Yes, Women in Dragon Age Could Use Longswords

[Oroboros]

There is an ocean's worth of evidence of women taking up the sword (or bow or axe etc) for those willing to look for it, that goes far beyond the well known Scythian and Viking burials.

The Dahomey Amazons, Order of the Hatchet, the Gladiatrices etc. to name just a few groups of female fighters.

Seriously, it doesn't take a whole lot of strength to use a sword effectively. I doubt a lot of people trying to cast doubt on the existence of female warriors have ever picked up a sword, much less sparred again a woman skilled in using one.

 

[Kathinka]

There is an ocean's worth of evidence of women taking up the sword (or bow or axe etc) for those willing to look for it, that goes far beyond the well known Scythian and Viking burials.

The Dahomey Amazons, Order of the Hatchet, the Gladiatrices etc. to name just a few groups of female fighters.

Seriously, it doesn't take a whole lot of strength to use a sword effectively. I doubt a lot of people trying to cast doubt on the existence of female warriors have ever picked up a sword, much less sparred again a woman skilled in using one.

I don't think anyone here is denying their existence. Merely arguing against the claim that they were more present and numerous instead of the more likely scenario of very rare cases. A claim not supported by our current historical, medical and archaeological knowledge and instead hyped up to cater to one viewpoint or another in the ever so popular sexism debate.

 

[Kerethos]

The only real hindrance to a woman using any weapon as effectively as a man is a big bust. A large chest (for a man) or bust (for a woman) prevents some guard stances and cuts, or at least makes them more difficult. That's about it.

You'll have to adapt your technique around the two things sticking out from your chest, if you've got a big enough bust for them to get in the way. Or, you know, you could just use a shield and remove the problem entirely - if it's even there in the first place.

Because the thing about weapons is that you generally pick the one your best with. Which means that and if you've got a large bust that makes techniques difficult or impossible to perform you'd pick a weapon where your bust was not a hindrance and fight with that instead. Crazy, I know, but people do that.

 

[Lilani]

There's no "irony of arguing about 'realism' in a game with dragons on the cover," because all stories need some kind of realism. Or to put it differently: The stupid parts of, say, Naruto don't become less gorram stupid just because it's a manga about ninjas.

Fantasy may be fantasy, but it still follows the rule of "like reality unlike otherwise stated."

"Realism" doesn't necessarily have to mean "plausible in the real world," though. The most important realism in a fantasy world is continuity within itself--that is, the world following its own rules. In Middle Earth, the Ents are a race of talking trees. However, they are specific types of trees from a very specific place. Talking palm trees on the coast may be just as realistic as talking hardwoods from the forests, however Ents do not have brethren who take the form of palm trees, and Ents are very ancient trees while palms tend to be younger. Such an addition would be out of character for the world, and would require an exception to the rule of how creatures like Ents come about.

In the world of Dragon Age, it's been established that whatever disparity there is between the strength of women and men, it's negligible enough that two of equal skill can battle on equal footing. So long as it follows that rule, it's remaining true to itself.

 

[Chris Moses]

Who says dragons don't have hollow bones? And who says they done get their fire from all the hydrogen inside them (displacing even more weight)?

What I can't stand are the dragons with 4 legs and two wings! Unless the dragon is an alien then it's a terrestrial vertebrate descended from therapods just like every other terrestrial vertebrate and will have only 4 appendages making 2 wings and 2 legs the optimal layout for powered flight.

Oh... there's an OT? Whoops. Yeah sure, women could swing long swords. If you really wanted to parse hairs you could even say the swords are lightly built for them. Thinner and/or slightly shorter blades but something that still looks like a long sword.

 

[Lightknight]

As with my other posts, this is a video game in which women can transform into fire breathing dragons. Who is really going to get held up on a woman using a sword that is pretty difficult to use for the average woman. What's more is if you really think about it, the men would die from exhaustion too from how many times they swing their blades in these games. It's all fantasy and as such entirely immune to failures to meet realities. Hell, in this universe maybe women are exactly as strong as men or even stronger? Maybe breasts in this universe are muscle instead of fat deposits.

Yes, those 2-handers that you showed in the picture were for hacking and slashing, but I wasnt talking about those. I am talking of one-handed swords. The type I was trained with, well I was trained to use 1 1/2, but the form was definitely onehanded. Strength had nothing to do with 1handed forms. Yea 2h sure, those things are more based on strength, but I am not talking about those.

Long swords are called such because of the length of the hilt being two handed, not because of the length of the blade but the two most always coincided as being longer than traditional one handed swords since the additional handle length meant more leverage. So if you were talking about one-handed swords then you weren't talking about long swords by any definition. Maybe some types of rapiers would make sense if you were trained in one nowadays. They have long blades but they're pretty thin (usually, again, rapier is an ambiguous term) with a single handed hilt.

