View source for Herstory

{{Short description|Term for women emphasized history}}
{{Italic title}}
{{distinguish|Her Story (disambiguation)}}
{{for|the South Korean film|Herstory (film)}}
{{Feminism sidebar}}
'''''Herstory''''' is a term for history written from a [[Feminism|feminist]] perspective and emphasizing the role of women, or told from a woman's [[Point of view (philosophy)|point of view]]. It originated as an alteration of the word "[[history]]", as part of a feminist critique of conventional [[historiography]], which in their opinion is traditionally written as "his story", i.e., from the male point of view. The term is a [[neologism]] and a deliberate [[Word play|play on words]]; the word "history"&mdash;via [[Latin]] ''historia'' from the [[Ancient Greek]] word ἱστορία, a noun meaning 'knowledge obtained by inquiry'<ref>[https://www.etymonline.com/word/history Etymology of the word "history"]</ref>&mdash;is etymologically unrelated to the [[possessive]] [[Personal pronoun|pronoun]] ''[[He (pronoun)|his]]''.<ref name=mills>Jane Mills, "Womanwords: a dictionary of words about women", 1992, {{ISBN|0-02-921495-5}}, [https://archive.org/details/womanwordsdictio00mill <!-- quote="early 1970s". --> p. 118.]</ref>

[[File:Herstory (32328522111).jpg|thumb|[[Lesbian Herstory Archives]] banner]]

==Usage==

Literature scholar Fritz Fleischmann marks "the first documented instance of the word-play with His-Story/Her-Story" as the title page of the 1817 novel ''Keep Cool'' by early feminist [[John Neal]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Fleischmann | first = Fritz | title = A Right View of the Subject: Feminism in the Works of Charles Brockden Brown and John Neal | publisher = Verlag Palm & Enke Erlangen | location = Erlangen, Germany | year = 1983 | isbn = 978-3-7896-0147-7 | page = 152}}</ref> The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' credits Dr. F.H.K. Green with first using the term "herstory" in print.<ref name="oed">{{cite dictionary |title=herstory, n. |dictionary=Oxford English Dictionary Online |url=https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/243412 |access-date=2017-03-08 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

During the 1970s and 1980s, [[second-wave feminism|second-wave feminists]] saw the study of history as a male-dominated intellectual enterprise and presented "herstory" as a means of compensation.<ref name="looser">[[Devoney Looser]], ''British Women Writers and the Writing of History'' ([[Johns Hopkins University Press]]: 2000).  {{ISBN|0-8018-6448-8}}.</ref>  The term, intended to be both serious and comic,<ref>Angus Calder and [[Lizbeth Goodman]], "Gender and Poetry", in ''Literature and Gender,'' ed. by Lizbeth Goodman (Routledge: 1996).  {{ISBN|0-415-13573-7}}.</ref> became a rallying cry used on T-shirts and buttons as well as in [[academia]].<ref name=Sommers>{{cite book |title=Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women |last=Hoff Sommers |first=Christina |year=1995 |publisher=[[Touchstone Books]] |location=[[United Kingdom]] |isbn=0-684-80156-6 |chapter=3 (Transforming the Academy) |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/whostolefeminism00chri }}</ref>

In 2017, Hridith Sudev, an inventor, environmentalist and social activist associated with various youth movements, launched 'The Herstory Movement,' an online platform to "celebrate lesser known great persons; female, queer or otherwise marginalized, who helped shape the modern World History."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Sudev|first1=Hridith|title=The Herstory Movement|url=https://herstorymovt.wordpress.com/|website=The Herstory Movement|publisher=Hridith Sudev|access-date=19 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170819150939/https://herstorymovt.wordpress.com/|archive-date=19 August 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref> It is intended as an academic platform to feature stories of female historic persons and thus help facilitate more widespread knowledge about 'Great Women' History.

Non-profit organizations Global G.L.O.W and LitWorld created a joint initiative called the "HerStory Campaign". This campaign works with 25 other countries to share girl's lives and stories. They encourage others to join the campaign and to "raise our voices on behalf of all world's girls".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.litworld.org/herstory|title=The HerStory Campaign|website=LitWorld®|language=en-US|access-date=2019-11-01|archive-date=2019-11-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191101175811/https://www.litworld.org/herstory|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The herstory movement has spawned women-centered presses, such as [[Virago Press]] in 1973, which publishes fiction and non-fiction by noted women authors like [[Janet Frame]] and [[Sarah Dunant]].

This movement has led to an increase in activity in other female-centric disciplines such as ''femistry'' and ''galgebra''.<ref>{{cite book|title=Words and Women|last1=Miller|first1=Casey|last2=Swift|first2=Kate|publisher=Bantam Doubleday Dell|year=1976|isbn=9780385048583}}</ref>

==Criticism==
[[Christina Hoff Sommers]] has been a vocal critic of the concept of herstory, and presented her argument against the movement in her 1994 book ''[[Who Stole Feminism?]]'' Sommers defined herstory as an attempt to infuse education with ideology at the expense of knowledge.<ref>{{cite book |title=Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women |last=Hoff Sommers |first=Christina |year=1995 |publisher=[[Touchstone Books]] |location=[[United Kingdom]] |isbn=0-684-80156-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/whostolefeminism00chri/page/97 97] |chapter=5 (The Feminist Classroom) |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/whostolefeminism00chri/page/97 }}</ref> The "[[gender feminism (Sommers)|gender feminists]]", as she called them, were the group of feminists responsible for the movement, which she felt amounted to [[negationism]]. She regarded most attempts to make historical studies more female-inclusive as being artificial in nature and an impediment to progress.<ref name="Sommers"/>

Professor and author [[Devoney Looser]] has criticized the concept of herstory for overlooking the contributions that some women made as historians before the twentieth century.<ref name="looser" /> Author [[Richard Dawkins]] also described his criticism in ''[[The God Delusion]]'',  arguing that "the word history has not been influenced by the male pronoun".<ref>{{Cite magazine|title=This Is Where the Word 'History' Comes From|url=https://time.com/4824551/history-word-origins/|access-date=2020-12-15|magazine=Time}}</ref> Critics also highlight that herstory, while aiming to prioritize women’s narratives, sometimes excludes non-Western perspectives, pointing out the importance of reconstructing feminist genealogies from a southern perspective, advocating for inclusivity in representing subaltern women’s histories and experiences.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jofré |first=Alejandra Ciriza |date=2012 |title=Genealogías feministas: sobre mujeres, revoluciones e ilustración: una mirada desde el sur |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-026x2012000300002 |journal=Revista Estudos Feministas |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=613–633 |doi=10.1590/s0104-026x2012000300002 |issn=0104-026X|hdl=11336/67208 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Feminist history]]
*[[Gender-neutral language]]
*[[History of feminism]]
*[[Radical feminism]]
*[[Women's history]]
*[[Womyn]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
*''Herstory: Women Who Changed the World''. {{ISBN|0-670-85434-4}}.
*''Daughters of Eve: A Herstory Book''. {{ISBN|1-4140-4356-2}}.
*''HerStory''. {{ISBN|978-1-60402-551-4}}.
*''Herstory: A Woman's View of American History''. {{ISBN|0882840177}}.

{{Radical feminism}}

==External links==
* [https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Aherstory Herstory Committee Digital Collection]

[[Category:1970 neologisms]]
[[Category:Historiography]]
[[Category:Feminism and history]]
[[Category:Lesbian history]]
[[Category:Nonstandard spelling]]