We Have Always Fought - an amazing article on the history of women warriors
We Have Always Fought - by Kameron Hurley
This is an article everyone should read, on the history of women who fight. It's very well written - it's witty and entertaining rather than boring and pedantic - but it's chock full of information that everyone who is in the least bit interested in fighting, battle and/or warfare really should know.Even if you think you know it already - read it! I was a war-gamer, and read numerous fiction and nonfiction books about the history of fighting, but this had information in it that made my jaw drop.
13
Comments
It is a given that almost everything ever known to have happened has been forgotten, and we accept this. Who cares what you ate for breakfast 13 years ago? Not even you, and thus we simply do not even try to record it. We see no value in remembering a fact, so it disappears from our conciousness, yet any anthropologist, sociologist or historian would consider Faust's bargain for knowledge of the tedius daily life of a human being long dead. And remember! This is the type of knowledge most people care nothing for today! So, just how valuable are the bigger truths then? The things anyone would love to know; what was Jesus' actual life like, or Mohammed, or Moses? Those 3 are from Western Religion, but there are also political figures, great artists, personal ancestors and even the reprehensibles of history, the Blue Beards, Bathory, and so on. What did they think and feel? What precisely did they do, and of course, why did they do what they did? We can never truly know all the details, yet we know even the banalities of daily life could tell us so much, perhaps change the world even? Perhaps indeed!
So, what are we left with? I like the term I first heard through Radtafarianism, "His Story", the White Mans story. Should we believe this nameless, faceless White Man of History? What are his bias', how self-interested is His Story? And even more absurd, how has His Story changed when His Old Story became inconvinient!
I think this is the issue, as facts that become inconvenient cease to be facts in His Story, leaving everyone but him with a progressively shorter end of the metaphorical stick. In the case of women, my personal theory is that the paradigm shift has been almost continuous: accomplishments of women are forgotten, explained away as abberarions or reimagined until they become a parody. The irony creeps in to slap us though during the more demanding periods in history, when there have always been women that stepped up. Recent examples include women joining the war effort in the 2 World Wars, filling ably the roles of men, before being rather rudely shoved aside. In the past, when people werent as fat or tall, the size difference between men and women was much less substantial, and just like in Mulan, they could disguise themselves as men and fight wars... and that, remember is in the more repressive societies. This occured during the American Revolution, and probably every war that has occured. In more permissive societies, including oddly enough feudal Japan, there were women Samurai, and many were considered substantially better warriors than their Samurai husbands! Yet, when WW2 came, Japan had become a part of His Story, and women were certainly not seen as warriors. How can an entire population of intelligent, civilized people disregard its own past? How has His Story changed history?
I think I am starting to drift around the topic a bit, so I'll say that was a very enjoyable read. Much obliged @kiwidoc for posting!
The number one reason people change history is because they are trying to make the past fit a preconceived notion of not only the present but what they would like the future to be. If you cannot tolerate stating the facts of things that happened in the past then you don't *deserve* to have a future.
@MathSorcerer I confess it, I'm a psychiatrist, so I've done a lot of reading about individual memory, group memory and perceived reality. I believe the number one reason people change history is that they are people! Most of the time it isn't deliberate. People can't help it - we unconsciously change our own memories all the time, we rely way too much on other people's memories and we don't recognise that this happens. There is a reason police and forensic people say the worst evidence comes from an eye witness!
...
Why just today a women hit me with a frying pan.
...
Bad jokes aside. Insightful link. Not sure on the Llama references. They confused me.
Is this more a problem over the pond?
In germanic mythology or almost completely destroyed history (thanks to the church) there were warrior priestesses who helped the men during battles too. There are many other female related tales in our history but it´s realy hard to sort out all the biased BS. written by the clergy man and their fellow servants.
But maggi Thatcher is not a warrior... she was a murderous criminal in the eyes of many irish people who only wanted to be free. Thatcher never went INTO war, she just gave bloody orders! Thats a big big difference!
ps.
And i can prove that this stupid male god is "invented" and thats it. Invented by mentaly retarded and complex ridden males! It´s even in the religious books that HE is invented if you want to know the truth!