But I'll point out that some rapiers were also intended for making quick agile cuts depending on the thickness of the blade and whether or not there was actually an edge on it. I'll admit that this is rarer but I've absolutely seen rapier slashing techniques in period accurate manuals and more than one client requested a rapier with a partially sharpened blade which I learned was common and some rapier masters preferred a two edged blade like a long dagger. People often thing of the thin foils when they're thinking of rapiers but in general they really had substantial blades even if the tip was somewhat weaker than the rest. Modern rapier training consists only of thrusts. Traditionally this was not the case. Regardless, the rapier is a post-middle ages weapon.

Lastly, yes armour was important, but weapons such as the estoc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoc) or halberds were designed to puncture mail. They had no point.

Two things,

1. They absolutely had a point. They protected against a lot of stray blades or attacks from non-specialized weapons. Knowing that polearms could puncture armor doesn't do you a lick of good if the knights are plowing into the ranks of other knights or foot soldiers. Telling me that there are weapons that could puncture them and therefore they're unnecessary is as ridiculous as me telling a police officer that because armor piercing rounds and high caliber rounds exist that they might as well not wear bullet proof vests when the truth is that their vests will protect them from a lot of what they normally see.

2. What I'm saying is that long swords have a variety of uses including hacking and slashing that could also be used against the armor wearers at the right times. In all honesty, most blades can't really puncture armor unless it's really shitty stuff and are instead targeted towards the weak points. Like in the picture I showed where someone was using the pummel as a blunt instrument, the other opponent was puncturing the eye slots. Regardless, no one would want to go up against a person in plate armor without themselves wearing armor. While it could puncture the weak spots of the armor you not only needed a strong thrust in the right places but all the while the person has their own blade that just needs to land home and not a specialized attack. While I have made some traditional armor (an absolutely terrible idea, people won't pay you what it's worth and you can forge 30 blades in the time it takes you to make one suit) and know that it can vary pretty widely in weight according to thickness, I know that most females would have a difficult time lugging real plate-mail into battle for the same reason modern female soldiers have great difficulty carrying the same packs the men carry to the point of 52% compared to men who suffer it at 26%. [http://jmvh.org/article/load-carriage-and-the-female-soldier/] Considering that this is the most common sort of injury sustained in military theaters now, this is a big deal.

Now, why did I bring that up? A suit of armor can be around 100 lbs. A modern soldier's pack is 80 lbs or more. So women, by far, did not wear plate armor and so would not be the unit to go up against the plate armored unit. Honestly, they'd be better suited running away from armored knights to fight unarmored foes. Which, again, means hacking and slashing.

So yes "the longsword",(langes schwert) was used that way. But those were mainly horseback. Furthermore the development of plate armour also ensured that those types of swords would be adapted to have a better thrusting point and smaller cutting capability.

They weren't used mainly on horseback or at least we don't actually know the veracity of that claim. They were used in both scenarios. We have no way of knowing how frequently they were used in any scenarios but there were usually far better weapons to use from horse back.

Long swords evolved into the claymore. They didn't evolve into the rapier. I stated that earlier. Long swords also didn't (couldn't) puncture armor straight through the plate. They punctured at the junctions or in slots. In all honesty, most of the time it really was more useful to use the blade reverse as a blunt instrument which was more effective in most cases against the plate portion of the armor. This required the end being held to be strong enough to survive and a thinner tip harms that possibility. Likewise, a lot of knight on knight fights devolved into wrestling pretty quickly. To the point where fencing manuals frequently had more on wrestling techniques than the actual use of a blade. God only knows that if I were a female or small male that that's the type of fighting I'd want to do. Struggling in 100 lb armor with another man wearing the same weight but big enough to control it. Hell, just regular wrestling is brutally grueling to endurance. I simply can't imagine what that would have been like with armor.

Also yes the fact that if armour was present or not was an important factor. For a longsword, if armour was present, you would use the tip, meaning it was less a question of strength, but dexterity and an application of the principles behind levers. If armour wasn't present, the yea hack away.

You still do both. You want to hack at the joins from the sides to get to the flesh or to loose a strap or clasp holding them together. You only stab when there's a blatant weak spot like the face. Are you imagining people running around and stabbing a blade through the actual armor? You need something like a powerful longbow to really get at it like that. To be honest, fatigue was a far more powerful opponent to the knight in plate than a sword. Now, would a rapier (the best at stabbing in small places) be a better tool against a knight? You'd lose the ability to cleave at the junctions and potentially fail to cut through the cloth armor they wore underneath. I think you'd be better with a sword that can do all and the long sword is one of those.

