Women competed in the gladiatorial arena fighting bare chested. (No bras to burn anyway, and well before the Womens Lib movement of the 60's and 70's. To prove I am not a chauvinst, I have always supported a womans right to bare her chest in public! This is a free country afterall and Gloria Steinham had one cute cottontail!) Many of the females, were housed, trained and used as gladiators in the Colliseum, which was the social network of ancient Rome. The female goddess glads were especially vicious according to depictions and writings of the time. The emperors liked to stage torch-lit fights between bare breasted combatants with copious cleavage who rarely wore helmets. Nero also forced the wives of some Roman senators into amphitheaters and some women fought in heavy armour. One famous marble relief depiction is inscribed with names that translate to “Amazon” and “Achillia” there have always been women who were able and to do battle with other women and with men. (In certain bizarre instances they also fought midgets!)
These were often fights included in the regular Roman gladiatorial games although at first they were held as a novelty to excite the Roman groin and engage the female portion of the audience in their first girl crush on a sweaty, well built, powerful female dynamo that was all muscle flexing female panther, while they dripped sexuality by the gallon.
Not all females were willing participants in the carnal carnival atmosphere of the Colisseum, but, were forced to by some emperors with a sadistic gleam under their togas. Nero it has been found, forced the wives of Roman senators into combat for entertainment purposes. Now heres a practice we could use here in Washington, DC. I can see some of the cougar wives of the senators bare-chested for old glory. Sure would make election year much more exciting. Hell, first ladies too...I actually did want to see Obama's wife and McCains naked in a mud pit going at it on ESPN. Lets face it...Michelle has one hell of rack and an ass like a fortress!
Female gladiators did have one advantage over their male counterparts...while the men were trained in group schools, the females were trained by private tutors. Some females trained were as young as 14 so jailbait combatants were considered grown up and fair game for grown women to fight and conquer if they could. In those instances the older female was the dominant over the younger submissive female who now had to obey the victor if it was not a fight to the death. That's one way for a woman to win a slave-girl for girl on girl post-gladiatorial action in the bed chamber! Rewards have virtues and lets face it, gladiators make for strange but delicious bed-mates!
Fast forward to the female future, and in 600 a.d. writings have shown that Celtic women fought alongside the men in battle against various enemies of the state. One female in particular, the daughter of Alfred the Great, led an army that conquered what today is known as Wales (whose only claim to known fame is Tom Jones!) Celtic Females also developed sword dancing as a ceremony and were involved in other battles in Britain. Some of these female legions were bare breasted with enough fleshy Teutonic tits jumping up and down to raise the erection factor of many a kilt of wary warriors where the mere sight of exposed breasts were enough to defeat an onslaught of erection crazed males mesmerized by fleshy mounds of mammaries adorned with nipples the size of broadsword shields on the attack...and if it was that time of the month, a particularly vicious assault could be expected. Men will pause in battle when menstruation at it's bloody peak leaving a deadly liquid trail dripping like a raging river of no return behind them as gallons of victorious vagina viscosity ooze creating a particularly blood curdling sight that stopped the male dead in his tracks. Where were tampons when you needed one.? Speaking of tampons, it reminds me of the story of the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dyke...but that is another story...and another type of dike...but my story is more sordid and more interesting...the dyke was pissed by the way!
Hold the eggrolls and stop the sushi! Foraging through the female fortune cookies of history the tea leaves show that China and Japan were swordplay foreplay forerunners in the feminine field of fighting and let there be no Confucian about it, by the 1300's Chinese females were engaged in sword and fist fighting. Many of the Chinese females were not just pugilists and swordswomen, but accomplished archers with crossbows, so that made for a most deadly combination of volatility when unleashed on the battlefields.
Japanese females were also martial arts mythmakers when it came to deadly combat. Women trained with men, and the weapon of mass destruction of choice was the "naginata" or long sword with a curved steel blade on the end of a eight foot wooden shaft, not only phallic but perfect for piercing armor and disembowling! By the 20th Century in the 1930's while Japan was getting more agressive towards their Asian neighbors, training females with these long swords was made officially a state exercise for Imperial Japan with illusions of granduer running rampant in her thirst for blood. This training was not just for women, but also for teen-aged and younger school girls.
Females were used throughout Asia and the Middle East around the same time period by kings and other rulers as bodyguards as well as replacements for eunuchs to guard the treasure trove of captured concubines and other captive females kept in harems. You can be assured there may have been a lesbian relationship or two but surely the ruler of the roost probably didn't put up much of a fuss, afterall it's not a male dipping into the private stock, and besides, it had a high propensity for entertainment in and of itself for the randy ruler of the harem hen house.
Amazons, most associated with the ancient Greeks were known as "Oiorpata" (Bull Busters?) and were a nation of all-female warriors that dwelt according to written accounts in a region which today is modern Ukraine. There are also accounts of similar tribes of warrior women in what is today Libya. Ancient writings have shed light on Amazon queens. Leaders such as Penthesilea who fought in the Trojan War.(The War of Prophyllacticus?) and also Hippolyta who was the object of one of the labors of Hercules.He had to steal her girdle! Honest! One mans labor is another mans, or womans pleasure. Nothing like a good girdles snatching to enliven the panty raid party.
Amazons in ancient art abound on scrolls and wall depictions doing battle with Greek and Roman armies and winning everytime.There was so much of this art that it became it's own genre known as amazonomachy and includes marbel bas-reliefs as seen in the Parthenon and in sculptures and various statuary.
