How often do you think about the Roman Empire

There's a tiktok trend happening now where we ask the men in our lives how often they think about the Roman Empire. Typically they answer multiple times a week, more than you'd expect.

There are so many articles on what this means for men (specifically American men, because the trend is obviously dominated by Americans). Some speculating its because its a time where men had more power and dominated, some say that the impacts of the period have effected so much of our culture its impossible to ignore it, and one article even implies that the younger generation are turning into "history channel dads".

Unfortunately this mostly harmless trend has stemmed a new trend of speculating what the equivalent of the Roman Empire is for women. This new trend is just another example of tiktok users veiws on woman being infantalising and harmful to the progress of the feminist movement.

The overwhelming majority of "our Roman Empire" videos have been about

• interpersonal relationships

• pop culture

• celebrities

A few I've seen over and over are ex best friends, Little women (2019), A LOT of videos on Taylor Swift, and speculations on the relationship between Pheobe Bridgers, Paul Mescal, and Daisy Edgar Jones.

The only topics I've seen that are even in the same field are The Salem witch trials and the life of St Joan of Arc, and unfortunately I've only seen these once.

Women aren't presenting themselves as equal to men despite being equally as smart, smart enough for the most prominent classicist in the world being a woman, Mary Beard.

This isn't to say women should be thinking about history all the time, I think it's an odd phenomenon that so many men are thinking like this, but to deliberately imply that you only think about topics viewed as lesser is doing more harm than anything.

I do think that the trend feeds into itself and its more likely than not that men dont all think about the Roman Empire constantly, but instead think about their own interests that are unique to them. And women do the same with equally as complex and researched interests.