Me: historical misinformation is bad. please make sure you actually know what you’re talking about before you insist that historians are just wrong or lying
So many people: um OP but what about all the historians who are wrong or lying??? Why do you think they should be allowed to lie????
Yes, historians are biased. EVERYBODY is biased. Everybody in the whole world. Even you. Good historians try to recognize and balance that. Typically, historians who study history do in fact want to be honest and accurate! A mark of good historical analysis is making arguments based on the best inferences we can make about history.
Yes, it’s often hard to say things for sure about history. The farther back you go the harder it is to be confident about what happened; the more recent an event, meanwhile, the more politically fraught the interpretations are. All history is interpretation, drawing inferences, trying to construct narratives about who and what and why based on the information we have. Original sources (letters, diary entries, newspaper reports) are biased. Archaeological discoveries are interpreted by archaeologists. Multiple interpretations for certain people and events are very common. A lot of the time, the best we can say is “this was PROBABLY that” or “these were PROBABLY NOT used for this.” However, qualifications and details like this for every fact that needs one are hard to reduce and are the reason history books exist. So like, was Louisa May Alcott trans? I do not think the evidence supports it. Was James Barry trans? I do think the evidence supports it. Those are interpretations, yeah. And this is the eternal complexity of history, that historians don’t always agree with each other about what historical evidence means, and that is often informed by their biases, but it also does not mean they don’t actually know anything and that your complete lack of studying any of this creates just as valid an interpretation.
And this is something where I ENCOURAGE you to do your own research! Read the historical sources! Learn about who was writing them and why! Read about the social context of the time and place! Read the people’s own words, or read the archaeological reports! I will gladly help you get your hands on any I can! Doing your own research should mean doing research, though. Not just assuming you know better by virtue of being queer or a leftist.
The point is not, has never been, “never question authority.” It’s “know what the fuck you’re talking about before you insist it’s fact.”
