Spoke to a family member today. Talked about how I'm gonna write a student thesis on Wu Zetian, the only female emperor of China. Was promptly met with "but why not write about women like Margaret Thatcher? So many more references and much more recent!"
Cue me asking why I should study a known European figure rather than somebody more unknown (and more interesting imo) overseas? Family member goes on to tell me how "easy it was for medieval women overseas to gain power, they just had to marry their emperor husband!", and how European history is so much more interesting and tragic and worth analysing because everything is so complex in Europe compared to those "primitive cultures." Family member then jumps to how Europeans have invented EVERYTHING and how everybody else copies us (clothes, music, science) and Europe is the sole inventor of everything apparently. I get up and leave.
Apologies for the rant. Do y'all have any supporting words or advice on how to speak to these individuals? I thought I could post this here because I appreciate y'all's anti-colonialist attitude, but do feel free to remove if it's appropriate.
China was inventing paper, printing press, gunpowder, public exam system for government officials, straps that go across horse's chest instead of their neck so you can attach a plow without choking them (europe would literally never figure this out until cars were invented), systematized formal philosophy, etc. while Europe was fucking sheep and living in mud and grass huts and dumping their shit into the street and ransacking more civilized people like the romans and ottomans. europeans are so warlike and barbaric they could not even stop from pillaging and enslaving each other in viking raids. Europe was a primitive literally shit covered backwater until the industrial revolution made textile production less lucrative for the ottomans. the first european king charlemagne was an illiterate warlord who could not even spell his own name. europeans literally did not believe in washing their hands, that was 'moorish heathenry' not for christians. european royalty would use dogs to lick their hands after meals, peasants would simply go filthy. europeans would wear flowers to cover the smell of shit and sweat and piss. europeans thought of chastity as a virtue, and in some communities in europe it was considered improper for a woman to ever bathe, to preserve her 'chastity' and ensure she was never sexually attractive to men. european vikings would wash their face and blow their nose in the morning, in/into a single tub of water, passed around one after the other, in order of seniority, without changing the water, much to the chagrin of Islamic travellers chronicling their disgusting hygiene. europeans did not have divorce, in many cases of legal marital dispute the man and woman were forced into marital duels with both stitched into leather suits (bearing a cross so you know its holy) and the man waist-deep in a pit with a club, the woman free to move and armed with a stone wrapped in her wedding veil (see below).
this family member is nothing short of an ignorant racist fool, a history channel watcher who, via dunning-kruger, thinks they are well informed and educated on history.