"medieval people bathed regularly. … In fact soap is a motherfucking medieval invention. Yes. It is. The Romans – whomst I don’t see a bunch of basics going around accusing of being filthy – did not, in fact have soap, in contrast." going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-a
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"allowing myths like this to perpetuate allows us to keep upholding harmful ideas about the medieval period that furthers our colonialist ideas about history, and simultaneously allows us to gloss over all the harmful and gross stuff that we as modern people do."
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While I'm down with medieval people bathing, the article feels like it comes from a place of dark age denialism, which: slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/15/wer
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"feels like"? That's a terrible way to evaluate an article. This one denies one particular often-made negative claim about the period, not all possible such claims. And it is right about this one.
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Like I said - I'm down with the soap. But even in what you quoted it says "perpetuating harmful myths", and in the essay it links to a dark ages denialism article, so I interpreted an additional theme in the authors viewpoint that made me want to tack on dark age support.
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You really shouldn't assume that an author agrees with everything said in something they cite.
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I didn't assume, the citation was linked I : "If you intrinsically believe (and it is a belief) that the medieval period is the Dark Ages, and very bad, then you read stuff like this and just assume people are gross and dirty, even if there’s no real evidence of that."
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That sentence doesn't at all endorse other claims about that time than the claim he clearly made before, that they weren't that dirty.
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Right, I think I understand what you're getting at, but I think I can support my argument more. I'm on phone on long car trip today to a festival, but, would like to get more into this when I have time
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