Herstory

A letter to the Old Town Crier, a local monthly magazine, concerning its self-described history columnist Sarah Becker:

Sarah Becker's use of the neologism "Herstory" as the title of her April 2011 column is unfortunate and misguided, promising much more than it delivers, for even a casual reading readily reveals that Ms. Becker's piece is little more than a hodgepodge of events that might or might not bear on the topic; perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the word "history" is inherently sexist, when clearly it comes from the Latin, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation"; propounding the intellectually dubious view best articulated by critic Christina Hoff Sommers as the infusion of education with ideology at the sacrifice of knowledge; and conflating the women's movement struggle for equality with the historical reality indicates that the two are not the same.