on this show all the way back in episode six, so I won't belabor

00:04:46.780 that point here. You can go back and listen to that episode if you haven't yet. Even upper-class

00:04:51.860 women, with some exceptions, were little more than political pawns to be traded in marriage for 1.00

00:04:56.520 treaties and political power. One of the few places women could go for education and some form of 1.00

00:05:01.680 freedom from male influence was the convent, but even then they were entering into a religious

00:05:06.180 world that viewed women in a fairly negative light. The political and religious systems of

00:05:10.860 patriarchal Europe viewed women as inferior to men in both mind and body. Religion viewed women 0.94

00:05:16.520 as the origin of original sin since it was Eve who first was tempted and took the apple. Society 0.52

00:05:21.960 viewed women as intemperate, gossipers who created social discord and lacked self-control. 1.00

00:05:27.240 Even medicine tended to still view women through the lens of concepts like hysteria and the

00:05:31.860 wandering room, believing that women were irrational and not trustworthy to know their

00:05:36.060 own mind as a result. So all of this means that women were just as responsible for their homes 0.96

00:05:41.080 and the financial stability of their families. They simply did it in a period in which they 0.90

00:05:45.240 were legally regarded as second-class citizens with overall little control over their finances

00:05:49.860 or their own bodies. There are of course notable exceptions to this based on period and geography

00:05:55.540 and circumstances of the individual cultures and positions of women, but overall women were not in 0.51

00:06:00.620 a position of power, but they were just as economically put upon as women today. But of

00:06:05.480 course the anti-feminist women like Phyllis Schlafly, who spout this kind of women were happier before

00:06:10.360 feminism rhetoric, aren't interested in returning to the Middle Ages, because who would actually 0.60

00:06:14.980 want to return to life when the Black Death was a threat and there was no indoor plumbing? 1.00

00:06:19.280 What these anti-feminists are jonesing for is the American dream circa 1950, right before the major 1.00

00:06:25.340 push for women's lib began in the 1960s, the so-called Golden Age of America. And don't take 1.00

00:06:31.480 my word for it. Let's look at some of their own words on the subject. In Who Killed the American

00:06:35.960 Family, Phyllis Schlafly makes it extremely clear what she thinks the heyday of the American family

00:06:40.600 was. This book explains the combination of forces that abolished the American family as we know it

00:06:46.080 in the 1950s. The 1950s was the high water mark for the American nuclear family. Social policies

00:06:52.340 favored it, evidence supported it, and no one apologized for it. And Candace Cameron Burr in

00:06:58.300 her book, The Good Wife's Guide, is damn near orgasmic in her fetishizing of the 1950s. Here's 0.87

00:07:03.920 a couple of quotes. I love all things vintage, clothing, ornate furniture, dishes, and strong

00:07:08.940 family values. I cherish the days when giving one's word meant something to her in this life,

00:07:13.800 when the sanctity of marriage was reserved for a man and his wife, when women were women and men

00:07:18.800 were just men, when the only choice society offered was life. And, after taking one look at

00:07:24.920 the little cafe, I knew that I had to call my husband in from the car. The red vinyl booths,

00:07:29.720 mini jukeboxes at every table on the checkerboard floor were a welcomed blast to the past,

00:07:34.460 but what really caught my eye was the way the vinyl barstools lined up in perfect order.

00:07:39.420 Excuse me, I need to go and vomit after reading that. And Suzanne Vinker, Phyllis Schlafly's niece,

00:07:44.700 by the way in her book the alpha female's guide to men in marriage writes now for the million

00:07:50.400 dollar question am i suggesting we go back to the 1950s when most women were supported financially

00:07:55.420 by their husbands the short answer is no we could never go back even if we wanted to but don't be

00:08:00.820 quick to assume women today have it so much better than women did back in the day remember women 0.87

00:08:05.800 robbed peter to pay paul they may be financially independent but they're also exhausted and angry

00:08:11.100 and if they have children, they're saddled with guilt and stress,

00:08:14.580 two words women back in the day never used to describe their lives.

00:08:18.460 Yeah, sure, Suzanne. 1.00

00:08:20.240 And it's not just the anti-feminist women with this obsession.

00:08:23.100 Writers in the manosphere talk wistfully of the old days of the 1950s as well.