In the first chapter of genesis where "adam" and eve is created... the original text tells it differently... so why did they changed that?... very hard to know right... let US make man in OUR image. Where man was not male but humanoid and ready to be reproductive... just one thing people never got in that fakery of creation!
Are you familiar with African history? It isn't taught very much, so most who are aware of it only know of some very specific aspects, primarily what is significant to the West. Let us ignore for a moment they why, and move to some examples. One famous aspect of Rastafarianism is, as I have mentioned, is that history as presented is eurocentric. One of their more interesting arguments is that history does not recognize any significant African cultures or empires. It isnt widely taught to Americans and Europeans, but central Africa was substantially wealthier and more civilized than Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages.
When monarchs and nobility from Africa visited, they found the barbarous Europeans dirty, poor and profoundly uneducated. These visitors were actually so wealthy that their traveling gold was sufficient to disrupt local economies everywhere they visited! I would expect that a vastly wealthy and civilized sociey would be something we hear about, but instead these Empires were simply not recorded. Guess what? Over centuries, people deliberately forgot these visitors, and their Empire, eventually going so far as to state that Africa had never achieved civilization! You are probably aware that this was a very significant excuse during the 'colonization' of Africa, as well as during the periods when Africa was the primary source of slaves: Europeans were performing a service for Africa by bringing Civilization to the uncouth savages. Do you see it? Facts become inconvinient, and after time, the record is simply 'trusted', despite being inaccurate. Eventually, this omission becomes history, and it became scceptable to think of humans as animals.
Another example, simpler by far, the 'discovery' of the New World. Well, first, who discovered it? Certainly not Columbus! The land to the west of Europe was known to scholars of his day, yet these scholars suddenly disregard Vinland (which appeared on some maps) and all other Pre-Columbian visitors. Even until quite recently, anything Pre-Columbian was considered academic heresy, yet academia had previously known that Europeans had already been to the Americas. There are even scholars now that believe there is evidence of Europeans visiting the Americas long before the Vikings. So, what happened here? Note, I didnt even mention the foolishness of the premise of discovering an already populated continent!
As a very simple example, examine the history of the conquests of the South and Meso-Americans. Extremely developed societies were systematically destroyed, and most of their history literally expunged, as their relics were either melted down for their precious metals, or burned. It is an interesting coincidence that Europeans immediately declared these native populations to be savages, and like Africa, proceeded to excuse their atrocities as 'bringing civilization'. Facts changed, and eventually most Europeans were astounded to hear of wonders like Macchu Picchu! Savages built this?
Back to the story of women, which is the primary topic, a European example would be the traditions of the Celts. Women warriors were common and equal to men, yet even contemporaries downplayed this fact. Why? Perhaps because the Greco-Roman civilizations that wrote the 'history' our scholars studied, and the civilizations that followed were not egalitarian societies, they deliberately omitted this rather significant aspect of history. Suddenly, other than isolated events, women throughout European history have been reduced to homemakers. More recently, imagine the surprise of scholars to find graves of female warriors!
Do you see the shaping? Quick question if not: which country is by international agreement the legal aggressor of the first world war? I wonder how common this trickery occured in the past.
@NWN_babaYaga I never have found much real evidence that backs up the 'gaia religion'. The study of gender oppression in pre-classical civilization hasnt been very successful at proving that the 'craddle' civilizations (mesopotemia, turkey, Egypt etc) were not by and large patriarchal from the beggining. I've seen the ancient idols, but these do not contradict the interpretation that these werent more of an oppressive 'holy incubator'. Certainly many cultures have been egalitarian, but by and large I do not agree that the 'craddle of civilization' was ever remotely matriarchal. Feel free to post your information!
I'd say the French have the most warrior women to brag about with Joan of Arc and Margaret of Anjou (married Henry VI but was born, raised and educated in France)
The first mention has God creating male and female at the same time, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
The second has God create man, then take a rib from Adam and create Eve. "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Woman is not created until Genesis 2:21-22.
