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ProfessorMeredith

@professormeredith.bsky.social
1K followers 227 following 190 posts

Historian, writer, and podcaster blending humor and insight. Host of Bitchy History, where irreverence meets historical deep dives. Author of a forthcoming book exploring 1950s media and its impact on American politics and culture.

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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Apparently, you can research the organization, prepare thoughtful answers, and arrive on time, only to discover that the beverage you brought to hydrate your throat while answering the question “where do you see yourself in five years?” has failed the personality test.
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Is Your Coffee Masculine Enough for This Job?
The interview panic over iced coffee has some very familiar ideas about who deserves to be taken seriously.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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The Patriarchy Has Always Had a Women’s Auxiliary
From anti-suffragists to Phyllis Schlafly to influencers who want to surrender the vote, women have a long history of campaigning against women’s rights.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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Prime Video Gave Ride or Die the Retirement Watch
The series was about women over fifty being told they were obsolete. Then Amazon canceled it while everyone was watching.
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Reposted by ProfessorMeredith
LibALGal @libalgal.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"The demand for 'apolitical history' tends to appear only after someone challenges the inherited distribution of attention." - History Is Political (pretending otherwise is too) open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi... #history #politics @professormeredith.bsky.social
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History Is Political (pretending otherwise is too)
The past did not preserve itself, interpret itself, or assign itself to your eighth-grade history class.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
My latest on substack
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The Terms and Conditions of American Citizenship
Women, marriage, race, and the surprisingly unstable history of being American
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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History Is Political (pretending otherwise is too)
The past did not preserve itself, interpret itself, or assign itself to your eighth-grade history class.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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One Token to Rule Them All
Why visibility without context is just the same old stereotype with better publicity
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
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Grocery Shopping as Russian Roulette
It took decades for regulation to make it expensive for companies to poison consumers with bad meat, bad eggs, and bad vegetables. Now those regulations are failing.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Enjoy this while I get moved into my new flat.
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Still in Monroeville: Disenchanted, White Feminism, and the Suburban Dream That Refuses to Die
Disney asked what happens after happily ever after. The answer was apparently property ownership, emotional labor, and a community committee.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
A history that records the law but not the songs people sang while demanding that the law change has left out rather a lot.
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Stop Letting Old White Men Decide What Counts as History
Why pop music, fandom and everyday culture belong in the historical record.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
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Women Are Not a Mystery. You’re Just Not Listening.
Gender essentialism has convinced men that understanding women is impossible, while women are still expected to understand, anticipate, soothe, and explain men.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Calling patriarchal marriage “men providing for women” is generous. Men were often providing women access to resources women were legally prevented from accessing directly. That is not provision. That is a hostage situation.
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The Work of Women Is the Work of Civilization
Civilization does not require women’s subordination. It requires women’s work, which is exactly why patriarchy worked so hard to control it
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The underlying assumption is obvious: women’s dress is supposed to be tethered to male approval. The article wants to treat women’s clothes as bizarre, but what seems to bother it is not actually bizarreness. It is self-direction. The young women are not always dressing to be looked at by men.
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Why College Girls Dressed “That Way”
How a 1946 newspaper article turned college women’s comfort into a postwar gender crisis.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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The Smithsonian Hearing That Wanted an Uncomplicated America
At the House Oversight Committee’s “Rewriting American History” hearing, historical complexity was treated as bias—and bad history as patriotism.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Eventually, dismissing every pattern as coincidence required more ideological work than acknowledging the structure producing it. I changed my conclusions because the evidence no longer supported the conclusions I had inherited. That is not the abandonment of conviction.
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I Didn’t Abandon My Convictions. I Followed Them Out of the Republican Party
I was good at conservative media. Leaving meant admitting that the movement rewarding me did not believe in the values it had taught me to defend.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
“powerful countries still imagine that their money gives them the right to organize other people’s families, bodies, healthcare systems, and laws”
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The New Missionaries: Trump Is Exporting America’s Culture War
The United States is using foreign aid, Christian political networks, and colonial legal systems to impose Republican ideas about gender and reproduction overseas. Then it calls that sovereignty.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
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A Field Guide to The Patriarchy for the Beginner
No, it is not a secret council of men in robes. It is worse. It is boring, ordinary, institutional, and everywhere people insist it isn’t.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
You can be technically free to study reproductive politics while being priced out of conducting the research. You can be permitted to ask a question while lacking the funding, institutional security, or student aid required to answer it.
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Academic Freedom Is Expensive, and They Know It
The government does not have to ban my research to threaten it. It only has to make the cost of doing it unbearable.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Which raises a number of questions, the most immediate being whether the advertising team had ever actually met a woman.
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1969: Tipalet Cigarette Ad - Primary Source Tea
Artifacts from the Patriarchy - Just Blow Smoke in Her Face, Apparently
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
A man once told me that women use PMS as an excuse to be a bitch. I told him “I don’t need an excuse to be a bitch.”
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I’m childfree and have no regrets about that. My lack of regrets is always validated when I’m on a train and a child is literally kicking and screaming at a volume loud enough to get through my noise cancelling headphones. I’m overstimulated and I’ve only had to deal with it for 10 minutes.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
If courage stops affirming men when women are also courageous, then the source of affirmation was never courage. It was the belief that courage distinguished men from women.
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Stop Gendering the Entire Human Personality
Courage, care, ambition and vulnerability do not belong to separate sexes.
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Reposted by ProfessorMeredith
Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 14/07/2026
An incredible euphemism here for “the government is doing illegal discrimination”
Opportunities Narrow for Women as Hegseth Blocks More Promotions
