May 26, 2025 • 20 mins
“There's been a long tradition of saying that women that women who ruled were exceptions, that women who fought were exceptions. That, you know, it's Joan of Arc, it's not GI Joan.,And that trap gets us over and over again, not just with women warriors.” — Pamela D. Toler
In this episode of How To Write the Future podcast, host Beth Barany interviews author, speaker, and historian Pamela D. Toler. Together they dive into the importance of women in history and discuss the significant challenges in documenting Women's History and how it can be tied into storytelling. They also discuss Pamela’s book, Women Warriors: An Unexpected History.
ABOUT PAMELA D. TOLER
Armed with a PhD in history, a well-thumbed deck of library cards, and a large bump of curiosity, author, speaker, and historian Pamela D. Toler writes historical non-fiction for a popular audience. She goes beyond the familiar boundaries of American history to tell stories from other parts of the world as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar. Toler is the author of ten books of popular history for children and adults, including Women Warriors: An Unexpected History and The Dragon From Chicago: the Untold Story of an American Report in Nazi Germany.
Website: https://www.pameladtoler.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pamela.toler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamelatolerauthor/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelatoler/
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See also: Ep. 146 - How Ancient Female Warriors Shape Our Future
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
BETH BARANY (00:00):
Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast.
(00:03):
I'm your host, Beth Barany.
I'm an award-winning sciencefiction and fantasy teacher,
editor and filmmaker.
And I care very much abouthumans being able to shape their
own future, both through thestories we write, as well as the
way we approach the world in theway we think about our future
because I believe that we humanscan create positive, optimistic
(00:27):
futures through our stories andalso through how we live our
day-to-day lives.
And so on that note, we areactually gonna do some history
deep dive today because where wecame from totally affects how we
are today and how we perceivethe future.
And let's shed a light on one ofmy very favorite topics: women
(00:47):
warriors.
I am so excited today to havewith me a special guest, Pamela
D.
Toler author, and fabulous humanbeing.
Welcome Pam.
or Pamela, what do you prefer,Pam?
Pamela?
PAMELA D. TOLER (01:00):
I prefer Pamela.
BETH BARANY (01:01):
Pamela.
So welcome, Pamela.
I'm so glad that you're heretoday.
PAMELA D. TOLER (01:05):
Oh, I'm delighted to be here.
BETH BARANY (01:07):
Let me read your bio for everyone.
so they can learn about you.
Lemme tell you all a little bitabout Pamela.
Armed with a PhD in history, awell thumbed deck of library
cards and a large bump ofcuriosity, author, speaker, and
historian, Pamela D.
Toler writes historicalnonfiction for a popular
(01:29):
audience.
She goes beyond the familiarboundaries of American history
to tell stories from other partsof the world, as well as history
from the other side of thebattlefield, the gender line, or
the Color Bar.
Toler is the author of 10 booksof popular history for children
and adults, including WomenWarriors: An Unexpected History,
(01:52):
and The Dragon from Chicago, theUntold Story of an American
Reporter in Nazi Germany.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Pamela.
I'm really grateful that youtook the time today and I just
have to do a little showing off.
I have your Woman Warriors book.
And I also have your Dragon fromChicago book.
So very exciting to have theseboth here.
(02:15):
And I just wanna say it's reallyfascinating to me that you took
the jump from having your PhD inhistory to deciding to write
books for the popular audiences.
I'm really grateful because weneed people like you who can
translate, and bring thesestories to life.
So I'm really grateful thatyou're doing this work.
I do wanna invite everyone tocheck out Pamela D.
(02:37):
Toler's material.
Her links will be in the shownotes and the article that
accompanies this podcast.
So everyone be sure to checkthose out.
She has a fabulous column abouthistory.
I love reading it.
Now I have a question for youthat has been, I swear to you,
plaguing me since I was a child.
Which is...
PAMELA D. TOLER (02:56):
no pressure.
BETH BARANY (02:57):
No pressure, no pressure.
And because I come from a familythat prized itself on being a
feminist family, but also I'm achild of the seventies, and
okay, I just have to tell thispersonal story.
When I was 16, I turned to mymom and I said, mom, how come
women aren't equal to men?
I thought they were.
I was brought up to believe thatthey were.
How come they're not?
(03:17):
And she said to me, well,essentially social change takes
a long time.
It's takes generations.
And my family had already beenworking on it for four
generations.
I have a great-great-grandmotherwho was an advocate for
abortion.
I know that's very controversialthese days.
but in the Midwest, it wasillegal then, completely illegal
and.
and my great grandmother who wasan advocate for women's rights
(03:39):
and and her mother was the onewho was, also pro education for
women.
And then here I am, fivegenerations later in the
seventies or eighties by thenlooking around, how come
equality isn't here yet?
And my mom was like, she's arealist.
