Only Christians Are REAL Women

The misappropriately titled REAL Women of Canada is a self avowed group of Christian women, fundamentalist Christians to be exact. White Whing Conservative Christian women to be more exact.

Along with attacks on unions, gays, pro-choice advocates, and anyone whose values are not theirs, read pluralistic secular progressive and classical liberal, they were created to attack feminism and feminist gains for women.

Of course they are only several centuries late since the feminist movement began with the classical liberal work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstoncraft written in 1792!

Mary was married to anarchist Willam Godwin, mother of the author of Frankenstein; Mary Wollstonecroft Shelly. And she was an intellectual partner of liberal author J.S. Mills.

REAL Women have always viewed themselves as good old girls, the ladies auxilary of the right wing neo-cons. For women who say that a womans place is in the home, they sure do alot of public bitching about the State replacing the Church as the source of social services.

They have launched a campaign to end funding for the Status of Women. As usaual, its an annual event for this small vocal minority. It's an old war, as Marriane Faithful would say, between those who advocate for womens rights, and those who advocate for christian rites.

Joined in this oppurtunistic campaign to get the Harpocrites to end funding for Status of Women is the right whing blogosphere, with the usual comments from both men and women in that small minded community saying that Feminists don't speak for them.

And the usual smear campaigns about radical feminist groups funded by Status of Women, radicals like LEAF which represents women lawyers. Or those radicals in the Aboriginal movement, the women adovactes who are fighting for their rights against the family compacts of Department of Indian Affairs approved Chiefs who dominate the Aboriginal Political community. Opps the right wing usually likes these women.

Ah well consistency is the hobgoblin of the little minds on the right. Caus one of the arguements REALwomen and their ilk use is that THEY don't get funded by Status of Women. So no womens groups should. They are NOT arguing that taxpayers should NOT pay for womens organizations to lobby the government, just that they don't get funded by the State. And that's not fair. Yep consistency is the hobgoblin.....

You would think that since the Churches are tax free and lobby on behalf of REAL Womens political agenda this would suffice as ripping off taxpayers. But REAL Women wants to rip you off twice. And then if that isn't enough wishes to end lobbying that would counter their taxpayer funded lobbying efforts.

P.S. the Housewife on the magazine cover is probably an Irish maid. The bourgoise housewife MANAGED the home, like her husband the boss at work managed his workplace.

Also See:

Who Speaks For Canadian Women

Catholic Hajib

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Grandmother of Second Wave Feminism Dies

The Real Crime In Canada

The Sanctity of Marriage Debate

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
SOW, StatusofWomen, Canada, REALwomen, Christians, Feminists, feminism, Poltics, Harper, PM, Conservatives, neo-cons, lobby

UK

It’s Women who face the brunt of Tory cuts – Kate Osborne MP on Women’s History Month

16th March 2024

“This Government is failing women. They are playing politics with real lives, real people, and real communities. They made no effort to address health inequalities, tackle the gender pay gap, or the huge levels of women in poverty.”

By Kate Osborne MP

Every March we celebrate Women’s History Month, to raise awareness of the invaluable contributions women have made – and continue to make – to better our communities and the world we live in.

We must continue to raise our voices on the injustices that women face, but I want to start by highlighting the recent wins women have had to not only celebrate these but use them to propel our successes forward.

This year’s Brit Awards were dominated by women, with 70% of winning acts either female or non-binary.

The significance of this cannot be understated. Young women looking to go into the music industry will see that this is becoming a place for them, a place their value is recognised and their talents are celebrated.

After all, our successes aren’t just for this generation – they are for the next, and the next after that, and for all the women that follow.

The Women and Equalities Committee, which I sit on, has been hearing an inquiry on misogyny in music, looking into a range of evidence on how these attitudes can filter through society to impact attitudes towards, and treatment of, women and girls.

Little wins can have a huge rippling effect on our society, and although the Brit Awards don’t by any means signal the end to misogyny in music, they do represent a huge leap forward for the industry in recognising the incredible talent that women hold.

And they’re not the only sector changing – as of February this year women hold 42% of board seats at the UK’s biggest listed companies, up from 24.5% in 2017. Change is possible, and change is happening.

Across the channel, France has enshrined abortion into the constitution, marking an unbelievably significant win for women’s rights by becoming the first country in the world whose constitution explicitly protects the right to an abortion in all circumstances.

France was also right to call the rest of Europe into action, the UK has repeatedly let women down with regard to healthcare and – with the number of women becoming economically inactive due to long-term sickness reaching a five-year high – the Spring Budget should have been the turning point for change.

It is incredibly disappointing and quite frankly dangerous that this opportunity was not taken up.

This Government is failing women.

They are playing politics with real lives, real people, and real communities. They made no effort to address health inequalities, tackle the gender pay gap, or the huge levels of women in poverty.

Strong and well-funded public services would be vital for our social infrastructure, by promoting well-being and gender equality through a stronger economy with a healthier, better-educated and better-cared for population.

This should have been the cornerstone of this budget.

Instead, the Spring Budget made cuts to vital public service funding, ignoring warnings that by focusing on tax cuts instead of investing in our public services we risk reversing the already little progress made towards women’s equality.

The tax cuts funded by this downscale continue to benefit men far more than women, with the Women’s Budget Group revealing that women would gain significantly less than their male counterparts, with single fathers receiving hundreds more than single mothers.

The announcement of an increase in the Child Benefit Cap to £60,000 further feigned support by abandoning parents who already receive the maximum payment and are still struggling, and falling short of ensuring future parents can access adequate financial aid to support the next generation.

So, once again, it’s women facing the brunt of the Tory crisis.

Under this Government women are more likely to use a food bank.

Women are more likely to work in sectors experiencing detrimental funding cuts.

Women are more likely to leave work due to caring responsibilities, or long-term illnesses.

Women are more likely to be on precarious zero-hour contracts, and twice as likely to miss out on key protections such as statutory sick pay.

Women’s maternity services are struggling with black and ethnic minority women being failed.

Women pensioners are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to not have a sufficient pension and more likely to be living in cold homes.

From birth to old age women are being failed.

Women won’t forget what this Government has done.

The efforts of feminists are still needed in the UK. The same efforts that get increasing numbers of women elected to Parliament, that challenge the gender pay gap, that confront gendered healthcare standards.

This country is on its knees under the Tories, and is crying out for change.

Labour’s New Deal for Workers would mark a significant move in the right direction, by banning zero-hour contracts; closing the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gap; establishing a day-one right to flexible working; and introducing fair pay agreements to boost pay and conditions in social care.

Only under a Labour Government will women have their talents and efforts recognised and celebrated year round.

We need a general election now.

---

• Kate Osborne is the MP for Jarrow and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.

