What social forces and practices make a woman? How is the a woman produced through work? And, does that work start with culture or go back to mammal radical seperation of female sexual function and male?
These are the issues that keep me up at night. I really can't see how to fit biology in to a deeper question of gender discourse. I have no idea gender is contructed, but our constructions as humans often take advantage of biology. And the limits of biology have often imposed different roles to male and female. You can't tend a child and hunt at the same time and human children can't be left alone.
Perhaps this is the Greeks interest in the myth of the Amazons. They must have understood that there would be no reason for women not to fight, and women from the regions near Russia, Georgia, and Iran where nomadic tribes raised horses could produce an very deadly weapon. A female, light and yet strong (women were strong in antiquity if not in the Victorian age), with a speak and bow.
The Greeks of Homer's age were mostly infantry forces but they had horses, and the raised horses and they must have known a boy can defeat a man on a fast horse, if the boy is good. It would make sense to field an army of female calavry unites just as today it would make sense to field units of them in tanks and jets, reduction of wieght can make a major difference in a battle.
But Western Culture never tried with this. Russia used women in WWI and WWII combat but none of the Axis or Allies did so in such a major way. Women could fight but they don't, because warrior has a status in our culture women can not be allowed to tradionally hold.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
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