ONCE WERE WARRIORS

It always amuses me when people protest about the natural pacifism of the “gentler” sex. All right, so, to make a sweeping generalisation, the male of a species does tend to be more for the big aggressive displays. However, given a reason to fight, given something to fight for, and the female of a species with wipe the floor with the males. Threaten her young, threaten her life or her food supply and you had better be very sure of yourself or have a death wish.

Not for nothing does the proverb run “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” As I’ve said many times, we are devious, and we can be ruthless. In fact, denying this is a relatively recent phenomenon. It may not seem so, but for every prohibition against women serving in armies, or fighting or hold public office you can be sure that at least one woman did just that. Prohibition is always reactive, always a case of closing the door on an empty stable.

And before the prohibitions, lived the warriors. The Valkyries were women, and I don’t need to define the word Amazon. There are stories from the Viking times of female Viking warriors fiercer than the men, who reportedly thought they were wolves. The Bacchae were infamously violent, as immortalised by Euripides (his accuracy may be questionable, but it is certain he based his play firmly in the realms of what his audience would find plausible).

The Norse and the Celts certainly had their shieldmaidens, even if we discount the contemporary stories as hysteria. And Boudicca was historically real, vengeful and furious. What is particularly interesting about her is the lack of shock among her contemporary chroniclers at a woman fighting, or leading an army into war. It may not have been the Roman way, but they’d certainly come across the concept among the various people they’d fought.

There are old legends of women Samurai in Japan, and even if they’re fictional it’s hard to imagine whence they came if no women in Japan fought. The Bushido code, which proved such a barrier to understanding between Japan and the Allies in World War 2 (especially when it came to POWs), comes from the Samurai or “bushi” class.

There is a form of kung fu invented by a woman – Wing Chun, whose legend is that a Shaolin nun was inspired by watching a crane and a snake fighting. The very fact she was a Shaolin nun is significant, given that Shaolin monks are famous around the world for their spectacular martial arts displays. (Wing Chun’s founder is also credited with founding/co-fouding four more kung fu styles. Not exactly gentle, then).

So, given this bloody and violent history, is there really any shadow of ground on which to base the idea of women as pacifist?

Yes, women generally choose peace in which to raise their families over war. And boys and young men are more likely to settle their differences with fists and bruises than by words. That doesn’t mean girls don’t use fists and nails and teeth when temper or need overwhelms reason and manners. It’s just not the initial, automatic reaction to every new nuance in the pecking order.

If women are no gentler, no less warlike at need than men, then where on earth does this idea that we are somehow more peaceable come from?

Is it just, as some feminists would have it, a patriarchal construct designed to keep women in their domestic place? Other apparent feminists argue that it’s true, that women are less inclined than men to shoot everyone and invade Austria. Maybe it’s just that it’s not the automatic response to a change in the status quo, but rather just one of the options.

We should be proud that once, we could be warriors – fierce and feared. Maybe we should see ourselves that way again – as more than simply defenders at need. But can I still consider myself a warrior, when I pick and choose my battles? I like to win, so I am unlikely to pitch myself headfirst into a fight I can only lose.

Interestingly, it is from the general maxims of Wing Chun that this advice for warriors comes: “Strike when you should. Do not strike when you should not. Do not be too eager to strike. Do not be afraid to strike. One who is afraid of getting hit will finally be hit. Persistent attacks will surely gain you entry. Staying on the defensive too long will surely get you into trouble.”

And in case I wanted a second opinion, from an unknown samurai, "Only a warrior chooses pacifism; others are condemned to it." Which is intriguingly at odds with the common understanding of the bushido code…

But it seems I can call myself a warrior, even if I do not always choose to fight, preferring to wait until I can fight from a position of devastating strength. In fact, most great historical generals would probably just call that good tactics.

WELL-BEHAVED WOMAN

I have a ring engraved with one of my favourite bumper sticker quotes: “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” And while the odds are against my making history, which, after all, remembers only the few, I can at least aim to make waves.

This should excuse me from being a lady (that is, behaving in a ladylike manner). My mother did her best, but I was never born to be a good girl, let alone a lady.

I never really got the fairytales of my childhood. Yes, I’d have liked Cinderella’s ballgown (we had the Ladybird version, which has a 3-night royal ball, and three different gowns: pink, blue and finally silver-and-gold. I liked the blue one best, never the pink. Was this an early warning signal that I wasn't going to be a conventional good girl?).

Ballgowns are good, and to be the centre of attention was certainly attractive, but the lead-up to that? Domestic drudgery with good grace? You have got to be kidding me. I’m far too impatient, arrogant and subversive for that. In Cinderella’s place, I would have spat in the Ugly Sisters' soup and stirred Stepmother's tea with an unwashed toe. Or something along those lines.

Had I been Rapunzel, I would have cut my own plait off, and attached it to the bed sheets to escape rather than wait for some strange heavy man pull on my hair to climb up and rescue me. I always figured that would be incredibly painful for Rapunzel.

No wonder I preferred Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes versions. What he got so right in those stories was in letting the heroines save themselves. His Snow White doesn't need a prince – she and the dwarves only needed the mirror, with which to make a living gambling. Hardly ladylike, but certainly novel. His Cinderella doesn't go to the ball with her family, but is left home and has a tantrum – which is a far more realistic reaction to the situation. His Red Riding Hood shoots the wolf.

These girls are proactive and don't need a prince, a woodcutter or similar rescuer. They can use their wits to rescue themselves, to determine their own futures, to shape their own destinies.

More recently, Terry Pratchett created Tiffany Aching, teen witch on the Discworld, who (like many of his other female characters) is a formidable force in her own right.

