# Women, cattle, and slaves



## Brian G Turner (Aug 18, 2014)

This blog piece at Aidan Moher's _Dribble Of Ink_ site won a Hugo:
http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured...attle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

Definitely an interesting and provocative read on gender stereotypes, and very well presented IMO.


----------



## The Judge (Aug 18, 2014)

I read this some time ago (was it linked here before?) and my only thought was how sheltered she must have been not to have realised that women had always fought in resistance and guerilla armies.


----------



## thaddeus6th (Aug 18, 2014)

Jein. Women have always fought, even during particularly misogynistic eras (Robert Guiscard's wife, in the 12th century, was practically a real life Valkyrie, it seems), but they've also almost always been in the minority for social as well as biological reasons.

And it cuts both ways. The media still refer with horror to the deaths of women and children. Children, fair enough, but is a woman dying worse than a man?

The soldiers and female soldiers point seems valid but you could just as easily make it about male nurses and primary school teachers.

I agree there's a common and widespread underestimation of what women did in various eras (even in medieval times they could run their own business and, perversely, a woman battering her husband was less likely to get taken to court over it than vice versa).

Got to admit the article's so enormous I only read some of the earliest bit.


----------



## Toby Frost (Aug 18, 2014)

I'm with the Judge on this. It's not badly-written, but the Wikipedia entries for Ursula Graham-Bower or Nancy Wake would be just as instructive in female badassedry, if that's a word (it isn't).


----------



## Brian G Turner (Aug 18, 2014)

It's was interesting to see Kameron link to Foz Meadows linking to a piece where Scott Lynch justified having a black female pirate captain:
http://fuckyeahscifiwomenofcolour.t...uthor-scott-lynch-responds-to-a-critic-of-the

Simply because I'm reading the original Dragonlance chronicles (first published 1984-86), and there's a black female pirate captain in that. For those who vaguely remember the story, but not _that _character: it's on her boat that Raistlin _does his big thing_.


----------



## thaddeus6th (Aug 19, 2014)

Wasn't Artemisia Xerxes' favourite ship captain (and also a woman)?


----------

