I've mentioned before that there are occasional, although scattered, references to fighting women in various historical sources. Believe I posted some a while back, and thought I'd add these, partly as worthy of note in their right and partly as an exercisae in remembering them.

These are from an article on "Gender and Ethnicity" by Walter Pohl.

"Tales about Sarmation oiorpata, as those fighting women were called, seem to correspond somehow with the archeological evidence, for about one-fifth of weapons found are from female graves."

"After battles with the Huns, dead women had been found on the battlefield", citing Prokopius.

"It seems that among barbarians in antiquity and the early middle ages, fighting women in 'male attire' were not imaginary at all. Barbarian women on the battlefield are prominent in most roman authors who deal with the wars fought against the Cimbri and Teutons, the armies of Ariovistus in Gaul or the Germanic peoples east of the Rhine. Indeed a majority of all available sources about Germanic women before A.D. 238 deal with women at war."

"To contemporaries, the existence of female warriors was attested by their dead bodies found after a battle, which is, for instance, reported from the Gothic raids in the Balkans in the third century. A less-known example is the thwarted attack of Slavs in dug-out canoes along the Golden Horn during the Avar seige of Constantinople in 626: according to Nikephoros, writing about 150 years later, 'among the dead bodies, one could even observe those of Slavic women.'

"Arcehological evidence for women buried with weapons in the early Middle Ages is not as substantial as in the case of the Sarmatians, but it can be found."

"For male authors, women who 'converted their appearance into male habitus', 'put toughness before allure, aimed at conflicts instead of kisses, tasted blood, not lips, sought the clash of arms rather than the arm's embrace, fitted to weapons hands that should have been weaving', as Saxo Grammaticus says about fighting women who once lived in Denmark, adding that they were 'forgetful of their true selves'.

In the Post-Roman kingdoms, female violence was also restricted by legislation. [An] edict of the Lombard king Rothari in 643 stated that...'If a free woman participates in a brawl (scandalum) while men are struggling, and if she inflicts some blow or injury and perhaps in turn is struck and killed', the higher compensation normally required for women does not apply, 'since she had participated in a struggle in a manner dishonourable for women'. There is little doubt that this addition to Rothari's code was based on a case that had actually happened. In the Burgundian code, 'If a woman has gone forth from her own courtyard to fight' and suffers some injury, she forfeits all compensation altogether."

And your point is, contra?

That with extreme indoctrination women can become as stupid as men?

Yeah, like RK, I am not sure of the point you're trying to make. OK, it's interesting historical trivia but one suspects that this wasn't the only reason in your post...

__________________
Unless otherwise specified, I am posting as a regular poster. When I will act as a mod, I'll make sure you're in no doubt.

go girlie terminators!

__________________
The New Topical: current affairs, current events, politics, political, culture, cultural, ethics & economics discussion debate forum.

... of the Bronze Age!

But, hey, I'd rather be killed by this

... than by this:

The plastic works better in one case than the other, if you see what I mean...

__________________
Unless otherwise specified, I am posting as a regular poster. When I will act as a mod, I'll make sure you're in no doubt.

The point is threefold; firstly, that despite claims to the effect that women did not fight historically, there is evidence that they did; and secondly, that this applies even when the mode of combat is hand to hand, which many people believe women are not up to. Third, while this data does exist, it is almost never mentioned, and certainly I've never seen it in a work of general history, which always treat armies as universally male.

Hence it is worth noting that the data does exist, and mentioning it is worthwhile for several reasons; as an object lesson in the limits of historical perception itself, as a contrast to later eras that restricted female participation in war - in fact WWI must have been historically unusual for the low number of women involved - and as a counter to modern arguments about the role of women in the military.

Originally Posted by contracycle

in fact WWI must have been historically unusual for the low number of women involved - and as a counter to modern arguments about the role of women in the military.

Uh, I don't see how a few scattered incidents, stretched over thousands of years, suggests that.

And this "After battles with the Huns, dead women had been found on the battlefield", citing Prokopius." Maybe thats just where they tossed their corpses after they finished raping them?

Or...

Quote:

In the Post-Roman kingdoms, female violence was also restricted by legislation. [An] edict of the Lombard king Rothari in 643 stated that...'If a free woman participates in a brawl (scandalum) while men are struggling, and if she inflicts some blow or injury and perhaps in turn is struck and killed', the higher compensation normally required for women does not apply, 'since she had participated in a struggle in a manner dishonourable for women'. There is little doubt that this addition to Rothari's code was based on a case that had actually happened. In the Burgundian code, 'If a woman has gone forth from her own courtyard to fight' and suffers some injury, she forfeits all compensation altogether."

Translated: If some dumb bitch gets involved in your fight with her man shes free game cause the bitch ought to know better than get involved in a man's business.

Originally Posted by AnonymousIdiotSavant

Uh, I don't see how a few scattered incidents, stretched over thousands of years, suggests that.

And the point is they're not really scattered; the pattern is pretty consistent. Women were almost certainly a minority of combatants, but they were also always there. Frex, women served as sailors in Britains fleet in the C18th and were reported for the Japanese civil war in the Tale of the Heike. There are other examples I have mentioned previously; the Scottish women preachers railed against for standing in the battle line with their husbands and brothers, or the Danish king who said the only way to tell the difference between his male and female warriors was by their longer hair. Jean d'Arc definitely fought, as did Heni Te Kiri Karamu among the Maori.