Now if we focus on Japan, the onna-bugeisha used naginatas, in contrast with their male counterparts, who used the katana. But this was prior to the Edo period, when Neo-Confucianism heavily restricted women. They were trained in the use of naginata.

The naginata is brilliant because it's basically a sword with a lever attached to it. While the weight seems like a disadvantage, the long shaft actually gives the individual more leverage to swing the blade with. The length of the polearm was to counter some of the strength and weight advantages of male opponents.

You'll notice that their other two weapons were varieties of daggers.

So while there is some sexual dimorphism, clever application of training, willpower and normal physics can override said dimorphism.

No, at no point is the sexual dimorphism overridden. A man putting the same effort in that a woman puts in grows faster much more rapidly and loses weight far more rapidly. You've got to think of all men as steroid users where it comes to testosterone.

What I think you mean is that women can be a force to be reckoned with which I sure as hell agree with. At no point did I say that women were powerless or incapable. I only said that the use of this particular blade would be ill-suited for females in general. The same would be true for smaller men.

Are you thinking that something I'm saying is inherently sexist? That I'm trying to make a point of inferiority? I believe that society is turning a blind eye to the fact that we are different. I think that's a shame because differences actually mean specialization where as a male I am likely to be weaker in some areas that you are strong and vice versa. These differences should be celebrated. Not seen as some sort of politically incorrect thing to even acknowledge. Sorry if you thought you were debating with some sort of sexist asshole but you're barking up the wrong tree if so. I'm just stating the facts for what they are.

You will not get denser bones, you will not get a narrower pelvic angle to help with mobility and weight distribution. You will not get larger organs or have a larger frame with greater reach. Some women far better than others and some males fare worse than others on those things they were born with but by and large men will have the advantage in those areas by a fair margin and they cannot be overcome with exercise or diet. The only thing you have at your disposal is to have to work harder than a male to achieve the same amount of muscle they got from being born male or from working significantly less for. Think of this, I have absolutely massive forearms. Massive to the point that friends will demand I show them the "baby head" by flexing them. How do I have massive forearms? I don't know. My dad has them too so it's likely genetic but I don't work them out. For you to get muscles like that you'd have to work at it. It isn't because I'm better than you or any nonsense like that. It's because of biology.

Now, put a gun in your hand and any male is screwed. This disparity is essentially nullified by technology.

Only when we allow it to be entrenched in a culture it becomes an issue. Hence why we still need feminism. It is just a matter of using our brains.

Wait what? What does women being naturally physically weaker have to do with feminism? This is biology. I'm not saying that women aren't able to do anything. I'm saying that compared to men, women are far weaker as a product of biology. This has literally nothing to do with feminism.

 

[Mikeybb]

I used Wikipedia as well for my source. Arms usually means weapons dude. Also some of the graves dug were found with a sword and shield, so more than just the seax. And Wikipedia again shows that there are more historians that believe in the existence of shieldmaidens than not. I will trust the Scandinavian historians on their own history before I trust a British historian to be able to make an "educated" guess about non-British cultures (hint: They are ignorant of other cultures).

Given the amount of raiding and attacks experienced by the north eastern coast of England during the middle ages, the two histories are somewhat entangled anyway, especially in regards to combat.
Granted, it's not a complete view, but it is an aspect of the culture viewed from an outside perspective based on frequent points of contact and conflict.
It's not ignorance per se, but it is a smaller aspect aspect of these events and cannot be viewed as sole evidence, but neither can it be discounted.

That said, I'm inclined to believe in the presence of female warriors based on the cumulative claims that have been made, some of which you linked.

As to the wider topic?
The only problem I can imagine with women using longswords is if the weapon isn't scaled to the wielder (I meant this as an art asset, but it occurred to me that it would probably make sense in real sword use to find a blade that fit the wielder), and if the animation doesn't sync up with the body type of the wielder.
In fairness, the latter point can be negated if the game in question follows an aesthetic that allows characters to display strength beyond that which their body type would imply.

 

[Haerthan]

As with my other posts, this is a video game in which women can transform into fire breathing dragons. Who is really going to get held up on a woman using a sword that is pretty difficult to use for the average woman. What's more is if you really think about it, the men would die from exhaustion too from how many times they swing their blades in these games. It's all fantasy and as such entirely immune to failures to meet realities. Hell, in this universe maybe women are exactly as strong as men or even stronger? Maybe breasts in this universe are muscle instead of fat deposits.

Yes, those 2-handers that you showed in the picture were for hacking and slashing, but I wasnt talking about those. I am talking of one-handed swords. The type I was trained with, well I was trained to use 1 1/2, but the form was definitely onehanded. Strength had nothing to do with 1handed forms. Yea 2h sure, those things are more based on strength, but I am not talking about those.

