By Sharanya Gopinathan
You’ve seen the social media handle @manwhohasitall, right? It’s a hilarious parody account that provides bits of wisdom to “men juggling a successful career and fatherhood”, sort of like a reversal of the nonsensical things magazines advise women to do, and it frequently highlights how ridiculous gender biases and the expectations on women are. It’s an awesome page, and provides lots of funnies on Facebook and Twitter.
This week, the handle literally sparked international discussion on how women are thought of in history and society off the back of a single tweet. It all began with this:
My friend is a history teacher. She’s compiling a list of great historical figures and she needs a male to add to the list. Suggestions?
— manwhohasitall (@manwhohasitall) September 1, 2017
Which is kind of a hilarious tweet all by itself, but the responses really just took it and ran with it.
You could invent a caveman. Call him Ugh or something, and claim he invented something. Maybe the first man to wear makeup.
— Cheryl Morgan (@CherylMorgan) September 2, 2017
As an archaeologist I can confirm that there were men in the Stone Age, even though we say cavewomen. Women did all the artwork though.
— (((Kim Biddulph))) (@kimbiddulph) September 2, 2017
Some of the figurines were fertility figures. The Roman god, Priapus, was worshipped by insecure & impotent men hoping to achieve erection.
— Cheryl Morgan (@CherylMorgan) September 2, 2017
There are so many phalluses on Roman material culture. It just proves that men’s only purpose was and is procreation.
— (((Kim Biddulph))) (@kimbiddulph) September 2, 2017
But then the conversation started taking some detours:
not a lot of people know, but Mark Twain was actually a man
— G Swain (@Swainwalker) September 2, 2017
I think that’s been debunked though. How could that wonderful writing be done by a man?
— Kate Holly-Clark (@AntikaNueva) September 2, 2017
That must be it. Because we all know men don’t have the capacity to write like that….it’s not in their inborn nature, bless the darlings.
— Kate Holly-Clark (@AntikaNueva) September 2, 2017
True, look how ‘hysterical’ they get watching sport – you wouldn’t want to trust nuclear codes with them.
— Sian Woolcock (@SWoolzie) September 2, 2017
They’re terribly dowdy a lot of these fellas, aren’t they? One suspects the lab is a bit of a refuge for the plain boys.
— Van Badham ✊🏻🌈 (@vanbadham) September 2, 2017
Oh, yes. Word is that men in labroratories can be distractingly sexy. It’s about the books, not the smouldering looks, I say.
— Van Badham ✊🏻🌈 (@vanbadham) September 2, 2017
Who was that German bloke Queen Victoria was married to? I think a couple of things are named after both of them.
— Kerri Hereward (@KerriHereward) September 1, 2017
Leopoldo? Wilhem? Can’t quite remember who Queen Victoria married, but his name was sort of similar. Ludwig?
— Dorothy Lobel King (@DLVLK) September 1, 2017
Though, to be honest, if you just created a sort of amalgam of all the handsome princes, nobody would be any the wiser surely?
— Kerri Hereward (@KerriHereward) September 1, 2017
Also, isn’t there already a special month for men’s history? We shouldn’t have to pretend to care about it the rest of the time too!
— David Rafferty (@portusprince) September 2, 2017
It all sounds so ridiculous, but that’s exactly why it’s so funny. These are exactly the kinds of debates and discussion self-serious men have been having around female authors like Elena Ferrante, women working in science and women in history, and this is really just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to check out the other responses (and believe me, you do) just open the first tweet here and check out the replies.
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