When Women Stop Taking Shit

When the dust settled a group of women found themselves completely alone, in one of the most dangerous environments of our nations history. Instead of giving up, they said screw it, and took their future into their own hands. This is the starting plot of the new show Godless on Netflix. I normally don’t watch much TV, and hadn’t touched Netflix for weeks before I saw the preview for Godless, but a bunch of gun-toting women taking on ruthless bandits without relying on a male Savior? Ya, I couldn’t not watch that.

I’m not going to review the quality of the show, but I am going to talk about some of the powerful messages it portrayed and the potential of women, or anyone for that matter, when they stop playing the victim and refuse to lay down without a fight.

In a nutshell, a mining town suffers a terrible accident killing all the men, leaving a town of women, children, and elderly to fend for themselves. The story progresses to an epic gunfight between these women and the villain, who leads a ruthless band of thugs into their town. A lot happens in between, but the importance of the plot is the message it portrays in a practical and often gruesome way, that women, no matter how bad things get, can always punch back.

Ultimately, this story really got me thinking of why our societies still consider men to be physically superior, when in reality that mentality should have stopped with the first weapon that was invented. Yes, there can be no argument that most men are naturally gifted with greater strength, but no educated person can claim we were gifted with greater minds. And regardless of how strong a man is, we all have weaknesses that can be punished by those with the skill and knowledge to exploit them.

Let’s travel all the way back to a point in history where sword fighting was the primary form of combat. Any great swordsman (or student of swordsmanship) will tell you that a fight is won by finesse and footwork. It’s like chess, a great fighter will win the fight before he even moves his sword. Everything is dependent on recognizing the opponent being off balance or spotting a weakness in their defense, and exploiting it. It has very little to do with brute strength. In fact, this concept can be applied to any form of fighting, martial arts or battle.

So if winning a fight has little to do with strength, why do we still view women as inferior when the only disadvantage they have is muscle mass? Because societies breed them that way. Imagine a girl and boy born in the same time, both started training at the same age and received the same instruction. Both learned the art of battle, tactics, and leadership. Both learned to maximize their strengths while exploiting their enemies weaknesses. Who do you think would be the better General? No one can really say, both the girl and boy have advantages they can use and disadvantages they must protect against. Whoever is the victor though, it certainly would have nothing to do with their gender.

The problem is, even if she received the same training and attention, she would still face the relentless pressure of society to conform to their expectations. ‘A girl doesn’t need to fight because men will take care of them’. That’s the bullshit lie we are telling our daughters every day, and they grow up believing it.

This is what I believe the show Godless portrayed so well, and how women, when placed in an impossible situation, will show they can stand up for themselves and not take shit from anybody. Who needs physical strength when you can shoot a guy off a moving horse at 50 yards, or knock your opponent down by exploiting his lack of balance, or shatter an attackers ligaments preventing his ability to pursue you. How much someone weighs or how much muscle they have is irrelevant if they don’t have a functioning kneecap.

Now I’m not trying to advocate physical violence in this article, but whether intentionally or not, we still judge women's abilities based on their physical strength. It doesn’t matter if the situation requires no physical ability, but instead intellectual reasoning, we are still subject to centuries of societal bias. That’s what needs to stop. We need to stop treating our daughters, our young women, and even our women leaders, that they are anything less because of their gender. Physical strength stopped being a deciding advantage when the first tool was created, it’s time to start helping our future leaders understand that.

The Takeaway

Physical strength has nothing to do with women’s abilities to stand up and succeed in modern day society. Yet we still treat them otherwise. Powerful men will always be convinced they are superior, simply because our reptilian brains are stuck in the stone age. The sooner women realize they aren’t at a disadvantage, the sooner the scales will tip.

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