UK

Women feel need to be 'looking over their shoulder' on public transport

Stewart Paterson
Tue, 7 March 2023 

The research was carried out for Transport Scotland (Image: Getty)

WOMEN feel they need to maintain "a constant state of vigilance" on public transport, research has found.

The study found concerns about men as “potential perpetrators of harassment, assault or anti-social behaviour” made women and girls feel unsafe on buses and trains.

The research for Transport Scotland found women changed or adapted their travel plans to avoid the risk of harassment or assault.

Women reported avoiding public transport completely, asking a male relative to meet them and taking steps like holding keys in their hand for self-defence and wearing trainers or flat shoes to be able to run if necessary.

Scotland's transport minister Jenny Gilruth said the report found women and girls are “constantly looking over their shoulder”.

Gilruth said: “It has become normalised and tolerated.

“Women should be able to travel safely on public transport and men should learn to behave themselves.”

Glasgow Times:

Because of the risks associated with public transport, the study found, the likelihood of delays or cancellations put women off using public transport at night to avoid having to wait alone in the dark.

Young women were more likely to report sexual harassment, disabled women were more likely to report anti-social and intolerant behaviour and women from ethnic minorities were most likely to report extreme examples of verbal sexist and racist abuse.

Women also noted that people, including other women, were unwilling to get involved “in situations that didn’t involve them”.

The report made 10 recommendations to improve safety for women and girls.

They include strengthening existing rules around non-consumption of alcohol on public transport and at points of interchange.

Other recommendations include more credible and accessible information and guidance for women and girls on what to do and who to contact if they feel threatened or unsafe.

Better lighting and security and increasing staff presence on board and at stations were also suggested.

Gilruth said what women face is not acceptable.

Glasgow Times:

She said: “During our research, women and girls told us they shoulder significant responsibility for adapting their own behaviour to try to ‘be’ and ‘feel’ safe on public transport.

“They are often in a constant state of vigilance, particularly at night time, and as a result end up changing their plans, only travelling at certain points of the day or not using public transport altogether.

“This is simply not acceptable in 21st-century Scotland.

“We will now work with transport operators and stakeholders to carefully consider these recommendations and how we can implement them quickly and effectively, to ensure our transport network is safer and more secure for all who use it.”

Superintendent Arlene Wilson, of British Transport Police, said: “We will use these findings to work with our partners to ensure that sexual harassment will not be tolerated on the network and we will always take reports of this behaviour seriously.

“Our officers continue to patrol the rail network to catch offenders and reassure passengers.”

She urged the public to report anything by texting 61016 or via the Railway Guardian app.

She added: “In an emergency, always dial 999.”

The battle for safer streets is not zero sum: let’s safeguard women and fight racial stereotyping

Jinan Younis
Tue, 7 March 2023

Photograph: Dmytro Betsenko/Alamy

Over the past month, it’s felt like every day has brought a grim reminder of the dangers faced by women on our streets and in our homes. The inquest into the murder of the Epsom college headteacher, Emma Pattison, and her daughter; the conviction of the murderer of the charity worker Elizabeth McCann; the arguments over the release of Joanna Simpson’s killer; the life sentence awaiting the boyfriend of Elinor O’Brien, who stabbed her in a “rageful and violent attack”; the conviction of the serial rapist police officer David Carrick; and the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey. And it’s three years since the disappearance of Sarah Everard, murdered after being stopped on her way home by the rogue police officer Wayne Couzens (affectionately known by his colleagues as “the rapist”).

Against the backdrop of these horrific headlines, I have been having more and more conversations with women about how they feel unsafe in the streets. We’ve exchanged stories of being followed and catcalled, of sharing Uber rides with each other and making sure we text when we’re home safe. We’ve lamented the increased risk of attack that trans women face, and how Black and minority ethnic women face the threat of both racism and misogyny. We’ve discussed the 800 Met police officers under investigation for domestic and sexual abuse, and what it means for women’s trust in the police – though that’s a privilege many women of colour have never had.

But in my recent conversations with some women about their feelings of safety, I have noticed underlying coded messages. They say things like “it’s a dodgy area”; that they “wouldn’t want to be alone around there”. They say they are scared of men in hoodies.

Some forego any pretence. One woman said to me: “I probably do find Black men in hoodies more scary.” Others admit they quicken their pace when they see a Black man walking down the street.

When women talk in general terms of “dodgy” areas or that some “types” of men feel scary, often a lightly masked stereotype has informed that fear. Studies have shown time and again that images of Black men were seen as larger, more threatening and potentially more harmful in an altercation than a white person. Being scared of certain areas where there are more of the “types” of men perceived as scary, then, becomes code for being more scared of Black and minority-ethnic men in public. When I’ve challenged these women, they protest: “It’s just the crime statistics!”, without acknowledging that behind these statistics lie stories of police harassment, ethnic profiling and racial criminalisation.

Studies have tried to get to the bottom of this. One, in 2014, questioned a group of women about their fear in public spaces and reported: “Racist comments came up in the discussion: although the young women acknowledged they were stereotypes, they conditioned their feelings anyway.” A study last year examined views of Australian women on street harassment and spoke of “some participants saying they felt unsafe or perceived behaviour as threatening because the person was ‘not like them’.”

I find that the women who speak to me in problematic terms are usually those who have either not spent much time in areas with a high minority-ethnic population, or are part of the gentrification of poorer neighbourhoods and are living side by side with different racial groups for the first time. These women would typically pride themselves on being “anti-racist” – they may even have joined the mass global outrage over police brutality against Black men and women in 2020. They may have dipped into an anti-racism reading list. Yet it seems they haven’t truly interrogated how racial bias has seeped into the way they perceive their own safety.

This racial stereotyping can lead to a very real feeling of fear and vulnerability in women. Because that feeling is so real, women find it hard when challenged to unpack what biases have informed that fear. There’s a sense of outrage that anyone would question a woman who says she feels unsafe. Yet I am not challenging the fact women feel unsafe in the streets. I am simply asking for women to look at how their prejudices may inform who they are fearful of and why.

There are consequences to making lazy generalisations about “areas” that seem scary, or the “types” of men who inhabit them. It’s part of the same stereotyping that leads to the violent overpolicing of Black men. The Metropolitan police, for example, are four times more likely to use force against Black people, because officers perceive them as “more threatening and aggressive”.

The impact of this coded fear of certain “types” of men in certain “areas” is clear: increased policing of these communities. That means more surveillance, more targeting and more racial profiling of groups who are already treated with greater suspicion and violence than their white counterparts. If the headlines have shown us anything, it’s that women’s fear shouldn’t be relegated to a specific type of person; that anyone is capable of violence towards women, from teachers to police officers to intimate partners.

