ALL the children in my social circle are gifted a book every birthday and every Christmas. I agonise over my choices - nothing gendered but nothing so obtuse that they reject it out of hand.
Recently the job has been made easier by a publishing push towards feminist books for girls. Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls; Until We Win; Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World - an excellent trend.
Buying a book for a six-year-old girl last week I swithered over the Little People, Big Dreams series. Would she like Rosa Parks? Or Ada Lovelace, Harriet Tubman or Amelia Earhart?
Who would Dan Snow choose, I wonder? Going by an interview he gave, perhaps none of the above.
The television historian said he was at an aviation museum with his six-year-old daughter who spotted something amiss. "My daughter was walking down rows and rows and rows of these black and white pictures of Spitfire racers and she was going "boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy'".
Rather than explain that women flew planes in Second World War but not in combat, he told his daughter women served alongside men in order to save derailing her ambitions with the "harsh reality" of the patriarchy.
“Now at some stage," he added, "She’s going to learn that I lied to her and she’s going to find out that women weren’t allowed to do active frontline service so I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
It seems with parenting there’s always someone rushing to tell you you’re doing it wrong. No difference with Dan Snow. Not only is he doing it wrong - too lefty, too liberal, too snowflakey - he also faces charges of being a dreadful historian, altering the facts to suit his own narrative, and insulting the men who fought. Poor Dan.
I so clearly remember my own Second World War confusion, being in a class at school, age about six, when the topic came up.
“My gran was in the army during the war,” I said. The class erupted, the teacher smirked. She couldn’t possibly have been in the army, the teacher explained as certain members of the class shouted out “Girls can’t be in the army”, because the army is for soldiers and women can’t be soldiers.
I was outraged, indignant that my version of events was being called into question. Furious. “Well, maybe she was a secretary,” the teacher said, further complicating matters. What on earth would the British Army want with secretaries?
Gran was in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, it later emerged. As a secretary. But I’d only ever been told “Your gran was in the army,” and so to my child’s mind this had meant she was doing whatever the men were doing, and why not? My mum did everything the dads did - she caught spiders and changed plugs. She wasn’t always at school shows because she was at work, a point of which I was proud.
It just wouldn’t have occurred to me that my gran had not been gone for a soldier.
I don't remember when I learned about the patriarchy but I don't believe the knowledge of it hindered my ambitions.
Some are concerned our war dead are insulted by Mr Snow's altering of history. My problem with his take is thus: it is not the male pilots who are snubbed by the gender neutral retelling of history, it is the women who fought for gender parity.
Mr Snow has told his own version of history, and it is incorrect. At the same time, that’s essentially what history is - a telling of events by people with their own opinions and biases.
It’s why so many women have been ignored or written out of history - because history has been curated, narrated, written and told by men. The presence of men in historical events is a given, the presence of women exceptional.
It sounds very much like Miss Snow has already spotted the discrepancy, with her keen observance of the lack of women in those black and white pictures. If they flew, she must wonder, then why aren't they celebrated?
There is no indignation like the righteous indignation of a child.
My hope in giving feminist books to my young friends is in igniting that powerful sense of right and wrong they have.
All the women of our mothers' and grandmothers' generations and before, the women who fought to give us rights to stand alongside men, they should never be erased from the story.
They deserve to be recognised and little girls deserve to have them as role models.
Inspiration and indignation are sure fire ways to ensure change keeps coming.
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