Welcome to Bitchy History
History is not dead. It is standing behind us in the grocery store, breathing on our neck, asking why women are so emotional.
I’m Professor Meredith Walker: historian, writer, educator, and creator of Bitchy History. I have a Master’s in Colonial and Global History from Leiden University, where I wrote my thesis on the sociopolitical critique in Star Trek. Yes, I made Star Trek academic. No, I am not sorry.
Bitchy History is where I write and podcast about women’s history, gender theory, pop culture, political memory, feminism, media, nostalgia, and the many ways the past is still ruining everyone’s afternoon.
At the center of my work is one question: how do societies teach people to mistake power for nature?
That is where my research on what I like to call “cultural gaslighting” comes in: the process by which media, politics, religion, advertising, education, and popular culture make unequal systems feel normal, comforting, inevitable, or even empowering. Women were not just told to stay home. They were told the home was their kingdom. Powerlessness got repackaged as virtue, femininity, moral superiority, divine design, maternal instinct, romantic destiny, or “just the way things are.”
And when women objected? Too angry. Too loud. Too bitter. Too much.
Here, we read the fine print.
Expect snarky but serious essays on reproductive politics, medical misogyny, the myth of the “traditional family,” tradwives, sitcoms, Cold War culture, queer history, and why pop culture is never “just entertainment.”
Most of my work stays outside the paywall because knowledge should not require a blood sacrifice. That said, paid subscriptions help support the research, writing, and caffeine.
Welcome. The past was female. They just edited most of us out.
Host: Professor Meredith has a Master’s in Colonial and Global history and wrote her MA thesis on the sociopolitical critique in the Star Trek franchise. She has taught American history and Women’s history at the college level for several years and uses her social media platform to spread historical education as far and wide as she can.
She’s currently finishing her MA in Gender Studies and preparing to start her PhD.