00:08:28.480 Ian Ironwood, in his nauseating book titled The Manosphere, A New Hope for Masculinity,

00:08:33.860 says,

00:08:34.480 The Christian corner of the manosphere isn't about abortion, it's not even about anti-feminism,

00:08:39.020 although a lot of that comes up.

00:08:40.380 It's about men trying to be men in the modern world and still stay true to their religious beliefs as they see them.

00:08:46.480 And these are, by self-definition, family men.

00:08:49.320 They take the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply literally.

00:08:52.940 They want a wife and kids in the American dream, preferably the 1950s version.

00:08:57.420 And they've been attacked for pursuing that dream for decades. 1.00

00:09:00.520 Feminists call it oppressive to women.

00:09:02.640 But for the conservative Christians in the manosphere, the Bible is standard by which everything is measured.

00:09:07.660 Marriage, not the least.

00:09:09.260 He also writes that there's a major difference between

00:09:11.500 women doing their marital duty in the 1950s compared to today,

00:09:15.540 the difference being that men apparently feel emasculated

00:09:18.220 by the emphasis on the female orgasm

00:09:20.280 and women's expectations about sex are too high,

00:09:22.840 which leads to marital conflict. 1.00

00:09:24.800 Ooh, self-burn. Those are rare.

00:09:27.500 And in a 2011 video for TV Ontario's The Agenda,

00:09:30.700 titled Goodbye to Good Men, Jordan Peterson had this to say.

00:09:34.120 Remember those 50s hat-sporting fathers who stayed married,

00:09:37.360 supported their families, and repressed women? Well, they're headed for extinction. 0.96

00:09:42.740 But here's the thing. These right-wing anti-feminist advocates are selling a nostalgic 1.00

00:09:47.040 bill of goods to a public who would only fall for it if their only real historical knowledge 1.00

00:09:51.500 of the 1950s was reruns of The Donna Reed Show and Leave it to Beaver. The real story of women's 0.97

00:09:56.780 lives in the 1950s is a story of being shoved forcefully back into a box by society. Women 0.64

00:10:02.320 had found they liked the money, freedom, and fulfillment of the professional sector that 1.00

00:10:06.100 they had gained during the Second World War. It would take some very targeted messaging to turn

00:10:10.840 these workers back into happy homemakers. And of course, sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg and

00:10:16.040 psychiatrist Marianna Farnham took to that challenge with their 1947 book, Modern Women,

00:10:21.260 The Lost Sex, which would become a nationwide bestseller. In the book, they argued that modern 0.95

00:10:25.660 women had become psychologically disordered and therefore less interested in having and raising 0.95

00:10:30.560 children. They categorized feminism as a deep illness, saying that the dominant direction of 1.00

00:10:36.520 feminine training and development today discourages just those traits necessary to

00:10:40.780 the attainment of sexual pleasure, receptivity and passiveness, the willingness to accept 0.98

00:10:45.560 dependence without fear of resentment, with a deep inwardness and readiness to accept the final goal

00:10:50.460 of sexual life, impregnation. It was the essential error of feminists that they attempted to put 1.00

00:10:56.140 women on the essentially male road to exploit off the female road to nurture. They also said that a 1.00

00:11:02.420 healthy woman has no fantasy in her mind about being an independent woman, a contradiction in

00:11:07.740 terms. She knows she is dependent on the phallus for sexual enjoyment, which as she is genitalized 1.00

00:11:13.720 she is in need of. Having children is to her the most natural thing possible and it would never 0.99

00:11:18.640 occur to her to have any doubts about it. Excuse me again while I go vomit. And not long after the

00:11:25.100 publication of Lundberg and Farnham's book, Dr. Benjamin Spock, no relation to the other Spock,

00:11:30.060 we like the other Spock, he reiterated these ideas about the role that women were meant for

00:11:35.300 in his extremely popular baby and child care book. Caring for children was not simply a task

00:11:40.520 that needed to be performed, it was meant to be the central focus of women's lives. 1.00

00:11:45.560 There was enormous social pressure for women to be wives and mothers. Magazines glorified the 1.00

00:11:50.320 domestic sphere above all other pursuits for women, publishing articles with headlines like 1.00

00:11:54.960 have babies while you're young, are you training your daughter to be a wife, and politics is a 1.00

00:12:01.000 man's world. But even when you went along with that social pressure, life didn't become some

00:12:05.860 stay-at-home mom dream life. Married women made up 47% of working women during the 1950s as well. 0.60

00:12:12.820 They just worked in suitably pink-collar jobs, like selling Tupperware and waitressing. You know, 0.99

00:12:18.180 jobs with little chance for career advancement and not enough income to support yourself, 0.70

00:12:22.000 let alone your children, if your husband decided to trade you in for a younger model.

