Sexism and Racism in Living History?

This is a very touchy topic, and I honestly haven’t seen it come up much in living history, although the thought has always been there.

If your group is trying to portray a time period / group of people as accurately as possible, what do you do about people who want to join who are of historically inaccurate sex/race? I mean, lets face it, women and people of color did not have all the opportunities back then that they do today. It was not normal to have female knights, there were no black archers at Agincourt.

So what do you do about this? I don’t know of any woman who’s tried to be a knight in one of the more accurate medieval living history groups. There are a handful in the SCA and larp, and that’s cool, but those groups aren’t going for accuracy of portrayals.

I know of one WWI combat group that says right on their website “Sorry, but this group is exclusive to males, not trying to be sexist, but that’s how it was” (I can’t find their page in my bookmarks for the life of me)

But this brings up another question, should even white males not portray another ethnicity? I’m 5’6 white male with English/German decent, I’d look off if I tried to play a viking, Italian, or Saracen.  I think the one thing that sticks out the most is when a white guy, especially a fat white guy tries to portray a samurai. The result just makes me cringe every time I see it. I know people are obsessed with samurai, but if you’re a western male it just doesn’t work!

Thoughts?

Living history vs farb…..

First off, I want to say that there is nothing wrong with people who commit farb crimes, as long as they are not at an event that is trying to show the general public “how it was back then.”

For non living history/ reeanctor readers, jargon definition:

Farb: a derogatory term used in the hobby of historical reenacting in reference to participants who exhibit indifference to historical authenticity, either from a material-cultural standpoint or in action.

I know this post is going to sound arrogant and condesending, but that’s not how I mean to come across. I’m sure doing LARP and SCA* stuff is really fun, I know people who have a great time doing it, I have nothing against that. What I do have something against is those same people coming to living history / reenacting events that are open to the public and bringing their farb ways with them. (*I am aware not all SCA is the same, and that some groups try very hard to be accurate.)

The point at those events is to educate the public, and to have fun doing it. If you’re not interested in properly educating the people by presenting as accurate depictions as possible, then go have your own group event. Just don’t come to a educational one with your drink coolers, pop up tents, plastic armor, and stainless steel swords. Again, there is nothing wrong with having that stuff, using it, and enjoying yourself, but just not at these events.

Some people think it’s just too much work to get the real thing, and put an expert kit together, but the quality shows. Let me give you some examples.

In camp: farb with coolers, pop up tents, bamboo mats, and obviously no period cloth for clothing:

Ok now here is an example of a non farb camp

Can you spot the difference? How about a compare/contrast with armor and fighting?

Farb:

Ok, now for the non farb guys:

Can you tell a quality difference? One group looks like a renfaire and the other looks like a movie set?

I must admit, when I first started doing living history at age 12, I was a farby. Here is the proof:

It takes time, a long time to put together an expert kit, but the effort you put in it really shows.

The two living history groups used as good examples in this post are Lord Grey’s Retinue and The Guild of Saint Olaus.

Anti-atheist billboards

As a sort of follow up to my last post about Atheist signs, I wanted to share this gem with you:

I hate it, but it is free speech, so I don’t think it should be illegal. There has to be a logical fallacy in there, possible multitple.

According to the dictionary: Trea-son

–noun

1.	the offense of acting to overthrow one’s government or to harm or kill its sovereign.

2.	a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.

Lets see, first off, there is a wall of separation of church and state set up by the very first clause of the first amendment. So anti-god is not anti-American. (technically the rest falls apart, but lets continue)

Anti-American is not necessarily treason. Firstly you need to be a citizen to commit treason. There are plenty of people in the world who are anti-American and not citizens, so they’re not committing treason.

Secondly, you can have “anti-American” thoughts, and not commit treason as long as you don’t act on those thoughts. Plus, what exactly qualifies as “anti-American” is open for debate.

Lastly, traitors don’t cause civil war, that is unless you want to call southern christian slave owners traitors, then yes, they cause civil wars.

This sign is pretty old, I think it went up in 2005. It was put up by Lamar advertising. They refused to post a Democratic ad despite being under contract saying it was too negative, yet this smut is fine. Oh, here is their contact info:

Write to:
Mr. Kevin P. Reilly, Jr.
Chairman & CEO
Lamar Advertising Co.
5551 Corporate Blvd.
Baton Rouge, LA 70808

Call: (225) 926-1000.
Fax: (225) 926-1005.

Lamar Pres and CFO and CEO contacts:

kreilly@lamarhq.com
sreilly@lamarhq.com
kistre@lamarhq.com