Additionally, these are not compatible, because in the first account, the Days of Creation are given. Man is created on the sixth day. Whereas in Genesis 2, it clearly states that the action is happening on "The day that the Heavens and Earth were created", which, in Genesis 1, happens on the third day. These directly contradict each other. That's proof enough that the Bible isn't a divine word of a god. Q.E.D. You'd think that an actual, real God would be able to remember when he or she or it created humankind. And if God only created Adam and Eve, where did their sons, Cain and Seth, get their wives from?
You also have people saying that the creation of men and woman on the sixth day was a separate creation, and that this is where Cain and Seth's wives came from. Neither is really compatible with Christian belief, as they hold that all people are descended from Adam and Eve (religiously, anyway). Which means Cain and Seth would have had to marry their own (Unnamed and unmentioned) sisters, making humanity the children of actual incest. No matter which way you slice it, it kinda stinks. (People who claim Cain and Seth married their sisters say that it wasn't against God's Laws at the time, which makes it okay, but that's still kind of repellent- and God says that he's not a man, to change his mind, which implies that if God thinks incest is bad NOW, it also means it would have been bad THEN. It's a Catch-22.)
History suffers from a problem that most sciences do not--everyone, especially researchers with impressive academic credentials, has a lens through which they filter the facts. No, no the "who, what, when, and where" but the "why" is *always* slanted for one reason or another. For every scientific paper which concludes "x happened because of a, b, and c and this resulted in d, e, and f" there will be another paper which concludes "no, x happened because of m and n, not a, b, or c, and this resulted in u and v rather than d and e"--even the researchers with sufficient knowledge do not agree on the "why". It is for this reason that I tend to focus on the "who, what, when, and where" and don't get too involved in the "why". Yes, we need to know why things happened but if we adhere to the wrong person's analysis then our conclusions and projections are, themselves, incorrect.
On a related topic, wild re-tellings of history such as "Christopher Columbus was a mass-murderer" are merely more examples of trying to swing the pendulum too far back the other way. He was not a mass-murderer; rather, he was a man with a vision to look for quick routes to India and China for trade purposes and got a little lost. He wasn't even on the mainland of North America, only some islands in the Carribbean. For decades schoolchildren in the United States were taught that he discovered America in 1492; why this was ever taught is unknown to me because even in the 19th century we knew that Vikings and Irish explorers had already been to the coast of present-day Canada centuries before Columbus--there were settlements discovered and rune stones unearthed as far south as Oklahoma. Also, most American History classes start in 1620 at Plymouth Rock, which baffled me even in the 8th grade and prompted me to ask "what about the Spanish settlements in Florida which had already been there for a century by then?". That didn't go over too well, let me tell you.
You asked about the legal aggressor for WWI. Most historians will tell you "Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia in July 1914 as a result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand" and thus the blame is put onto Serbia...but that isn't, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. The Archduke was assassinated in June so why wait a full month to declare war? No, all the major powers had been sizing each other up for at least a decade before 1914 hostilities broke out--everyone was itching for a fight to prove themselves as the top military power in Europe. Austria-Hungary had, itself, annexed portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the previous decade so the case can be made that they are the actual perpetrators. *shrug* It all depends upon the spin of the person analyzing the situation.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, history books are written by the winners when conflicts occur. This results in a perpetuation of "we were the good guys and they were the bad guys" when, in fact, *every* nation on Earth has, at some point in its past, been the bad guys. Slavery, mass murder, genocide--everyone is guilty depending upon what century it is.
(what is it with me lately? that is the second time in the last week I have referenced that song. not here, but on another forum where I mod the current events/politics sub-forum)
Is anyone else interested in the points he made about the psychology of shared "memory" and shared "reality." I thought the llama story was the best example I've seen explaining how this works without getting into serious technicalities, and heavy jargon. It isn't really the Jungian thing about a shared, racial unconscious, it's more about how our brains organise the chaos of information they get assaulted by every day into coherent and easy to understand stories and rules about how the world works. We build these stories and rules in groups, not on our own.
