Amazons are as Mythical as Centaurs III
Continuation of a previous rant.
Andrew Klavan, international best selling author and Edgar Award Winner, wit, pundit, and man of letters, criticized a television show for portraying a female swordsman in a medieval-flavored fantasy show as being able to combat trained soldiers, when, in real life, a woman in pitched battle with a sword against a man would lose one hundred percent of the time.
Mr Klavan was offered rebuttals of various degrees of persuasiveness:
The best rebuttal, and by “best” I mean most risible, was in the comment that said women have been carrying swords into combat for thousands of years.
The stupidest rebuttal, and by “stupidest” I mean the least likely to fool the unwary, is merely to denounce the motive of any who state the fact that women cannot compete with men in medieval combat, without addressing the issue of whether the statement is true or false. (Even taken in its face, I am not sure why saying women are feminine is misogyny, whereas saying women are masculine is feminism.)
The worst rebuttal, and by “worst” I mean the least honest, were those who argued that since dragons and unicorns and hippogriffs and other mythical creatures are never denounced as unrealistic in fantasy stories, therefore Amazons of Themyscira (or Paradise Island, take your pick), the superhuman daughters of the war-god, magically granted the ability to fight equally with menfolk, should not be denounced as unrealistic n fantasy stories.
Those who say this, it must be noted, do not join Klavan in saying female swordsmen are as unreal as dragons. They say the opposite: because Amazons are unreal, therefore woman swordsmen able to defeat swordsmen in combat are real. The logic is, shall we say, somewhat elliptical.
Please note that Mr. Klavan did not say anything about the artificially formalized environments of a duel, or of sports fencing, or of historical re-enactments, as all of theses, in one way or another, hinder and deter the vehemence of the violence employed; nor did he say anything about a young, fit woman attacking untrained recruits, unarmed prisoners, the blind, the halt, the lame, the old and likewise nothing about young and fit women armed with swords mugging infants sleeping in the nursery.
Please note also that, when calculating percentages, or when speaking for rhetorical effect, one rounds up. So “one hundred percent of the time” means “less often than 99.5%” so if a female swordsman beat a man in melee only once in every two hundred and one combats, Klavan’s statement is still good. In logic, a single exception will defeat a categorical and universal statement, but it requires an overwhelming number of exceptions to contradict a general statement.
We can take Klavan’s statement as a general statement. Those who wish to argue that the number of female swordsmen able to routinely defeat swordsmen is not zero, but is an infinitesimal number hard to distinguish from zero, engage in pettifoggery.
Let us assume by “one hundred percent of the time” he meant to exclude unique events, miracles, and that time Britomart defeats Artegall in Satyrane’s tournament. Call it “More than 99% of the time.”
If a female swordsman in pitched battle were only defeated by swordsman 99% of the time or less, then history would show all female squads of fighters beating their male counterparts one time in every hundred battles or more.
There is no such historical record.
There are historical records of female war leaders, or spiritual leaders on the battlefield, such as Semiramis or Joan of Arc. There is no evidence that they defeated armed men in melee.
There are patchy stories of females thrown into combat by desperate barbarians, such as Scythians, in times of emergency, or women dressing as soldiers for ceremonial rites, but, again, no record of any of them defeating an equal number of males in combat one time or more in each one hundred clashes.
There are records, or, at least folk tales, of camp followers dressing up as drummer boys, or manning a cannon whose gun crew was dead, or other rare, one-off events, as unusual as David killing Goliath with a pebble.
It is instructive to see the furor this clear, conspicuous, glaring, indisputable, obvious, overt, palpable, patent, perceivable, perceptible, plain, pronounced, self-evident, straightforward, undeniable, and unmistakable fact of the absurdity of female swordsmen, pikemen, spearmen, or bowmen in combat.
Women generally lack the psychology necessary to chop into shrieking flesh to break bones in sprays of blood and send guts unrolling like spaghetti across a weeping victim’s lap. (We would all like to think that psychology is not influenced by brain chemistry, which is determined by hormone balance which is determined by sex, but our materialist friends think otherwise.)
Because men are stronger, they generally have explosive speed that is greater, and can put more power behind the stroke. A man who particularly can not tense up, stay relaxed when chopping or being chopped, so he can unleash more strength in the form of greater speed, will have the advantage. The muscle constitution of men is particularly built for this.
Men have far greater grip strength than women. Forearm strength is crucial to prevent the blade from turning during contact, and hitting with the flat.
Men have greater bone mass and body mass. The big man can simply take more damage. The women lacks bone density and has less lean muscle. A muscular man can take a blow from a blunt weapon, a poorly timed stroke, or a turned blade, whereas the softer tissues of a woman will actually channel the blow into her bones, which are thinner and more easily broken.
The strength and mass may not be crucial when fencing on a strip with epee, but in a real battle the ability to knock a foe off his feet, while keeping one’s footing, is crucial, and depends more on size than on skill.
If skill could override the factors of size, strength, muscle mass, heart size, muscle constitution, adrenaline, testosterone, upper body strength, grip strength and so on, than (1) sports such as wrestling, boxing and mixed martial arts would not be divided into weight classes, and they certainly would not be divided by sex and (2) there would be historical reports of at least one battle or fray in a hundred being won by armed women, whereas history reports not one.
Finally, one cannot believe in the feasibility of female swordsmen while looking at the historical record without resort to some sort of conspiracy theory.
For let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that soldier women armed with sword, bow, spear or pike could win one battle out of every hundred against soldier men. Why, then would any general or wise leader losing a battle, if defeat was otherwise certain, not arm the women and send them into the bloody fray?
Let us say that the wise leader, thinking of future generations, wants to preserve the womenfolk so that they can bear the next generation for the tribe. That may be very important. But is it more important than victory in war?
Consider. Suppose women could fight in combat and add effectively to the chance of victory, even if the chance were small, a matter of five percent, or one percent.
If so, the wise leader has to consider the reason to keep women out of combat is more important than that small but real one percent chance addition to the chance at victory.
And, since nowhere in the history of the world, at any time, anywhere before the invention of gunpowder, is there report of wise leaders sending women into combat, save perhaps as the last resort, this reason for keeping women out of combat, whatever it was, would have to be something each and every leader in each and every case in history, in every land, for every race and tribe, universally regarded as preferable to defeat in war.
Defeat in war is perhaps endurable, if the Americans defeat you, because they will probably rebuild your factories. But in general, defeat in war is the paramount of all tragic ends.
In reality, there is no reason, neither a desire to see the next generation born, nor any other, so overriding that each leader in history, wise and unwise alike, would prefer to see his tribe defeated, his men slaughtered, his womenfolk enslaved and raped, children sold into slavery, his city burned to the ground, or his tribe wiped out, instead of sending the women into the fight.
It cannot be a cultural reason, such as the contempt for women of the Chinese or the chivalry of the European, because then it would not be true for all cultures.
The only possible reason for tribes and city states and empires and kingdoms not to sent their womenfolk into the fight was that they had nothing significant, that is, less than one percent, to add to the chance of victory.
Because, in fact, we do have tales, if perhaps doubtful, of barbarians sending womenfolk on raids and whatnot, or arming samurai wives to protect the female quarters if the castle falls, when the losing side has nothing more to lose.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
