Girls Don’t Fight Fair

by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon

Senior Editor of Touchstone Magazine, and archpriest of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, IL, Fr. Patrick is, perhaps, the most erudite writer in the Orthodox Church in North America today. This article, one of his Pastoral Ponderings, was published by Orthodoxtoday.org.

Although the history of art does not show this to be the case, ancient legend claimed that the Amazon warriors — the easier to bend the bow and fling the spear — had their right breasts amputated. Indeed, popular Greek etymology explained the name “Amazon” as derived from a-mazos, “without breast.”

I wonder, however, if that physical mutilation did not also insinuate in the Amazons some deeper and more significant impairment, a hint, as it were, of diminished femininity. The willful loss of that breast suggests – to me, at least – that the Amazons, as women, were not quite up to the mark. I confess to a basic, inherited, and irremediable bias against women warriors. I don’t like girls getting into fights. It just ain’t proper. Read more