{"id":769,"date":"2026-03-07T21:29:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T19:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/?p=769"},"modified":"2026-05-18T16:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:55:19","slug":"ancient-greece-gender-studies-social-media-can-one-resist-cultural-marxism-to-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/ancient-greece-gender-studies-social-media-can-one-resist-cultural-marxism-to-succeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Greece, Gender Studies, Social Media \u2013 Can One Resist Cultural Marxism to Succeed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A few days ago, while browsing X, I reshared without much thought a post about the 2026 topic for the French historical teaching certification (agr\u00e9gation), which read: \u201cWork in ancient Greece according to gender and social status.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: square;\">\n<li>Written by <strong>H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Lausanne<\/strong>*<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Having taken this famously demanding exam myself, which combines teaching and research, twenty years ago, I was surprised by the wording, which would have been simply unthinkable twenty years earlier, and saddened by the anachronism of attacking poor ancient Greece using outrageously modern concepts borrowed from gender studies. That\u2019s what I said. As soon as the unfortunate little message of fewer than 140 characters was cast into the virtual Mordor that is Elon Musk\u2019s network, a swarm of locusts descended on my head.<\/p>\n<p>I will spare you the list of charming words with which I was honored within minutes: old hag \u2013 which is quite ironic for someone who has just turned forty \u2013 stupid, reactionary, bloody aristocrat \u2013 and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few lines summarizing the arguments leveled against me:<\/p>\n<p>I am twenty or forty years behind my time because the concept of gender has existed since the 1950s. I understand nothing about research. I refuse to acknowledge that there are differences between men and women worth examining (which is ironic for anyone who knows me even a little). I ignore the contribution of carbon-14 dating to historical research. History evolves, and we can use tools that do not correspond to the chosen period to study it.<\/p>\n<p>I was accused of looking for problems where none existed. I was accused of wanting to force students to write on papyrus in ancient Greek to be more authentic. The stupidity rivaled the bad faith.<\/p>\n<p>On X, as is typical for this platform, complete idiots coexist with genuine academics (with some overlap between the two categories). Thus, I wasted my time responding patiently and politely \u2013 I want to live up to my reputation as reactionary \u2013 to both groups, in order to cover most of the spectrum of arguments proposed against me. After that, I turned off my notifications: there is life beyond social media.<\/p>\n<p>But the scale of hatred unleashed by this unfortunate exam question deserved to be addressed in another form.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I am saddened and would even describe as \u201cfrightening\u201d the text proposed to the 2026 students competing in the noble exercise that is the history assessment.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I compare it to what existed twenty years ago and admit that I \u201cfeed the discourse of decline\u201d \u2014 as a distinguished medieval history professor accuses me online.<\/p>\n<p>Let us examine it more closely. The agr\u00e9gation exam is designed to select the best teachers for secondary schools. It is a symbol of excellence that also counts toward obtaining a university position. Every year, students wishing to take the exam must prepare questions from the curriculum covering four periods: ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary history. The questions are always chosen to be very broad, encouraging students to explore a topic in depth and demonstrate a high level of synthesis in mastering the material. However, in recent years, we have observed a worrying trend \u2013 I dare say, a decline, for which I am often criticized: the titles of the curriculum questions are becoming increasingly specific and reflect, albeit still quite discreetly, increasingly ideological issues. Political and diplomatic history is giving way more and more to social history \u2013 which itself will soon be contaminated by other sciences, such as \u201cgender studies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My critics have accused me of being closed to any historiographical development: by criticizing the use of the word \u201cgender\u201d in the title of the question posed to students, I am said to be locked into a fundamental historiographical movement, which some trace back to the 1950s and others even to the 19th century. For others, rejecting the word would signal my narrow-mindedness and refusal to engage with anything related to gender differentiation in antiquity, a reality that obviously existed long before the word \u201cgender\u201d appeared in universities. Finally, others, sometimes the same people, reject the idea of anachronism, arguing that it is legitimate to use a concept invented after a given historical period to talk about that historical period.<\/p>\n<p>There is great confusion in all these arguments. What I criticize is obviously not the fact that we are interested in the way of life of men and women in the Peloponnese in the 7th century BCE. Sorry, before our time. Nor the fact that we use a concept \u2013 gender \u2013 that postdates the period we study. The very word \u201cwork\u201d did not exist as such in ancient Greece, yet it is legitimately used in historical analysis today. What I criticize is the use of a word that is not at all neutral and that today clearly carries a strong ideological charge \u2013 something inappropriate for a teaching exam and obviously not the case for the word \u201cwork.