Earlier this year, the director general of assessments of Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. He explained that the anti-feminist movement is becoming increasingly relevant to national security.

He argued that in certain contexts, “anti-feminist ideology can function as an enabling factor along pathways to violent extremism.”

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Similarly, the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women reports that misogynistic views are becoming embedded in key institutions, including governments and political bodies, and are now shaping debates over education policy. These ideas are “aimed at dismantling or blocking progressive change for women’s equality and human rights,” according to the organization.

As a historian working in Canada whose research covers sexuality and gender in medieval Europe, with a specific focus on masculinity and male sexuality, I can say that none of this is new in western society.

The power of sexist language, in fact, rests on a question medieval scholars debated centuries ago: did the terms “man” and “mankind” include women, or men alone?

Gendered creation story

Linguistic debates about the creation of humans emerged from the two very different versions of creation contained in the Book of Genesis.

In the King James Version of the Bible, Genesis 1:27 states “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Here, the gendered words and the use of the plural are clearly inclusive.

The word “man” includes “male and female.”........

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