Could WOMEN have fought in medieval WAR, and won?

oh boy let's get into a controversial subject okay here we go greetings I'm Chad and this video is somewhat of a follow-up to a previous video I did addressing the interesting question of can women fight effectively with swords specifically against men please do go watch that video if you haven't seen it already because it's a good lead-in to this because now I want to address something I did address the last video but I want to address it in more depth in this one and that's in how can women fight effectively in a battlefield because the previous one was a response to Andrew Clavin who said that no woman could fight with a sword and he later did kinda you know shift the goal posts to recontextualize what he was saying even though he did say what he said was a hundred percent correct when he later said afterwards I will admit there are exceptions which would imply what he said was not a hundred percent correct and so there's a bit of a contradiction what was being said there because unfortunate because I think Clavin is actually a decent guy look if you disagree with his opinions that this is separate to how well he would treat someone who he meets on the street and is a decent guy okay sorry and in this shifted goal post and this is where a lot of people were trying to you know come back to what I was saying my original videos I no no this isn't about sword fighting is about how they function on a medieval battlefield and a medieval battle is completely different it is different but does that mean the ultimate conclusion is different when the conclusion is that women would not be able to fight in a medieval sword battle which was the new context Andrew put to his words and I think it's absolutely worth discussing and exploring because I don't care about the controversy I don't care about the politics I find it an intriguing subject especially for me as a writer someone who loves a medieval period and someone who loves adapting it into fantasy and one of the things that I love to do is adapting it accurately and I want two things to be realistic and sorry me you know I'm a guy okay every nerd from the dawn of time I thought a girl use a sword was hot all right and so we have never had a problem with it a strong female characters and stuff like that we get annoyed with Mary Sue's when they're not done right but there are so many female action heroes that guys have always liked it Ripley but there the end goes on and on [Music] [Music] I am and so for me as a writer and a guy okay it's cool all right we want to do that now I wanted to kind of incorporate them in a realistic way which means addressing everything in a realistic manner and also addressing some of the problems that existed historically because historically women didn't fight in battle so why now in the previous video I would like to think that the the myth the idea that women can't fight effectively with swords and that is then thereby extended to other Malay based weapons is debunked they can it's been proven in one day competitive EEMA okay then people like people did ask okay okay there they can compete on the same level as men with swords but do they win the tournaments and I didn't know but I looked it up and yet there are which there are a number of times women have one open tournaments which is a complete mix between men does it happen more often not a course not all right though whose natural strength stiffness is still playing to effect as I mentioned in my in the previous video and stuff like a pat the idea that women can't beat men in sword fighting and combat that uses weapons and even unarmed unarmed it's more difficult but they can okay that that needs to be debunked okay we need a correct the the misconception that it can happen but there are other interesting complexities that arise when you try and apply it to a medieval battlefield the other thing that we need to understand okay because there's the whole thing and I even mention this previous video about all things being equal skill is a biggest difference okay if you and most determining factor as to who's going to win but if you say if skill was even okay and the only difference were the average strength and physical differences that men and women have on average who's gonna win and the answer is of course the man is going to win but that also there's a bit of important thing it's not gonna win all the time okay luck and just mistakes no matter how skilled you are sometimes you just do the wrong move okay and so it's never going to be a hundred percent in actual fact I don't know what the percentage is but something like eighty percent of the time the man is going to win if all things being equal different strengths could it be high in ninety but it's never going to be a hundred percent okay because sometimes you just get lucky you do you choose the right move the person makes a mistake and you are able to exploit it and because of that even someone who is significantly less skilled can still beat a superior opponent and in actual fact there's this idea in hematuria stuff like that about fighting someone who is unskilled can actually be more dangerous because they generally don't understand how easy it is to be hit and stuff I and they're willing to do far more riskier moves to beat their opponent and usually lend in doubles but when you're finding a competent opponent you can generally be assured that they don't get a cut try and commit suicide doing they don't want to die but unskilled opponents tend to do that a lot more often which can actually make them even more difficult to fight because they can be a bit crazy so that needs also be understood that yes of absolutely unskilled opponent can still beat opponents that are even more skilled okay so never even you know all things being equal high school even law school and things like that is it going to be a hundred percent that should be understood oh and the next thing I would like to address is that a very disingenuous response people either you know come back in response to that video was that pema no I mean it's not it's not accurate analog