She's like, well, mm-hmm.
Takes a long time.
And I'm like, you know, sadabout that.
Yeah.
So this segues me to our firstquestion, which is: How is it
(04:03):
that women have been disappearedor women disappear from history?
We are 50% of the humanpopulation.
PAMELA D. TOLER (04:11):
There are a lot of reasons.
and at some level, the first onecomes back to: what people have
thought were worth telling.
What were the stories that wereworth telling?
And if history was the story ofpower, then you are largely
talking about men in positionsof power.
(04:32):
And when you're talking about awoman in a position of power,
she's always an exception forwhatever reason, despite the
fact that, if you look over thebroad range of history, the
number of women who haveactually ruled, and in many
cases ruled with an iron fist isextremely large, but a lot of
(04:54):
their stories end up thengetting erased or told with
extreme prejudice by the peoplewho record the history.
They either remove women fromhistory, which has happened in
some really egregious ways.
Hatshepsut of Egypt, where hersuccessor simply takes their
(05:14):
name off the monuments.
So sometimes it's literalerasure, but you also get
instances where someone who'swriting the history, and a lot
of times, particularly in theancient world or even the
Medieval world, we're gettingsources that are written a long
time after the fact and you geta lot of trash talking.
You get a lot of (05:33):
there was really a man behind her pulling
the strings or, she was ahorrible human being, or, she
didn't exist, or she didn'treally do what the records say
she did.
I was just astonished how manytimes, particularly in women
warriors where I was readingsecondary modern historians
(05:55):
looking at older histories,making the argument that she's a
metaphor (06:00):
This isn't someone who actually was there.
She's a metaphor, or, yeah, shewas there, but all this other
stuff has accumulated and shedidn't really do what our actual
source says she did.
And not always in ancient times.
There's a woman named Amina ofHausa who was a contemporary of
(06:20):
Elizabeth the First of England,and there are historians who
said, yeah, we're not reallysure she existed.
So yeah.
BETH BARANY (06:26):
So it seems like it's a lot of either overt
erasure.
What happened to the Egyptian?
I don't know the name for theEgyptian leader.
PAMELA D. TOLER (06:37):
She's a Pharaoh.
BETH BARANY (06:38):
Pharaoh, that's right.
Thank you.
My brain went blip.
Or just male, dare I say, maledominated bias.
PAMELA D. TOLER (06:45):
Mm-hmm.
BETH BARANY (06:45):
And, And woman couldn't do that- kind of thing.
Would you say, so that seems topredominate over the last, I
don't know, what, two, three,5,000 years.
it seems to have been for a longtime.
PAMELA D. TOLER (06:57):
it's
BETH BARANY (06:57):
for a long time We really start having the idea of
women's history around 1980.
PAMELA D. TOLER (07:05):
That's when women's history as a discipline
begins and historians beginlooking at different sources to
tell us what women's lives werelike.
But also since then, you getincreasing numbers of people
like me going and bringing tolife stories that are put in the
(07:25):
footnotes, because a lot oftimes women don't disappear
completely.
their sources end up attached totheir husband's papers is one
thing.
Or they just show up in afootnote.
Or in more traditional writing,they get used as a horrible
example (07:42):
This is someone you don't wanna be.
So it's really only about 1980that you get a body of work
that's attempting to bring womenback into the light.
BETH BARANY (07:51):
That's fascinating and also explains a lot in terms
of why that material wasn'thandy when I was a child.
PAMELA D. TOLER (07:59):
And the other thing, I'm sorry, you have other
questions, I know not just whywomen get erased, but it's also
a question of what sources getkept.
Yeah.
Who decides what archives areworth keeping?
If you're writing women'shistory, you're often having to
work around the archives in somereally interesting ways because
papers may not have been kept.
BETH BARANY (08:20):
Yeah.
That's fascinating.
'cause you go back as far as youcan to original sources, right?
PAMELA D. TOLER (08:25):
More or less original sources in some cases.
BETH BARANY (08:28):
Let's segue to our next, my other very fascinating,
I would say, obsession that I'vebeen dabbling in for years and
hope to do something verydefinite with at some point.
I loved your book on womanwarriors.
I was also frustrated at thelimitations of history, like we
only have certain historicaldocuments, but it sounds like
you took your time to figure outwho to include in your book.
(08:50):
And so how do you define womenwarriors for- I'm just gonna
show it on screen for everyone.
Women Warriors (08:57):
an Unexpected History, beautiful cover.
And, and
PAMELA D. TOLER (09:00):
Defining turned out to be really important
because despite the fact that insome ways there's this sense
that women didn't fight.
In point of fact, I had so manyexamples that I had to make hard
choices, and I went in with areally simple definition, which
was I wanted women who literallyfought, that this is not women
(09:24):
for whom fighting was ametaphor.