00:12:26.600 Oh, and if you did happen to want to leave your husband for some reason,

00:12:29.720 as I mentioned back in episode 6, it wasn't an easy task to accomplish,

00:12:34.020 and once you were out, what then? 1.00

00:12:36.360 Women had little economic agency. 1.00

00:12:38.400 They didn't even have equal access to credit cards or mortgages until the 1970s. 1.00

00:12:43.360 In a 2011 interview with NPR, Phyllis Schlafly said that when she went to law school,

00:12:47.820 that the only person's permission I had to get was my husband's,

00:12:51.180 Which is honestly quite hilarious, since this was only a little over a century since the U.S. Supreme Court had decided in Bradwell v. Illinois that a woman could be denied a license to practice law.

00:13:02.200 The only reason that the only person's permission she had to get was her husband's was because of decades of effort by feminists to ensure the equal rights of women.

00:13:10.800 But of course, I'm sure Schlafly was right when she said that she didn't owe the feminist movement anything.

00:13:16.540 Hear that? That's the sound of Schlafly not just pulling ladders up behind her, but actively setting 1.00

00:13:21.780 them on fire. But I could do an entire episode that was nothing but one insult after another 0.98

00:13:26.980 in reference to Phyllis Schlafly, so let's move on before I get sidetracked. 0.63

00:13:31.440 Most hilariously, Schlafly writes this incredibly historically illiterate line at one point in

00:13:36.540 Who Killed the American Family?

00:13:38.500 Women's magazines of the 1950s and 1960s were helpful and hopeful. Women didn't need Zoloft 0.99

00:13:44.420 or prozac today women's worry list of fears and woes includes everything from the weight of the 0.99

00:13:49.700 world's problems to the weight of extra fat on themselves this is a truly asinine statement when 0.78

00:13:55.100 we look at what life was truly like in the 1950s for women i mean look the rolling stones didn't 0.58

00:14:00.820 give us a song like mother's little helper because women weren't popping pills left and right to get

00:14:05.500 through the day. The only reason women weren't taking Zoloft and Prozac was because those 1.00

00:14:35.360 two exact drugs hadn't been invented yet, but they were sure as hell popping more than a few

00:14:40.140 pills with other names. The two classes of drugs that became the most popular were barbiturates

00:14:45.040 and amphetamines. Barbiturates are a group of drugs that have calming effects on the body.

00:14:49.720 They can produce effects similar to those of alcohol, ranging from mild relaxation to an

00:14:54.080 inability to feel pain or a loss of consciousness. Drugs like Butasol were advertised as the

00:14:59.340 daytime sedative for everyday situational stress, or Cerax, which had a tagline that said,

00:15:05.680 you can't set her free, but you can help her feel less anxious, with a photo of a woman trapped

00:15:10.840 behind a line of cleaning tools that were set up to look like a jail cell. Nice. Medical columnists 0.90

00:15:17.040 in magazines like Cosmopolitan and Ladies Home Journal told women that sedative drugs like

00:15:21.580 Milltown and Valium were the cure for everything that ailed them. Stressed, anxious, frigid in the

00:15:27.780 bedroom, this class of tranquilizers could fix any problem. By 1960, women were twice as likely 0.99

00:15:34.400 as men to be taking tranquilizers. Advertisements, popular culture, and physicians had begun to push

00:15:40.380 women toward the calming effects of Miltown, especially when it related to the needs of

00:15:45.840 their husbands. In one 1956 article in Cosmopolitan, one doctor reported that after taking the drug,

00:15:52.580 frigid women who abhorred marital relations reported that they responded more readily to

00:15:57.360 their husband's advances. Because we all know that the answer when your wife doesn't want to 0.97

00:16:01.960 have sex with you is to encourage her to medicate herself into insensibility so she won't mind

00:16:06.740 performing her marital duties so much. I guess that's what Ironwood was talking about in his 0.95

00:16:11.760 book about the emphasis on women's orgasms being too much for men to deal with these days compared

00:16:16.280 to the 1950s. I guess it is a lot less stressful to have sex with a woman too strung out on 0.98

00:16:21.300 sedatives to care what's going on. Side note, can someone remind me to call in a tip to some 0.99

00:16:26.680 law enforcement agency somewhere to have someone check to make sure that that author doesn't have 0.95

00:16:32.000 any women in his basement against their will. He's just giving off some really bad vibes.