The goal of women’s safety does not lie in racial stereotypes. We should instead direct our concern towards a culture of toxic masculinity that has seeped its way into every corner of society. It shows up as misogyny in our institutions, in our workplaces and in our schools. It can be seen in the normalisation of violence against women in our popular culture. It is rooted in rigid concepts of gender and “manhood” and is supported by a system that routinely fails to believe women, and that blames and intimidates them.

Everyone should be able to feel they can walk down the street without fearing attack, assault or humiliation. So when we tackle the very real issue of women’s safety, we have to avoid actions that make the streets more dangerous for others.

This is not a zero-sum problem: we can fight for women’s safety in the streets and avoid playing into racial stereotypes. To have a coherent, intersectional approach to women’s safety, we have to work towards building streets that are safer for all vulnerable groups.

Jinan Younis is Head of the diversity, equity and inclusion practice at the strategy firm Purpose Union, and a former assistant politics editor at gal-dem magazine. She has contributed to the books I Call Myself a Feminist and Growing up with gal-dem. She is the past winner of the Christine Jackson Young Persons Award

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Who Speaks For Canadian Women

Well not Real Women no matter how much they insist on it. They speak for right wing fundamentalist protestant women, a minority if ever there was one, except in the rank and file of Harpers Reform/Alliance/Conservatives. Their agenda, pretty clear;

Real Women’s letter to MP’s has called upon the Harper government to defund the powerful radical feminist lobby that allows only one interpretation of women’s rights and equality to be represented.

Lorraine McNamara, Real Women’s National President, writes, “The feminist ideology does not now, and never has had the support of the vast majority of Canadian women.”

McNamara writes, “Feminist groups have few, if any, members, and are, in effect, mostly phantom organizations sustained only by the funding they receive from the Status of Women. Since these organizations represent no one but the women who run them, they should not receive financial support from the Canadian taxpayer.”

Also see:

History of the WRF

Catholic Hajib

Whose Family Values?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
daycare, childcare, feminism, Canada, Real-Women, Conservatives, right-wing, anti-feminism

Trans liberation

UK Supreme Court backs bigots and transphobes

Monday 21 April 2025, by Paris Wilder


On 16 April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 (the EA) refer to the sex assigned at birth in a case that was pushed for and funded by the UK gender critical movement. In essence, the judgment has found that being a woman entails having an XX chromosome, large gametes and the ability to produce children. This judgment means that trans women with gender recognition certificates (GRC) will no longer be legally defined as women under the EA.

This is a fundamental attack on the human rights of trans people.

The case was brought by the gender critical campaign group For Women Scotland (which is funded by J K Rowling). They argued that transgender women should not be viewed as “women” for the purposes of occupying places on public boards set aside for “women”.

Both the Scottish government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened in this case to clarify that the term “woman” under the EA included trans women who hold GRCs. But today the Supreme Court has overturned those interpretations.

The immediate result is that trans women will no longer be able to sit on public boards in places set aside for “women” under the EA. But the decision has wide-reaching implications for how trans people live day-to-day.

The purpose of this ruling is to discriminate and force transgender people back into hiding, because the real fear has always been that heteronormative homogeny will collapse thus threatening the capitalist, patriarchal superiority by which our world is run.

This new ruling will be extremely detrimental to trans people across the country – both for those who have already gone through the very arduous process of getting their GRCs and for those who do not yet have GRCs or who do not intend to obtain a GRC. The judgment comes as the trans community faces attacks on their health care following the recent Cass review and record-high levels of violence from the everyday public (a 186% increase in half a decade). Whilst gender critical “feminists” believe that the ruling will provide security for cis women in its strict definition of what a woman is, the decision will only harm cis women and create even more insecurity for trans people.

In summarising the judgment, Lord Hodge was adamant that the act will continue to give transgender people “protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender”. However, this leads to further questions rather than concrete answers. How do you balance sex characteristics with gender reassignment characteristics? How do you prove sex discrimination when you are not recognized as that sex? What about gender non-conforming or non-binary people who do not align with their sex assigned at birth but do not ‘choose’ a gender to be reassigned to? And what of intersex people whose ‘biological sex’ does not fall easily into this rigid view of male and female.

Hate built on lies

The ruling reinforces the damaging falsehood that trans women are dangerous predators – men disguised as women to gain access to safe spaces – and that trans men are but long-lost lesbian sisters, confused and taken advantage of by the woke trans agenda. Both stereotypes strip transgender people of agency, safety, humanity and dignity.

The counter argument from the gender critical movement is one of ‘protecting women and girls’. The sentiment stems from a real problem in society of male oppression against women; it is not unfathomable to expect women to act out of fear. However, pitting a vulnerable group of women against the safety of all women is a falsehood peddled by wealthy, right wing, reactionary figures to fight against an ‘oppressive woke agenda’.

As Judith Butler, the famous gender theorist said, “feminism has been about contesting received notions of what a woman is”. The continuation of feminism rests on keeping this question open as a response to a society that tells women ‘you’re good for social reproduction & you’re good for housework’. So, closing this fundamental question about what a woman is, defies the work of feminists who have systematically fought for women’s liberation away from these oppressive gender norms that keep us enslaved under the capitalist system.

And what of the practical impacts that this ruling will have on cis women? What do we tell our young women when we say ‘a woman is only biological sex’, that a man is also only biological sex? That because of a man’s ’s biological sex, he is right to partake in oppressive structures of male hierarchy? That his desire to rape and sexually assault women is justified because of his biology?

This ruling is much more than a question of ‘who is being protected’ because it raises the question of ‘protected from who’. There is no evidence to suggest that cis women are at risk of violence from trans women. The high rates of sexual assault and rape on women from cis men are continually ignored. More rapes and assaults are suffered at the hands of family, friends and lovers than through assaults in single sex spaces like bathrooms.

Trans people, especially trans women and even more so racially oppressed trans women, are at especially high risk of assault and sexual assault. Framing them as the problem amounts to a shockingly cruel attempt to shift focus away from the social structures that put all women in danger. Additionally, cis women who do not conform to feminine sterotypes in their gender presentation are at risk of being ‘transvestigated’; there have been many instances of cis women, particularly butch lesbian women, being harassed and attacked when using women’s facilities because they are perceived to be ‘men’. This judgement will further empower those who wish to carry out harassment and attacks of this kind.

To see how this judgment will harm cis women rather than protect them – as argued by the gender critical movement – we need look no further than the following recent example. In 2021, the gender critical movement attempted to remove Gillick’s Competence, a law that states that under 16 year olds can get medical treatment without their parents consent, claiming this was a gateway to young people transitioning. However, upon further inspection, this law is used mainly by young cis women trying to receive contraception without parental consent rather than by young trans people.

