by John Man
AND SO DIANA, THE WONDER WOMAN, GIVING UP HER HERITAGE AND HER RIGHT TO ETERNAL LIFE, LEAVES PARADISE ISLAND TO TAKE THE MAN SHE LOVES BACK TO AMERICA – THE LAND SHE LEARNS TO LOVE AND PROTECT, AND ADOPTS AS HER OWN!
For a mass-market comic, that’s quite a back-story (though since then revamps, relaunches and re-boots, all recorded in mind-numbing detail by comic-book historians, have added many other elements, one of which was to rename Paradise Island Themiscyra, as the Amazon homeland was known in Greek legend). It is a mish-mash of much of Marston’s whole life, and there would be more of it in the adventures to come. The Greek connection has its origins in Huntley’s love of Greek language and literature, in particular Sappho. The Eden-like bliss of Paradise Island recalls the perfections of female-only society in Gilman’s Herland. Most crucial of all is the influence of those feminists, particularly Margaret Sanger, fighting for equality, birth control and sexual liberation – not that Marston could make much of that explicit. It was enough to create a rule that, as an Amazon, Wonder Woman cannot marry. Marston had seen that it was hard for Holloway to earn a living and raise a child, so hard that he organized Olive Byrne to do it for her. That would not have been possible in a traditional marriage. Marriage enslaves, he thought, as Hercules enslaved the Amazons. Diana’s bracelets, an idea he got from Olive Byrne’s habit of wearing similar ones, play several roles: they symbolize a memory of male oppression, they protect her, and they represent weakness, because if they are chained together – yet more bondage, please note – she loses her strength. The bracelets are one of her attributes, for Greek characters, whether divine or human, usually had features that acted as character traits, like Cupid’s bow, Athena’s owl (for wisdom) or Aphrodite’s dove (for peace). Another attribute is her Golden Lasso, or Lasso of Truth, which has the magical ability to force those whom she catches with it to submit to her and tell the truth. It was in effect a lie detector, rather more effective than the one Marston spent much of his life developing, and a form of bondage, in which he maintained his obsessive interest.
Traditionally, damsels in comics were constantly being made into damsels in distress by evil characters tying them up; this damsel does the tying and induces submission with her Lasso of Truth. Truth, or rather its absence, was a major factor in the lives of Marston and his women. He was happy to distort the truth to promote himself; the four of them lived a secret life to hide their unconventional ways, and Byrne’s work on Family Circle was possible only because she hid the fact that she was the mother of Marston’s children. Wonder Woman, too, has a secret life: as Olive Byrne became Olive Richard by ‘marrying’ the spurious William Richard, so Wonder Woman must hide her identity. Her aim is to look after Steve Trevor in hospital, so she buys credentials from a nurse and works under the nurse’s name as Diana Prince.
Many details come from the lives of Marston and his women. Elizabeth Holloway told DC Comics that a suitable exclamation for a woman from an island of women was ‘Suffering Sappho!’ Like Olive Byrne, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman has a fat friend called Candy, who loves candies.
The themes and details were probably simply the result of a writer grabbing what he could from his memory and his unconscious to make a story. But there was also an undercover agenda. Marston wanted Wonder Woman to be ‘psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.’ First, of course, there were bonds to be broken, an aim made explicit by an opening cartoon for his article, harking back to the days of Woolley and Sanger:
Wonder Woman was a hit. After five months, Gaines did indeed ask his readers for their opinion, comparing her against seven male characters. She came out ahead 40 to 1 over her nearest rival, taking 80 per cent of all votes. As Marston wrote, ‘They were saying with their votes, “We love a girl who is stronger than men, who uses her strength to help others, and who allures us with the love appeal of a true woman!”’ In January 1942, she became the lead character, and thus became the third superhero, along with Superman and Batman, to have their own series. She’s never been out of print since.fn6
To see her influence, fast-forward twenty years. Forget the 1950s, a bit of a wilderness for women’s rights, and for Wonder Woman, who spent much of that time as the sub-wonderful Diana Prince. But in the 1960s, feminists came out fighting. A powerful sisterhood of thinkers and activists – Shulamith Firestone, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm – demanded equality, liberation, abortion rights, nothing less than a political and social revolution. The Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced to Congress forty years previously (drafted by Alice Paul, a hunger-striker back in 1917, still going strong in her eighties), finally passed into law in June 1972. Wonder Woman played her part. In July, with Shirley Chisholm (the first black woman in Congress) still in hopeful-but-hopeless contention for the Democratic presidential nomination, Wonder Woman was on the cover of Ms magazine, on the march down Main Street under the slogan ‘WONDER WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT’. Inside was a pull-out reprint of the original ‘Introducing Wonder Woman’ comic book. It was a heady moment, but a moment only. Conservatives fought back, feminists fought each other. Even as women’s history boomed in academia, feminism stalled. Radicals accused moderates of conspiring to sabotage the cause. Embedded in the rage, as Jill Lepore points out, there was a point about Wonder Woman: ‘Who needs consciousness raising and equal pay when you’re an Amazon with an invisible plane?’