Long swords are called such because of the length of the hilt being two handed, not because of the length of the blade but the two most always coincided as being longer than traditional one handed swords since the additional handle length meant more leverage. So if you were talking about one-handed swords then you weren't talking about long swords by any definition. Maybe some types of rapiers would make sense if you were trained in one nowadays. They have long blades but they're pretty thin (usually, again, rapier is an ambiguous term) with a single handed hilt.

But I'll point out that some rapiers were also intended for making quick agile cuts depending on the thickness of the blade and whether or not there was actually an edge on it. I'll admit that this is rarer but I've absolutely seen rapier slashing techniques in period accurate manuals and more than one client requested a rapier with a partially sharpened blade which I learned was common and some rapier masters preferred a two edged blade like a long dagger. People often thing of the thin foils when they're thinking of rapiers but in general they really had substantial blades even if the tip was somewhat weaker than the rest. Modern rapier training consists only of thrusts. Traditionally this was not the case. Regardless, the rapier is a post-middle ages weapon.

Lastly, yes armour was important, but weapons such as the estoc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoc) or halberds were designed to puncture mail. They had no point.

Two things,

1. They absolutely had a point. They protected against a lot of stray blades or attacks from non-specialized weapons. Knowing that polearms could puncture armor doesn't do you a lick of good if the knights are plowing into the ranks of other knights or foot soldiers. Telling me that there are weapons that could puncture them and therefore they're unnecessary is as ridiculous as me telling a police officer that because armor piercing rounds and high caliber rounds exist that they might as well not wear bullet proof vests when the truth is that their vests will protect them from a lot of what they normally see.

2. What I'm saying is that long swords have a variety of uses including hacking and slashing that could also be used against the armor wearers at the right times. In all honesty, most blades can't really puncture armor unless it's really shitty stuff and are instead targeted towards the weak points. Like in the picture I showed where someone was using the pummel as a blunt instrument, the other opponent was puncturing the eye slots. Regardless, no one would want to go up against a person in plate armor without themselves wearing armor. While it could puncture the weak spots of the armor you not only needed a strong thrust in the right places but all the while the person has their own blade that just needs to land home and not a specialized attack. While I have made some traditional armor (an absolutely terrible idea, people won't pay you what it's worth and you can forge 30 blades in the time it takes you to make one suit) and know that it can vary pretty widely in weight according to thickness, I know that most females would have a difficult time lugging real plate-mail into battle for the same reason modern female soldiers have great difficulty carrying the same packs the men carry to the point of 52% compared to men who suffer it at 26%. [http://jmvh.org/article/load-carriage-and-the-female-soldier/] Considering that this is the most common sort of injury sustained in military theaters now, this is a big deal.

Now, why did I bring that up? A suit of armor can be around 100 lbs. A modern soldier's pack is 80 lbs or more. So women, by far, did not wear plate armor and so would not be the unit to go up against the plate armored unit. Honestly, they'd be better suited running away from armored knights to fight unarmored foes. Which, again, means hacking and slashing.

So yes "the longsword",(langes schwert) was used that way. But those were mainly horseback. Furthermore the development of plate armour also ensured that those types of swords would be adapted to have a better thrusting point and smaller cutting capability.

They weren't used mainly on horseback or at least we don't actually know the veracity of that claim. They were used in both scenarios. We have no way of knowing how frequently they were used in any scenarios but there were usually far better weapons to use from horse back.

Long swords evolved into the claymore. They didn't evolve into the rapier. I stated that earlier. Long swords also didn't (couldn't) puncture armor straight through the plate. They punctured at the junctions or in slots. In all honesty, most of the time it really was more useful to use the blade reverse as a blunt instrument which was more effective in most cases against the plate portion of the armor. This required the end being held to be strong enough to survive and a thinner tip harms that possibility. Likewise, a lot of knight on knight fights devolved into wrestling pretty quickly. To the point where fencing manuals frequently had more on wrestling techniques than the actual use of a blade. God only knows that if I were a female or small male that that's the type of fighting I'd want to do. Struggling in 100 lb armor with another man wearing the same weight but big enough to control it. Hell, just regular wrestling is brutally grueling to endurance. I simply can't imagine what that would have been like with armor.

Also yes the fact that if armour was present or not was an important factor. For a longsword, if armour was present, you would use the tip, meaning it was less a question of strength, but dexterity and an application of the principles behind levers. If armour wasn't present, the yea hack away.

