An Excerpt from, Learning to Respect my Strut: My Journey as a Woman Warrior, and Women’s History Month
This week as March begins with its designation as Women’s History Month, I wanted to share some excerpts from my book because in the first part of it, I discuss women’s history and how large portions of it haven’t been included in the history textbooks.
The Valkyries
“Valkyrie, also spelled Walkyrie, Old Norse Valkyrja (“Chooser of the Slain”), in Norse mythology, any of a group of maidens who served the god Odin and were sent by him to the battlefields to choose the slain who were worthy of a place in Valhalla.” The true Viking world’s Valkyries were portrayed in artwork and oral storytelling as terrifying. Yet, when the Christian monks of medieval times began writing about them, they distorted the stories using their own fantasies to paint these women as beautiful, erotic beings. This is early evidence of males subverting images of women to objectify them as sexually tempting and to hide the authentic power of women. When I discovered this, I thought of the pictures of those big-breasted super hero women in graphic novels and the like, created by male fantasies in the 21st Century. It seems they weren’t the first males to sexualize women to subvert their strength and power.
1Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Valkyrie." Encyclopedia Britannica, October 1, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Valkyrie-Norse-mythology.
Male fantasies and their objectification didn’t begin with these fanciful monks I am sure, but I do wonder when it first began. Could it have begun in the Stone Age? It is hard for me to fathom a weak female during that era or for many after that, certainly.
As I worked through the research for my book, I found many examples of women who had pushed back against the cultural norms and expectations of their time and did as they pleased as far as they could within the structures of their society in their time. I began seeing some posts on Facebook about women in history who stood out and did some fantastic things.
I would like to do my part in celebrating women during the month of March, so I would like to add a couple more excerpts from my book here regarding women in history.
The Vikings and the Amazons of ancient history are not the only female warriors. Women were snipers in WWII for Russia. The most famous female sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, had the nickname, Lady Death.2hile she was attending university, she volunteered for the infantry in the Red Army and at first, was encouraged to become a nurse, but she eventually made her way into the army. Even in more recent history, the Vietnam War had a female sniper and torturer of infamous acclaim. She was known as Apache, and she became a target high on the list for the American troops because of her sadistic ways. She was killed by Carlos Haithcock, the famous American Sniper of the Vietnam era. All in all,the history here supports the fact that women have every capacity to be as heroic, courageous, warlike, cruel, and vicious as men. Our history is important, and knowing this history of women warriors is important as well. We have been brainwashed, oppressed, demoralized, and hoo-doo-ed to believe that we were meant to be subservient to men. That is not true. That is horseshit. We need our daughters to know our legacy. They need to know they have their own power. All they have to do is understand the history of women and believe in themselves. If we train our daughters to know and believe this, it could change our world. The victimization of women might very well be on its way to disappearing. The reason we were brainwashed and oppressed by the patriarchy is because of fear, fear of our fierceness as warriors. The Ancestral OG Strut is the fierce warrior that resides inside each of us. That warrior that had been buried, hidden, oppressed, sexually objectified, raped, beaten, ostracized, bullied, pushed down, and forced into servitude under the guise of proper ladylike decorum and religious bullshit. But the Ancestral OG Strut is still there. Some of us are claiming it, and others are becoming aware of the power of womanhood. I encourage each of you to reach down and grab that deeply hidden, still powerful warrior, and strut your identity. Awaken to your heritage. The strut of the warrior women is not necessarily a physical battlefield anymore, but there are still fields of battle we face every day. The Ancestral OG strutting warrior women did what they had to do to survive and thrive. So can we. All we have to do is find our own strut and use it to rise up and be who we were meant to be, powerful women. Use it to show that we will not be subservient, that we have a purpose, and that we have the right to pursue our dreams. And as you embark on this journey with me, strut your shit. It is your right.
I hope that these excerpts from my book convey the significance I place upon women owning their power and individualism as we celebrate women’s history month.
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Valkyrie." Encyclopedia Britannica, October 1, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Valkyrie-Norse-mythology.