Yet she endured. A TV series in the 1970s made Lynda Carter a star. Several attempts to resurrect her for TV series and feature films failed, but she was still enough of an icon to be named by the UN as an honorary ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls in 2016, the seventy-fifth anniversary of her first appearance; and enough of a symbol of a man-made, large-breasted, scantily clad Stars-and-Stripes pin-up to inspire protests. But Wonder Woman is bigger than any appointment or protest. Lynda Carter herself spoke up for her ever-youthful alter-ego, calling her a non-predatory symbol of ‘the beauty and the strength and the loving kindness and the wisdom of women’ – as much of a role model now as she was when she first arrived from Themiscyra and her Amazonian past. That same year she made it on to the big screen, with a brief appearance in Batman v. Superman, a warm-up for her starring role in the 2017 blockbuster bearing her name. As I write, her future seems secure, and so do her pseudo-Greek origins as Diana, princess of Amazons.
Epilogue
HALFWAY TO AMAZONIA
I WONDERED IF there are still Amazons today. A quick online search suggested there are – Kurdish women warriors fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The media interest in these young women seemed a little sensationalist, but maybe it was worth learning more. Luckily, near where I live in London there is a Kurdish Community Centre. In a large hall, where bearded men in work-clothes play billiards, two charming young Kurds, Arzu and Aladdin, offered help in making contact. After discussing how to arrange a phone call to the bitter battlegrounds of Kurdistan, we realized that Skype would serve our purpose.
By then, I knew it would be worth it, because Aladdin had said, ‘Why don’t you just go? We can arrange for someone to meet you.’
‘Well,’ I hesitated, ‘time is short, and besides, it’s winter.’
‘For Kurdish women fighters,’ he said, ‘there is no winter.’
That was good enough for me. These women, as individuals and as a group, seemed to combine the toughness of the Scythian mounted archers with the solidarity of Penthesilea’s legendary band. It sounded as if they were as close to modern Amazons as I could hope to find.
Of course, in one sense there are countless millions of ‘Amazons’. To call a woman an ‘Amazon’ has become a cliché, usually a male one, usually pejorative, suggesting power, commitment, ruthlessness and inappropriate success. To her detractors, Margaret Thatcher was an ‘Amazon’ armed with big hair and a handbag. In this sense it’s a cartoon term, too far removed from its origins to carry weight. And in another sense there are hundreds of thous
ands of ‘Amazons’, for almost all nations now include women in their armed forces, increasingly as front-line troops. Libya’s strongman Gaddafi employed forty female bodyguards on the assumption that Arab assassins would never gun down women. Known as ‘the Amazonian Guard’, they were well trained in martial arts and firearms, and also had to take an oath of chastity, which explained their alternative title, ‘the Revolutionary Nuns’. Most women soldiers, though, are integrated, not in separate battle contingents.
The Kurdish women fighters are the best modern example of a regiment of women warriors. Fighting for Kurdish autonomy in the borderlands of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, they are increasingly independent from male domination. That is a surprise, given that they have emerged in a society that is intensely patriarchal. A patriarchy might inspire women to want liberation; but you would not expect them to get it. Why was it not suppressed?
The reason is that, for both sexes, Kurdish patriarchy is trumped by Kurdish nationalism, especially in its modern manifestation.
The Kurds were demanding independence before the present nation-states came into existence. The term ‘Kurdistan’ dates back to the twelfth century. A century ago, when the victors of the First World War were drawing new borders across the ruins of the Ottoman empire, a delegation of Kurds came to Europe to plead for recognition. They made no impact on those drawing the borders. Like the Basques, with whom they have a lot in common, they ended up with a strong sense of nationhood but no state, sharing their homeland with four recognized nation-states and an interfusion of Turks, Arabs, Syrians and several other ethnic groups. They are linked by religion – mostly a mild form of Sunni Islam; by language (in five dialects); by almost universal fluency in at least two languages; and by their sense of identity. Lacking a state, and divided politically, they, like the Basques, have to wrestle with ways to handle oppression and division: to fight, assert, cooperate or submit? They have tried all four. There are no easy answers, especially in a region now torn apart by war, civil war, terrorism and the peculiar horrors unleashed by the sect known in the West as Islamic State, locally as Daesh and several other variants.
Kurdish women fighters have a history of their own. They look to two different sources: a tradition of female militancy, and a radical ideology of Kurdish nationalism that is remarkably feminist. They remember Adela Khanem, who before and during the First World War ruled the Halabja region with such skill that the Kurds nicknamed her ‘the Queen Without a Crown’. They remember ‘Kara’ (Black) Fatma, who commanded a unit of 700 men and 43 women in the Turkish army during the First World War; and Leyla Qasim, aged twenty-two, arrested in Iraq in 1974 for trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein, then tortured and hanged. In the late 1980s, Kurdish women began to organize. Gatherings, groups and congresses led to their involvement in both politics and in the Kurdish armed forces (some 2,000 women fighters by 1994). Usually action is inspired by ideology. Not in this case. Here, action came first and the ideology followed.