Prominent anti-trans gender critical “feminist” Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) spoke openly in favour of re-thinking Gillicks Competence not only in regards to anti-trans rights but also of children’s access to ‘dangerous contraceptives’ and ‘abortion’. On further investigation, it was found that Posie Parker’s tours were funded by the Conservative Political Action Coalition who spoke openly about the ‘eradication of transgenderism’. The gender critical movement directly aligns itself with far-right anti-abortion groups, opening the door to the far right under the guise of feminism and protection of women.

Not just trans women

Today’s interpretation of the act is not only obviously transphobic but also deeply queerphobic and misogynistic. The judgment seems to suggest that trans people will no longer be able to use single sex spaces that align with their gender.

The purpose of this ruling is to discriminate and force transgender people back into hiding, because the real fear has always been that heteronormative homogeny will collapse thus threatening the capitalist, patriarchal superiority by which our world is run.

The women in the gender critical movement act based on fear; fear that their position as women is under attack. They fail to recognise that their position as women is one of oppression under patriarchal capitalism and instead only entrench their own oppression further by using their power, and the history of feminist movements, to oppress another marginalised group. It is clear to anyone willing to see it, that it is much easier to move through the world as a cis man; there is simply no need for men to disguise themselves as trans women to gain access to women and take advantage of their bodies. We already live in a world where this is easy and expected. Our lack of rape and sexual assault convictions speak for themselves. In a world where a cis man can be found responsible for rape and still become President of the United States – twice – why would any cis male predator go through the difficulty of pretending to be trans in order to rape cis women?

This amendment ruling is a dark day for the trans community and intersectional, non-exclusionary feminists everywhere. It is a sign of the growing authoritarian views in society that reduce our powers to live as we want, instead forcing us into more and more narrow definitions of what it is to be human.

But we must continue to fight against it, call out the connections to far right hate groups, and name the real cause for the oppression of women and girls, including trans women and girls: capitalism.

AntiCapitalist Resistance 18 April 2025


Attached documentsuk-supreme-court-backs-bigots-and-transphobes_a8953.pdf (PDF - 913.6 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article8953]

Paris Wilder
Paris Wilder is a member of AntiCapitalist Resistance in London


International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

Women fighters of the 1871 Paris Commune

08/03/2024

Barricades erected by the Commune in April 1871. 

Photo: Pierre-Ambroise Richebourg/CC (uploaded 31/03/2021)

In the Paris Commune in 1871, for a brief but heroic few weeks, the working class took power for the first time in history. In the immortal words of Karl Marx, the masses ‘stormed heaven’. In extremely hazardous circumstances, Parisian workers attempted to re-organise society, to abolish exploitation and poverty, before falling beneath a vicious counter-revolution. Cecile Rimboud, Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI France) outlines the key role that working-class women played in this historic struggle.

If the development of a society can be judged by the extent to which women are involved in it, that is certainly the case with a revolution. In 1871, women – especially women workers – played a huge role in the Paris Commune, despite significant hindrances. These heroic women workers swept aside forever the idea that their emancipation could happen outside of the class struggle.

Women’s labour had already played a very important role in industrial production in the 1860s in France and it had developed very rapidly. In 1871, 62,000 jobs out of 114,000 industrial jobs were held by women. Many thousands of female workers worked outside of industry – as home-based workers, laundresses, day labourers (cleaners). Women, as well as child labourers, were very poorly paid, earning a lot less than men, and this was used by the bosses to drive all wages down.

Women workers had to suffer horrendous sexual harassment from the bosses, and from some of their male co-workers, in the factories and workshops; sexual blackmail over employment was common. The wages were so low that many women had to prostitute themselves. In her Mémoires, one of the Commune’s most famous figures, Louise Michel, wrote: “The proletarian is a slave and the most enslaved of all is the wife of the proletarian. And what about women’s wages? Let us talk a little about that: it is no more than a decoy”. Women workers’ conditions were truly atrocious.

Victorine Brocher, a boot-stitching worker who was very active in the defence of Paris later, wrote in her Memoirs of a Living-Dead Woman: “I saw poor women working twelve and fourteen hours a day for a derisory salary, having old parents and children whom they had to leave behind, locking themselves up for long hours in unhealthy workshops where neither air nor light nor sun ever penetrates, for they are lit with gas; in factories where they are shoved in like herds of cattle, to earn the modest sum of two francs a day, earning nothing on Sundays and holidays”.

“Often, they spend half the night repairing the family’s clothes; they would also have to go to the wash-house to wash their clothes on Sunday mornings. What is the reward for these women? Often anxious, she waits for her husband who has been lingering in the neighbouring drinking den and only comes home when three quarters of his money has been spent… The result: abject poverty or prostitution”.

During the final years of the Empire, some women workers had been agitating against these terrible conditions. The most politically advanced of them, who would later rally to the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA – the first international), started to be active in trade unions. Nathalie Le Mel, a Breton binder and leader in the binders’ union, joined the IWMA after the 1865 strike that won equal pay, regardless of sex, for Parisian binders.

Reactionary views

These activists had many opponents, and they were not only bosses. The majority of the workers’ movement then, including the politically heterogeneous IWMA, did not support women workers. Amongst others, Jean-Baptiste Proudhon, a self-declared anarchist and member of parliament after the 1848 revolutionary upheavals, had a very reactionary position. Proudhon theorised that women were inferior to men.

In Justice in the Revolution and the Church (1860), Proudhon scandalously wrote: “In itself, the woman has no reason to exist; she is an instrument of reproduction… The woman remains… inferior to the man, a sort of medium between him and the rest of the animal kingdom… The man will be the master and the woman will obey”.

The common position that “women should stay at home” was defended by the majority of the French delegation at the IWMA Congress of 1866, although some leaders, like Eugène Varlin and Antoine Bourdon, opposed this. They moved a resolution at the Congress stating that: “Women need to work to live honourably, therefore, we must seek to improve their work instead of abolishing it”. The resolution was defeated. The French workers’ movement then was not defending better conditions for women workers but the abstract call for the ‘abolition’ of women’s labour. In this regard, Varlin and Bourdon’s resolution was progressive. Such figures in the French workers’ movement, not least Marxists, played a key role in the struggle for women’s rights.

Léodile Champaix, who took the alias André Léo, was a member of the IWMA at that time, and a writer. She commented: “On this question, revolutionaries become conservative”. She pointed out how ironical it was for those who pretend to struggle for freedom to defend “a small kingdom for their personal use, each in their own homes”.

This reactionary view remained the dominant position in the workers’ movement, as well as amongst the majority of the working class of France, at the time. Hypocritically, the dominant ideology condemned women’s labour and demanded of women to be mere housewives deprived of all rights. At the same time, society rendered this role impossible for working-class women: they were already drawn into heavy industry and suffered terribly from exploitation and poverty.

