Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

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> The first and only complete recipe for the drink—and the primary source for modern recreations—turns up in 1393, in what might be considered a manual of mansplaining.

Really? Mansplaining in the 14th century? Is that how historical subjects are going to be treated now?

> An anonymous French writer penned an exhaustive guide to etiquette, moral conduct, and the practical concerns of a young bride, from choosing servants to throwing feasts: Le Ménagier de Paris (The Good Wife’s Guide). “It’s a ridiculous book,” says Verberg. “It’s micromanagement. I would not have wanted to be his wife.”

Nor would she (or he) have wanted you as her husband (or wife), she (he) would possibly not even have recognised you are a marriage-worthy candidate. Times change, attitudes change, mores and morals change, that is what makes history so interesting. Knee-jerk virtue signalling is not a sign of a good historian.

Read Machiavelli's The Prince for another detailed manual on how to behave, in this case on how to become an effective prince. Was Machiavelli mansplaining as well, seeing as how he wrote the book to instruct another male?

Let history be history and study it for what it is, the past which eventually led to the present. Rest assured that once we are history many of our cultural traits will seem strange as well. Rest assured that what is considered virtuous now will be considered something totally different in a few centuries - if not a few decades.

Also, stop using labels like mansplaining, it adds nothing to the discourse and only leads to polarisation of the 'he is not in my camp' type.

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article and then rush into the HN comments to get angry about it. That leads to generic tangents, which are predictable, tedious, and usually turn nasty. It's all so boring. We may need to add this to the site guidelines, although it's arguably covered by Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

One way of looking at this is to take the following guideline to apply at the article level as well: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

The idea on HN is to have curious conversation. For that, a better practice would be to bring in the most interesting bit from an article, or the bit that creates more interesting responses in you. If an article creates no such responses in you, then the way to use HN in the intended spirit is to look at at different article instead.

I've read portions of that book, and the description is not inapt. It's a man of late middle age explaining to his young (14 iirc) wife _every painful feature of her duties_ in excruciating detail and with perfect self-concern, in a way that is not typical of the way wives are addressed and marriage handled in other works I've read from the time. I found it hard not to dislike the author intensely, which was not my reaction to other medieval writing at all.

> Knee-jerk virtue signalling is not a sign of a good historian

The author isn't and never claimed to be a historian. Their bio on Atlas Obscura says "I'm a senior editor and writer at Atlas Obscura, bee steward, mead maker and veteran of karaoke in Antarctica."

It seems you missed the whole point of an actually pretty interesting article and wrote a frankly boring rant about one word that seemingly triggered you.

Probably better not to bother next time.

1393

If the new bride (14yo) can read such a book then she is not a peasant. If the family owns a book then they are several tiers up again. Anyone reading this book therefore has at least one servant. If they do, that servant may well be a child even younger than the new bride (12yo). Such a person definitely cannot read. This is a book for the master or lady of a 14th century household speaking to their servant. Mansplaining is expected.

I'm about as anti-PC as they come, but to me this passage is not attempting to criticize Medieval culture by framing it within modern PC context. Instead, it reads like the inverse – it's making light of modern PC culture by framing it within Medieval context.

What makes you think mansplaining didn't exist in the 14th century? I'd expect it to be /more/ prevalent than today.

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