00:16:37.640 And to return to Schlafly's asinine commentary, she mentioned that women today are stressed about

00:16:42.520 extra fat on themselves, as if women's body image wasn't an issue in the 1950s. Amphetamines, 0.99

00:16:48.820 also known as uppers or stimulants, were used by women to help lose weight, battle depression,

00:16:53.400 and have enough energy to get through the day.

00:16:55.980 Drugs like methadrine were advertised to give

00:16:58.240 the depressed patient a genuinely brighter outlook

00:17:01.740 and also as a treatment for obesity

00:17:03.760 that would keep the reducer happy

00:17:05.900 and dispel abnormal craving for food

00:17:08.520 because we all know craving food is abnormal.

00:17:12.180 But if life for women in the 1950s

00:17:14.100 was actually kind of a mess

00:17:15.560 and the stability and happiness of the nuclear family 0.86

00:17:18.020 was a complete lie,

00:17:19.540 why is this lie so ingrained in our minds?

00:17:22.240 Where do we learn to romanticize and fetishize this period the way that we do?

00:17:27.220 Well, televised propaganda helped that along a lot.

00:17:30.760 By 1957, there were 40 million television sets in the United States.

00:17:35.140 Nine out of ten American families owned at least one set by the end of the decade.

00:17:39.340 By the mid-1950s, situational comedies and family dramas presented a very standard traditional family structure,

00:17:46.120 a nuclear family with two biological parents and their children.

00:17:49.700 Much of the programming of the 1950s and early 1960s created a common image of American life,

00:17:55.040 which acted as propaganda to further enforce the social norms of the 1950s.

00:17:59.780 This is a complex issue, and trust me, we will end up discussing it in excruciating detail

00:18:04.560 when we eventually get to the Cold War in American History 101.

00:18:08.300 Television showed families in which, as the title of one of the popular shows put it,

00:18:13.000 Father Knows Best, and in which most women were mothers and housewives

00:18:16.980 striving to serve their children and please their husbands. 0.93

00:18:20.160 And it wasn't just television.

00:18:21.800 Everything from advertisements to home economics textbooks

00:18:24.700 presented a view of social norms that said, 1.00

00:18:27.140 these traditional gender roles are what make everyone happy.

00:18:31.020 They pushed the 1950s image of the ideal woman, 0.86

00:18:33.940 a stereotype that conjures the mythic images of June Cleaver and Donna Reed,

00:18:38.500 the quintessential white middle-class housewife 0.94

00:18:40.820 who stays at home to rear the children, 1.00

00:18:43.320 clean the house, bake the cookies, 0.95

00:18:44.940 and always did it with a smile on her face and a string of pearls around her neck.

00:18:49.780 Our popular knowledge of this era is based on the very propaganda

00:18:53.160 that was being pushed as propaganda at the time. 0.99

00:18:57.020 Anti-feminists are actively selling us a bill of goods 1.00

00:18:59.920 based on a version of the 1950s that never existed, 1.00

00:19:03.480 trying to prove that the world we live in is only bad

00:19:06.080 because women's liberation made it that way 1.00

00:19:08.280 and everything would be just so much better 0.95

00:19:10.520 if we gave up this silly game of demanding equality.

00:19:14.200 Later, in that same NPR interview I discussed earlier, Schlafly had this to say.

00:19:18.880 Do you feel that feminism has made any contribution to American life? 0.52

00:19:23.640 No, I think it's made women unhappy. 0.57

00:19:26.200 It's made them believe that we live in a discriminatory and unjust society 1.00

00:19:31.760 and that they should look to government to solve their problems.

00:19:35.400 What is your advice to the young women in your family, and the men for that matter?