None of these characters is the typical good girl, ladylike damsel of the fairytales, and all are better characters for it. Maybe they don't end up with Prince Charming, but is that really what we want to be telling girls in the 21^st century? That their only purpose in life should be to marry a prince and be his wife? That they must behave like Cinderella, the uncomplaining, compliant drudge?

If we turn away from fairytales and look to facts, the women we remember, the women  whose names survive the ages aren't simpering ladylike princesses. Helen of Troy ran off with her lover, leaving an enraged husband. Dido founded Carthage, using her wits to claim the biggest possible portion of land she could. Cleopatra was a master manipulator and politician – she had to be to rule a nation like Egypt. Boudicca rebelled against Roman arrogance, leading an army against the invading power. These women were far from well-behaved, by the standards of female behaviour of their days. Theirs are, I think, far better stories to tell our daughters and indeed, ourselves. After all, history remembers the remarkable few, the rebels who stand against the prevalent norms and so change the times they live in. And that's definitely a challenge for anyone to aspire to.

MODERN MALAISE

There are no dragons left to slay.

No lands left to explore,

Nothing to conquer, nothing to tame.

No last undiscovered shore.

The great deeds are all done,

And the ballads are all sung.

The last great treasure has been found and spent;

All the heroes are long dead

The adventurers sit at home, content

And the last spell has been said.

The great deeds are all done,

And the ballads are all sung

There is no honour in battle anymore

Even the memory of glory has faded.

There are no causes left to die for.

Even the villains are boring and jaded,

The great deeds are all done,

And the ballads are all sung

I don’t want this Andy Warhol world;

I will pass on my 15 minutes of fame

I would rather leave no mark at all

Than burn so brief a flame

Then be forgotten.

History remembers only the few –

The remarkable, rebellious few.

And these days how to stand apart,

And leave an enduring mark?

There are no monsters left to hunt,

No great deeds left to do.



GIRL ON GIRL- Why women are women’s worst enemy

It is a given that the vast majority of any generation is content to accept the status quo, and indeed, to buy into the dominant paradigm. For women, the trouble is that the dominant paradigm is a misogynist one – and it’s very hard to avoid buying into it.

What, I hear you ask? How can a girl be a misogynist?

The answer is: pretty easily.

Women still don’t generally earn the same wage as their male peers. Granted, most women take career breaks to have and raise children, and this sets their careers back. Women who do take a career break to start a family are often looked down upon by other women as “betraying the achievements of feminism.” Women who choose career over having children, however unsuited to motherhood they know themselves to be, are looked down upon by both women and some men, as “not fulfilling their God-given or biological purpose.”

Men who choose career over marriage and kids are respected as focussed and driven business leaders.

Women are under a lot of pressure physically, to look like the air-brushed Photo-shopped and surgically enhanced models of the magazines and page 3Girls are told almost from birth that men are visual, more visual than women, and finding love is going to be all about how they look.

When this kind of pressure is so constant, it has a water torture effect of insinuating itself into the brain. It’s no surprise girls start to believe what they’re repeatedly told how they should look. And what they’re told about how they should act.

Boys are told that while bad girls are fun, you marry a good girl.

So: the misogynist society is the one in which we all live, in the democratic liberal west, every day. (This is not to say that other cultures aren’t also or even more misogynist, but they are often a lot more upfront about it)

Humans are a social species, a herd animal; and we still have a very strong pack instinct. It is this pack instinct, this innate desire to belong, that truly makes women so dangerous to women.

As children, we want to be part of the cool crowd. With girls, this is where the misogyny inherent in society really starts to show. The good girls, the bullies and the cowards are so busy desperately fitting in, so they won’t lose their status in the group’s hierarchy, they don’t stop to think that maybe different isn’t always a bad thing.

These girls see difference as a threat, and they respond by attacking – generally by bitching, and back-biting. And they’re careful to keep the tenor as only teasing, so their targets have no comeback that doesn’t leave them wide open to the accusation that they just can’t take a joke.

The victims of these whisper campaigns of bullying generally react in one of two directions. They either chop even more pieces off themselves in order to try to correct the perceived faults that make them targets, or they decide it costs them less to be different than to try to fit in, and will often deliberately emphasise their difference – this is where bad girls come from, with their devil-may-care attitude to gossip.

Those who morph are aware of the price they’ve paid to fit in, and they resent those who refuse to. Why should they be allowed to succeed without paying the price these now “good” girls paid? The girls who refuse to change their identities for the sake of belonging to the tribe are the ones who react by becoming even more different… it’s a vicious cycle. It would be nice if good girls ever grew up and left the schoolyard behind.

The trouble with girls buying into the misogynist paradigm – about which they are given very little choice in such an insidiously misogynist culture as ours - is the mess it makes of their own psyches. To be human is to have appetites. To be a good girl is to have no appetites. So good girls have to play mind-games with themselves just to deal with being girls in a social context that devalues that and dehumanises it.

All of which is why Dame Helen Mirren is right when she says female jurors are harsher to rape victims than male jurors. Female jurors want to be thought of as good girls, and therefore arrange themselves on the misogynist party line, to throw stones and vilify the victim as “asking for it.”

Of course, no good girl wants to admit to her own misogyny, so those who speak out are greeted with outrage.

Early feminism, with its bra bonfires, unshaved legs and lack of make-up or fashionable skirts, was expressing itself in very misogynist terms. In a misogynist society, misogynist symbolism is readily understood. But the burning bras and refusal to shave or be a domestic drudge were a way of making women more like men. Thus, feminism became a dirty word. And Laura Doyle was able to be taken seriously, when she should have been laughed out of court. Misogyny, like schoolgirl bullies, is disturbingly good at insidious.

Girls need to stop treating each other based on sexual competition and misogynist constructs of female identity. We all need to treat each other as human first and sexual only when the context demands it.