Talk:Amazons

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What exactly is wrong about the following quotes that were removed?[edit]

The Wonder Woman quotes are more appropriate for that page, however Phyllis Chesler and Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo both contribute a better understanding of the theme, which even in the times of Lois and Clark was used to refer to non Greek women from the Island of California and is used by wikipedia to refer to the all female royal military regiments of the Dahomey Amazons.

  • Amazon society, as mythology, history, and universal male nightmare, represents a culture in which women reign culturally supreme because of their gender. Amazon societies are also important because women were trained to be warriors—military and, presumably, in other ways as well...
  • In Amazon societies, women were mothers and their society's only warriors; mothers and their society's only hunters; mothers and their society's only political and religious leaders. No division of labor based on sex seems to have existed in such societies. Although Amazon leaders existed and queens were elected, the societies seem to have been...ones in which any woman could aspire to and achieve full human expression.
  • Perhaps someday a choice between forms of injustice will not be necessary. Of course, it is unrealistic and perhaps dangerous to take visions too seriously. Perhaps we must respect them as difficult truths with which to inform our lives—in some way. Perhaps we cannot go backward too longingly in time. (We can, of course, realize how little or badly forward we've come.) Despite the importance of knowing about goddesses and Amazons, I certainly believe that mass female liberation lies more in the technological future than in the biological past. The earth's female population is no longer small nor is the habit of warfare a desirable one. For women not to fear rape because we can successfully defend ourselves against it is not anachronistic but revolutionary. For women to be considered as potential warriors (in every sense of the word, including its physical representation) is not anachronistic but revolutionary. If realized, it might imply a radical change in modern life.
  • What would it mean for a woman to be a warrior today? How could modern women control the means of production and reproduction? Miracles of consciousness aside, I see no way for women to defeat or transfer patriarchy without achieving power. Unlike male groups, women have little power with which to either avoid or commit violence. Women traditionally are physically weak and politically powerless in a culture that values physical strength and its extended representation in the form of weaponry and money. Women, like men, must be capable of violence or self-defense before their refusal to use violence constitutes a free and moral choice, rather than 'making the best of a bad bargain.
  • Survival is the characteristic property of power. To those who think I am suggesting that we have a war between the sexes, I say: but we've always had one...Should or can there be a single standard of behavior for both sexes? Is there such a thing as a biologically rooted female culture that should remain separate from male culture, partly because it is different than or superior to male culture?
  • Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler
  • Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks.
    • Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, The Adventures of Esplandián Putnam, 1917 p. 306

I think these should be restored and would be willing to further discuss the academic merit of including these and expanding the scope past Greece. CensoredScribe (talk) 19:29, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]