In the 9th century BCE, in North Israel, lived a great Phoenician queen. She was the power behind her husband's throne, telling him how to rule her country. She was known for being beautiful, and to have ruled at such a time, when the people of her kingdom were prospering, means she must have done a good job. Not only that, but this queen was wise and open-minded, defending a minority religion that were in a dangerous situation, facing death at the hands of a particularly bloodthirsty group who had been going around slaughtering those who didn't agree with them.
This wise and beautiful woman could sometimes be cruel and ruthless, but no more so than any other ruler around at the time. She had to be, in order to keep her throne. But, despite how well she ruled, she was living in horrible times, when the local defenders of the patriarchal society in which she lived would literally torture a woman to death if she managed to gain power and hold it well, and they found a situation they could use to gain power over her. And so, eventually they managed to ambush her and murder her by defenestration. They threw her out of a window. But she was, when she lived, a wise and intelligent, open minded and beautiful ruler and woman. And this is why I admire the historical figure Queen Jezebel
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Boudicca's husband Prasutagus, ruler of the Iceni tribe who had ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome, left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman Emperor in his will. However, when he died, his will was ignored. The kingdom was annexed as if conquered, Boudicca was flogged and her daughters raped, and Roman financiers called in their loans.
But Boudicca would not be beat so easily! This brave and understandably angry ruler rallied around her the warriors of her tribe to try and face the Roman hourdes.
Boudicca successfully razed Colchester, London, and St Albans, and the Romans were getting desperate. If things continued like this, Boudicca, her daughters and her few thousand men would manage to make the Romans leave Britain entirely. So... Suetonius regrouped his forces. According to Tacitus, he amassed a force including his own Legio XIV Gemina, parts of the XX Valeria Victrix, and any available auxiliaries, a total of 10,000 men.
Boudica exhorted her troops from her chariot, her daughters beside her. She gave a short speech in which she presents herself not as an aristocrat avenging her lost wealth, but as an ordinary person, avenging her lost freedom, her battered body, and the abused chastity of her daughters. Their cause was just, and the deities were on their side; the one legion that had dared to face them had been destroyed. She, a woman, was resolved to win or die; if the men wanted to live in slavery, that was their choice.
Eventually, outnumbered badly, she was defeated. Ever the brave warrior, rather than face slavery at the hands of the invading Romans, Boudicca and her daughters drank poison, and thus ended the life of one of history's most brilliant generals.
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Emmeline Pankhurst (14 or 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was an English political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement
Pankhurst was introduced at the age of 8 to the women's suffrage movement. In 1878 she married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister known for supporting women's right to vote; She quickly became involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for women. When that organization broke apart, she attempted to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie, but was initially refused membership by the local branch of the Party on account of her gender.
After her husband died in 1898, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words".
The group placed itself separately from – and often in opposition to – political parties. The group quickly became infamous when its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists were sentenced to repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions.
Whats not to admire in the woman who lead the Suffragette movement?
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We need more female scientists and athletes, more women who write and paint and dream. We need more female political leaders. What we don't need, is Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham and their ilk preening and posing for cameras and embarrassing our whole gender by acting like idiots.