Opposing bourgeois views

In the second part of the 1860s, strikes over pay took place throughout the country. Here and there, papers and journals were published to discuss women’s rights. One example was the bi-monthly Women’s Rights. It aimed at discussing “the moral, intellectual and civil emancipation of women – as daughters, as wives and as mothers” but not financial emancipation, and not women as workers!

These journals were mostly produced by bourgeois men and women, who did not encourage women, in general, to organise or take political action. On the contrary; in July 1869, the Women’s Rights newspaper commented: “We do not tell them [women] that the time has come for them to claim their share of those political rights … because their education has not prepared them for the special virtues required for political action”. How wrong were they proven to be by the heroic action of the Parisian women workers not two years after this outrageous declaration.

On the other hand, Karl Marx and scientific socialists had always supported the rights of women and women workers. And although they were in a minority in France at the time, they did everything they could to aid women workers to organise and fight. This was not only for emancipation and equality but for the workers’ movement to change their position and defend the women of the working class.

A young collaborator of Marx was Elisabeth Dmitrieff. She was an activist in Russia before immigrating to Switzerland where she helped found the Russian section of the IWMA. She was only 21 years-old when she went to Paris to build support for the ideas of scientific socialism, particularly among women. The emancipation of women, she maintained, would happen through the emancipation of the whole proletariat. One of the tasks was thus to stir up the class consciousness of Parisian women workers to draw them into the revolutionary fight.

Female socialists were not concerned only by matters regarding the condition of women workers. The activists, members of the IWMA, and others were also among those who were most serious about the success of the Commune itself.

André Léo, for instance, was relentless in her attempts at convincing the people of Paris and members of the Commune that the isolation of the struggle in Paris and the alienation of the peasantry would be fatal. On 9 April 1871, she wrote: “In the provinces, there is danger, there is a disaster. Paris at this moment hates and curses the provinces and the provinces hate and curse Paris. A mountain of lies and calumnies has been raised between them”.

Together with Auguste Serrailler, a member of the IWMA and the Commune, Léo worked, alas unsuccessfully, to get a decree passed on the abolition of mortgage debts, which would have raised great support among the peasantry: the mortgage debts of small landowners had skyrocketed to a total of 14 billion francs.

Women in military defence of Paris

In his famous narrative, History of the 1871 Commune, Pierre-Olivier Lissagaray wrote that on 18 March, the beginning of the insurrection, when the new capitalist government of Adolphe Thiers had abandoned Paris after France had been defeated in war by Prussia: “Women were the first to act, as in the days of the [1789] revolution… Those of the 18 March, hardened by the siege, did not wait for the men – they had had a double ration of misery”. Women started organising quickly. A battle was waged for women to be officially incorporated into the military defence of Paris.

Of course, women had not waited for any official orders to defend Paris and the revolution; thousands had already participated in its defence during the siege by the Prussian army. Several female defence organisations were established. Louise Michel, André Léo, and others organised ‘ambulances’ (paramedic services), and the distribution of food and clothes.

On 8 May, Léo, in a quite pessimistic article entitled The Revolution Without the Woman, protests against the hostility of the National Guard commander General Dombrowski and others to integrating the women paramedics of Montmartre in the army and on the outposts: “Do you know, General Dombrowski, how the revolution of March 18 was made? By women. At early dawn, troops had been sent to Montmartre. The small numbers of National Guard who guarded the cannons of the Saint-Pierre square were taken aback, and the cannons were being removed”. Louise Michel related: “Women covered the cannons with their bodies”.

Lissagaray writes: “The attitude of the women during the Commune was admired by foreigners and infuriated the Versaillais”, those in Versailles where the Thiers government had withdrawn to. Ten thousand women workers fought during the ‘Week of Blood’. The Twelfth Legion of the Commune even had a female contingent.

The Women’s Association

Several women’s organisations were created in the heroic days of the Paris Commune. Most notably on 11 April the Union des Femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés (Women’s Association for the defence of Paris and care of the wounded), was created. Its members had put themselves at the disposal of the Commune and were ready to “fight and conquer, or die”.

On the founding of the Union des Femmes, a manifesto was published in the form of an address to the Executive Commission of the Commune, published in the Official Journal of the Commune on 13 April. The address stated: “The Commune represents great principle in proclaiming the annihilation of all privilege, of all inequality, and by the same (principle) is thus committed to taking into account the just claims of the entire population, without distinction of sex – a distinction created and maintained by the need for antagonism on which the privileges of the dominant classes are based”.

It demanded the necessary means of organisation for women to be able to be truly involved in the revolution, such as rooms in each district where they could meet and organise their political activity.

This was agreed to by the Commune. Louise Michel is one of the most well-known figures of the Commune. But it is worth noting that even if she demonstrated great bravery, her political views were not socialist and she, therefore, did not play any role in the attempts to form trade unions or women workers’ organisations like the Union des Femmes. This was very active and well organised and was mainly led by women workers who displayed tremendous courage.

On 18 May, the Association’s executive commission was still convening an assembly of women with its famous Call to Women Workers. The aim was to constitute trade union branches, whose elected delegates would, in turn, form the Federal Chamber of Women Workers. The Association, with its headquarters in the beautiful town hall of Paris’s Tenth Arrondissement (an administrative district), held daily meetings in all arrondissements and organised about 300 members.

Elisabeth Dmitrieff, in particular, was aiming at using the Women’s Association to encourage the political organisation of women in the IWMA to fight for socialism. Despite the absence of women in the Commune itself, in some arrondissements women had been integrated into the administration; in the Ninth Arrondissement, a woman named Murgès sat on the council.

The Women’s Association waged a ferocious struggle against bourgeois women who, through posters and papers, espoused defeatist and demoralising propaganda. On 3 May, a poster stated: “Women of Paris, in the name of the fatherland, in the name of honour, finally in the name of humanity, demand an armistice!” – in other words, accept the rule of the capitalist government in Versailles.

The Women’s Association responded on 6 May with a poster: “It is not peace, but war at all costs that the workers of Paris come to demand… The women of Paris will prove to France and to the world that they too will know… how to give their blood and their lives, like their brothers, for the defence and triumph of the Commune!… Then, victorious, able to unite and agree on their common interests, men and women workers, all in solidarity, by the last effort, will destroy forever all vestiges of exploitation and exploiters!”.

Huge inspiration

Many very progressive measures for women, albeit short-lived, were gained during this two-month long revolution. The closure of brothels was won. The Commune banned prostitution, considered as “a form of commercial exploitation of human creatures by other human creatures”. Common-law partnerships were officially recognised. Widows of National Guardsmen killed in action were granted the payment of a pension, whether officially married to them or not, and their children, whether legitimate or ‘natural’, were recognised on the basis of a simple declaration.

