more evidence of warrior women!
- Thread starter alsih2o
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s/LaSH
First Post
Stormrunner said:There's a Maori legend about a village which was being terrorozed and devoured by a pair of flying-head monsters (similar to vargouilles or penanggalan) who were magically invulnerable to the men's weapons. Then a canoe appears from the southwest, filled with "strong women". Their leader wields a magic throwing weapon that "cuts with a noise like thunder" and returns to her hand. She knocks the heads out of the sky and straddles them, which negates their masculine magic with the female power of her menstrual blood, enabling them to be killed.
Interestingly, the TV show Xena, while nominally set in ancient Greece, is filmed in New Zealand, and features an Amazon wielding a magic throwing weapon that returns to her hand...
Is there a connection? I don't know - but it wouldn't surprise me. The weapon in the legend is never well described - we only know that it throws and returns, and has a sharp edge. Historically, if you look southwest from New Zealand you're looking towards Australia. Gee, an Aussie with a returning thrown weapon - wonder what it could be?
Technically speaking, Aussie is west-south-west from us Kiwis, and then only if you're really far north in New Zealand and aiming for islands off the south coast of the subcontinent. More accurately, it's north-west, and even then over a stretch of water that's as wide as Europe. (All of Europe. London to Moscow.)
However, I hadn't heard that one before; it's interesting (and the menstrual reference is interesting - Maui, the primary demigod hero of Maori myth, dies in a way I won't even mention here).
What I want to know is, Why are warrior women considered so incredibly rare? Personally, I blame Romans (a firmly patriarchal society), but I may be looking at a victim culture rather than the originator...
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
I think people ought to consider the possibility that warrior women were considered incredibly rare because they were, in fact, incredibly rare. I doubt the Romans had much to do with it; what I know of the culture of Greek city-states indicates that they were rather patriarchal societies as well. As were the Medes and the Persians and the Babylonians and the ancient Hebrews for that matter.
Women warriors aren't so rare as to be non-existant. There are stories about women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the American revolution and it wouldn't surprise me if that didn't happen in the War of 1812 and the civil war as well. (It would surprise me if it happened in World War I or World War II but only because I'm pretty sure that the women involved would get as much space as all of the rest of the conflict put together in our history books if we knew of any and I haven't heard anything about any such women). As far as all the reliable history I know of goes however, they are extremely rare in the histories of societies that developed into powerful states in the modern world.
Women warriors aren't so rare as to be non-existant. There are stories about women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the American revolution and it wouldn't surprise me if that didn't happen in the War of 1812 and the civil war as well. (It would surprise me if it happened in World War I or World War II but only because I'm pretty sure that the women involved would get as much space as all of the rest of the conflict put together in our history books if we knew of any and I haven't heard anything about any such women). As far as all the reliable history I know of goes however, they are extremely rare in the histories of societies that developed into powerful states in the modern world.
s/LaSH said:
Particle_Man
Explorer
I think that Quentin Tarantino is putting out a 2 part documentary about some warrior women..."Kill Bill" or something like that... 
reapersaurus
Explorer
hong said:
ing TELL me about it!Jack Reapersaurus says, "Bad Henry! No donut!"
Henry, I'll save myself the creation of a thread in Meta and the Report This Post and just tell you here (and in the splitted-off thread) this:
If you're going to split off a thread, please don't misrepresent my post by not telling the reader how it came to be.
By starting an OT thread in my name, and only posting an out-of-context statement of mine, it really looks different than was intended, and I don't appreciate that little move.
I understand why you did it, but next time, please add in a Moderator's note about it, at the least.
Elder-Basilisk said:
No undercover warrior-women in WW1/WW2 because by then armies had brought in medical exams for recruits, and possession of a vagina disqualified the recruit. There were lots of female combat troops in the WW2 Soviet army, especially tank units - women's smaller size and greater stamina* makes them well suited to the cramped conditions of WW2 tanks.
Leaving aside cultural prohibitions, women warriors have tended to be rare because women have less testosterone than men. This means that women tend to be less aggressive and less likely to seek the warrior role. Also women have smaller body size and, most importantly, a lower muscle-mass to body-weight ratio, so a 150lb woman will tend to be not as strong as a 150lb adult male. In a pre-industrial society with muscle-powered weapons this limits the effectiveness of female fighters - only a minority of women can contend with the typical male adversary strength-for-strength. It's notable that the semi-mythical Amazons' weapon was the Scythian shortbow, which could be used as effectively by a moderately strong woman as by a typical man. Unlike in D&D, muscle mass affects both Strength and toughness in the sense of ability to withstand physical damage from wounds - muscle sheathes and protects bone. I remember training in the army reserve, it was commented that the female soldiers were much more often injured in training with broken bones, because they had less muscle protecting their bones. Mind you, there were several female trainees physically superior to yours truly!
In industrial societies, muscle mass is less important for most military roles, though it still has a place for combat infantry especially. By contrast, I think the _relative_ lack of aggression of the average woman vs average man will tend to keep female soldiers a minority in most cultures. That said, sf Power Armour - perhaps cramped and uncomfortable, like the WW2 tanks mentioned above - might well favour the female physique.
*In D&D terms women have less hit points than men, but a higher Fortitude save.
Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
S'mon said:
Interestingly, men who have lower levels of testerone are far more aggressive than men with normal or greater levels. It's one of the things you can find out if you know people who work in psychiatric hospitals.
The only public, historical, and obvious example of this, that I know of, was Hitler. He certainly gave people with a single testicle a bad rep as public officials.
The American civil war was the first war in which women were segregated out from the lines and military formations. There are theorists who believe that the lack of proper camp followers was a direct contribution to the horrific rates of disease and privation that attended civil war armies.
Medieval mercenary companies considered their women to be essential components of the company, and medieval ladies had just as much right to expect obedience from their militaries as their husbands did. St. Louis's Queen commanded the Crusading forces in Egypt when he was captured and his occupying troops before that. Eleanor of Aquitane was a brilliant military/political strategist.
Traditionally, sort of, you really encourage young men to enter armies because they aren't as useful as everyone else in the society, they tend to be fit, trainable, can be made to obey insane commands, and represent a danger to the rest of the social order. Military service often serves as a means of training/culling them to better fit the social order.
You don't, traditionally, need to go through that sort of effort with women. And even bad women are comparatively easy to integrate into the social order.
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