Revising history to suit one’s purposes is a common tactic for manipulative or ignorant people. Lately though, it’s become increasingly common among people who want to encourage or discourage gender roles or to raise awareness about either feminism or the patriarchy.

For example, recently, someone affiliated with the group known as the MRA’s — Men’s Rights Activists — decided to edit all the parts out of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" that aren’t centered around men.

Uploaded to The Pirate Bay by an anonymous user, the “The Last Jedi: De-Feminized Fanedit” is, according to their own description "basically The Last Jedi minus Girlz Powah and other silly stuff." You might be wondering how this is possible, seeing as the film is still a ways off from its DVD release date, but the intrepid nerdlinger(s) who decided to make this possible were so impatient for a version of TLJwhere boys don’t get [t]old off that they used a dodgy camrip with hardcoded subtitles.

Being neither a man nor a fan of sci-fi, this seems silly to me. Why can’t both men and women be celebrated in a Star Wars film? Alas, it looks petty that men associated with this group not only despise women on earth but in outer space.

Still, the feud continued when someone else responded with some edits of his own.

The resulting film is less than three minutes long and it’s gone viral: Glamour magazine tweeted it was “hilarious.”

First, there is a bit of a leap from science fiction to a tale — albeit also fictional — based on an important world event. Star Wars is about good and evil, but is completely invented, though a perhaps iconic piece of American filmmaking. "Saving Private Ryan," while also fictional — there was no confirmed story about a bunch of soldiers risking their lives to save one man — was also an homage to the approximately 300,000 men who died fighting Axis enemies during World War II.

Second, while both of these editing schemes may be tongue-in-cheek, there is still a hint of revisionist history, particularly with the latter. Women are a part of history as are men. Both have played various roles throughout the spans of time. It’s true, in America, women did not always have equal rights, equal access, or enjoy equal privileges, but that’s largely not the case now. Sure, women don’t appear to be equally present in all situations of life, in all industries at all levels, because they often make different choices regarding work and family.

Women were integral to the World War II effort in many key ways. The Twitter user who made these edits reminded me that some women even died in this effort. Yet it’s a known fact that it was men who stormed Omaha beach, who got their limbs blown off and torsos blasted in half, who watched their fellow brothers-in-arms die in front of their eyes even as superiors demanded they keep fighting, never surrender, and press forward. Because of the way men are wired, to band together as a unit, to support one another even in the face of death, they bravely took on this challenge, some sacrificed their lives, and defeated a cruel, tyrannous enemy.

To edit men out of a film like "Saving Private Ryan" in response to men editing women out of a film like "The Last Jedi" is not only a one-upping gotcha game of gender competition but one where everyone loses. Sure, both sides will say modern art still obfuscates the role women have played in history. The same people claimed "Dunkirk" was sexist because there weren’t many women in that film either. But often art portraying certain parts of history is sexist because that’s how the event happened. Show me a woman whose limb was blown off on Omaha beach and I’ll show you 1,000 more men who suffered the same fate.

Men and women are both integral to society and play different roles which often complement one another. Sure, "The Last Jedi" isn’t nearly as interesting without the women. And without men willing to fight and die during World War II, we’d all be speaking German.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator's Young Journalist Award.

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