social history – Going Medieval

I assure you, medieval people bathed.

I can’t believe I have to write this down right now, but my dear friends, medieval people bathed regularly.

Yes. I assure you. I am very serious. It is true.

In fact, medieval people loved a bath and can in many ways be considered a bathing culture, much in the way that say, Japan is now. Medieval people also very much valued being clean generally in an almost religious way.

This is not to say that getting clean was as easy for medieval people as it is for us now. But medieval people were very clever and had ways of getting around that.

On sexualising the “other”

Friends, we are as ever living in a society that spends a lot of time and energy attempting to uphold what it sees as “normal”. Normality, after all, doesn’t police itself, or even hold up as a concept without strenuous effort from the people invested in it. What we’re thinking about today is that in our society over time if something isn’t “normal” it is probably also sexual. Because sexual stuff is bad and therefore Not Normal and what we in the overthinking stuff game tend to refer to as “other”.

The other can vary from society and society and place to place, but here in Europe and in the areas that Europeans subjugated there is an underlying default, and that is a white straight dude. This was certainly true in medieval Europe, where, as you may have noticed men bossed everyone the fuck around and decided that they were defo the norm.

On Sex, Logic, and Being the Subject

This week in the godforsaken wasteland that is Twitter where I hang out for some reason (?), the public has been treated to the absolute gift that is a bunch of dudes insisting that women, in their experience do not like sex. No, they do not see this as linked to their person, and it is as fucking hilarious as you are imagining. WITNESS:

Islam was the party religion, or, why it is lazy and essentialist to say that Islam oppresses women

Kittens, it saddens me to update this blog with an opener about how semi-sentient Etonian wank sock Boris Jonhson has, just now graced us with the very excellent racist comparison of women wearing the niqab to “letter boxes“, in this, the year of our lord 2018. I initially wrote this piece back in 2016 when the French were being super uncool about letting ladies wear whatever the fuck they want to the beach. Because we live in a neo-Nazi studded hellscape, where everyone refuses to learn ever, you also might be having your various social media feeds blow up with a bunch of basic-ass Beckies trying to justify this. “But Islam is just SO oppressive of women!”, they type. Because in the West women are totally equal now, not paid less than their male counter parts, told what they need to wear, and blamed for their own sexual assault. It’s totally fine here!

Yes, it is true that these fools are available as a part of Sainsbury’s reasonably priced own-brand range, cuz they basic as hell. But would you like to explain to them the historical facts for why that is? Sure you would! Let me help.