00:19:40.220 Well, I think, as we say in the book, that it's unfortunate that colleges and women's studies courses guide women to a career path that has no space for men, marriage or children.

00:19:53.500 And I think you should plot a life that will give you the joy of marriage and children.

00:19:58.240 And a few years later in Who Killed the American Family, she writes that women seem to be happiest when they have lasting marriages to men they can look up to.

00:20:06.960 Feminism has taught them that they will have more choices in life if patriarchal marriage 0.76

00:20:10.660 is destroyed, but someday they will realize that feminism has made them unhappy. 0.99

00:20:15.820 Except we know that's a load of bullshit, like so much of everything Schlafly has ever 1.00

00:20:20.840 had to say. 0.99

00:20:21.980 And before we get into why it's a load of bullshit, can we just take a moment to think 0.97

00:20:25.840 about how very creepy that line about marriages to men they can look up to is? 0.99

00:20:31.120 I'm sorry, are women supposed to be equal partners or wide-eyed innocents looking for 0.99

00:20:35.280 mentors? 0.99

00:20:36.600 Never mind, I can guess which one Schlafly thought.

00:20:39.280 I'd go vomit again, but three times would be a bit much. 1.00

00:20:42.260 So back to why her claims about marriage making women happy and feminism making us unhappy are utter bull. 0.99

00:20:51.620 A number of studies have reported that single women tend to be healthier and less depressed, 0.89

00:20:56.180 and live longer than married women.

00:20:58.660 Single women generally experience fewer stresses and compromises than married women,

00:21:03.060 and they feel more empowered.

00:21:04.780 In one study in the UK, 61% of single women said that they were happy with their relationship status compared to 49% of single men.

00:21:12.660 A further, 75% of single women were not looking for a partner compared to 65% of single men.

00:21:18.660 According to Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioral science at the London School of Economics,

00:21:22.840 men derive benefits from marriage. The same cannot generally be said for women.

00:21:28.020 Dolan concluded that the healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who have never married or had children.

00:21:34.220 It turns out women do just fine on their own. We only needed men when society created a structure 0.80

00:21:40.960 that made us need them. I've even figured out how to open my own pickle jars and kill the occasional 0.69

00:21:46.300 six or eight-legged creature that sneaks into my home. The nostalgic rose-colored lenses that we

00:21:51.700 often view human history through can be fun, it can be entertaining, but they are more often

00:21:56.580 dangerous. They invite us to believe in a world that never existed and entice us into thinking

00:22:01.620 that we can make things great again, if we just make things like they were in the good old days.

00:22:07.280 You know, it's funny. When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses,

00:22:11.520 all the red flags just look like flags. Everyone who overly romanticizes these eras seems to have

00:22:18.660 one major thing in common. Well, two, since most of these people are paler than a tub of mayonnaise,

00:22:24.200 which definitely has something to do with their view of the past. But the major thing all of

00:22:28.480 their fantasies about what life was like in the past have in common is that they are all based on

00:22:33.180 a very idealized concept of what the past was like and the idea that if life was like that once more

00:22:39.260 they would be one of the privileged few rather than living the life of serfs servants and peasants

00:22:44.220 or some resentful housewife popping pills to get through the day because they hate the life society

00:22:49.060 has forced them to accept and if things are going to suck either way well i don't know about the

00:22:54.080 rest of you, but I'd rather be exhausted and equal than exhausted and subservient. 0.97

00:22:59.320 Thanks for tuning in to listen to me bitch about history. Big emphasis on the bitch part in this 0.99

00:23:03.540 episode, to be honest. I fully admit that the narrative of this one got away from me a little 0.91

00:23:07.700 bit at times, but I hope you learned something regardless. Next time, we'll be back to the

00:23:11.960 American History 101 part of the series, and we'll start getting into the aftermath of the

00:23:15.940 French and Indian War and what that means for the colonies. In the meantime, don't buy any bridges,

00:23:20.960 no matter how good the price is, don't take any wooden nickels. And if the history someone tries

00:23:25.740 to sell you sounds like something that would come out of Phyllis Schlafly or Ron DeSantis' mouth,

00:23:30.440 for God's sake, ask a historian before you believe any of it. And I'll see you back here next Monday.

Bitchy History - August 07, 2023

Episode 18： How Did America Get Here – The Romanticization of History

Episode Stats

Transcript