Thread by @thebencheah

Now that I've got a bit of time, let's talk about the fantasy of the woman warrior.

And why everyone who goes rah-rah about women warriors and swordswomen and whatnot has less than a clue about the realities of combat.

/1

https://twitter.com/DeanBradleySFF/status/1213491248063041536

First, definitions.

We're talking about female warriors in a pre-industrial setting. A time and place without firearms, the internal combustion engine, or other conveniences. This makes melee combat the rule, not the norm.

In other words: historical combat.

/2

In the pre-gunpowder era, soldiers strapped on between 1/3 to 1/2 of their body weight (or more) in weapons, armour, supplies and other gear and marched for 10 to 30 miles a day.

A pre-industrial soldier needed superior strength and endurance just to GET to the battlefield. /3

This requirement alone will disqualify many MODERN women, with modern medicine and nutrition, much less pre-industrial women, from combat.

A load like this, carried over so many miles, will blow out backs and joints, especially in the lower extremities. /4

The US Army found that "women are more than three times as likely to suffer a lower extremity stress fracture and more than seven times more likely to suffer a femoral neck stress fracture than men."

lermagazine.com/article/stress…

/5

To REACH the battlefield, a woman warrior must be at least as strong as a man.

Which means she has to be a genetic anomaly, somewhere in the top 1% of women.

Now consider that Olympian female athletes are as strong as their 14-year-old male counterparts... /6

A woman warrior who can keep up with male troops will be extremely rare. She will be as tall and buff as the men too. She must, to bear the weight she has to carry.

And even then, science tells us that she isn't going to outmuscle men.

No elfin waifus for you.

/7

When the troops DO reach the battlefield, combat does NOT start immediately.

They'll spend hours and hours standing still or maneuvering around local terrain, securing strategic advantages.

Under the hot sun. In full kit. With inconsistent resupply.

/8

When they do join battle, they have two options:

Wait for the enemy to come to them.

OR

Go forth to meet the enemy.

/9

Both options have their advantages and disadvantages. Speaking only of the individual soldier, the former is preferred. He'll have more time to rest and prepare for battle.

But you can't always choose to fight a defensive battle, so you must train for the offense. /10

When the opposing sides finally meet on the field, they will be hot, sweaty, tired, thirsty, encumbered by the weight of their weapons and armour.

The only saving grace is that their nonessential supplies would be left in the rear, with the baggage train. /11

Under such conditions, they must do battle.

Combat usually opens with long-range missile weapons. Javelins, arrows, slingshots, darts. To weather this storm, the troops must approach the enemy with tight formations and shields raised.

Which is exhausting. /12

Remember: it could take a while before the troops actually meet.

They'll have to survive this storm of missiles for a long time. And THAT means they need to hold up heavy shields for a long time.

BEFORE combat.

/13

Soldiers without shields have to rush through and pray their armour holds, and that the missiles don't find their mark.

Depending on the setting and time period, melee combat proper begins at spear range. What usually happens is push of pike.

reddit.com/r/AskHistorian… /14

Soldiers could spend a long time trying to fight through each other's long weapons.

Push of pike, once again, requires upper body strength (to handle the polearms) and muscular endurance (to push and bat about.) /15

In such a setting, individual skill is nice but not as important as the brute strength and endurance of the group.

A skilled soldier might kill his counterpart on the other side. But that man will be quickly replaced by the one behind him.

/16

If he tries to rush in to exploit the gap, he will face a wall of spears and be forced back. Or die.

There is no place for lone heroes in a spear wall. Only soldiers who will hold the line in the face of a forest of sharpened steel.

/17

When combat closes to sword range, interesting things happen.

In the West, a block of armed men will slam into another block. The shield wall must hold. If it collapses, everyone in the block is at risk. It's organized close-quarters butchery. /18

In Japan, however, samurai maintained a tradition of disorganized single combat, seeking honour through one-on-one duels. This finally ended in the mass wars of the second half of the 16th century.

Keep this in mind as we discuss space. /19

This is how soldiers might have fought on the battlefield. Xingyiquan was theorized to have been derived from military spear work, to be used in tightly-packed formations.

The linearity of the style comes from the LACK of space. /20

You can go forward.

You might be able to retreat, if there's a gap between you and the man behind you.

You have no room to move to the left or right.

This defines your fight strategy. Namely, crash into the enemy and overwhelm him. Fast. /21

Many civilian martial arts, in contrast, DEMAND space.

Space to maneuver around the enemy. Space to employ deceptions, tricks, and footwork.

Space that might allow a female pugilist to survive combat with a male.

Space that is NOT found on the battlefield. /22

Now observe Maija Sonderholm. Head of her style, she is famous for specializing in the art of deception.

But she acknowledges that her art is mostly irrelevant outside the context of mid-range sword duels.

Look at how much space they need.



/23

On the battlefield, you won't have space or time for sword duels and trickery. You need to charge in, take out the enemy in front of you and move on.

If he's in armour, you need to throw him down, stab him to death, and move on.

This requires strength and endurance.
/24

A woman needs skills to survive combat with a man. But, barring an honour culture like ancient Japan, there is no space on the battlefield for individual skill.

Brute strength and stamina counts more than skill.

And even a 1% woman can't match her male counterpart. /end

Postscript:

This thread is focused primarily on the battlefield, because this is where warriors go. But it only covers a small portion of the full spectrum of combat.

Let me know if you're interested in analysis of the other realms of combat and how a woman warrior might fare.