[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

Boy. I guess I wasn't clear in my point.<P>Strength does not come from anything other than personal will. When you point a gun at a person, a soldier will tell you it's the will to look a man in the eye and pull the trigger that counts. False bravado is apparent whether it comes out of the mouth of a man or woman.<P><B>The Arwen character in the movies is played with false bravado.</B> If I were looking at her down the barrel of a gun or the other end of a knife, I know she'd falter. You can tell. The Arwen from the books I would take more seriously, because someone with her patience (regardless of any feminine manner) has much more real backbone. It's not the weapon nor the words, but what backs it up that matters.<P>I'm sorry if my joke about knitting confused the issue. If you knew me better neither of you would have taken it as some kind of *****-wimp general view of women. I'm a good marksman, I've been a construction worker (concrete construction) simply because I wanted to, and once in the past faced down five young guys who were breaking into my house, with a (rather large) knife. Trust me, it wasn't the knife that won. Not against five. You can look a coward in the eyes and know that he's lost before a word is said. I'm tiny and hardly intimidating. You'd think. <P>Women who are taught to be weak I think are just taught to doubt themselves. Anyone who is taught that feminimity is inherently weak (I do knit and do appear feminine I think) is simply taught a false concept of strength. <P>E-masculating (ha!) female images with a sword & false bravado underlines that same concept of weakness, from another angle.<P>Perhaps I have this perspective because no one has ever encouraged me to be anything other than myself, and I come from four generations of feminists (my great-grandmother was a suffragette, grandmother one of few women of her time to attend college, etc.).<p>[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: Marileangorifurnimaluim ]