Amazon Sexuality

Within the Amazon myth, sexuality plays a large role in the conception of the Amazon warrior. Having taken reproductive control away from the male, the Amazon warrior threatens man’s power through heirs. Moreover, by exhibiting violence toward the male children, the Amazons' inverted common practices endangered masculine domination. One of the more common myths concerning Amazon sexuality associated this female warrior with the male Centaur. The Centaurs were known for a brute violence and sexual drive, whereas the Amazons acted as warring and sexual female creatures. As the myth of the Centaurs recounts the near-rape of the Lapith women, the parallel Amazon myth tells of a society in which the female unfairly dominates men. Amazon sexuality reveals itself as a major issue within the myths, since these women were seen to be overly promiscuous. When the Scythians overcame the Amazons in battle, the Greeks attributed this loss to the fact that the Amazons preferred sex to victory.

  There are two distinct views of Amazons within marriage. One set of myths inverses gender roles within marriage so that the males held no power and the female dominated the marriage. In reversing patriarchal customs, the Amazons handled hunting, farming, warfare, and public affairs; meanwhile, the men were consigned to spinning wool and domestic work. Within marriage, the husbands

". . . spent their time in the house tending to the orders of their wives. They had no share in the army or magistracies nor any say in public affairs from which they might become presumptuous and attack the women. When the babies were born, they handed them over to the men, who fed them with milk and other boiled foods suitable to the ages of the infants." (Tyrrell, pg. 47)

Unlike within Greek societal structure, Amazons had no restrictions upon their lifestyle. They were able to move throughout the city, instead of being restricted inside a house. Yet, the male were confined by domestic life and by possible physical crippling. This situation reverses the conventional marriage for Greeks. For a look at the female’s role in a typical Athenian marriage, click here.

Other stories portray Amazons as living entirely without men, though they periodically copulate so to bear female children. This version of the myth explains that the women either exposed male children or that they crippled the boys and made them into servants. Only female children were worthy to be raised. In these myths, the female also controls the blood line. Since the father cannot trace his offspring, only the female, who undoubtedly knows which children are hers, has power over inheritance. When these warrior women remove mating from the inner-household domain, they gain ultimate power through their heirs. In these stories, the women both refused male influence in their lives and worshiped Artemis, though they procreated and engaged in sexual activities whenever they desired. Amazons who refused the constraints of marriage portrayed an uncivilized culture which shunned that which was essential in everyday Greek life.