The subjugations and abuses of not-men by men are too numerous to catalog in a library… let alone a book. “It’s just his nature,” they say. We say nature may be brutal, but it is not sinister. But if it were in his nature to dominate his sisters, t’would be an instinct garrisoned by civility. For the institutions of men care not for the weal of women. You don’t have to be Queen of Gods to recognize injustice. Can you imagine what it would feel like to bear witness across millennia?
In every birth, there is risk and pain. This is true of creatures, ideas, and tragedies. Mortal births are particularly gruesome. They enter the world unprotected, screaming, suited for inevitable suffering. Amazons draw their first breaths girded and armed. There is no innocence in them. Vulnerability comes later. When it is cultivated and earned.
HERA. Can you imagine? Not thinking, but knowing?
ATHENA. I cannot.
HERA. Then what good is counsel to me?
ATHENA. Are you saying that
you know our efforts to be futile? Our venture, doomed?
HERA. I am saying
that I cannot join you. But I will not impede you, and… for what it’s worth…
I wish for your success. A doomed venture may still be a worthy one.
“Exposure is not infanticide,” Hippolyta lies to herself. To murder a child would be as hubristic as it would be heinous. To expose one, on the other hand, is a common practice for children that are ill, or female, or otherwise unwanted. It is to leave fate to the Gods.
The Gods will decide, as they decide the fates of us all. They will choose wisely. Yes. … No. Pursued by her fear and regret, Hippolyta runs back to the river. She has no plan for what she’ll do with the child once she finds it… nor will she ever need to make one. And so she runs. Looking for the babe at first… And then… Running because not running would mean admitting the babe would not be found. And so she runs. Through hunger… and pain… for hours… days… seasons… until… until she can run no more.
In stories told by the fireside, we are monsters come to devour men whole. Sometimes we spit out the bones. It depends on the night… and the wine. Bits of truth slip in among the lies. Hippolyta collects them both. She keeps them, like coins in a basket. No one speaks of the dead girls we avenged. Not are there portraits of the ones we saved. They are shadows. Understood to be present… but never mentioned. Ours are the women the world would leave behind.
Our scholars debate the exact moment Hippolyta became an Amazon. Was it when she set her heart upon the river in a basket? When she began to run? Was it when Artemis marked her face? Perhaps when we she stood up for her sisters and demanded their place? I say it was none of these. Hippolyta became an Amazon the only way a mortal woman can… She became an Amazon when she remembered who she was already.
HIPPOLYTA. A word of prayer for Heracles? He would have defiled us had he been
able.
ANTIOPE. What he might have done is his, what we will do is ours.
War is not simple. It is not pure, or clean. But there is a structure to it. There are calculations, goals – rules, even. Absent those necessary fictions, a warrior will lose her way. She’ll lose herself… she will become rage… for anger is more bearable than grief.
And so Hippolyta chose. In the war between the Gods and the Amazons… the Amazons lost. Not in battle, but in dignity. Resurrected without consultation or consent… Here we will remain forever, lashed to a rick like Prometheus… Betrayed by our Queen.
- Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons: Book One. Kelly Sue DeConnick; Phil Jimenez.
- Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons: Book Two. Kelly Sue DeConnick; Gene Ha.
- Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons: Book Three. Kelly Sue DeConnick; Nicola Scott.