People need history for self-determination, for finding answers to questions: who are we, where are we going, what have we already come to. What story do men give women? Men's, the one in which a woman will find those "answers" that men need. Who are women in the history of patriarchy? Victims and servants. What are women going to and what have they already come to? Nowhere. In men's history, women are denied subjectivity.

However, women have the real Women's History, the one that men deliberately erased in order to take over our minds. Moreover, this history is hundreds of thousands of years without patriarchy. This is, among other things, the story of rich, advanced, high-tech civilizations in which the place of a man was where it should be under a woman.

From the fact that the real Women's History is hushed up, we feel like only shadows of men. We do not identify ourselves with the female warriors of Power, who fought against the male yoke; we do not identify ourselves with the mighty and strong Scythianesses; with priestessesses, shamanesses, astronomeresses and mathematicianesses from the times of the gynocentric civilization of Crete or the Harappan civilization. We do not even define ourselves in terms of suffragettes. At best, we identify with women operating within the patriarchy. We do not see our roots, we do not remember the times in which the world belonged to us, and was not yet torn to pieces by male, bloodthirsty, armed troops. Therefore, it seems that patriarchy has always existed and that women have never resisted it. Moreover, this is a lie.
The history imposed on us is not ours. It is designed to blur collective female boundaries, erase our personalities, lead to feelings of hopelessness, apathy and longing. Women need to create their own periodization of history, develop their own opinion about each historical episode. We need to REMEMBER our past, our greatness, our strength, our personality, we need to abandon the official history of patriarchy written by men, and we need to record all the mistakes we have made, because whoever does not remember his past is condemned to relive it again.

The issue is not that there are no feminists among women who have worked on Women's History, but that we are losing their works. What is it connected with? Firstly, with male academic unfounded criticism of the matriarchal past, and secondly, with male opposition to the spread of Women's History. There are books describing our past. They may not be ideal, imperfect, but they exist, and we do not talk about them, do not write about them, and do not read. There is no continuity among feminists and every 20-40 years we have to reinvent the wheel.

In Russian feminism, practically no one reads or refers to the books of women who worked and wrote their important works, and are now practically forgotten. Probably, a similar situation is not only in Russia, but also in other countries. Which feminist has read R. Eisler's Cup and Blade (1)? Who remembers the book by Sieu Monica and Mor Barbara "The Great Cosmic Mother" (2)? And Elizabed Goodle Davis' "The First Sex" (3)? Or Dale Spender's "Women's Ideas and What Men Have Done With Them?" And these are just some of the creations undeservedly thrown out of the rut of the feminist struggle.
We need to concentrate all the books on the History of Women; we need to create feminist libraries. How can we move forward if our daughters still believe that all feminism is the work of Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote books not for women, but primarily for men? How are we women going to construct our past if we do not cherish every creation of feminist writers? With such an attitude towards the works of great women, it is not surprising that some feminists are still convinced that patriarchy has always been there, that a woman’s ability to create new lives is a kind of bug and weakness, that feminism is a movement for equal rights with men, and so on. Many of women's misconceptions stem from a lack of continuity of knowledge.

I urge every feminist and every woman to respect the work of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, to read these important books, which already have ready-made answers to many questions that concern us. I call on feminists to create feminist libraries, a storehouse of knowledge, where Women's History will be collected; their own view of the history of patriarchy, our future, our mistakes of the past, our collective identity will be developed.

Author: Shveia Krovavaia
Translation: f.sumasbrodskiy

Links:
1. Rhian Eisler. Chalice and blade. http://lib.ru/URIKOVA/AJSLER/klinok.txt
2. Sieu Monica, More Barbara. Great cosmic mother. http://samlib.ru/l/luchinina_o/cosmicmom.shtml
3. Elizabeth Goodl Davis "First Sex". https://vk.com/doc185746152_651066201?hash=UzGPzfu1oe7lW3aXlB9umF9JZWO4ZKsMJZfSiLekxwH&dl=HVvGaPkjF2DyFGEJCvfCDoMrNZwTh85EpxJ0sQB5IBg
4. Dale Spender. Women's ideas and what men have done with them. https://vk.com/doc185746152_651065670?hash=xAZJn2VI6WZMetu9xSZEGu6PZTlUptQctqAS6xit8Q4&dl=knyK9IRVPXxhzenJaSPlLfdzoBzGiIVMVbfRsI9vDLs