Amazons International #3
Topics
- Ricci: my profile
- Thomas: bio
- Thomas: Outlining the amazon concept
--------
From: kaesl-r@acsu.buffalo.edu (ricarda kaeslingk)
Subject: my profile
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 23:54:56 EDT
I admit it. I am an Amazon and I LOVE IT. It think what qualifies me best as an amazon is the fact that I will face guys on their own level. I am the one in gym class who throws guys against the walls during floor hockey. HA!!! Once during that gym class, I growled and there was the "parting of the Red Sea." Now I know what Moses felt like. I was always picked first because that way that captain knew he wouldn't get hurt.
I play basketball with guys, too. I block, press, and guard my man. The players are usually impressed when I will stand still and let a 6'3" plow into me.
No matter what I play or do. I do it as an equal. What treatment I give others, I expect back. So if I plow someone against a wall, I don't get offended if they do it back to me.
In hockey, I also play goalie. I go out and attack the ball instead of playing back in the net. I admit, I scare the shit out of guys, but they do have respect for me!
I do a lot of other sports also. The latest being co-ed softball. A month ago, I played co-ed tackle mud football. I play lacrosse, ultimate frisbee, etc. I swim and run to keep in shape. My favorite hofy ( which I haven't been able to do lately ) is horseback riding. i miss it a lot.
I don't understand how girls can go about playing as their stereotype dictates. I mean it is embarrassing to see a girl who plays one hell of a field hockey game, pretend like she can't play when playing in gym. Who wants to be fake. I grew up as a tomboy and had a lot more fun doing so than pretending I was weak and stupid.
CrazyWildEyes
Ricci
[I love your attitude, Ricci! This is just the spirit that we're all about! -- Thomas]
-----------------
From: Thomas
Subject: Bio
Keith speaks for me as well when he said:
I've been quietly obsessed by strong women and wrestling for as long as I've been a sexual person. My first sexual fantasies revolved around wrestling with strong, powerful women. It was only later that I learned there were other fun things we could do as well :-)
I've wrestled and arm wrestled with most of my lovers, and I think it's a great way of getting to know one another and becoming intimate friends. At school I used to tease and tickle the big girls in the class, to get them going. I've been a fan of female action heroes (Modesty Blaise, amazon science fiction and fantasy comics and novels etc) for as long as I can remember, I love Vasquez in _Aliens_, I regularly read women's bodybuilding magazines.
I've never understood (and I trust I never shall) how anybody can like, accept or live with the dominating ideas about gender role bipolarity and femininity as weakness, passivity and subordination. I'm deeply opposed to the idea of gender role bipolarity (i.e. the idea that men and women have, or should be trained to have, different interests, abilities and behaviors because they are men and women) and my sexual values are antithetical to the standard cliches about "femininity".
I find that the gender bipolarity ideas are destructive. I know many "masculine" or androgynous women, often athletical women who were labeled "unfeminine", "tomboys" etc as girls, who experience an emotional conflict between their interests and their sex, or between the gender part of their personality and other parts. It can be a difficult job to get through with the message that one doesn't have to be a mainstream feminine cliche; that in fact the mainstream ideas are limiting and destructive.
Our society has inherited its mainstream attitudes from Greece and from Christianity, a doubly reinforced message. Greek statues depict male heroes with athletical bodies -- and soft, weak women. Women were not permitted at the Greek Olympics -- there was *death penalty* for women who were caught at the Olympic stadion. (Men and women were segregated all over in the Greek society, even in the home.)
In our century there has been two or three waves of female athleticism, including the current one, where women are "muscling in" in such sports as bodybuilding and martial arts, creating both a real power within themselves as well as a symbolical expression of it. Needless to say, this is something I welcome and support.
This was supposed to be a bio, so I'll stop here...
- Thomas
"I find women with well developed flesh very attractive. The scrawny little things doing commercials on my television set are slightly repulsive -- like famine victims."-- Dana Hatch
From: Thomas
Subject: Outlining the amazon concept
Stormwind writes:
i guess the best way to start this off is to ask, what exactly is an amazon, and why do i consider myself one?most amazons are drawn (usually by boris vallejo) as tawny muscular goddesses sporting very little clothing.
(I think I've missed out on something here -- where can one find Boris Vallejo's drawings (comic books? book covers? paintings?))
so aside from physique, what classifies one as an amazon? that's a much more difficult question than would appear at first glance. i suppose that my own criteria for amazonness is the capability to be self sufficient and non-dependant on others, but most importantly is pursuing what one wants to do and the willingness to challenge social norms whilst doing so.
That's very good! I think that goes to the heart of the matter.
I once wrote what I called a list of typical characteristics of the "masculine woman" (before I heard the term "psychological androgyny"). I hasten to stress that I do not claim that this is an exhaustive list; nor do I claim that all these characteristics have to be present, nor that they have the same degree of importance.
(Also, today I'm more restrictive with terms like "masculine" and "feminine", which I consider to be culturally determined grab-bags of psychological characteristics that are not determined by one's biological sex; rather, they have been grouped together because of historical coincidences, and different cultures have very different concepts of "masculinity" and "femininity". I think that everybody would be best off by possessing both sets of characteristics in order to be a whole person, so I'm in favor of psychological androgyny.)
Be that as it may, here are what I'd call some typical amazon characteristics:
- athletically built
- self-assertive, capable of independent decision-making and action
- a particular "heavy" or unconsciously self-confident way of walking, stressing certainty and physical strength
- preference for "rough", practical clothing (e g sportswear, jeans, leather jackets)
- a "strong" face, vivid eyes (hard to be specific here, but it's the opposite of the kind of detached, passive, away-from-this-world-looking expression that one can find in some artworks that are considered to express femininity). Having a "defined" angular face helps.
- her looks is not the most important part of her self-concept (even if she is photo-model beautiful)
- no or little make-up/fake-up
- no false behavior (deceptions, manipulations, game-playing etc.)
- Thomas
(I'd be surprised if everybody agrees with everything I've written in this issue -- let's hear it, folks.)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazons International: thomasg@ulrik.uio.no
Thomas Gramstad, moderator
------------------------------------------------------------------
"A Hard Woman is Good to Find" -- The Valkyries
