I saw a YouTube video about the history of Italy in WW2 and noticed that they went out of their way to talk about the treatment of women during this time, despite never once mentioning anything about the treatment of men.

Because Italy was a fascist state and wanted a strong military, women were encouraged to have lots of children. This of course prevented them from doing much else besides being mothers. Moreover, women who didn't want to have children were sometimes seen as mentally ill.

This was presented as a common pattern of misogyny in history. And it's not just this one video; it's very common to see this type of stuff in our popular representations of history.

But let's consider the other side of this story, the one that never gets told: what men went through in WW2 era Italy.

Besides the obvious bloodshed and loss of life during the war, men had to work long hours in difficult and dangerous jobs to support their large families. Which they were also expected to have, exactly the same as women.

Do you think these men wanted either of these things? Do you think they wanted to spend 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, slaving away in factories and mines to earn enough money to support these families? Do you think they wanted to sign up for a draft, and go to war? And what would their punishment be for not going along with it? Draft dodging is a very serious crime basically everywhere. People wouldn't just think that he was kind of strange or mentally ill for not going along with it. He would have been put in jail, or worse.

So why do we stop to give special consideration to the plight of women in these stories, but never the plight of men? Or just accept that war is bad for everyone?

It's definitely not because women had things any worse than men, as is often implied. It's because, as a society, we place the safety and happiness of women above everything else. So whenever women are restricted or harmed in any way, we see it as uniquely reprehensible, and go out of our way to talk about and criticize it. It's basically a form of rage bait. Misogyny is so hated in society that we bring it up in anger and admonishment in order to feel good about ourselves.

This is why people think men had things great in history. This is why we think it was only women who faced difficulties. These narratives, and our beliefs about these narratives, are clearly sexist, and ahistorical.