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Old 01-May-17, 22:29
al89 al89 is offline
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Default Re: Losing at chess is sexy

This is my favorite painting of Tomyris (look at attachment). She looks so beautiful, feminine and ladylike while at the same time enjoying her complete victory over her powerful male rival in a brutal display of her total triumph over him (Cyrus the Great whom she defeated was one of the greatest rulers in the history of antiquity, it's pretty impressive that this woman handed him a complete defeat and took his life). By holding his severed head in some way she is showing how small he was to her and that she squashed him like some bug.

Like I said it's very telling that her victory fascinated so many great artists of the renaissance as there was no other reason to depict her other than because of her display of female domination since her battle wasn't particularly relevant to European history.

Also the way that the artists depicted her as a contemporary European aristocratic lady rather than as some oriental woman (which she actually was) in some way reveals a secret desire or fantasy to translate her example of female domination to their society and their time, making it look as if a Christian European woman could also behave like that and deliver such cruel punishment on men as well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maitsek [Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]
You're right to emphasize that we can find many events in history which could be related to this fetish. I was captivated when i was younger by Greek mythology (with a lot of tales involving goddesses/women of power), and the early medieval period has always been a source of interest...some women of these times have fascinated me, especially Brunhilda, Queen of Austrasia (a part of actual France). She ruled a kingdom during warfare and a family feud : she was so feared by her enemies she suffered one of the most cruelest fate of those times (dragged to death by horses).
I liked Greek mythology as a child as well, I loved women defeating men for as long as I remember and I remember I loved the illustrations of Amazons and also Athena beating Ares and things like that. So basically my desires were passed on to me or at least strenghtened by Greek (Western) mythology which is just another proof that this fetish is part of Western tradition in some way.

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I think however we can find examples of women rulers in Arabic or Asian regions. During the seventh century, Wu Zetian was an empress of China and even created her own dynasty. There is also a lot of tales with women warriors in these parts of the world. I would say it is more buried and hidden than in western countries, but it is mainly a reflection of the ambivalences of society.
I think the difference is that in the West we made more of a fetish out of women dominating men because we included that a lot more into our mythology, art and culture. I could be wrong though, I haven't given it much thought yet. I think one of the reasons might be in Catholicism which put a lot of women like Virgin Mary and women saints on pedestal, also there were a lot of influential women in the Church in the middle ages like Hildegard of Bingen or Catherine of Siena.

People have this simplified one sided view that Catholicism/Christianity oppressed women while its relationship with women is much more complex. In the days of Roman empire Christianity was actually associated with women a lot since there were more religious women than men at the time and also in the modern days there were/are more women going to churches than men and Christianity did bring a lot of rights to women compared to what they had in pagan Rome. Also the pagan Roman empire didn't have female rulers while medieval Christianity didn't mind women rulling over men as queens, duchesses, princesses etc. Not only that if you look at the vocabulary related to those female rulers it was common that men would really stress their submission to their female leaders and were supposed to give them utmost respect. Isabella the Catholic was one of the most revered leaders in Christian European history and she's another example of a pious religious woman who was very respected by her male subjects.

For this reason I think people are wrong when they view Christian middle ages and early modern era as a time when men completely dominated when there were so many powerful women figures who kept their men subjects in line and forced them to submit to them.

One of my favorite female rulers is Olga of Kiev who was the first Russian ruler to convert to Christianity and was also pious and religious and is now venerated as a saint. She was a very dominant lady who completely obliterated the Drevlians, a tribe that killed her husband. She inflicted a series of devastating defeats on them, outsmarted them many times and slowly destroyed them to the point where they begged her for mercy but she ignored them and decided to eradicate them, enjoying her revenge and her complete triumph. If you want more details read on her Wiki page about "Drevlian uprising": [Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]

Here's a story of her life in more details and with some nice illustrations:
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Here's another nice picture of her:[Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]

I love how they always depict these cruel noble female rulers as feminine, it's how I like to imagine them as well, as elegant and feminine women but at the same time able to keep their men subjects completely submissive to them. Basically as some real life dominatrices.

EDIT: Maybe you should move the posts from post #34 on to a new thread "Women rulers defeating men rulers" or something like that so that we don't derail the thread about chess completely?

Last edited by al89; 01-May-17 at 22:45.
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