Women in the Themiclesian military

There is a long history of women in the Themiclesian military, though females have been the minority and the discriminated sex in many perspectives before recent decades, through assumptions, measures, or attitudes. Efforts have made to correct discrimination, though success has not been universal, and there remain considerable and institutional sources of prejudice and other obstacles against women.

Philology

The Shinasthana word nja′ (女) is generally translated as "woman" or "female" in this article, such as most ancient and modern scholars do. In Mengja, it is a logographic character, depicting a human indicated with developed breasts, seated and with arms folded before the midsection. While pre-modern Themiclesians had a predominantly-binary understanding of sex, intersex people were historically known, and they were described as both male and female. Themiclesians also did not analyze sex separately from gender, believing for the most part that biological sex determined gender roles. In this tradition authors have written of spinning and weaving as "woman's work", using the same word that described women through the biological feature of breasts, though there is little evidence of any scholarship that discussed the relationship between biological sex and gender roles. However, the latter is also complicated by social class, and particularly in the upper class they were often deliberately broken for various reasons.

Pre-modern history

During most periods, Themiclesian men were as a rule required to render both military and labour service (役) to the state. By definition, women are not obliged to perform either, but during desperate episodes, particularly sieges, women have been armed en masse and sent into actual battle. Whatever the results of such actions, women were excluded from ordinary military activity, since such marshalling of women was considered extraordinary and not to be a norm. In the gender-binary view of the world, men also worked the land and paid agricultural, while women tended to silkworms, spinning, weaving, and thereby contributed to the state in fabrics; there was a dichotomy between males and females in terms of their duties towards the state and daily routines.

While women did not particpate in combat regularly, they played an indispensible role for the upkeep of husbands or other male members of the family in military service. Early Themiclesian militiamen were responsible for their own food and clothing, receiving only weapons and armour from the state. As it was not ergonomic to carry off-seasonal clothing or more than three months' grains, militiamen often wrote home asking cloth, food, or cash be sent to their garrisons. These were collected by the local magistrate and conveyed by the state to their recipients' positions. Excavated letters on bamboo slips demonstrate that militiamen often wrote in entreating terms asking for surprising sums of money and quantities of goods. One letter dating to the 2nd c. showed female literacy in Themiclesian peasantry, scolding her husband who "asks that I be not promiscuous with other men, yet is promiscuous with the fruits of my labour with merchants and gamblers" (乃令我勿與人通 / 亦以朕功通于賈).

As Themiclesian power expanded in the 5th and 6th c., regional minorities often entered into peaceful relationships with Themiclesia, pledging troops to defend a certain area or to respond to the court's summonses. Depending on the specific culture, these units may have had women in their ranks, though evidence is sparse. Judging, however, that their leaders frequently were military commanders themselves, it is not inconceivable that some such units may have been commanded by women as well.

Naval forces are frequently treated as a distinct subject in military historiography, as they had few connections with terrestrial ones. The early maritime culture was highly superstitious and, for unclear reasons, deeply prejudiced against women. There was a near-societal agreement that women should not sail abroad, even in non-military contexts; this was justified through mythical and cultic reasoning, that women imperiled ships at sea. These early maritime cults were also implicated in human sacrifices for favourable winds or clearing of the skies, ostensibly for celestial navigation. Starting in the 7th century, such superstitions began to abate, though sailors were, like militiamen, almost universally male. Females sailing abroad gained acceptance when women started to stand in for their fathers or husbands, when the family had no adult males; however, females were still regarded as the infirm sex, and women sailing abroad were exceptional.

Amgonst the social and political elite, women had military capacity in several contexts. The close guard of the empress, the Middle Gentlemen-at-Arms (中郎中, trjung-rang-trjung), were female or predominantly-female. This institution was an imitation, on the grounds of ritualistic parity, of the Gentlemen-at-Arms that served as the Emperor's close guard. Like it, the Middle Gentlemen were the daughters of the social, political, and educated elite, serving the empress-consort as part of the mechanism of aristocratic reproduction. At any rate, the male Gentlemen-at-Arms were bodyguards in name only, and martial skills were considered a liability at best, and a marker of shame, for its connotation with commoners, at worst. Within the Middle Gentlemen-at-Arms, there also existed a female body analogous to the Gallery Cavalry; these women, though likewise guards in name only, were mounted and armed.

See also

• Themiclesia