TheIronRuler said:
So I'm partially right about pulling the string back, but completely wrong about the Amazons.
There weren't many females operating bows outside of modern day sports, where Archery is a common form of sport .Women compete in it too but I find it strange to see a woman drawing a bow in the common medieval england setting every single Fantasy story borrows from.
I haven't listened to the video but the reason why I brought up Amazons is to remind the player that if he has wanderers, sellswords or tramps in his story they aren't usually women. But that's just me. 'Amazons' would mean that they had no breasts, meaning that they were masculine because they were fighters.
Indeed. The most likely reason one sees it as strange for a woman to use a bow in a medieval setting is that it's an instrument of war. Women have by and large through history been excluded from the actual fighting part of war. Now, in a modern fantasy setting it is common to depict a fighting woman or two because the whole shieldmaiden concept is intriguing and adds variety and spice. Sadly, the whole amazonian myth - which is about as true as centaurs - stands strong with the creators of popular culture, leaving women who use bows in these kinds of fantasy works a rather rare sight.
Only recently has archery been taken up as an all-inclusive sport and leisure activity, which serves as a proof of concept for the notion that women can use bows.
Basically: You're right in that it's weird to see a woman draw a bow in the whole Albion setting, but in reality it is no stranger than a woman drawing a sword in the same setting.
The difference is that popular culture has been hammering the image of women in fantasy settings using swords into our heads over a decent amount of time, so that swords don't seem weird to us.
I don't know whether, on the rare occasions that women did pick up arms in actual history, they would use swords or bows though.
My guess is that they would have used swords.
Using a bow with any semblance of effect requires a lot of training, not to mention upper body strength. When you haven't actually been trained to be a warrior, but are rather picking up a weapon because you find yourself forced to fight, you're just not going to get any reasonable effect from a bow.
You can, however, do some decent damage with a sword even if you don't have any training. Sure, you'll be obliterated in a fair fight against a proper swordsman, but you're going to want to avoid those situations anyways.
So I'm guessing there's a kernel of truth to the "women can't use bows" myth: On the rare occasion that a woman in medieval society took up arms, she would most likely not use a bow.
However, in the hypothetical scenario of a warrior society in which women are trained in combat just like men, there's no reason the women shouldn't use bows.
Strength is really just the greatest obstacle here. A proper war bow has an incredibly tough draw strength. A modern sports bow rarely gets more powerful than 60 pounds. Most people use bows in the 40 pound area. To be effective in war, you're going to need something closer to 100 pounds. There are supposedly records of bows with as much as 120 pounds of required drawing force.
EDIT: Nice pictures, by the way.
Thanks. Well, they aren't mine...
