I saw some men complaining about a piece of historical fiction by a woman having too much sexism, even though it was time period accurate. This bugged me. I think I’ve finally figured out why.
History is full of sexism…
If you don’t want sexism in your fiction, maybe you don’t want time period accurate historical fiction. That’s okay.
Or maybe… you just don’t want women in your time period accurate historical fiction because our lives are too painful to look at. That’s not so okay.
If you don’t like time period accurate historical fiction… maybe you shouldn’t be reviewing it, or should mention that it’s not your preferred genre in the review.
If you just don’t like having the truth of women’s lives drag you down because you have the choice of not looking at it… That’s the definition of privilege, and you should probably think about that.
(Personally, I just mostly don’t like historical fiction, accurate or not. Too few talking animals and the spaceships aren’t nearly comfy enough.)