Civics: Louis C.K., Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, and the rise of benevolent sexism in liberal men

Constance Grady

As Jessica Ellis pointed out on Twitter, Moore’s assertion is historically inaccurate: Women worked on the Manhattan Project, were instrumental Nazi leaders, and have shot up schools. Women have committed all sorts of atrocities — it’s just that most of them have been erased from history, in the same way that most of women’s more positive accomplishments have been erased.

We don’t learn in school about Elizabeth Graves, who helped to create the first atomic bomb, just as we don’t learn about Cecilia Payne, who discovered that hydrogen is the building block of the universe. We don’t, in general, learn about the women who do things, regardless of whether those things are great or terrible.