You still do both. You want to hack at the joins from the sides to get to the flesh or to loose a strap or clasp holding them together. You only stab when there's a blatant weak spot like the face. Are you imagining people running around and stabbing a blade through the actual armor? You need something like a powerful longbow to really get at it like that. To be honest, fatigue was a far more powerful opponent to the knight in plate than a sword. Now, would a rapier (the best at stabbing in small places) be a better tool against a knight? You'd lose the ability to cleave at the junctions and potentially fail to cut through the cloth armor they wore underneath. I think you'd be better with a sword that can do all and the long sword is one of those.

Now if we focus on Japan, the onna-bugeisha used naginatas, in contrast with their male counterparts, who used the katana. But this was prior to the Edo period, when Neo-Confucianism heavily restricted women. They were trained in the use of naginata.

The naginata is brilliant because it's basically a sword with a lever attached to it. While the weight seems like a disadvantage, the long shaft actually gives the individual more leverage to swing the blade with. The length of the polearm was to counter some of the strength and weight advantages of male opponents.

You'll notice that their other two weapons were varieties of daggers.

So while there is some sexual dimorphism, clever application of training, willpower and normal physics can override said dimorphism.

No, at no point is the sexual dimorphism overridden. A man putting the same effort in that a woman puts in grows faster much more rapidly and loses weight far more rapidly. You've got to think of all men as steroid users where it comes to testosterone.

What I think you mean is that women can be a force to be reckoned with which I sure as hell agree with. At no point did I say that women were powerless or incapable. I only said that the use of this particular blade would be ill-suited for females in general. The same would be true for smaller men.

Are you thinking that something I'm saying is inherently sexist? That I'm trying to make a point of inferiority? I believe that society is turning a blind eye to the fact that we are different. I think that's a shame because differences actually mean specialization where as a male I am likely to be weaker in some areas that you are strong and vice versa. These differences should be celebrated. Not seen as some sort of politically incorrect thing to even acknowledge. Sorry if you thought you were debating with some sort of sexist asshole but you're barking up the wrong tree if so. I'm just stating the facts for what they are.

You will not get denser bones, you will not get a narrower pelvic angle to help with mobility and weight distribution. You will not get larger organs or have a larger frame with greater reach. Some women far better than others and some males fare worse than others on those things they were born with but by and large men will have the advantage in those areas by a fair margin and they cannot be overcome with exercise or diet. The only thing you have at your disposal is to have to work harder than a male to achieve the same amount of muscle they got from being born male or from working significantly less for. Think of this, I have absolutely massive forearms. Massive to the point that friends will demand I show them the "baby head" by flexing them. How do I have massive forearms? I don't know. My dad has them too so it's likely genetic but I don't work them out. For you to get muscles like that you'd have to work at it. It isn't because I'm better than you or any nonsense like that. It's because of biology.

Now, put a gun in your hand and any male is screwed. This disparity is essentially nullified by technology.

Only when we allow it to be entrenched in a culture it becomes an issue. Hence why we still need feminism. It is just a matter of using our brains.

Wait what? What does women being naturally physically weaker have to do with feminism? This is biology. I'm not saying that women aren't able to do anything. I'm saying that compared to men, women are far weaker as a product of biology. This has literally nothing to do with feminism.

Yes, you stated that, but the hacking and slashing was not the main way to use those weapons, due to the advancements of the armour.
Second I meant, halberds and estocs did have points, sorry about that. And no I am not imagining dudes running around stabbing knights in the chest, I always knew that the weak points were the joints, the neck area and the crotch area. Also you are putting too much faith in the longbow. The longbow actually didn't have enough power to penetrate plate armour. Crossbow yea, longbow no. Case in point: Battle of Agincourt, 1415. The English won because the French knights got stuck in the mud, and the English infantry and archers practically walked up to them and stabbed them in the face, or they drowned in the mud (rainy day that day).

Third no what you are saying is not sexist. I just believe that you are wrong in believing that women couldn't use swords, as rapiers (yes even the ones with an edge, and if I remember my history, the French Musketeers were equipped with muskets and rapiers), estocs and other types of longswords weren't meant for hacking and slashing. Could they be used for that? Yes. Now claymores, 2handers and other swords like that were mainly used for hacking and slashing. But these differences in biology were used in the Victorian era to completely strip women of the rights they had. So celebrating them is not that good of an idea based on the historical evidence we have.

Now the issue of the modern female soldiers suffering in military training due to their lower bone density and muscle mass can only be solved (short term that is) through genetics research. Long term, well it will take some time. There are other ways, but to be honest I don't have time to look them up. Lastly I never said that biology was sexist. I never said that. I said that if we allow to entrench backward ideas in our culture just because of biology, that is sexist. Yes biology has nothing to do with feminism, but culture (and politics) has everything to do with feminism.

 

[zegram33]

See, this is interesting for me, because I can see a couple of reasons why this argument could possibly work, but they are almost perfectly the opposite of dragon age.