For the first time in more than a decade, no active-duty female Navy officers are likely to be promoted to admiral this year.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Hot take: I still think horseshoe theory is more valid than not. Source: I spent enough time arguing with both sides of the aisle to see the clear overlap when either side gets crazy enough.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Stephen Miller, Washington D.C. Nazi-Cryptid, did not stumble into white nationalist politics by accident, trip over a copy of The Camp of the Saints, and land face-first in immigration policy.
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It’s Not About Babies. It’s About Which Babies.
On pronatalism, eugenics, and the Republican obsession with producing the “right” kind of future.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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The Smithsonian’s Real Crime Was Refusing to Provide Emotional Support for Nationalism
America’s museums are being punished for doing history instead of reassuring the country that it has always been the hero.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
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They Lost the Abortion Vote, So Now They’re Coming for the Pills
We're watching democracy be forced to run a marathon while state legislatures keeps moving the finish line.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I am once again begging people to understand that “women used to stay married” is not the same thing as “women used to be happy.” Usually it actually means “women used to have no money, no legal protection, no right to their own children, and a church lady judging them from three pews away.”
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I just have some questions about the attachment some gamers have to torture porn…
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If Removing the Impalement Scenes Ruins the Game for You, We Need to Talk
On Lara Croft, gendered violence, and the things some players don't want examined too closely.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
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You Look Like Stevie Nicks in '75
Or: Why Patriarchy Keeps Making Women Compete With Themselves
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
The funniest thing about “women are too emotional for politics” is how often that argument has been made by men actively starting wars, duels, coups, inquisitions, and comment sections. Usually entirely based on their thin skin and massive egos.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
You guys are going to fucking hate this week’s paid subscriber only essay.
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1970s: “Innocence Is Sexier Than You Think” - Primary Source Tea
Artifacts from the Patriarchy - From Ivory Soap to Love’s Baby Soft, the beauty industry kept asking women to be softer, younger, and less like adults.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
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The Past Is Not Dead. It’s Under Active Renovation.
Why every fight about history is really a fight about power.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Over here “overanalyzing” science fiction again.
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The State Always Has an Opinion About Your Body
The Orville, Topa, and the Institutions That Decide Who Gets to Exist
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Ross Douthat had a remarkable ability to interview people with shitty opinions that piss me off as proven by my post about his interview with Helen Andrews last year. His latest: “Is It Time for a New Sexual Revolution?” is no different and I’m debating how to respond to it currently.
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Helen Andrews vs. Evidence: Unpacking the NYT’s “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?”
Watching the goalposts of misogyny shift in real time would be funny if it wasn't so nauseating.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I should probably actually use my Bluesky account for more than just posting substack links, but honestly I have no idea what to say in short form anymore 😂
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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Women Keep Having the Audacity to Choose
Male Grievance, Historical Illiteracy, and Why Some Men Think Feminism Is the Problem
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
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Feminism Didn’t Steal Your Glass Slipper
A historian takes on choice feminism, anti-feminist nostalgia, and the claim that women’s freedom ruined women’s lives.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
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The Waiting Room Is Everywhere
Ireland may be ending its three-day abortion waiting period. Unfortunately, the much older waiting period is still alive and well.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
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Please Laugh Now
How television used fake audiences to teach Americans what was normal
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
So excited to announce that the inaugural episode of the new show has been scheduled! Amy and I will be getting together to discuss Gerda Lerner’s book The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) and what we can learn from it 40 years later. Please subscribe and tune in on Sunday, July 5th at 2pm EST.
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LIVE SOON: Gerda Lerner, The Creation of the Patriarchy, and Guest AmyManlapas!
Starting Jul 5 at 2:00 PM EDT
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
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1952: Chase & Sanborn Coffee - Primary Source Tea
Artifacts from the Patriarchy - Chase & Sanborn asked one question: what if stale coffee deserved corporal punishment?
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Every time some man with a podcast microphone announces that women do not need orgasms, that female arousal is suspicious, or that women’s pleasure has “no ROI,” he is not inventing anything new. He is doing Victorian medicine with Wi-Fi.
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Good Women Don’t Want Sex
How Western society turned female desire into a diagnosis, a sin, a scandal, and now, apparently, a bad investment strategy
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I’ll be telling the story of the time a group calling themselves the Modern Confederacy decided that a history professor saying the Civil War was about slavery was simply a bridge too far.
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I'm Doing a Thing. You Should Come:
Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! on June 20 at 5PM ET
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I did not say men are inherently terrible. I did not say every man is personally responsible for every problem on earth…I said patriarchy trains people. And my God, did some of the trained seals start clapping.
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The Men in My Mentions Proved My Point
I said patriarchy trains boys to confuse critique with persecution. Then the comments section brought visual aids.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
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History’s Greatest Magic Trick: Making Women’s Work Disappear
How generations of women built civilization only to be told they never worked at all
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
open.substack.com/pub/bitchyhi...
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Lolita Complex in Space
The Problem of Feminism in Star Trek: Voyager
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
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Fidelity Month and the World’s Most Unqualified Marriage Experts
Stop trying to make "Straight Pride" happen and worry about not cheating on your wife maybe.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
I was working on a serious post about anti-feminist rhetoric, but then remembered that anti-feminist rhetoric is so fucking unserious that it didn’t deserve it. So instead you get this.
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How Anti-Feminists Made Feminism the Villain and Missed the Actual Plot
Anti-feminist substack essayists are so committed to the bit, that they miss every clue right in front of them.
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ProfessorMeredith @professormeredith.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
There’s something hilarious ironic about starting Pride month with a post about bad straight sex.
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The ROI For Making Women Come
Do You Like Women, or Do You Just Need Other Men to Think You Do? (There's nothing funnier than starting Pride Month off with an essay on bad straight sex)
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