But use of the term 'herstory' implies that 'history' is a masculine word; it is not. Of course the 'his' in 'history' (as the Wikipedia entry notes) has no relation to the masculine possessive pronoun 'his.' And so use of 'herstory' and similar terms can only encourage superficial if not downright silly linguistic (pseudo)analysis. If 'herstory' falsely suggests that 'history' is a masculine word, does the word 'herding' imply that all shepherds (or goatherds or cowherds – pick your livestock) are female? Clearly not. Of course, one can take the silliness of 'herstory' to even greater extremes. Since the word 'this' also includes 'his,' why not be consistent and insist on substituting 'ther' when referring to any feminine referent?

In Latin, 'historia' is in fact feminine, as the word is in all the omance languages ('la storia' in Italian, 'la historia' in Spanish and Portuguese, 'l'histoire' in French, 'istorie' in Romanian). History also is feminine in German ('die Geschichte').

To see how profoundly culturally limited and limiting the silly term 'herstory' is, just try using it in a conversation (or a written communication) in any language other than English. A Frenchman or Frenchwoman would understand me without any problem if I say, "Je m'interesse a l'histoire" ("I'm interested in history"). But I will only baffle my francophone interlocutor if I say, "Je m'interesse a l'herstoire."

'Herstoire' would make no sense at all in French, any more than 'Herschichte' would in German, because 'her' is the feminine possessive only in English. And that is indeed one of the biggest problems with 'herstory': it is a term that only anglophones would understand, and even then, only when it is explained. 'Herstory' is an anglophone invention that is as ahistorical as it is unfortunate and use of the neologism divorces the study of history in the English-speaking world from the Italic and other Indo-European languages and cultures that use a word derived from the Greek 'istoria' without in any way connecting the study of history to non-European languages and cultures.

'Herstory' also has the unfortunate effect of erasing the 'story' from 'history,' which is the true etymological connection. History is in fact the story of both men and women – not to mention the transgendered, the intersexed, and those who may not have identified as either men or women – from the beginning of, well, history. Human history is about those stories, and the women who thought they were advancing a feminist agenda by attempting to popularize the term 'herstory' only showed how white-privileged, anglocentric and temporally limited in consciousness they were in their approach to human history.

The term 'herstory' is profoundly ahistorical and it cannot successfully be translated into any language (other than English) without an elaborate explanation that shows just how artificial and culturally limited the word is. The use of a highly artificial and culturally and temporally limited term does not produce serious history because such an enterprise cannot be based on a superficial and misleading coincidence of orthography in just one language.

Sisterhood can indeed be powerful, but only if the sisters dump 'herstory' and do real history, a history informed by a feminist consciousness that is sophisticated rather than silly and multilingual and multicultural rather than anglocentric. The feminist moment captured in the term 'herstory' reflects certain concerns and debates in the United States in 1970. But if feminist theory is to have any relevance – and I believe it does – it must move beyond the narrow constraints of the thinking of a few white skin-privileged mostly heterosexual middle class US-born English-speaking American academic historians writing 37 years ago. We need to embrace a global feminist consciousness that relates the history of the United States (including that of women in the United States) to history as written in many different languages and understood in many different cultures and time periods. As I see it, history is the story of human beings in this world going back to Sumerian cuneiform and classical Chinese and back still further to the caves of Altamira and Lascaux. History is the story of the lives of the women, men, and others whose stories and lives did not begin in the United States in 1970. So let's ditch 'herstory.' Let's do history as if it really mattered, because it really does.