![]() Who are the Spartan women of the Muslim world? Who are their Amazon warriors, and what happens when they take the field? We hear constantly about Middle East militias, jihadis and national armies, but less about female soldiers and their brassy heroism. ![]() It appears also in the Near Eastern context, where the foremost literary heroine, Scheherazade of “1,001 Arabian Nights,” has no warlike recourse but instead only sex and fairytales to save herself. Such a rupture is not confined to the Greek classics. Then again, their bravado is singled out as an oddity, a freak aberration from the normal rupture between femininity and the martial virtues. “Come back with this shield or come back on it” - according to Plutarch’s “Moralia,” this was the parting cry of Spartan mothers as their sons rode to battle. In fact, from Mulan to Cleopatra, from Lozen to Pavlichenko, history tells another tale. No reason to think that women are any softer, weaker, more merciful or less bloodthirsty than men, aside from arbitrary social norms plus my own idiosyncratic experience. This woman, I remember thinking as she offered me a powerful arm to pull me up and exchange friendly glove taps: This woman is a warrior. Rather a keen, dexterous athlete hardened by years of training and hundreds of fights, one who wouldn’t think twice before rushing breakneck toward the sounds of trouble. Here was my opponent: a woman, very much a woman, but not a doting mother or delicate sister, at least not at this instant. It was a fundraiser in which celebrity martial artists fought friendly matches with anyone who wanted to sign up. Needless to say.įrom my harborage on the floor, I peered out through the swollen red protective headgear that trapped and amplified the sound of my own breathing. The referee called the match, but not in my favor. Limas put almost zero force behind what then seemed like roaring deathblows). ![]() But what I remember is being stalked, cornered and pounded into a gelatinous heap of a boy (in hindsight, I’m sure Ms. Circling the hardwood floor, gathering a sleeve of dirt on my bare feet, I must have gotten off a jab or two, perhaps a most excellent try at a leg sweep. The first and only time I fought Olympic taekwondo champion Arlene Limas, I was at a fundraiser called Karate Helps Kick Diabetes, one of many such events to which my father, an accomplished martial artist himself, dragged me in my youth.
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