Discussion Group Report

Those who control the directions society takes are those who control the words we hear and read maintains Patty Henetz in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune on May 2, 1999.

In earlier times history was forged in poetry. In the West troubadours mixed their traditional love songs with word of the land beyond the tiny rural villages where most people lived. Ordinary people, almost exclusively illiterate, memorized poetry and stories that contained all the information they needed to live--their family histories as well as ancient sagas.

"History, though, has always kneeled before power,"says Henetz. "The stories we accept today...have the earmarks of victors' spoils. But as the new millennium approaches, it may be possible to loosen the hold the powerful have on knowledge."

"History," she quotes historian Rick Perlstein as saying, "embarrasses us, reminds us that it is first and foremost story, shifting and contingent, and that we are in its thrall."

It is often said that a dog is man's best friend. This stripped-down version of the bond between humans and canines isn't quite the whole story. Crucial elements of the conventional wisdom have been purged from our memory. Traditional narrative points to women, not men, as the original domesticators of dogs. In pagan legends dogs were the companions of the Goddess in many different contexts. Our culture doesn't remember all the parts of this story and ignores others.

"You know the old saying," Peristein says, "History is written by the winners...How we communicate is always interrelated with power."

Women's stories suffered as Christians took control of the West. The parts of the Bible that asserted women's equality were suppressed. The inherent wickedness of women was written into the Bible from its opening tale of the fall of man. In the sixth century churchmen even denied women had souls. Countless numbers of women who refused to renounce the stories of the old religions were murdered during the Inquisition. Women who might have remained non-Christian gave in and adopted the faith written by the men of the church. And even men who tried to sidestep papal authority were dealt with swiftly and harshly. The first men who published the Bible in the language of the ordinary people were burned at the stake.

The dark ages were a time of vast spiritual struggle during which religious and political leaders forcibly abolished the study of philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and geography. Temples and libraries were smashed and burned, pagan intellectuals and teachers persecuted, and schools closed. Church control of information was nearly absolute because few beyond the monasteries were literate, and even there learning and writing was in Latin, which was not understood by the general public. For 1,500 years, writes historian Barbara G. Walker, "the church maintained a monopoly of written records, and virtually wrote its own history to its own order." But the human impulse to share a good yarn persisted. It was the bards who preserved the scraps of history in spite of the suppression. Finally, a revival of interest in historical documents occurred. Paperwork became big business. Then the invention of the printing press brought about an immense change; it took information out of the hands of a few. The press pumped out 8 million books in its first 40 years of operation.

"Publishing allowed passionate stories wide circulation," says Henetz. Information had forever slipped the bonds of the church moralists.

But a new kind of "uber-control" has emerged, she says. "Publishing today is increasingly ruled by gigantic multimedia corporations. As storytellers, they seem far less concerned about their hearts than their pockets. As institutions, they exert massive control over information, just like their church forebears. Television, but a half-century old, is the prophet of the age."

Brenda Cooper, director of women's studies at Utah State University, states, "Kids learn more about their culture and society today from media than any other source." And those who tell the stories are overwhelmingly homogeneous. "Ninety percent of the executives involved are white men." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"It's all about power, baby," Perlstein says. "Whether a certain story will still endure 100 years from now will have little to do with how true it is."

But Cooper wishes women could take over the media industry and control the stories we embrace. Henetz comments with reason, "Unfortunately the only previous example of such a total media takeover involved five centuries of relentless social pressure via thumbscrew, rack and pyre with a public relations assist from Torquemada."

Henetz suggests that the Internet, with its global access to information and relative gender indifference, may be a way for women to reclaim chapters left out of his-story. Anyone can be a troubadour in the electronic community.