Women pleading for separation from partners could also be granted the payment of a pension. Education and childcare were revolutionised. The church and the state were separated, hospitals and schools were also made secular. Male and female teachers won equal pay.

The most important concern was the shortage of work. All the women’s associations demanded work from the head of the Commune’s Labour and Trade Commission, Léo Frankel. He endorsed the proposals of the Women’s Association, including the requisitioning of abandoned workshops and the organisation by the Women’s Association of cooperative workshops for women to work in. Dmitrieff, in particular, was afraid that if the Commune failed to take bold measures to employ and provide living wages for women, they would “go back to a passive and more or less reactionary state that the previous social order had created – fatal and dangerous for revolutionary interests”.

Tragically, all the progressive measures were cut across by the bloody onslaught on Paris from Versailles starting on 21 May.

Women fought heroically during the Paris Commune and its ‘Week of Blood’ at the end of May. As Karl Marx put it: “The real women of Paris showed [themselves] again – heroic, noble and devoted… joyfully giving their lives on the barricades and on the place of execution”. The editor of the newspaper, Le Vengeur, commented: “I’ve seen three revolutions, and, for the first time, I’ve seen women getting resolutely involved, women and children. It seems that this revolution is precisely theirs and that by defending it, they are defending their own future”.

Thousands had died during the ‘Week of Blood’, but the heroism persisted. “Defeated but not vanquished”, were the words of Nathalie Le Mel, deported to New Caledonia along with Louise Michel and thousands of others. How impressed we can be, seeing such determination! The fight of the scientific socialists like Dmitrieff and others to form women workers’ organisations in the face of such adversity is truly an example and a treasured jewel in the armoury of the world workers’ movement.

What a tremendous source of inspiration the Paris Commune and these women can provide for all those today who seek to end discrimination and exploitation of women and all the oppressed! The women of the Commune began to show the way. The emancipation of women can be achieved only through a common, united struggle of the working-class – men and women alike – aiming at freeing labour from capital and in this way ending all forms of exploitation.

PAKISTAN

Harassment, patriarchy and inflation come under fire in Aurat March

Shazia Hasan 

Published March 13, 2023 

(Clockwise from top) Aurat March participants dance after smearing colours on each others’ faces in a symbolic Holi played at Burns Garden on Sunday; a tableau is under way on the stage; women covering their heads with chadors listen to a speech; and a rally is taken out at the end of the event.—Online/ Shakil Adil / White Star

KARACHI: Raising voice over the many injustices in society, raising awareness on multiple issues, standing up for each other, Hum Aurtein managed to gather, in no particular order, women, men, transgender persons, workers, peasants, members of minority communities, students and children at the sixth Aurat March in all its unapologetic, unabashed brazenness at the Burns Garden here on Sunday.

There were stories to listen to, faces to read along with interesting posters and placards.

There were also taboos to be broken. One placard had the words ‘Sunno, Samjho, Seekho, Badlo [Listen, understand, learn, change], another read ‘We Are Not Ovary-Acting’. Some other interesting messages on placards included ‘I Want To Exist Without Apology’, ‘Abort the patriarchy’, ‘Anti-hero’ and ‘Bachay Paida Kerne Hain Tau Inn Ki Perverish Bhi Kerna Seekh Lo [You want children, then learn to bring them up also].

The stories were all around you, and not just up on the main stage. Rukhsana Paveen Kho­khar had her eight-month-old daughter, Mashal, in her arms who was looking around inquisitively while taking in her surroundings and the happenings. “I have named her ‘Mashal’ because I want her to light up the path for everyone. Similarly, I have named my other daughter, who is six, Mazaib, meaning bea­utiful like the moon. The moon also lights the night sky,” she expla­ined, adding that her mother, Khandul Mai, was also there at the Aurat March with her.

“My mother struggled a lot to get me educated. I’m the first female in my family who studied right up to master’s. I have a master’s in English literature. Throughout my schooling I stood first in class and in intermediate, BA and MA I passed in the first division. And this despite all the men in my family, save my father who was a poor labourer, being dead set against educating girls,” she said.

People from all walks of life pour their heart out as fiery slogans heat up Burns Garden

Meanwhile, up on the stage there were people coming up to tell you about their struggles, their issues. There were performances, singing of songs, acting out skits and tableaux. There were chairs if you would like to sit on them and watch, there were also carpets spread out on the grass if you would like to sit down on the ground. The Net­work of Organisations Working For People With Disabilities Pakistan, or NOWPDP, had arranged for wheelchairs too, for the disabled or the elderly. You could also just roam around and mingle or watch from under the big shady trees of Burns Garden.

There was an air of ease, of freedom to do as you please, women came dressed in pretty cotton saris, ghararas, ghagras, skirts, pants, jeans, plain shalwar kameez, there were several men with long hair who wore their hair in buns or in pony tails, girls had pink, blue and purple streaks in their hair, many of them were smoked, too, filling their lungs with smoke. Why why not? They were their lungs, they could do whatever they jolly well felt like doing with them bringing up the famous, or infamous most misunderstood slogan from the first Aurat March ‘Mera Jism Meri Marzi’! It was repeated several times up on the stage, too, along with Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s inspiring poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’.

Speaking about the Aurat March, economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, who has attended all the six marches, said that it was an opportunity to express themselves, which was an important pillar of our social ideology. “It tells us how society should be organised, pluralised with freedom,” he said.

Architect and town planner Arif Hasan, who was also there, said that he had so far attended five marches and that the Aurat March was a movement.

“Such movements build up slowly but they should happen as they point out the ills in society which people don’t usually talk about,” he said, adding that the media should also write about these ills to spread the word and raise awareness.

Fatima Majeed from the fisherfolk community came up to talk about the hardships fisherfolks face, about pollution in the seas, about dirty fuel for power generation such as coal.

Labourers and workers lamented loudly about inflation and the rising costs of fuel, Pastor Ghazala Shafique spoke about minority rights, sanitation workers, crimes and injustices against minor girls abducted and made to change their faiths.

Radha Bheel spoke about bonded labour and how girls were chained as they worked. How they are also raped as they work like slaves. “We are fighting against child labour, we are fighting for education, for respect,” she said.

Women from Lyari spoke about how the skin of their hands burn and their nails crack while peeling red chillies, tamarind and garlic. Other women spoke about harassment at the workplace.

Laali from Mirpurkhas came up to talk about the difficulties women of the flood-affected areas have been facing.

Transgender community member Bindiya Rana, Shahzadi Rai, Dr Mehrub Moiz Awan and rapper Jaan-e-Hasina brought up the difficulties faced by their community.

