An Introduction to Feminism

‘Herstory’ is a term associated with the ideas of (a) telling women's history, (b) women telling their own history and (c) feminist critique of the way the discipline of history is practised, with a particular critical focus on language-use (e.g. making a big deal out the fact that it's his-story not her-story).

I decided to include a brief comment on the idea of herstory here because it is a point on which feminism is particularly likely to attract ridicule – in fact, the term is probably used more often by those taking the piss out of feminists than by feminists themselves. It is ridiculed on the following main grounds:

As far as the second point goes, it is certainly true that ‘history’ doesn't come from ‘his’ plus ‘story’. The actual etymology, for what it's worth, is as follows. The two terms, ‘history’ and ‘story’, were used interchangeably in Middle English, and are cognate, i.e. they come from the same source: the Latin term historia (taken over from Greek). The Greek term comes from histor (‘judge’ or ‘wise man’), which gives rise to the verb historein (‘to enquire’), so that historia refers to the results of that process: an ‘enquiry’ or ‘account’. Very much nothing to do with the male possessive pronoun. But are we really supposed to believe that these feminists simply don't know that? That they haven't bothered to look it up? Instead of assuming so, we would do better to ask what feminists might be trying to do by introducing and using the term ‘herstory’, and thus how they might also respond to the first charge above. Here is what they might say:

Of course we don't want to suggest a mere change in the use of words, keeping our practices the same. What feminist would be satisfied with that? The term ‘herstory’ stands for a different way of practising history, after all. And of course we should focus on things that are politically significant, things that matter.