The only was I can see this argument holding water is if a)its a world where its established that females do NOT fight and thus will be less likely to have the training or muscle mass to fight, and b) all melee fighting is done in some form of roman shieldwall type thing, where the physical strength to keep hacking and slashing is important (see jim Butchers fantastic "codex alera" series for this exact world, basically, except with a realistically large number of characters annoyed about this)

Hoooowever: we know that in dragon age, most fighting is done in loose groups (in story: because otherwise a lone mage can toast huge numbers of idiots)

Also: we know that female fighters exist in dragon age, and are common. "Aveline" from DAII is literally named after "Ser Aveline" from the distant past, who was the first female knight and is now revered as something like the patron saint of female knights and soldiers.

The sheer existence of a patron saint of female soldiers means that its pretty common, meaning a lot of women will train up to the point that they're physiologically just as strong as any male soldier (women being "weaker" as a gender is more or less a societal thing which is obviously not present in Thedas).

and for Cassandra specifically: She's a member of the royal family (historically, even women in that situation received a decent amount of martial training) WHICH IS ALSO a family famous for being dragon-slayers.

so with all that stacking up (women accepted as equals to males, receiving both royal training and probably some dragon-slaying training, and no shieldwalls or large group action that would be most detrimental to someone of smaller stature or slightly lower strength: I'd almost say a small person is MORE dangerous in Thedas: Think how many demons and uch are huge, towering behemoths: its gonna be easier for a smaller person to slip under their guard than it would be for arnie)

 

[Kathinka]

Also you are putting too much faith in the longbow. The longbow actually didn't have enough power to penetrate plate armour. Crossbow yea, longbow no. Case in point: Battle of Agincourt, 1415. The English won because the French knights got stuck in the mud, and the English infantry and archers practically walked up to them and stabbed them in the face, or they drowned in the mud (rainy day that day).

Given that the only surviving military longbows were shipboard weapons from over a century later we don't actually know whether the Agincourt time period longbows could penetrate standard French plate from the early 1400s. Saying hands down that longbows couldn't penetrate plate however is entirely incorrect. At various points in time armor could stop the bow and the bow could penetrate armor. It all depends on the exact period in question.

Just throwing this in here: Contemporary accounts of the battles of the hundred years war tell of longbow missiles being ineffective against knights in hardened steel plate armor (Which by this point in the late middle ages even knights of fairly modest means were able to afford). Modern experimentation show that it would have been fairly hopeless, even with silly strong bows (700 J and up) at ridiculously short distances (below 20 meters).
That doesn't mean it was a bad or ineffective weapon. It was still very useful against the general rabble that makes out the biggest part of a medieval army, mostly armored in some sort of mail or maybe wrought iron, as well as exposed parts of horses of course.

Right, just wanted to leave this here. Carry on.

 

[Demagogue]

Wait, people are saying what?

This, but additionally... and we are writing a three page piece about it why?

Congrats Interweb... you've just been trolled.

 

[spartan231490]

Without silicone or other breast "augmentation" going on, I am pretty sure most women would be just fine. The breastplate is just going to press them down (silicone would frustrate this). Its armor, not a pushup bra. Hell, for running and fighting, compression would be what any woman would want. So unless she had freakishly huge boobs, its not going to be a real issue.

Of course, now we are getting into the whole realistic armor vs. female fantasy armor problem. Your point is much more accurate for female fantasy armor... which would just get a woman killed rather than protect her.

I said well endowed women not every women, and compression doesn't make them smaller,

really? Have you never seen a woman in a sports bra? Have you ever seen a busty woman in two sports bras? Compression can make them quite a bit less pronounced. I'm fairly confident that a woman would need something in the range of H cups for a properly made armor to interfere with two-handed sword use.

the mass is still here and breast do not compress that much, they will be less prone to move but still they are denying you to use some technique with two hand. Because you can not compress them too much either, if you do you will restrict other movement.

It does not even need to be that big, a C cup can be enough especially if the female is not really tall. It's a concern for women in HEMA that's something you need to think of. And that's for unarmoured combat, a breast plate made to accomodate such physique would still stop you to use two handed technique, so better stick with a one handed sword.

Hell even male with over bloated pectoral muscle can not use two handed sword technique.

Not talking out of my arse here, but experience.

 

[Ariseishirou]

Now, put a gun in your hand and any male is screwed. This disparity is essentially nullified by technology.

Oh, I don't know about that. I've run into many men who've argued that the invention of the gun hasn't changed anything, because men are better at using guns, too. Women shouldn't be in the army, because men can carry heavier backpacks/do more pullups/have faster reaction times/have a better "killer instinct"/could fight someone hand-to-hand if it came down to it.

