I Ain't Your Sweetheart, Boy.

I always amazes me just how much straight men underestimate the potential cisgendered women hold to commit violence. I routinely hear men who are against women in dangerous and violent careers wax about how females are mothers and life-givers, about how they are the core of the family and should not be put in a position which jeopardizes their lives. Of course, these men are always the first to defend this position and say they are not sexist, but a battlefield or a war is not a woman’s “place.”

Which, of course, a simple study of history extending beyond the past few hundred years of Western civilization would prove is both a fallacy and a total patriarchal construction. You don’t even have to go that far out— Jean Hachette and Hannah Duston are two fairly modern examples of women completely going into full beserker mode and just fucking everyone’s shit up. More than just examples of the odd woman not taking it anymore and deciding to defend herself or her children or country, they are examples of the woman warrior trope, amongst one of the oldest archetypes of civilization. This isn’t some modern, radical cultural trend, which is why it’s so ridiculous that heterosexual men suddenly bemoan about the loss of what they perceive as womanhood when headlines about horrific acts of violence committed not just by grown women by by girls are presented. In fact, the only radical cultural trend about womens’ capacity for violence is that it’s been so suppressed in modern culture.

There’s also a pattern of thinking that while women may be capable of violence, this violence only manifests during the instinctive need to protect their offspring. One example of this is Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Female of The Species” that, while making excellent points about how far females will go to defend the family unit, fails to take into account that women are both capable of reasoned and planned violence. Hundreds of queens, from the illustrious Elizabeth I to the lesser-known Egyptian badass, Queen Hatshepsut have led successful military campaigns while others worked as analysts, strategists, and spies.

Even these specific examples are only parts of a greater whole. The list of women warriors in folklore is staggering, and whether or not these women truly existed and did the feats they are celebrated for is irrelevant in what they contribute towards. In the West and other places where the ancient practice of goddess worship has been almost totally eradicated outside of history texts, we no longer have metaphysical examples of warrior women. Many warrior goddesses have existed throughout the ages— Ishtar, Athena, the Valkyries and Freyja, Sekhmet and Oya to name only a few— and their modern counterparts exist still in other religions today. Kali-Ma and Durga are probably two of the most important Hindu goddesses and their man focus is destruction; destruction of evil, of false ideals, of enemies of life and rebirth. They are benevolent and terrible mothers who take life in order to further the cosmic cycle.

The lesson for men here is that we’re not all delicate flowers. Women are people, whether we are cis, trans, or somewhere in-between. That means we have bouts of irrational anger or hatred, that we lash out and not just in the impotent “she’s just PMS-ing” way. Some of us are beautiful but also cunning, devoted mothers and fierce warriors, both or one or neither. All of us carry our own strengths.