Also the more times our brain runs down the same set of rails, the stronger that track becomes, and the harder it is to deviate from it. For example, a person (lets call her Jane) did something mildly embarrassing and humorous as a child. Their family trots out the funny story at every family gathering, till it becomes a tradition to do so. Over the years the story gradually gets more embellished because that makes it funnier, and everyone loves a good laugh. Like a game of Chinese Whispers the story becomes increasingly different, However Family members are absolutely convinced that the new version is the truth and would be very offended if you suggested they were lying to themselves and to others.
Meanwhile Jane isn't just sitting in the corner and blushing - she comes up with a story of her own ... a little white lie that makes the story just as funny but without making her look like a total idiot. At every wedding, Christmas dinner and Easter get together she trots out this nice little white lie. Over the years it becomes more and more real, until it is no longer a lie. She really does remember doing things that way ... hell, she can probably tell you what flavour of ice-cream was involved!
In both sides of this little story, people have laid down new memories, but they are remembering something that didn't happen. They can even remember things associated with the "memory" like the smell, a song on the radio, or the emotions they were feeling at the time this event happened ... but in truth it never did happen.
Now that's just a simple. small change in "reality" experienced by a small group who share the same small family sub-culture. It's so easy for larger groups and cultures to make much larger changes in "reality" without ever realising that it's happening, and without ever deliberately lying.
So your absolutely right @Booinyoureyes ... She didn't fight at all : )
Godiva fought with 25 in her charms stat. Totally obliterating all opposition. The taxes were dropped. No one with a long sword could touch her! You use what weapons you have...
Women have always, always fought. Just not in a manly way. Although I bet Boudicca could all give us a kicking : )
If she defended the chocolate from my horde of hungry nieces last Easter I would totally count it.
That's kind of a big deal. *nods sage-like*
Post-tour interviews were conducted after only one month and by then people were already starting to fill in details: they knew what the officers looked like, knew what they were doing, and one guy even recalled that one officer pointed a gun in his direction!
I know that many societies had an oral tradition of passing down history via stories and song but this makes us wonder just how effective that system of recording history could possibly be--there is no way that an epic poem could remain unaltered by telling and retelling it over and over. It has to change at some point as people input their own little embellishments.
http://www.askmen.com/top_10/entertainment/top-10-legendary-female-warriors_2.html
And then there is Queen Tomyris of the Massegetai, who King Cyrus of Persia offered to marry to gain her Kingdom. She declined, and it came to war. Cyrus tricked the portion of the army led by her son, defeated and killed him. In response, Tomyris called her armies and rolled over the Persians like a tidal wave, leading to the death of Cyrus.
Queen Shamsi/Samsi of Arabia, who fought against King Tiglath Pileser III. They fought, she lost and had to pay him tribute, along with her kingdom.
The Trung Sisters of Vietnam, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, who raised an army of 36 female generals and fought to drive the Chinese out of their homeland. Trung Trac was raised to rulership and became Trung Vuong, or "She-King Trung", but ultimately, they were unsuccessful and committed suicide to keep themselves out of Chinese hands.
Vishpala, a female ruler mentioned in the Rig Veda, lost a leg and was fitted with a "Limb of Iron" to help her keep up the fight (The First mention of a limb replacement).
They have also found a cuirass made for a female warrior (with boobs, yes) at Haute Mame in the Netherlands.
And remember "The Immortals", that bunch of Elite Persian fighters? They were commanded by a woman, Pantes Arteshbod, back in Circa 540 BCE.
The Amazons, of course, were actually real and based on the Parthian tribes. Their women riders have been found with graves filled with bows, swords and other implements of war, as well as jewelry and mirrors. Jewelry and mirrors are considered purely feminine objects when found in graves and arms are traditionally male ones. Needless to say, male archaeologists had to adjust their world views a bit.
Here's a picture said to be the Haute Mame Cuirass. Tried to find a bigger pic, but couldn't. Sorry!
Here's another pic, purported to be of the same armor:
I love how they tagged this armor "Probably ceremonial" Because, of course, women don't fight, therefore they don't need to wear armor… so why would they need *ceremonial* armor if they didn't fight to begin with?
