THIS IS MARRIAGE!!
Thats right!
Permission to be a bad ass. Nod.
He looks back at the guy like, “SEE THAT? SHE SAID YES. YOU’RE SO FUCKED.”
Like, guys. Sparta was so kick ASS sometimes when it came to women. Spartan women were given these small knives so that if their husbands came home and tried to hit them or assault them, they had a weapon within reach. That weapon was for CUTTING THEIR HUSBANDS’ FUCKING FACES so that when he went out in public everyone would know he was an asshole, abusing jerkface and they would publicly shame him.
I DID NOT KNOW THAT THAT IS GREAT
LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT SPARTAN WOMEN FOR A SECOND.
In Sparta, women could own land and were considered citizens. THAT IS A HUGE BIG FUCKING DEAL. Why? Because that was RARE AS FUCK and there are lots of places TODAY where women don’t even get that much.
Divorce was totally fine, and a woman could expect to keep her own wealth and get custody of the kids because paternal lineage wasn’t very important. And it didn’t make her a pariah! She could totally remarry, no big deal at all.
Spartan women participated in some fuckin’ badass sporting events, too. And because they were expected to be as physically fit as the Spartan menfolk (who all had to serve compulsory military duties, btw, and couldn’t marry until they finished them at thirty) they didn’t have time for lots of swishy dresses. So they wore notoriously short skirts. According to some accounts, their thighs were visible at all times. HOLY SHIT.
Also, In Sparta men only got their names on their graves if they died in battle. And women? Women only got their names on their graves if they died in childbirth. THE SPARTANS COMPARED CHILDBIRTH TO FUCKING BATTLE AND IT WAS VIEWED AS A GODDAMN BADASS AND HONORABLE WAY TO GO OUT.
FUCKING SPARTAN WOMEN. THIS DUDE HAD FUCKIN’ BETTER MAKE SURE SHE’S COOL WITH WHATEVER HE’S DOING, IF HE KNOWS WHAT’S FUCKIN’ GOOD FOR HIM.
^^ I throughly enjoyed the history lesson dashed with the colorful adjectives.
I mean, he knew she was Cersei… lol
And the women were trained the exact same way as men were. As children they were equals ; they were not allowed to wear clothing until a certain age and at that point they were sent away to a training camp until they were 18. It was only the men who were sent into the wilderness for an extra two years to ensure their strength for battle.
Plus the women could marry whomever they pleased and the men weren’t allowed to live with the women in their house until she said so. And they were tough in Sparta but also all about family. To have male offspring was good luck, to have female offspring was an honour.
This part of the movie was true; King Leonidas really did kill a man because he insulted his wife and he always ensured that he had his wife’s approval. And while Leonidas was away in battle she did rule Sparta on her own.
Sparta knew what was up.
The Vikings are actually very similar to this!
There’s a lot of evidence of women being super hardcore warriors, either protecting the homestead while the men went viking, or even going viking themselves. (Viking is actually a verb, the act of going on raid.)
They also had divorce, which involved the woman getting together her posse and declaring that she divorced her husband three times - first at the entry to her property, second at the door of her house, and finally at the foot of her marriage bed. After that, she was no longer married to the dude, and could take all of the property she brought to the marriage and leave, usually to return to her parent’s home, but often also to marry some other guy.
…
The moral of this story is that patriarchy doesn’t just affect our present, but also our view of the past. Think that women have been oppressed across all cultures, throughout history? Wrong! Women have been kickass equals for millennia, but it is always the goal of oppressors to rewrite the past so they can use it to support their lifestyle in the present.
History is written by the victors, and right now, the victors are men.
