Zonca 1

Glen Zonca
Mr. Salow
English 11
14 September 2015

Race, Class, & Gender

David Gordons The Mangling Of American History is a passage about how feminism is
displacing the way we teach and learn history in our current lives, and never before has the
image of teaching mens and womens history to an equal extent been so distinct. Davids
perspective on this recently developed equality is met with unhappiness and dread. Although
feminist theory is important, focusing a majority of time on this topic doesnt make sense, and it
is naive to try and convince people that both men and women have equally impacted the course
of history, thus, they should equally be discussed about.
Women gender is not less than the gender of a man but because of the lifestyles men have
led us to live, mens history should be taught further than the history of womens. David
expresses, Womens history has contributed to the current holy trinity of race, gender, and class
that dominates the historical profession. Many strong women have assembled very influential
movements throughout history, but men are the foundation of how history has been told. Ever
since the existence of the first civilizations to modern day, men have controlled most of the
direction in history, men have controlled most of the wealth in history, and men have controlled
most of the power in history. Without learning about how men have played a role in history, there
is no possible way we could understand even a glimpse of how we came to be who we are today.

Zonca 2
It is easy to argue that women havent had as many opportunities to impact the course of history
as much as men did, but regardless, women still have not affected history as much. Trying to
educate every aspect of history with equal opportunities rather than with importance is why we
are left with the distorted illusion of political correctness.