And the best thing I saw when looking for "Female historical armor":
I am unsure if you have acknowledged my point about the revised history of Africa, edited quite liberally to present Africans as uncivilized savages, and thus clearing the way for slavery and colonization. While it is true that the internet provides plenty of information, it also makes the problem worse, as much of that information is biased, misleading and blatantly inaccurate. One merely needs to look up some of the septic sludge hate groups spew as facts to see reality being misrepresented. There are holocaust deniers and unrepentent racists, and they all love the internet. I doubt they bring many to their side, but the young, unwise and unhappy are all vulnerable. So, as an example, how would you teach your children to tell truth from lie in print? I'm of the opinion its easier to teach them of how lies have been used by people in the past versus trying to teach them what I think you are suggesting.
I can't agree that the 'who, what, where, when' portion is anymore trustworthy than the why! In the examples I already presented, things other than 'why' have certainly been deliberately misrepresented. Nor do I think history is really alone with his problem in academia, just an easy example. Mainstream science eventually self-corrects, but individuals are often intransient! Einstein was never a fan of quantum physics, for example. But I digress, and stand by my examples. Each was or became accepted, despite known inaccuracies. I admit not everything is inherently false and manufactured, but accepting the possibility that every fact could be untrue is pretty important to study history. I dont see how else to make the falsehoods stand out than to question the lot.
My example of Columbus should be taken seperately from that of the conquistadors. Columbus discovers a populated land he already knew existed, that even map makers had heard of, so why were children ever taught he did discover it? Perhaps because it would give more legitimacy to any claims Spain would make later to territory or trade routes?
You seem to have ignored the example of the conquest of the New World, the atrocities of the conquistadors and other Europeans. In truth, the behaviour was little better further north, but in the case of the conquistadors, a priority was to eradicate the recorded history of the natives. Doesnt it seem significant to you that the extensive records of central and south America were deliberately targeted? The goal was to change the past of the natives, by divorcing them from it. History helps inform the future, and by having no history, the people were made less civilized. Poverty, disease and oppression finished the task, until they no longer had civilization. A bit like the old philosophical question 'if a tree falls, and nobody witnesses, did it make a sound', expunging the record allows time to obscure it completely.
Heh, American history has lots of examples of what I am trying to say, and the arrival of settlers is just one of many. How much are Americans taught about the Trail of Tears? The 'kill the Indian, save he man' policy? The Florida example is very good though.
I asked about the legal aggressor for a specific reason actually; it was, in fact, Germany. To say this was a blunder of colossal proportions isnt quite sufficient, since this was the pretext the winners used to punish Germany after the war. Huge reparations, loss of land, humiliating demilitarization all made the rise of facism quite predictable. By official, legal history the complex causes of WW1 were changed to a more simple (and expedient!) story, an untrue one. By this time of course the emergence of media had made this old trick useless, but one cannot help but wonder how often official history has been dictated by the winner. Thats not just the 'why' I think! Even recently, the Georgia conflict with Russia is a good example of this, and suggests our media has grown into a tool of the establishment in some cases. The facts of the situation were poorly reported, so that most Westerners were unaware that Russia had sanctioned peacekeeping forces in the two regions, and despite a ceasefire being recently agreed, Georgian forces attempted an offensive. This would not be tolerated by any Western power, yet the West demands Russia ignore deaths of its peacekeepers caused by another country's military. My point however isnt whether or not Russia over reacted, but that media sold an extremely misleading story to help generate hostility towards a country.
This same reshaping has been key to the structural oppression of women, which is why the fascinating article that started the discussion we are having!
You are also correct in that you cannot perform a quick Internet search, click on the first two or three links that show up, and be satisfied that you found reliable, trustworthy information. Although the Internet allows access to the greatest wealth of easy-to-reach information we will ever have (at least, until whatever replaces the Internet comes along) it also allows for the greatest wealth of misinformation imaginable. It was only in the last couple of weeks that China blocked any/all website or domain referencing Tiananmen even in passing--they would like for us all to forget about that little incident.
The conquistadors did their jobs a little too well. They wiped out Central and South American native civilization histories so thoroughly that even today we still cannot correctly translate what they managed to leave behind. I would like to think that collectively we know better than to do that now but I am not going to bet any money on it.
Our kids definitely know about the Trail of Tears. Their great-grandmother was half Cherokee.