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not long ago, the magic words were \u201cclass struggle\u201d and \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat.\u201d We have moved on from the era of pan-Marxism in universities, but the Left has found new obsessions. Today, it seems obvious that a course with the terms \u201cclass\u201d or \u201cclass struggle\u201d in its title would be considered ideological and unscientific. Yet not long ago, the concept of \u201cclass\u201d would have been promoted as an objective analytical framework \u2013 as the word \u201cgender\u201d is today.<\/p>\n<p>The word \u201cgender\u201d can mean two things. For those promoting the term, it refers to the \u201csocial role with which one identifies\u201d in a self-referential way.<\/p>\n<p>Under these circumstances, and insofar as this concept is based on self-identification and was constructed in opposition to the famous compulsory \u201cassignment\u201d of gender at birth, asking people to discuss the gender of ancient Greeks makes no sense, as this concept was unknown to them and therefore they could not \u201cidentify with a gender.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another possibility is that \u201cgender\u201d is simply synonymous with \u201csex\u201d (i.e., biological sex), as in French grammar, where we speak of \u201cmasculine gender\u201d and \u201cfeminine gender.\u201d In this case, the topic could be phrased as follows: \u201cWork in ancient Greece according to sex, status, and condition.\u201d It is no coincidence that many of my opponents feel the need to rephrase the topic to show its harmlessness: it is \u201conly\u201d a discussion about the differences between men and women in relation to work in ancient Greece. I agree: why not simply put it in these terms?<\/p>\n<p>It is true that the use of the word \u201cgender\u201d has a specific \u2013 almost emotional \u2013 connotation.<\/p>\n<p>Logically, either we accept the primary meaning of the word \u201cgender,\u201d in which case it is dishonest to deny the ideological assumptions behind the term, which was conceived as a deconstruction of a dominant and oppressive model, that of sexual binarism. We must therefore assume that there is an anachronism, or rather, a desire to apply a modern combative reality of recent construction \u2013 20, 40, or 50 years old, it does not matter \u2013 to a past reality. Or we give the word \u201cgender\u201d its second meaning, and it is therefore equally dishonest to criticize me with the argument that I deny the epistemological contribution of gender studies to historical science, which developed based on the first meaning of the word, or that I have not read a decisive dissertation by an American historian from the 1970s about patriarchal oppression in Delphi among vase painters in 497 BCE.<\/p>\n<p>The barrage of insults unleashed on X to hunt down nasty reactionaries like me moves from one meaning of the word \u201cgender\u201d to the other with the greatest ease, without worrying about the contradiction.<\/p>\n<p>As one of my supporters on X humorously pointed out in this crazy dispute, \u201cBased on the responses to this comment, a huge sociological study could be done on \u2018Pretending not to understand when I belong to the academic Left.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Because it is obvious that many of the commentators who attacked my post know very well what they are saying and play innocent in the name of a scientific ideal that is as unrealistic as butter on a spit: a linear evolution of knowledge toward ever greater intellectual enlightenment, where each era enriches the discussion with new concepts that are perfectly pure in their intention, allowing ever more \u201crefined, problematic, and critical\u201d analyses of human experience.<\/p>\n<p>I wish.<\/p>\n<p>But <strong>I do not believe in the myth of pure objectivity in history<\/strong>. Biases are inevitable, but we must admit them and not sugarcoat them with melodious words about intellectual objectivity or scientific rigor. The rather successful takeover of the university by leftist thinkers has established that the standard of truth and objectivity is measured by the speaker\u2019s acceptance of their progressive theories. Consequently, any discourse that deviates from this is not judged as unreliable or disputable with arguments, but as a priori avoidance of the framework of scientific discussion and objectivity.<\/p>\n<p>Under these circumstances, aspiring educators who have doubts about the relevance of gender theory are called upon to resort to the doublethink so beloved by Orwell: <strong>for now, it is the only weapon they have if they want to advance in the French national education system<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/europeanconservative.com\/articles\/commentary\/ancient-greece-gender-studies-and-social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><strong>The European Conservative<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>* H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Lausanne is a correspondent for The European Conservative in Paris. She studied at the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure de Paris. She taught French literature and culture at Harvard and earned a doctorate in History from the Sorbonne. She is the author of Histoire de l\u2019Autriche (Perrin, 2021).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Historian \u00c9l\u00e9ne de Lozan critiques the 2026 French agr\u00e9gation exam\u2019s use of &#8220;gender&#8221; in ancient Greece topics, arguing it misapplies modern ideologies to historical study, sparking fierce online backlash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[670,123,669,80,672,140],"nfg_topic":[137],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ancient-greece","tag-culture-wars","tag-elen-de-lozan","tag-european-conservative","tag-french-national-education","tag-transgenderism","nfg_topic-culture-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":918,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"nfg_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nfg_topic?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}