| Tournament of the Golden Swan |
| Shire of Appledore |
| Why is Golden Swan only open to female personas? |
| This is a touchy subject. There is disagreement on this topic even among the Swans. But the female personas policy was never intended to be a statement about feminism or inequality. When Golden Swan was originally conceived, it was created to provide an outlet for the intellectual and creative energies of women in the SCA. There were plenty of outlets for men, particularly if they were interested in war-like activities. So it was, in a sense, deliberate reverse discrimination. As originally conceived, Golden Swan was also intended to exemplify all the virtues a well-rounded person in the SCA should possess. There were numerous areas that are appropriate or necessary within the SCA culture that are not in the real world or the Middle Ages, and vice versa. For example, the Survival Skills category, which was never meant to be entirely serious. It generally resulted in "poisonings" at dinner that were fun for victim and poisoner alike, and offered some relief from the rest of the day's activities. Immersed as we are in a warrior culture in the SCA, it seems obvious that a woman can and should defend herself. In reality, women in most times and places (including our own) are vulnerable, and for the most part, cannot defend themselves very effectively. But this is not a reality twentieth century women are comfortable with. While we can justify the Survival Skills category within our SCA context of "the Middle Ages as they should have been," it's not necessary, let alone inevitable, within the context of historical reality. Over the years, Swan has become more historically based than it was in the beginning. Putting a woman from certain cultures into close contact with men would require compromises in the authenticity of the female persona. This became even more pressing with the inclusion of personas from throughout the world. There are many cultures (Ottoman Turkish, Heian Japanese) where women simply do not speak to, or even sit in the same room with, men outside their immediate family. At the Imperial Court of Heian Japan, which is within our time-period, women and men, even married couples, did not interact publicly in any way at any time. So even within a female-only competition, a persona from the Heian Court would pose problems for the organizers of the contest. Opening the contest up to men, and having men and women judged together, would mean excluding those female personas from the competition. Feminine Subculture and the Separation of Men and Women The modern Western world is unusual, even unique, in that it allows and encourages widespread interaction between men and women in virtually all spheres of life. Most cultures and most time-periods separate men and women most of the time. Most cultures have and have had a feminine subculture. The fact is that women in the past, and women in many non-Western cultures today, would not spend a lot of time with men. They spent most of their time with other women. So to create a plausible female persona, it's easier to do surrounded by women because that's how you would have lived your life. Adding men to the social circle, if we're going to be absolutely authentic in our recreation, would create a completely different situation altogether. And in some cases, it simply did not happen. So, do we open the contest up to men and thereby exclude certain female personas, or do we open it up to all female personas and thereby exclude men? So, why not judge men and women separately? Having separate, parallel judging sessions for men and women would increase the complexity and demands of running the event. As it is, Golden Swan runs 4 tracks of activities, including more than 20 different activities and contests (two heavy armoured tournaments, a rapier tourney, archery events, children's activities, and up to 12 judging sessions for Swan itself). All of these require organizers and prizes. Increasing the number of activities increases the difficulty of setting up a schedule that works for everyone. Appledore has said repeatedly that it will be quite happy to advise any branch in creating a parallel event for male personas, but we are not capable of expanding or willing to expand the complexity of the existing event beyond what it has already become. There are also issues related to research and the creation of personas. In some respects, judging a male persona and a female persona is comparing apples and oranges. There are issues that women must consider in creating a persona that a man can ignore completely (not that all men will, but they can). There is no culture on earth in which a male cannot inherit or own property, as long as he belongs to a class that is allowed to do so. There are many cultures and time periods in which women cannot inherit or own property. Most cultures have specific restrictions on the ways in which a woman can inherit, own or use property of any kind. Anyone creating a female persona must take this into account. Meanwhile, it's possible to create a male persona with no reference at all to laws of inheritance. In most cultures, if a man has no brothers, he inherits pretty much everything. If there are minor variations, he can fake it. All women must be concerned with their culture's attittudes and laws concerning fertility, control of fertility, lack of fertility, childlessness. Even a nun needs to have some knowledge of how her people view marriage, children, and childless women. A man may have this knowledge, but does not need it to construct a persona. This is not to say that researching and creating a female persona is more difficult or superior in some way to researching and creating a male persona. Men need to earn a living or support themselves and their families. They may go to war. They may have political or legal issues they must deal with. Men have their own issues, which may not be women's issues. Creating a female persona is not necessarily harder than creating a male one. But it is different. Apples and oranges. "The Culture of the Inarticulate" The culture of women is also notoriously difficult to research. It has been called "the culture of the inarticulate." In many periods, women could not write. When they could, often they did not. Much of what they did write has not survived. And much of what they wrote is not relevant to everyday life or the factors one needs to know to create a plausible persona. Hildegard of Bingen, for example, wrote prolifically, but virtually none of her prodigious output is about what she ate, what she wore, what her room was like, how comfortable her bed was, or what her mattress was stuffed with. This is also true of men of the period, but the sheer volume of writing by men is greater. Men also comment about other men, while they may not even mention women. One large, lavishly illustrated book I own has literally hundreds of illustrations from the Middle Ages. Not one of them depicts a woman. A feminine subculture often exists not to isolate women, but to give women a place where they can support one another and share information freely, while men don't need to hear about it. Our own culture has only been willing to discuss "female troubles" openly in the last 20 years, and even married men are still uncomfortable with certain topics. This is not necessarily discrimination or hatred of women, simply unfamiliarity. But when men are the primary historians and observers, the concerns of women may go unnoticed and unrecorded. Just as the concerns and lives of any group that is not the same as the observer's will go unrecorded. People write about what they know and care about. When they wrote at all, people in the past tended to write about things they considered significant, such as philosophy, theology, and records of important legal or political transactions. It was primarily an oral culture, and reading and writing were not commonplace for them as they are for us. Writing was reserved for matters of importance. Generally, they did not record the minutiae of day to day life. Journals and diaries are rare until the Renaissance. Letters are more common, but tend to be restrained by our standards. Women's lives are often made up of minutiae, even when the women themselves may think about significant things. Legal Discrimination? The issue of legal discrimination against men has also been raised. And the fact is, Golden Swan does discriminate in a sense. But the laws of Canada presume that white adult males with no physical or mental handicaps can protect themselves, while women, children, the disabled and minorities may need help. Section 15, subsection 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifies that "every individual is equal before and under the law ..... without discrimination," but subsection 2 allows for the suspension of subsection 1 if it will result in the "amelioration or betterment" of conditions affecting groups that have traditionally been discriminated against, including women. This is what allows Women's Studies and Native Studies departments to exist in universities, and allows for "affirmative action" in employment and other areas. Studying the lives of women of the past to better understand how they lived falls well within the area defined by the Charter. But the female-persona rule of Golden Swan is not intended to make a statement about inequality or to promote a feminist view of history. Among those who have been involved in Swan are rabidly feminist women and rabidly anti-feminist women. Golden Swan was never intended to be a statement or a position on feminism or equality, or even about a female perspective on history. It is intended to provide a venue for women to excel in specific ways in a group that tends, to some degree, to be biassed toward male pursuits, and it tries to address problems and issues that arise when a person attempts to create, as accurately as possible, a specific type of persona from the past. There are great differences between twelfth century Mongol women and twelfth century English women. But the researcher dealing with one will probably still have more in common with the researcher of the other than they will have with someone researching the lives of men in most periods. All of the categories within Swan are open to men as well as women. It is only the overall Golden Swan itself that is limited to female personas only. |
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