This is of the fundamental arguments posed by feminism: “In the past -before brave feminists fought for their freedom- women were bound for lives of destitution and misery, being tied to the will of their husbands. Women could not vote, work, or own property: it’s time to uproot the effects of such a long and oppressive history.”

This argument is very conveniently used in any instance where a feminist is locked in a debate, when asked to explain any sort of double standard against men. For example, if the fact that more women are graduating from universities than men is posed as a problem, a feminist will contemptuously brush it aside, since this “inequality” serve to level the competitive field between men and women, where the former is supposedly still privileged from what feminists consider to be a “Male dominated history”.

The underlying presumption is that history has been in the hands of the male gender, is that really the case? It is certainly true that women have lacked many of the rights that were made available for men, but does this make the wide inference that a male’s life was any easier than that of women? A simple observation into the lives of pre-20th century history -without fixating on gender dynamics- will make it very clear that a man’s life throughout history, unless he belonged to the ruling elite, was not a life of any ease or good-fortune. Treated as instruments of war, the kind of objectification women of the past faced was very much her reality for the historical man. It is not only cases of war that threw men into bloodshed; any sort of catastrophe or natural disaster placed men in the avoidable role as the protectors who are to escort the women and children to safety. Try asking any western today if she would like to live in medieval England as a male, it is certain that she would reject such an offer.

The concept that an individual human should not be subject to an absolute monarch emerged steadily over the later centuries of the 2nd millennium. Notable philosophers such as John Locke, otherwise known as the founding father of Liberalism, criticized extensively the governments’ presumption that a citizen is to be readily used as an asset for the greater good of the monarch.

The gigantically fallacious summary of societies as “History has been a culmination of men abusing women” can be redeemed by otherwise amending it to the form of “History is a culmination of men and women surviving in an amoral universe, while struggling to survive and thrive amidst a great limitation of resources.” This is not to suggest that there ought to be any sort of victim competition between men or women, or a debate about “who suffered more”, what is important is that we do not create any ahistorical or even inaccurate present observations -which are likely to rise due to human being’s egotistical nature.