![\"Cretan](\"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Cretan-Antartisses.jpg\")
<\/a>When asked who the Greek god of war was, most people will answer \u201cAres\u201d but that\u2019s incorrect. The Hellenes had two gods of war and made a distinction between what type of conflict each oversaw. For wars of conquest in which armies invaded someone else\u2019s home territory, the deity in charge was indeed Ares. For wars of defense, the presiding presence was Athena (as always in those palimpsest myths, the rule\u2019s not absolute: in the Iliad, Athena\u2019s intense liking of Odysseus overrode her formal duties).<\/p>\nThis is directly relevant to the endless natterings in SFF about whether it\u2019s problematic to prominently feature women warriors, especially in the self-labeled \u201crealistic\u201d grittygrotty mode encouraged by the success of George Martin\u2019s Songs of Ice and Fire. One standard defense to this question is to quote names of warrior queens (Boudicca of the Iceni, the Truong sisters, Lakshmi Bai, Laskarina Bouboulina, Nzinga Mbandi, Jeanne d\u2019 Arc), mention women who fought disguised as men and women warrior groups across eras. Frankly, the issue is irrelevant to whether women warriors existed in history and should also be irrelevant to a genre that freely postulates magic and mythical beasts.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s relevant is the fundamental truth that underlies the Athena\/Ares split: women have fought in equal numbers to men in the defense of home territory. That\u2019s why resistance movements always have a healthy percentage of women all the way up the ranks, including executive officers. In fact, if someone looks at the names I listed in the previous paragraph their uniting attribute is that they were all home defenders.<\/p>\n
Many attempt to argue that the term \u201cwarrior\u201d implies special training, implements, ethos, etc. However, Toussaint l\u2019 Ouverture is universally deemed a warrior regardless of his relevant formal credentials. The definition of warrior includes one non-negotiable item: bravery in fighting. Women can be summarily dismissed from this equation only if one limits the definition of \u201cwarrior\u201d to an elite caste whose entire vocation and raison d\u2019 \u00eatre is war. But most women \u2013 and, incidentally, most men \u2013 who fought in resistance movements or defensive wars against invaders and occupiers were not professionals. They were teachers, doctors, craftspeople, factory workers, farmers. Those who were still standing when the fight ended went back to their real occupations with scars and stories handed down the years.<\/p>\n
Both my parents were such fighters. It\u2019s well past time for SFF to absorb the fact that bravery is a universal not particularly high in the Maslow scale nor confined to a chosen few.<\/p>\n Related articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n Is It Something in the Water? Or: Me Tarzan, You Ape<\/a><\/p>\n A Plague on Both Your Houses<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAs Weak as Women\u2019s Magic\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Ain\u2019t Evolvin\u2019: The Cookie Cutter Self-Discovery Quest<\/a><\/p>\n Those Who Never Got to Fly<\/a><\/p>\n Caesars and Caesar Salads<\/a> We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars<\/a><\/p>\n Images:<\/strong> Ad\u00e1rtisses (women guerillas) in WWII Hell\u00e1s. Top, Cretan grandmother and granddaughter<\/a>; bottom, Mountain Fighters, from the Rizosp\u00e1stis archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.” \u2013 Cheyenne saying When asked who the Greek god of war was, most people will answer \u201cAres\u201d but that\u2019s incorrect. The Hellenes had two gods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology-and-culture","category-history","category-science-fiction","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>People who become warriors because they must usually lack the aura of the strutters arraigned in the finery of moran and samurai, Jedi and Rohirrim. At the same time, neither do they present society with the intransingent problems of reintegration, polarization, power differentials. And societies that are not fatally fixated on machismo recognize such bravery. In my own culture, the last stand of Dh\u00e9spo is as celebrated as that of Leon\u00eddhas. The term of my tongue for someone truly brave, pallik\u00e1ri, is neuter and used for everyone whose behavior fits the definition.<\/p>\n
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\nSo, Where Are the Outstanding Women in X?<\/a><\/p>\n