to actual combat with a sword they're just tapping each other people said I don't know much about him okay most SEMA tournaments don't count strikes that were not done with authority and intent meaning proper edge alignment with the right amount of force that would have done actual damage okay hiim is actually a brilliant analog for real sword fighting and people who say that's not don't know much about him oh okay so that's wrong and yes Hema also allows grappling okay grappling picking people and stuff the problem is if your opponent has a sword it's actually much it's very risky and give me a far more difficult to initiate that grapple so even if you're a man finally gone and you have greater advantage in a grapple against her just rushing in to try and grab her while she has a sword is a very risky thing okay so yeah absolutely and it's also moving the goalposts again because even andrew said there's no physical you know contact sport that women compete if it like on an even level against men no there is Hema that happens and they like move the car but it doesn't reflect actual combat a daf1 that wasn't the initial proposition was just any contact sport and all you have to do to prove that I'm wrong is mention a single contact sport that women in which women can compete with men they can't which was proven directly that there is a contact sport that women and men compete and two it moves the goalposts like other because it doesn't it and that's wrong because it does simulate sword combat very effectively does it simulate warfare no ok warfare is a completely different mix a and the idea that it would naturally because warfare in every situation is going to give more disadvantages to physically weak members of the army is an assumption ok an actual fact fighting in a unit you might be able to overcome physical strength limitations better in a unit formation warfare formation they're not a one-on-one fight ok but people always jump to the assumption that helps their own argument when actual no there's far more complexity now are there situations in a war in our unit you know you have your unit infantrymen or whatever in which strength becomes important and more useful and you would be negatively affected in the the battle itself from having lesser strength yeah of course there are secret circumstances but it's not a universally applicable thing where this strength disadvantage always applies because again weapons are force multipliers and there's a very important element in regards to large-scale battles tactics okay now when it comes to one-on-one fighting generally we always referred to skill okay but skill involves tactics as well but when it comes to a battlefield you have a commander directing okay troops and and therefore you could have a unit that is not as skilled but if you employ the right tactics they can still win and there are countless examples where an inferior force usually numbers but it can be also force that is equipped with unless you know weapons that aren't well made they might be farming tools and jury-rigged into weapons and things and there are so many things situations in which you have a force that is legitimately disadvantage for any number of reasons okay and they still win because of effective tactics out-thinking outflanking out all the outs like a against the bounine and this would absolutely apply to a force who's the the average strength representation of the soldiers among them is on average lower than the opponents they are firing and so in this situation we might be looking at a unit that's comprised out of women to say that they always going to lose 100% of the time because they're women is wrong it's just flat-out wrong are their inherent disadvantages of course there are in terms of endurance sports women generally can perform I'm not an area that like long-distance swimming women outperform men okay and so when it comes to yeah cardiovascular endurance things they can perform on a closer level to men than other competitions that say rely wholly upon strength like weightlifting there's a big disparity but in terms of marching and stuff women have a pretty decent paint also performing most of the tasks that you need your soldiers to perform in an army in our warfare scenario women would be out of do it to the set to an acceptable equivalent army very effectively very viably there are a few exceptional women who can meet the standard military strength requirements as men but we must ignore that these women are the exceptions in modern military tests most women cannot meet the same physical standards as men in one of the more recent results samples from the army combat fitness test and bear in mind this wasn't an army wide test but it had a decent sized sample group eighty-four percent of women failed versus thirty percent of men but this also means that 16 percent of women did pass this physical test the most difficult routine being the leg tuck but this also should be understood in context looking at the two-mile run only 6% of women failed at that versus 11 percent of men so again this was a sizeable enough sample group but it wasn't the whole army and it goes to illustrate that there are some physical activities that women can perform at a very comparable level to men and some in which they perform much worse than men and once again it was a more exceptional female soldier that was able to successfully pass this test meaning they were able to complete all these separate physical tasks that were required and a military unit comprised solely out of women will not be comprised solely of these exceptionally strong women and if it was there would be a vast number of women applicants who would have not met the standard so outside of that exception all other female military units will always have a very significant physical disadvantage but all we have to consider honestly is this is if this all-female unit both the ones that perhaps could meet the numbers required that is solely comprised out at the very exceptionally strong female soldiers or a military unit that is more representative of the standard athletic female physical capacities would