Amazons

"A word about the title of this book. The British traveler Richard F. Burton called Dahomey 'this small Black Sparta' for its militarism and subordination of the individual to the state. Its amazons resembled the women of Sparta in one respect: their bodies were hardened from childhood by physical exercise. Footracing, wrestling and spear-throwing were sports they probably shared; the Greek girls also threw the discus. (The African girls were more demure: they did not compete naked in public.) Spartan women kept in shape to breed male warriors, Dahomean amazons to kill them.
  Here, then, is the amazons' story."

(Amazons of Black Sparta : The Women Warriors of Dahomey, from the Introduction.)


Amazons of Black Sparta is an utterly fascinating book, certainly a must-read for anyone who frequents this blog. In this well-written, erudite account, Stanley Alpern takes us to a time (not that long ago) and place where traditional notions about gender are turned completely on their head and exposed for the sham that they are. Here you will learn about women who were the elite soldiers of a kingdom's army, and among the most feared soldiers on an entire continent. These women warriors were indeed formidable, and the professional soldiers who fought against them didn't hesitate to make that clear in their reports.

This book is a gold mine of gender-stereotype-demolishing facts. Perhaps chief among these, and spotlighted in the excerpt above, is how the Dahomey warrior women built their bodies, starting from a young age, into lethal weapons through intense physical training; observers frequently noted the Amazons' solidly muscled frames and superior strength, and even conceded that the women warriors of Dahomey were more powerful than their male counterparts. That translated to the battlefield—the ultimate test—where the Dahomey warrior women consistently showed themselves to be superb fighters, easily the equals of the men they fought alongside and against.

Moreover, the stories of the Amazons' skill, bravery, and perseverance in the face of often insurmountable odds will amaze you. They truly were remarkable women. It will be good for more people to learn about them, and Amazons of Black Sparta serves that purpose well.

But there's a dark side to this book too, though it's no fault of the author's. Life isn't always pretty, and the world of the Dahomey warrior women starkly reminds us of that. Dahomey was, in fact, a totalitarian, war-making state with ties to slavery and human sacrifice. We see also throughout the book European colonialism for what it was: a horrible, corrupting influence on the African continent. And it should come as no surprise that racism sometimes rears its ugly head in the comments of white observers.

The Amazons, of course, had their faults as well. The book doesn't gloss those over either. Yet you never lose the feeling that these women were special. Often expected to do the impossible, they marched proudly off into battle when certain death awaited many of them. It's hard not to admire the Dahomey Amazons, even knowing they could be ruthless at times.

The book comes with ample notes, bibliography, and index. It would be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in African history, military history, gender studies, or Amazon feminism. I can safely say that you won't find many books that are as eye-opening as this one, or as well-written.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has an article on Amazon feminism. It starts out so:

Amazon feminism is dedicated to the image of the female hero in fiction and in fact, as it is expressed in art and literature in the physiques and feats of female athletes, martial artists, and other powerfully built women, and in gender-related and sexual orientations.

Later it says:

Amazon feminism is concerned about physical equality and is opposed to gender role stereotypes and discrimination against women based on assumptions that women are supposed to be, look or behave as if they are passive, weak, and physically helpless.

(Accessed June 28, 2007; see also: Amazon Connection)

I think that explains it well enough. And it makes perfect sense, too. Indeed, gender is a much more nebulous concept than many people realize, and feminine comprises a spectrum, not a lone, distorted ideal.

Are there differences between men and women? You bet. But society often works to exaggerate and harden those differences. So what is, at best, a statistic in nature (the average woman not being as strong as the average man) gets perverted into a misguided absolute (physically powerful women are considered aberrant and frowned upon).

The pressure on women to conform to this artificial standard has been immense, and it has been going on for a long, long time now. We really don't know the extent to which women have been and still are held back by it, but no doubt it's considerable.

However, now with the relaxing—though there is still a ways to go—of superficial, outdated social mores and standards in liberal societies over the last thirty years, we're starting to see what women can accomplish in the athletic arena and just how physically powerful they can be. In virtually every sport, including strength and combat sports, women are competing and performing at higher levels and in greater numbers every year, already surpassing what could only have been imagined thirty years ago.

That's not to say that women haven't demonstrated their athletic prowess in the past; it's just been downplayed or ignored altogether.

For example, there were female athletes in ancient Greece, and Spartan women in particular were prized for their athleticism and strong physiques. We know from ancient sources that freeborn women in Sparta were expected to exercise just as strenuously as the men, and they competed often in athletic events and tests of strength (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 14.1-4; Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1.3-4).

And even at a time when it would seem social mores were solidly against them, strongwomen like Vulcana thrived, wowing audiences and performing feats of strength that were astounding at the time (and are still worth noting today).

So yes, the female athlete is as natural as the male, and just as worthy of our respect—perhaps even more so. That is Amazon feminism in a nutshell, and what this blog is here to call attention to.

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