Arzoo Raja, Neha Pervaiz and other teenage Christian girls, who have now been recovered after they married Muslim men as old as their fathers, came up to tell their own stories in the form of a tableau. “I have a body, I have a soul and I have my faith,” they sang.

“We don’t speak about any one woman, we raise voices for all women, from all communities, classes, faith and sects. We raise voice for all genders, too,” said social activist and classical dancer Sheema Kermani.

Finally, there was a small celebration of Holi as all the participants of the Aurat March rubbed colour on each other’s cheeks. Many participants, who felt they have been wronged in any way in life, were also invited to dip their palms in red colour and leave their palm impressions on a long white cloth that had inscribed in red the words ‘The injustice done to you will not be forgotten’.

Chanting slogans then and reading out their charter of demands, the Aurat March then moved out of Burns Garden to march to the Fawwara Chowk.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023

The women will march

  

The Aurat March is not a sanitised, polite, controlled version of a narrative of women’s rights. It is organic and therefore, it will always be messy and diverse.

Maria Amir 

Published March 8, 2023

The years following the inaugural Aurat March in 2018 have been met with what is now an alarmingly familiar pattern.

Each year, around February, there is a marked uptick in online vitriol directed at women speaking about their rights on any public forum. Television anchors and guests spin cautionary tales, detailing various themes of behayai [shamelessness] that the Aurat March is exclusively held responsible for. Most of these commentators are men, but there are many women who also buy into this narrative.

As if Pakistan’s greatest problem at present is behayai, and even if that were the case (which it is not — that particular list is unending), the insinuation that our behayai problem stems from the one day a year when women chant slogans and carry placards calling out abusive, neglectful men and patriarchy in general, rather than the slew of rapes, child abuse cases, grave robbing, domestic violence, killing in the name of ‘honour’ and near institutionalised sexual harassment of women in the workplace and in public spaces are apparently the hallmarks of a ‘respectable’ society.

The ‘men are not robots’ debate

This time is marked with men reminding us that women in Pakistan have no real problems because religion affords us rights even if the men interpreting, institutionalising, and preaching that religion markedly do not.

We are told from a young age that we should not go ‘outside’ because ‘it isn’t safe for women’. Pray tell, what is so dangerous outside that women must be so wary of? Is it goblins or ghosts or wolves or djinns?

We are told not to go outside because the danger facing women outside their homes is men. While all men obviously do not abuse women, women are in no position to distinguish between which men are and are not a danger to them — therefore women must be wary of all men.

It is men who taught us this lesson by telling us that they respect us and the only way they have devised to show us this respect is to cage our movement, lock us up, prevent us from working and limit our potential. All because men cannot control themselves in the presence of women, something that they proudly reaffirm for us publicly with comments like “agar aurat aise kapre pehne gi to aadmi kya kare [What can a man do when women wear such clothes?]”, “aurat bahar phire gi to uss ke saath bura hi hoga [Only bad things happen to women who venture outside]” and the now infamous “Mard robot thori hein [Men are not robots]”.

Women are punished for a problem that men have with female bodies. This is a lesson they have taught us by reiterating that a woman’s izzat [honour] is framed through her jism [body] and men’s izzat rests in how they manage ‘their’ women.

‘Not real women’

All the concerns with badgering and intimidation, media harassment and misrepresentation are things the Aurat March and its organisers are deeply familiar with. None of this is new. Every independent minded woman who stands up for herself in our country, in any capacity, is punished for it socially.

The present charge against women participating in the Aurat Marches is that they are not ‘real women’. ‘Ye asli aurtein nahin hein’, a phrase that expands the ‘good woman/bad woman’ binary into new territory, where supposed ‘bad women’ aren’t even women any longer.

This vitriol and baseless propaganda is achingly familiar. The Aurat March is also well acquainted with the charge of being ‘foreign funded’. If only!

Read more: Let me womansplain the Aurat March to you

Aurat March funds are painstakingly collected through bake sales and dholkis, with students and volunteers selling everything from handmade face masks, tote bags and posters to conducting storytelling sessions.

In some ways, the greatest testament to the fact that the Aurat March receives no foreign funds is the treatment it receives. No matter how Pakistanis denigrate western nations at political rallies, no one messes with any group or institution that actually has foreign funds backing it up. Not in this country.

The state’s response

While all these struggles are familiar, 2023 has been the start of something new and ominous in the form of the state’s response to the Aurat March.

For several years, Aurat March chapters in several cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Multan and Lahore have met with intimidation from religious groups and local administrations, and the marches have either been limited or redirected but they have never been stopped altogether.

This has been the first year when the Lahore District Commissioner actively chose to cater to the Haya March over the Aurat March, even though the former arose as a violent response to intimidate Aurat March organisers. The Lahore, Islamabad and Multan chapters all received notices that the march would not go ahead two days before March 8, and it has taken entire days for volunteers, lawyers and organisers camping outside of the courts to finally secure permissions and security protocol for the Aurat March to proceed.

This new form of intimidation implies that the real problem here isn’t about freedom of expression or assembly, not even women’s free expression or assembly, but rather about who the women taking to the streets are, what they are saying and who claims them.

The Aurat March works independently and while women organising under any other banner have the protection of a political party or religious group, someone to ‘claim’ them as ‘their’ women and therefore ensure their safety, the Aurat March rejects this frame. Despite having fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the women gathering at the Aurat March do so as individuals asserting that they are enough to be regarded as human beings with rights.

By claiming only themselves, they demand the protection of the state from violence, threats and harassment. Denying peaceful protesters this protection while it is extended to violent groups openly making threats, carrying sticks, and throwing bricks, implies that the state endorses institutionalised violence over independent, peaceful citizens, especially when those citizens happen to be women.

Here to stay

The Aurat March is an inclusive, grass roots led movement that welcomes khwaja siras, gender minorities, men, and women from all walks of life to protest for women’s rights on March 8, which is a global event marking International Women’s Day.

The Aurat March begins its organising efforts early on and hosts both private and public events to plan its manifesto, its art and poster campaigns and its fund-raising campaign. Grassroots organising with women’s groups, ranging from farmers and sanitation workers to religious minority communities and domestic workers, continues all year-round, so for all the people accusing the March and its organisers of being elite women who don’t have ‘anything to do with Pakistani women’s struggles’, it would be prudent to visit their vibrant social media pages and see how much effort every chapter of the Aurat March makes to engage with as many women from as many walks of life as possible.

One hopes that more men and women who are genuinely sceptical of the March would engage with them. If you think you and your concerns are not being included by the March, then show up to the one in your city on March 8 carrying a placard that says what you want to say.

Read more: Is Aurat March un-Islamic?