Men were not permitted to have sexual encounters or even live in Amazon territory accept as captured slaves for domesticity kept as you would cattle and othe livestock. They would perform domestic chores, work in the fields and were used once a year for breeding purposes for procreation sex by their captors in order to keep the Amazon culture and race alive. The male children were either killed or sent back to the fathers own tribe. The girls were kept and brought up by their mothers and trained in hunting and the art of war. In war Amazon women preferred not to kill the enemy men but take them as slaves. However, should they want to marry, that was another story altogether. The Amazon could marry one of her male slaves, but, first as a form of a pre-nuptial agreement...they had to kill a male in battle first! Just knowing she had done that to tie the knot (literally!) would keep her slave husband in line don't you think?
The Amazon legacy is alive and well today..in..yep, you guessed it..Ukraine! A modern day Amazon named Katerina Tarnovska heads up a group of Amazons called Asgarda. They all share the singular belief that the Amazons are the direct ancestors of Ukranian women! They have thier own form of martial arts called Hopak but the emphasis today is more on self defense then busting balls for the sake of busting balls. In Turkey, they have unearthed artifacts such as shields and other militaria supposedly used by the race of Amazons when they ruled that region, and today the Turks have constructed an Amazon Village and museum for academic as well as tourism reasons. For real dominant fun for the male and female submissive there is the annual Amazon Festival in the town of Terme to celebrate the legacy of this warrior tribe.Have fun and let Xena kick your ass boys and girls...Gabriella approves!
Eleanor of Aquitane, was one of those twenty-something gen-x wife of Louis VII of France who decided to take up the cause of the Crusades, and garbed as a man decided to mount up and ride off in 1146 to join the battle! She dealt stunning blows on the field of battle and actually returned unscathed and eventually married Henry the II! Then of course there was Joan of Arc. She was all female but in her mind and manner, she was all man and quite the brilliant military strategist. In 1429, at that age of 17 which today she couldn't even vote in America, she kicked British ass to drive the Brits from French soil all away across the channel to jolly olde England. Then of course now that victory was in hand, the Grand Inquisitors discovered that he was a she and she took a military walk on the wild side. This of course to the Master Baiters of the Inquisition was blasphemy of the highest order...(ok, they can believe in a Virgin Birth but not that a woman should act as a man!)
Joan was a man in her mind and her bearing and a damn good one at that. She always dressed on mens clothes and was the rock star of the ages until 1431 where she was burned at the stake..for posing as a man! So much for lesbian rights in the dark ages! Her crime was "cross gendered expression" and accepted Holy Communion dressed...gasp! as a man! She was told to dress as a woman and be a woman in her manner, she refused and was thus burned at the stake, but not completely...once the fire subsided and her clothing burned to ash..they exposed her body to the throngs showing off her female secrets, proving that St. Joan, just as the Virgin Mary had a Holy Hymen!
By the 1400's British prostitutes were taking up arms and fighting on horseback with axes defending British cities and castles from other European invaders. These same coquettish vixens were involved in sword duels in the 1600's, thereby probably giving rise to the term broads with swords or more appropriately, "broadswords!" As war continued in Europe in the 1700' and the 1800's females were on the front lines loading and firing artillery decimating whole divisions of the "enemy" whoever they may be! Then, as Hitler was Sieg Heiling, Britsh hymens took to the skies flying as the got cozy in the cockpit (no pun intended) of fighter planes in dog fight duels against Goerings "invincible" Luftwaffe in WWII knocking them out of the skies and flat on their Messerschmidt axis asses.
One interesting activity involving battling females took place on a regular basis in sex crazed Switzerland during the 13th Century during cases involving rape. While William Tell was shooting apples off his sons head, rapists were stealing "virgin cherries" and holding Heidi down by the pigtails while she yodeled for help!
Today the rape victim is treated not as a victim but is raked over the rape coals in court and sometimes looses the case. In Switzerland the judicial system would schedule a duel between the accused and the victim. To make it even and fair, the man was placed in a dug out pit as deep as his navel while the female had free movement around the pit. Weapons were leather belts, sticks, and rocks wrapped in cloth. If a weapon touched the ground three times he or she was declared defeated and in that case the male was beheaded and the female lost her right hand. This was centuries before the term "bobbit"!
During the days of the slave trade, black tribes in Africa were victimizing each other and selling their captives into slavery! Sort of like burning down your own ghetto..so in effect..which came first the chicken or the egg? Can't have a slave trade without actual slaves now can you? Conversely, there would be no slave trade if there was not a market for it. Both races were guilty, not just one!
During one of these slave raiding parties, King Agaja of Dahomey suffered massive casualities to his armed forces so in a stroke of genius he created a female palace guard armed with muskets. Never take a spear to a gunfight! There were at one time over 5,000 of these female guards, armed and fabulous as they say! They were also highly trained in combat and explosively effective on the battlefield. They were considered better warriors then their male counterparts by European observers and wrote glowing reports of their prowess in battle. One problem...if they became pregnant, they were executed.
Women today serve in combat roles as a matter of course. American women more still in somewhat of a limited and support capacity and nothing like the ferocious field of combat we've seen by females in a revolution such as the Cubans or the Chinese, or the Soviet women of WWII defending Stalingrad or the Vietnamese women during the American debaucle. Wait, want tough? The Israeli Sabra..named after the cactus of the region they are tender on the outside..but tough on the inside. These are the women to fear...in time perhaps the American fighting female will get her chance to charge on the field in hand to hand combat against a mighty foe...but that day has not come for them ...yet. The American male leaders won't let them! So much for true equality eh?