This is not a search for "Xena" but for actual women who took up arms and fought like men. It's for a novel I'm into rewrites on about a young women turned female warrior in spite of herself. Set in an era about like the middle ages but on another planet, etc.
During the research I came acorss something interesting.
There are many case of women who dressed up like men and joined armies and fought like men. Not unlike the American West's legend of Claminity Jane.
In each case the women impersonated a man in order to go un-noticed. China's famous Mulan as but one example. But these were only a few cases. Even if you extrapolate that there probably ten cases that went un-noticed for each one known, you don't get very many women dressed up like men going to war.
There were far more women, notably of the noble classes, who didn't pretend to be men but were simply women fighting beside men. Duchesses and princesses and baronesses who lead men into battle and defend their homes and castle and countries. Yet these women who fought as women don't get nearly as much notice as the women who disguise themselves as men.
It makes me wonder about where the idea of women dressing in male clothing came from?
The handful of stories of women disguised as men, which novelists and movies gloomed onto and promoted?
Is the Women's Lib concept that they have to imitate males valid?
Where it all becomes different is that our culture treats women trying to be like men as something serious and proper. But men trying to be like women become a joke, at best, or are seen as something pathetic people living troubled lives.
Women as men we applaud for their noble efforts.
Men as women are scorned!
One more case of a double standard!
We simple need more positive images of men in skirts that aren't the butt of jokes!
Dennis A. Lederle
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