It came mainly from a man, surprisingly: Abdullah Öcalan, a burly figure with a bushy moustache now in his seventies. He is a contradictory mix of radical, nationalist, feminist, freedom-fighter and peace-lover. Raised in a dirt-poor village in Turkey by a downtrodden father and tough mother, he saw as a child the consequences of violence, female strength and oppressive traditions. ‘Once when Öcalan was beaten badly by some other boys and he ran crying home to his mother, she threw him out of the house, warning him not to return until he had exacted revenge.’fn1 His sister, Havva, was sold for a few sacks of wheat and a handful of cash into a loveless marriage. ‘If I was a revolutionary,’ he thought at the time, ‘I would not let this happen.’
The child became the father to the man. As a student in Ankara in the 1960s, he absorbed both long-established socialism and evolving Kurdish nationalism. Different Kurdish groups in the four neighbouring states rose, argued and occasionally attacked their dominant cultures, achieving little except repression. In 1972, Öcalan was arrested and spent seven months in jail, where conversations with his cell-mates confirmed his commitment to left-wing politics and violent revolution. In 1978, he founded the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and in 1984 declared war on the Turkish state. Based in Turkey’s enemy Syria for security reasons, he was forced out in 1998, tracked by various intelligence agencies, and captured in Kenya, an event that inspired Kurds to riot in many European cities. He was taken to Turkey, tried and condemned to death – briefly, as it happened, because Turkey abolished the death penalty, including Öcalan’s, in preparation for joining the EU. By then, in a move that astonished his fellow nationalists, Öcalan had abandoned the armed struggle for an independent state, claiming he would work with Turkey for peace within established national borders. Some Kurds accused him of cowardice, self-service and egomania, but he remains the Kurds’ leader in the evolution of what they call ‘democratic confederalism’, which is basically democracy without a state. Since his capture, he has been held in the prison-island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara, between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. He was the sole inmate for ten years, before being joined by a few other prisoners in 2009. He has had more than enough time to think, to propose political solutions to the Kurdish question – which to date has no answers – and write (forty books so far).
His top priority is the liberation of women, which he believes is the key to liberation for the Kurds, the Middle East, and indeed the world. Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution, published in 2013, is a manifesto that combines history, feminism, ecology and anti-capitalism, all expressed in sweeping generalizations. There is little directly about Islam, but much implied criticism. Here’s a quick guide to his views and style:
In Neolithic times, society was egalitarian, communal and matriarchal. The 5000-year-old history of civilisation is essentially the history of the enslavement of woman by the dominant male. Woman’s biological difference is used as justification for her enslavement. All the work she does is taken for granted or denigrated. Her presence in the public sphere is prohibited by religion, progressively excluding her from social life. Treating women as inferior became the sacred command of god. Thus woman, once the creator, became the created. This sexual rupture resulted in the most significant change in social life ever. In Middle Eastern culture, woman is wrapped in veils, and becomes a captive within a harem, which is but a private brothel. This explains why Middle Eastern society fell behind Western society. There is a need to radically review family and marriage and develop common guidelines aimed at attaining gender equality and democracy. Without gender equality, no demand for freedom and equality can be meaningful. From the liberation of woman will come a general liberation, enlightenment and justice.
It’s heady stuff, especially if you happen to be a Kurdish woman oppressed by any one of four states and by the men in your life. Kurdish women had their share of honour killings, dependence, domestic violence and exclusion, and many still do. For those ready and able to listen, Öcalan was and is a political prophet, who summons them to cast off the chains of religion and tradition, and stand up for themselves, working – and fighting – towards a glorious, new, free, democratic world. Surrounded by civil war and collapse, it is no surprise that so many of them believe they have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to gain.
As individuals and encouraged by gatherings, groups and congresses, women became directly involved in politics and in the Kurdish armed forces. With 2,000 women fighters in the early 1990s, their ranks grew over the next twenty years to more than 7,000, fighting in the PKK’s mixed-sex military wing, the Syrian-based YPG. In 2004, a riot in the Syrian town of Qamishli drove thousands of Kurds into Iraq, and spurred many women to join up. In 2012, the women got their own contingents, the Women’s Defence Units (YPJ), based in the Kurdish part of Syria, Rojava. Numbers climbed again, to about 20,000, and they became famous for their role in fighting Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. In 2014, IS turned on the Syrian Yazidis (also spelled Ezidis), a Kurdis
h sub-group with their own pre-Islamic religious traditions, killing 5,000 of them in their main city, Sinjar, and forcing another 200,000 to flee. Some 50,000 took to the bare flanks of nearby Mount Sinjar, where they faced imminent extermination. In response to widespread media coverage, President Obama ordered US intervention. US bombers, the YPJ and their male counterparts drove off the IS fighters and saved the Yazidis.
In this chequerboard of interlinked wars, civil wars and sectarian strife, the Kurdish women fighters have been a steady focal point at the heart of a unique experiment in democracy. Like many partisans down the centuries, they believe they have a worthy cause: fighting for their homeland, their political rights, their freedom. Sharia law holds no sway in most of Kurdistan. There are fewer hijabs and niqabs in Kurdish cities these days, and very few indeed in Rojava, the heartland of the revolution.