I've known men to in all sincerity argue that even if a woman were armed with a gun and they not, they would win, because she would be scared and miss, they would react faster and rush her, etc. etc. There are men who absolutely refuse to accept that they could in any way be beaten by a woman at any fight under any circumstances, ever. (Not a hypothetical or a strawman - my own father and brothers argued that if they were the man at the end of Double Jeopardy - the film - and a woman was standing in their office with a handgun, they would just duck and dive and tackle her and grab the gun away before she could do anything.) We even had someone here on this board argue that all accounts of successful female snipers have been Soviet/Scandinavian/IDF propaganda, and that women make "naturally" terrible shots.

You might think these men are idiots - so do I, honestly - but there are scads of them out there, and we've all heard them before.

Which is why I don't blame people for being a bit skeptical when someone says "men are just better at X, because biology" because men have said that about everything in existence in the history of the universe at some point or another, it seems like, except possibly childbearing. (Certainly not child-rearing, there are whole websites dedicated to the "natural", "biological" superiority of fathers out there.) And if it were biologically possible for men to be better at child-bearing, I'm sure many of them would say they were naturally better at it.

I think it's fairly obvious that men have a natural advantage when it comes to sword-fighting, so as I've said I agree with you, but I also sympathize with people who'd argue the point, if not for any reason other than they've heard too much "men are naturally better at X" about literally everything to take such claims at face value right away. It might seem tedious in an obvious case like this, but skepticism is always healthy, I think.

 

[Darkness665]

Nice read, thanks for that.

Dark Souls is my favorite pastime but great sword and ultra great sword movement sets are so unrealistic they border on hilarious. I rarely use them as they are horribly slow, a Balder side sword with some enhancement (+10 Divine) is a better option for much of the game. The physics of holding a 16 (arbitrary weight unit) sword over the shoulder and flinging it towards the enemy is so unrealistic that either you ignore it or you laugh. It is merely a video game and as such the balance of the game play is more important than reality. Which is as it should be.

My default character in any RPG is a female thief/archer. Never held me back yet, they always murder the Big Boss and everything else that gets in the way. Or drops souls.

For those that care, not many I realize, I switch to a halberd when the stats support it as the side sword is limited to ~400 damage at its maximum. The halberds provide good range and two handed attacks are devastating to human scale enemies. From a game play viewpoint the scimitars are beautiful weapons as you can easily get three slashes in before the opponent gets one. Many of my weapon choices are based on initiative, who hits first can set not only the tone of the fight but can offset any initial advantage the opponent has/had.

And for a Movie twist I recall that the book Timeline covered this very subject although I don't recall it being mentioned in the movie based on it.

 

[Erttheking]

What a load of crap, nobody is saying women cant use swords. You made this up so you could dispute it. I am reminded of the "fake geek girl" controversy that nobody supported, the only reason anyone even knew about it was from people decrying it as evil. Same thing here, you should be ashamed.

*Looks around the comment section*

I think you're giving the internet a little too much credit. Plenty of people right here are saying a lot of stuff like that.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

What a load of crap, nobody is saying women cant use swords. You made this up so you could dispute it. I am reminded of the "fake geek girl" controversy that nobody supported, the only reason anyone even knew about it was from people decrying it as evil. Same thing here, you should be ashamed.

*Looks around the comment section*

I think you're giving the internet a little too much credit. Plenty of people right here are saying a lot of stuff like that.

I see some people saying that they would have a more difficult time, and possible suffer in endurance with a sword. That much I can understand, there is a reason physical competitions are separated by gender.The longsword is a graceful weapon, however fighting is fighting. Can women fight? yes. Can some women fight better then some men? yes. Are we going to merge women and men's boxing into one league? Of course not that would be unfair.

I do not see anyone saying women flat out could not use swords.

 

[Erttheking]

What a load of crap, nobody is saying women cant use swords. You made this up so you could dispute it. I am reminded of the "fake geek girl" controversy that nobody supported, the only reason anyone even knew about it was from people decrying it as evil. Same thing here, you should be ashamed.

*Looks around the comment section*

I think you're giving the internet a little too much credit. Plenty of people right here are saying a lot of stuff like that.

I see some people saying that they would have a more difficult time, and possible suffer in endurance with a sword. That much I can understand, there is a reason physical competitions are separated by gender.The longsword is a graceful weapon, however fighting is fighting. Can women fight? yes. Can some women fight better then some men? yes. Are we going to merge women and men's boxing into one league? Of course not that would be unfair.

I do not see anyone saying women flat out could not use swords.

Well I don't think the argument wasn't that woman couldn't use swords. It's that they couldn't use long swords and should use short swords. That's what the article was disagreeing with. And not to mention I've seen plenty of people who have experience with swords saying that longswords aren't that heavy and really endurance wouldn't be too much of a problem, so it seems like the people who are saying it would be are not exactly on the ball.