they hold no military value or usefulness and the answer is of course not they would absolutely still hold a very significant measure of the military usefulness that could be employed in warfare but in regards to women's role in a military there are far more debilitating things that must be considered that are actually separate to physical strength and I mentioned some of them in my previous video I want to talk about them again and also emphasize ones that I didn't emphasize enough and some you know other things that I think would impact it quite significantly one of the most liberating things in human history for the roles that women can pick up and do without with less I guess impacts on in all things that prevent them from fulfilling those tasks effectively is the birth control okay a contraception effective contraception honestly is a massive game-changer in regards to human history and giving women the freedom to be our to look at fulfilling other roles in society that they generally didn't fulfill as prominently in the past sometimes just not at all okay because having control over when you know a woman falls pregnant when and then for the individual when she falls pregnant okay is is a game changer it really is okay the first thing that I think needs to be acknowledged is that most women and on average I'm not I'm not saying all women because whenever you say something lies like well I do but most women on average this is a statistical want to have children there is a decent enough sizable enough group but most do okay and if you apply this to historical context when it was a more cultural kind of expectation that you're gonna have you know one of your roles is to have babies it's gonna be even more prominent and so if they're if that's going to be such a prominent thing and you're there then women have no control over when it happens because this is the other reality that you just have to acknowledge in regards to the historical context men and women on average they like to have sex they're attracted to each other okay thank you married not always and then they have sex and without contraception there's a very likely you know thing that happens afterwards just I'm just saying okay and so one of the ways that women of course admin but we know the differences and stuff would be out of control when they fall pregnant is by just not having sex okay but the thing is women are still attracted to men I'm in a soul tractor women okay that's so it can be bit more difficult you know in abstaining in that regard and so as soon as you know women fall pregnant and on average because they like to add value stuff like that in regards to medieval setting and this can be extrapolated to many other historical periods and locations it's massively debilitating all right and so a woman who's pregnant is not going to be how to be nearly as effective as guys in a in an army all right and they get more I guess they have more trouble doing physical things the further the pregnancy develops and then when you have the child the child needs to be taken care of needs to be nursed okay generally when a woman is breastfeeding it actually acts as a type of contraceptive it's not a hundred percent but women basically don't fall pregnant in their breastfeeding not always but that's one of the things and so throughout the entire you know period what they're nursing they generally won't fall pregnant after that so this from the pregnancy period and in the early time that the child and children generally breastfed to a longer period of time they didn't have formula replace and so that breastfeeding up to a year is common and so that's a decent period of time the time of pregnancy and time of Nursing which a woman would not be able to get out of the house and either join an army but even performing a training everything is going to be massively debilitating and the average yeah you know amount of children that women had in the medieval period of six okay sometimes higher sometimes lower and so this is affecting so much because that's at least you know nine years okay nine to ten years if they're having the average amount of children and the amount of you know space between children on average and things like that generally like it can be just a year from the pregnancy and then you know you can fall pregnant like it exactly everybody like if you're going over the average of breastfeeding being safe or less um you know measure of contraceptive thing it I guess it's a matter of sin yeah yeah between eight to ten years if they're having the average amount of children Meadowvale period women are either going to be pregnant or dealing with the result of pregnancy and that's just not taking into account raising children after the nursing period which generally for some because during this time it just makes a logical sense that the guy's going to be working okay I'm supporting his family in whatever trade or whatever he does okay and if that man was promoted in some level progressing in his profession stuff like that after all this has happened who's a who's earning more money right from the get-go it's just a logical natural thing that the guys generally gonna stay in a work force okay and the wife is gonna stay home and raise children and there's a lot of other sociological biological things that you can go into you as to the roles that both men and women play in raising children and the essential role that mothers play men are also absolutely essential but they generally fulfill a different needs for the children and so with just pregnancy alone as I mentioned my previous video we've just got any more depth here women they're not gonna be on the in the in or in a battle okay abort they would they were there are exceptions but on average they're not going to be recruited on mass into an army all right because even if even if all right the way if you're only recruiting non-married women you have the big problem of men and women in an army like there are problems in the modern day we're still trying to deal with that in modern day armies about the relationship between men and women in this these types of scenarios