Female warriors appear in legend as well, like the famous Scathac who taught Cuchulain, but of course as myth the argument is harder to make. We are also familiar with leaders like Boudicca or Tomyris, and while it can't be shown that they actually fought it pretty much beggars belief that in the warrior societies they lead that they didn't.

Furthermore, as the sense of disaproval expressed by male, often clerical writers from whom we obtain the bulk of historical documentation, is so clear, the fact that references are so sparse may be the result of active concealment. These were actions that upset what they perceived as the natural order, and possibly shameful. Ind addition, Roman was expressly and extremely patriarchal, and we are more reliant on Roman documents than any others.

So it can't just be dismissed. Women do fight, have always fought. As I said, you have to do some digging to find the references, but they are there.

Quote:

And this "After battles with the Huns, dead women had been found on the battlefield", citing Prokopius." Maybe thats just where they tossed their corpses after they finished raping them?

It was a battle they lost. And in context, it's not even surprising - the Huns were a multi-ethnic tribal federation, and had recently passed through the same steppe-lands previously inhabited by the Sarmatians, mentioned above, who definitely did have warrior women and formed the basis of the Greek myth about Amazons, and the Massagatae who were lead by Tomyris. Furthermore, the role of horse-archer might be one the minimises the differences in strength between men and women. So it's not at all surprising or implausible that the Hun army contained women - why bother to construct speculations to argue the other way?

Why go to the effort of trying to explain it away? That's precisely how this information gets buried and lost in the first place.

Quote:

Translated: If some dumb bitch gets involved in your fight with her man shes free game cause the bitch ought to know better than get involved in a man's business.

Yes of course. But as always, you don't legislate against something that doesn't happen. The Lombard king clearly had reason to expect that women would involve themselves in violence, and not of the hair-pulling "cat-fight" variety either.

Edited from wikipedia... removed mythical, leadership, etc.

Women in warfare (1750-1799)


* 1757: Sailor "Arthur Douglas" is revealed to be a woman. Her birth-name is unknown.
* 1760s: Hannah Witneg serves in the Royal Marines while disguised as a man from 1756 to 1761. She is noted for serving with "fortitude and valor".[1]
* 1760-1761: A woman serves in the British Marines as "William Prothero".
* November 16, 1776: Margaret Corbin assists her husband in manning the cannons while fighting the British in battle in the American Revolutionary War. When her husband is killed, she mans the cannons alone.
* 1777: Mademoiselle Leverriére fights a duel with a man in France.
* 1780s: Swedish runaway Carin du Rietz becomes a soldier at the royal guard.
* 1781: Margaret Thompson serves in the British Marines under the name George Thompson.
* 1782-1783: Deborah Sampson serves in the American army during the American Revolutionary War while disguised as a man. She is the first known American woman to join the military, the first to fight in combat, and the first to receive a military pension.
* 1787-1807: A woman serves twenty years in the British Marines under the name "Tom Bowling".
* 1788-1790 : After the war between Russia and Sweden, several of the soldiers decorated in the Swedish army are discovered to be women in disguise. One of them is Brita Hagberg, who enlisted in search of her husband; she is given a military pension.
* 1788-1790 : During the Battle of Svensksund, Dorothea Maria Lörsch takes command of a Swedish ship and is revarded with the rank of captain of the Swedish fleet [2].
* 1789: Female revolutionary Anne Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt leads the storming of the Bastille in Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution. She also leads female troops in 1792-1793.
* 1792: Two hundred and eighty women participate in defense of the city of Frauenbrünn in Switzerland.
* 1792: The Albanian woman Moscho Tzavela leads several women in defense of their village against the Turks.
* 1792-1799: Angelique Brulon serves in the French army in Corsica. Although she initially disguises her self as a man, she is eventually allowed to remain openly in her service because of her acknowledged military skill.
* 1793: Suzanne Belair, called Sanité Belair, serves in the armé of Toussaint Louverture in the Haitian Revolution. She was promoted to sergeant, and was executed by the French in 1802. She did not hide her sex.
* 1793: Renée Bordereau disguises herself as a man and fights as a Royalist cavalier in the French Revolution.
* 1793-1800: Therese Figeur serves in the French army.
* 1797: Margaret Catchpole serves in the British Marines as a man.
* 1798: Mary Ann Riley and Anne Hopping serve in the British Marines during the Battle of the Nile against the French outside Egypt.

etc etc....

IIRC, Total War: Rome has "screeching women" as a unit for the Celts, the Germans and the British tribes...

I remember reading something about the siege of Alesia but i think it went the other way - the women were sacrificed...

So I would say "of course, there were some women fighting in barbarian armies and probably forever, everywhere as soon as wars required real mobilisation and/or involved sieges". The points are two-fold, though. They were a minority. And the societies they came from were still barbarically patriarchal - if not to the Roman or Greek extent.

It still doesn't say much about whether we should let women join modern armies combat units per se and how to address the problems that might arise from that fact.

__________________
Unless otherwise specified, I am posting as a regular poster. When I will act as a mod, I'll make sure you're in no doubt.