Besides, as bad as the Escapist can get at times, it's honestly one of the most tame websites I've seen. If it's this heated here, it must be even worse elsewhere.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

What a load of crap, nobody is saying women cant use swords. You made this up so you could dispute it. I am reminded of the "fake geek girl" controversy that nobody supported, the only reason anyone even knew about it was from people decrying it as evil. Same thing here, you should be ashamed.

*Looks around the comment section*

I think you're giving the internet a little too much credit. Plenty of people right here are saying a lot of stuff like that.

I see some people saying that they would have a more difficult time, and possible suffer in endurance with a sword. That much I can understand, there is a reason physical competitions are separated by gender.The longsword is a graceful weapon, however fighting is fighting. Can women fight? yes. Can some women fight better then some men? yes. Are we going to merge women and men's boxing into one league? Of course not that would be unfair.

I do not see anyone saying women flat out could not use swords.

Well I don't think the argument wasn't that woman couldn't use swords. It's that they couldn't use long swords and should use short swords. That's what the article was disagreeing with. And not to mention I've seen plenty of people who have experience with swords saying that longswords aren't that heavy and really endurance wouldn't be too much of a problem, so it seems like the people who are saying it would be are not exactly on the ball.

Besides, as bad as the Escapist can get at times, it's honestly one of the most tame websites I've seen. If it's this heated here, it must be even worse elsewhere.

I dont even, endurance is always a problem in any kind of fighting, any kind. Adding another 3 or so pounds to your weapon is not a non-issue. I will go back to boxing again, add a few pounds to the gloves and see if it makes a difference.

Also to be considered, is most accounts I have heard say it is a lot more about how many blows you can deflect or withstand, rather then how much you can dish out.

nerd out begins now

*nasal breath* when luke defeated dearth vader he was not even trying to hit him, just wear him down into submission with his superior endurance and youth, and that is using a weapon that arguably weighs nothing *nasal breath*

nerd out concluded.

 

[Erttheking]

What a load of crap, nobody is saying women cant use swords. You made this up so you could dispute it. I am reminded of the "fake geek girl" controversy that nobody supported, the only reason anyone even knew about it was from people decrying it as evil. Same thing here, you should be ashamed.

*Looks around the comment section*

I think you're giving the internet a little too much credit. Plenty of people right here are saying a lot of stuff like that.

I see some people saying that they would have a more difficult time, and possible suffer in endurance with a sword. That much I can understand, there is a reason physical competitions are separated by gender.The longsword is a graceful weapon, however fighting is fighting. Can women fight? yes. Can some women fight better then some men? yes. Are we going to merge women and men's boxing into one league? Of course not that would be unfair.

I do not see anyone saying women flat out could not use swords.

Well I don't think the argument wasn't that woman couldn't use swords. It's that they couldn't use long swords and should use short swords. That's what the article was disagreeing with. And not to mention I've seen plenty of people who have experience with swords saying that longswords aren't that heavy and really endurance wouldn't be too much of a problem, so it seems like the people who are saying it would be are not exactly on the ball.

Besides, as bad as the Escapist can get at times, it's honestly one of the most tame websites I've seen. If it's this heated here, it must be even worse elsewhere.

I dont even, endurance is always a problem in any kind of fighting, any kind. Adding another 3 or so pounds to your weapon is not a non-issue. I will go back to boxing again, add a few pounds to the gloves and see if it makes a difference.

Also to be considered, is most accounts I have heard say it is a lot more about how many blows you can deflect or withstand, rather then how much you can dish out.

nerd out begins now

*nasal breath* when luke defeated dearth vader he was not even trying to hit him, just wear him down into submission with his superior endurance and youth, and that is using a weapon that arguably weighs nothing *nasal breath*

nerd out concluded.

I misspoke. I meant to say endurance wouldn't be an issue because they would be able to handle the weight of a longsword. In other words I meant to say that them enduring it would be perfectly feasible.

Yeah the problem is that I've been people say that, and they talk about blocking with the sword, which kind of makes me question how much they know about swordplay. Long story short, if you do the clanging sword on sword action you see in movies, your sword is gonna break PDQ, because they're not meant to take abuse like that. It's why shields exist, to have a hunk of metal to take a beating without the need to keep a sharp edge at the same time. Luke was able to get away with it in Star Wars because lightsabers don't chip

I think Luke was trying pretty damn hard to hit him, he was kind of in a blinded rage mode at the time and wasn't doing any thinking apart from "Luke smash"...also how is Vader supposed to have inferior endurance when he's 60% metal and wires? I never got that.