especially on in if they actually and their high stress environments in a battle with other things like that and so you're never going to be out of stop men and women hooking up when they're put together I guess in such close proximity and they're doing things together like and so if you have it in a medieval situation if you had a chance if you were recruiting Half Men and half women and half of you know your army has a very decent chance that they're just gonna fall pregnant because there's no contraceptive and people like to have sex and then as soon as they're pregnant they basically cannot function as a soldier in your army no military commander in our mind is ever gonna recruit women on average as a common regular thing never gonna happen and that's the biological reality because it's women that fall pregnant after sex not men okay there are other realities that also plays an interesting role there will certainly play an effect as to you would cancel out completely because if you add birth control into the mix because that means men and women can have sex and and especially if it's reliable birth control because even now birth control sometimes doesn't work but if you if you're in a fantasy setting and you use magic okay this is a game changer all right and so I've been feeling like you know in previous video I was like what what's something that could you know enable a higher representation of women in an army in a medieval fantasy setting stuff what'swhat's one of the things to change that makes it far more plausible and analogical that you could actually pull off in a realistic way and its birth control and you can add birth control in a fantasy sitting really easily especially after magic magic birth control I don't but make that not even magic I plants okay a plant that's basically the pill all right and if women take it boom done its contraceptive and that changes the game completely all right because then you don't have this very high chance of losing half the people you're accruing into your army because of this physically debilitating condition known as pregnancy so we've talked a lot of problems not every problem but it makes it far more functional realistic and plausible okay so it's about something our problems woman's monthly cycles that is something that should be addressed in in college if you're gonna try and do really realistically look at the viability of women being the highly represented in a maybe evil army and I'm using medieval context because that's my longest you know knowledge source and stuff like that you can extrapolate it to your other cultures and stuff but I focus I'm in evil because that's what that's where I know that's my stuff and yeah like I said so their monthly cycle that's going to be interesting now so I actually looked up how periods impact our elite athletes okay there are studies done on it and the results were very interesting it seems to be very individual where you can't say because women have monthly cycles that means during a certain time of the month bang they're not going to be out of function effectively as a soldier well the studies are just athletic females is some camp some legitimately can perform and have won gold medals while right in the middle of their cycle okay that's happened it seems to be more the exception okay but just it but to say blanketly that is always going to just take you know women out of any physical role is incorrect there are many examples of these symptoms for the monthly cycle being quite physically debilitating for certain number of women and I don't know how would a medieval are we trying to count for that if they had contraception there are certain things like it with medical technology today that women can take which puts them into what's called like a low hormonal state which lowers the severity of a period when it happens and so again if you have a magical plant that is a contraceptive have another magical plant that that lowers the severity of a period and that'll solve that problem quite easily but if not now what a minute let me do it so does your monthly period physically a debilitating I need to know I got asked maybe they do do that alright and and you would certainly find out in training because like when these studies were done and they're you know measuring these athletes women who do get affected physically from their periods when it happens their performance does drop there are some women it doesn't but it can be recorded that their physical their this like for athletes to speed their runnings you stir all the you know the indicators and results that they're recording dip right throughout that that time right and so even if they didn't report it through the trading process the people observing it would be add up okay sorry there's it is one time a month in which we noticed that you're not marching as far as everyone else we can't like if we need to March - yeah like a battlefield to intersect an enemy we can't and a knife falls within that time having a certain number of soldiers in your army that are getting physically you know affected or not able to keep up to muster I mean just like a man who isn't physically strong enough to march the length of need and everything like that a competent military commander because winning wars is a very serious business they're gonna get cut okay it doesn't mean that having someone still trained there might not be useful especially if it's not like if you're being besieged and you need every you know viable person who's mildly competent with a weapon I'm not saying they wouldn't hold any valve course you know anybody would still hold value even these guys that weren't able to march far enough because the idea that an army just like if we're looking at men specifically just said oh alright you're physically weaker no you're not in know there were many situations in which armies just took in everyone because even if they're not performing as well as everyone else every sword spear borrow counted and they need them because it's a that that around Tyus you know city kingdom is going to be overrun of course all right you know some people have also