Despite all the intimidation and the last-minute hurdles, harassment and hiccups, rest assured that the Aurat March is here to stay. It is here to stay because it is a movement that showcases something markedly different from all other protests.

The reason so many people fear the Aurat March is because it features scores of women openly embracing two emotions that women are seldom, if ever, allowed to express in our culture — anger and joy.

Protesters sing songs, dance, perform theatrical pieces and feature artwork that epitomises this potent combination of women’s rage coupled with their joy — all in a public space.

The Aurat March is not a sanitised, polite, controlled version of a narrative of women’s rights. It is organic and therefore, it will always be messy and diverse.

These are women who have taken the slurs, insults, and attacks on them and turned them into art and laughed at the men trying to terrify them. Nothing destroys insecure men more than such brazen defiance.

The Aurat March features women speaking simultaneously for themselves and for each other. It shows their collective power — their joy and their rage, proudly on display for all to see without apology and without fear.

I get why some of you are terrified in the face of such uncontrollable, beautiful, and raw honesty but that is your cross to bear.

Because the women will march.


Maria Amir is a former journalist and Fulbright Fellow. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Global Gender Studies at SUNY, Buffalo. Her research interests include South Asian feminist folklore and Women’s Movements.

Researcher explores the truths 

behind myths of ancient

 Amazons 

Hippolyta, Antiope and Penthesilea. These are the names of Amazonian women warriors made famous in folklore, thanks in large part to male Greek storytellers like Homer and Herodotus. In some archaeological digs in Eurasia, as many as thirty-seven per cent of the graves  contain the bones and weapons of horsewomen who fought alongside men 







 [Credit Erich Lessing/Art Resource] 


They were huntresses, founders of cities, rivals and lovers of adventurous men. They battled the Greek hero Heracles and fought alongside the Trojans in the final hours of Troy. And yet, they are widely held to be little more than figments of Greco-Roman imagination. But warrior women actually existed, according to Stanford's Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar in the Department of Classics. In her new book, "The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World," Mayor explains the real-world underpinnings and history behind the Amazonian folklore. In Hellenic legends, as Mayor learned, Amazons often faced defeat and death at the hands of male Greek heroes. Yet the storytellers also described these female foreigners as exceptionally heroic, civilized and worthy counterparts to the Greek champions. "Amazons were modeled on stories of self-confident women of steppe cultures who fought for glory and survival and enjoyed male companionship," but, as Mayor puts it, "on terms that seemed extraordinary to the ancient Greeks." The hereditary stories left quite a mark on the Greeks. "The popularity of Amazon stories and images suggests that Greek women and men enjoyed imagining heroes and heroines interacting as equals and seeking adventure and glory in hunting and battle," Mayor said. 

An ancient Greek vase depicting an Amazon female warrior  [Credit: Colin/WikiCommons] Real women warriors

 Mayor began her investigation by amassing all the surviving ancient Greek and Latin accounts she could find that told of encounters with Amazons as well as "warlike, barbarian" women who behaved like Amazons of myth. The texts described them as members of nomadic tribes roving the territories that the Greeks collectively called "Scythia" – a vast expanse between the Black Sea and Mongolia – from the seventh century B.C. until the fifth century A.D. She proceeded to research the Scythians – Eurasian steppe peoples who cultivated a mastery of horseback riding and archery for thousands of years. Mayor consulted early European travelers' reports and ethnographical materials as well as contemporary descriptions of steppe life, comparing the latter to ancient Greek knowledge and speculation concerning the identity of the Amazons. Mayor also analyzed physical evidence – including "actual battle-scarred skeletons of women buried with their weapons and horses" – and she corresponded with the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg to learn how researchers there used infrared cameras to reveal invisible tattoos on frozen female Scythian mummies from more than two millennia ago. "Their tattoos of deer and geometric designs resemble the tattoos and patterns on Amazons depicted in ancient Greek vase paintings," Mayor said. Furthermore, Mayor was able to collect and verify lesser-known tales and reports (such as a newly translated Egyptian papyrus in Vienna) that showed warrior women were the subject of much fascination in cultures beyond Greece – Persia, Egypt, Caucasia, Armenia, Central Asia, China and among the steppe peoples themselves. Examining the corroborating evidence, Mayor found that "real women warriors lived at the time that the Greeks were describing Amazons and warlike women of exotic eastern lands." She even determined that there was even more respect and exaltation for women warriors in the non-Greek traditions that stretched from the Black Sea to China. In these non-Greek stories, she said that male and female enemies were so equally matched that neither could win: "Instead of ending in doom for the woman, the former foes declare their mutual admiration and decide to become companions in love and war." 




A battle between Amazons and Greek warriors is depicted in a marble sarcophagus  on display at the Pio Clementino museum in the Vatican  [Credit: Colin/WikiCommons]

 Gender dynamics While Greek heroes usually defeat Amazon women in their mythic narratives, the triumphs are depicted as hard-won from worthy rivals. As Quintus of Smyrna described the tragically slain Queen Penthesilea in The Fall of Troy, "All the Greeks on the battlefield crowded around and marveled, wishing with all their hearts that their wives at home could be just like her." "After Heracles, Amazons were the single most popular subjects in vase paintings of myths," Mayor wrote. Artistic Greek objects of all sorts, crafted for men, women, boys and girls, underscored that admiration for the Amazons transcended gender and age groups. Mayor's exploration of the subtler gender dynamics within the Scythian culture is reflected in her linguistic analysis of the Greek name for this people, Amazones antianeirai. Homer's Iliad offers the earliest reference to the Amazons in the eighth century B.C., using the full designation Amazones antianeirai. 

Mayor counters the popular modern translations of antianeirai as "opposites of men" or "against men," pointing out that in ancient Greek epic diction, the word would more ordinarily translate to "equals of men." Scythian culture, she explained, was not a purely female-dominated society. Instead it afforded a greater range of roles to women and promoted parity between genders. Scythian women often dressed in the same clothes as their male brethren and often joined them in battle – helping them thwart forces such as those of Cyrus the Great and Darius of Persia. For example, the "Nart" sagas, Scythian oral traditions of the Caucasus passed down to their descendants, hold great praise for their women warriors, as led by the valorous Queen Amezan: "The women of that time could cut out an enemy's heart … yet they also comforted their men and harbored great love in their hearts." The sagas point to the possibility of a Caucasian etymology for the Greeks' nomenclature of "Amazon." Mayor's work also clears up confusion over whether the word signifies women who sacrificed a breast to become better archers: "The single most notorious 'fact' often used to describe Amazons is wrong … The origins of the 'single-breasted' Amazon and the controversies that still surround this false notion are so complex and fascinating that Amazon bosoms have their own chapter,"  Mayor said. 

Author: Fabrice Palumbo-Liu | Source: Stanford University [October 29, 2014]