said that women would not be at a function as well as men in heavy armor and again that's taking the assumption that armor is significantly heavy and we actually look on average when you look at modern-day armies and it sometimes is an unfair comparison to compare modern to history and stuff but there are some things that I think can be translated a bit better and on average when you know you have this same strength level requirements you know that you need to meet to enter in an army on average women do not perform and really so standards nearly as often as men do but there are some women who can and these types of women they can march as much as men and that Beato function and fight in armor easily because the comparison is like when in like armies they're marching the the military backpack they're carrying on average is about the same weight as a full suit of of full plate armor okay and if women can do it in certain circles like women who are you generally stronger than the average woman and they pass the the requirements and things yeah they could absolutely wear the armor as well and so to say that and the other thing is even if they I'm not as strong as the average man armor is white and it's more distributed over the whole body and when I say light it doesn't weigh nothing okay of course it has weight to it but my point is they would absolutely be out of fight effectively in armor okay on average now in my other video I also mentioned sociological conditions about our gender roles and stuff like that which affected not only the I guess expectation between the genders of who is going to be able to fight but also the natural training and Safire because you know boys often play fight and I'll say something girls don't okay but a boys an average we play fight more that's actually a form of physical training in terms of combat and fighting and and so it's easy to recruit men when they're already mature because they already have a certain measure of you know capacity for combat in like that they've worked throughout their whole upbringing and if women went through that same process and then you can address certain other issues that we've talked about absolutely women would be a very viable and valuable addition to an army because it would bolster recruitment and a larger army generally as a slight advantage okay but of course when we look at the historical period when these cultural you know social illogical chronic conditions were in place and then you also have situations or by the way as well I should have mentioned this in the whole if if you don't have contraceptives okay and women fall pregnant stuff like that mortality during childbirth it's very high during a medieval period okay and so not only do you like is there a good chance that if you recruit women and there's no conscious that than that period stuff like that they fall pregnant they wouldn't be out of fighting armies but there's a good chance they're gonna die during childbirth as well and then you lose your soldiering of all the investment and the resources that you devoted to training into equipping those are gone okay so that's gonna be another problem as well I mean like when you look at things like that it's not that women can't fight effectively in one-on-one combat or be trained up to be an effective soldier they can it's not for those reasons that they weren't put in but what I say effective soldier I do admit these do blaring positions you could say it makes them more ineffective think about if you're just like if they're if they're trained and you take them into a single one day are they capable how they'll do it yes they can okay even in the medieval period women would be able to become competent effective soldiers and comp and we know from without any conversation the evidence is in okay they absolutely can be very effective swordsmen sword women whatever as well so it's not those reasons women didn't fight in the medieval battlefield because people then take the conclusion which is a whole opening this video is that women fighting its men in a battle warfare scenario would lose 100% of the time no all right that's wrong the reasons why women weren't in battlefields were their very biological but it's not because of strength differences or their competency capacity for being out of fight effectively but actual disadvantage absolutely still there but it can be overcome and honestly applies less when I was trying it does apply the strength advantage does apply and situational another field but overall I actually find that it applies less because it can be overcome through other things tactics being a massive one and as we've already talked about when you address those things and if they were if they were capable being addressed in the medieval period so if we go back in time and say here here's a plant that will solve the monthly cycle and contraceptive I actually think that what she liked that would throw society on its head it like from a medieval context it's not just a battlefield Wow because the through society I was heady like when it came in in that in our time okay and if you had it coming in earlier there are a lot of implications that you would want to logically extrapolate to try and figure out because it honestly liberated women's role in society in a big way so these are important things because it happens a good interesting like topic to sink your teeth into is it and these are the tide I like addressing interesting things sorry these are been my thoughts on it I do share your thoughts in the comments below I look forward to reading them and of course I look forward to seeing in the next video so until then [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 223,134

Keywords: sword, sword fights, longsword, hema, historical European martial arts, tournament, tournaments, melee, history, historical, tourney, knight, knights, katana, samurai, greatsword, martial arts, Andrew Klavan, the daily wire, the witcher, medieval, fantasy, middle ages, arming sword, blade, woman, women, men, female, male, battle, warfare

Id: LuYTGRj0pT0

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020