These were women who picked up arock or a gun or a sword and
actually fought.
And that's a pretty gooddefinition if you're talking
about women on the front linesin any way, whether they are
regular soldiers or aredefending a besieged castle.
(09:46):
It gets less clear when you'retalking about commanders because
there's a real wide range thatwomen commanders can take.
On the one end there isElizabeth The First on her white
horse with her silver cuirassover her gown saying, I have the
(10:07):
weak body of a woman, but theheart of a king.
And she's sending people off tofight, but she's not going into
the field.
And at the other end, you havesomeone like Boudica so just
stay in the British Isles, whoclearly is right there, sword in
hand fighting.
And you've got everything inbetween.
(10:27):
I ended up using a modernAmerican military definition
called a"combatant commander,"where they might not necessarily
be holding a weapon.
After all, you don't think thatgeneral Eisenhower wasn't a
warrior in World War II, even ifhe wasn't shooting.
(10:48):
But where they're at the front,they're making command
decisions.
They may be making tacticaldecisions, logistical
arrangements.
So someone who is activelyinvolved in the the unwinding of
a war where they're, they arehands-on, even if they are not
physically fighting with aweapon.
The other decisions that Ineeded to make- I really did
(11:10):
want this to be a globalhistory.
So I took time to choose peoplefrom all around the world and
from across time, beginning fromthe second millennium, B.
C.
E.
I think the last person I talkabout was actually in the
Falklands War, but she's almosta footnote because basically I
(11:35):
didn't go much past World War IIin looking at active combatants.
So, no.
Tibet and with the Chineseinvasion, but first half of the
20th century is where I end.
So I also had to make thosekinds of decisions.
And I didn't want all queens andI wanted regular women.
I didn't want it to be a wholebook of exceptions.
(11:57):
I wanted ordinary women fightingbecause they needed to as well.
So lots of choices that had tobe made.
BETH BARANY (12:05):
You can't include everyone.
On this book, what was the mostsurprising thing that you've
discovered about women warriors?
PAMELA D. TOLER (12:13):
Really just how many of them there were.
I went in with a really fatfolder of stories that I had
been accumulating for 20 years,maybe before I even thought
about writing the book, but Ijust kept finding more and it
became clear that even ifindividual women were exceptions
(12:37):
in their times and places,there's a point at which: How
many women do you have to haveover the history of time for it
to stop being an exception?
So the real thing that just gotme was how many they are and how
unexamined that is.
BETH BARANY (12:51):
So I appreciate that you have taken your time to
ask all these incrediblequestions, including this next
one that I would love to explorewith you, which is: how does the
trap of the individualexception, and you're gonna have
to define what that means,contribute to the erasure of
women from history?
PAMELA D. TOLER (13:11):
There's been a long tradition of saying that
women were exceptions that, thatwomen who ruled were exceptions,
that women who fought wereexceptions.
That, it's Joan of Arc, it's notGI Joan.
And that trap gets us over andover again, not just with women
warriors.
I recently was reading a bookcalled The Swans of Harlem about
(13:35):
black dancers in our lifetime,and how that book got triggered
by Misty Copeland being treatedin the news as if she were the
first, as if she were anexception, and this journalist
going back in, finding thisgroup of women.
So what the trap of theexception does is it stops you
(13:59):
from looking more broadly.
It stops you from seeing whothat exception built on.
It stops you from seeing whoelse is doing something that
looks a lot like that.
In the case of women warriors,the other thing that the
exceptional does is if we startdefining women warriors as
(14:22):
exceptions.
If you start dubbing the blackwomen who fought in Dahomey as
the black Amazons of Dahomey.
If you call women who arenational heroines, because they
fight the Joan of Arc ofwherever it is, you start
creating a definition that meansthis is something you can't
(14:46):
aspire to.
This is a big heroic thing thatstands apart.
But you person who is having todefend your home because the
Nazis are marching into Russia,you're not really a warrior.
So the real trap of theexception is not even that it
means we don't see it, but thatwe don't think we can be it.
(15:09):
I guess we come back to that:"Ifyou can't see it, you can't be
it" phrase.
But it's true and it's very muchtrue as a historian looking, is
that exceptionalism idea willget you every time.
BETH BARANY (15:21):
I actually do love that you've tied it back to,"if
you can't see it, you can't beit." I know, Geena Davis uses
that in her promotions.
Because it's really true.
When I was a child, I wanted tobe a doctor, or at least that's
what I told all the adults.
'cause that was what impressedthem the most.
But also, I had a deep desire tohelp people and I knew that
hospital thing.
But when I went looking forother doctors, women who were
(15:43):
doctors, my parents were like,there's this woman, It's like
they couldn't give me very manystories when in fact there was
probably a lot more stories outthere that existed.
They just couldn't give them tome'cause it wasn't because of
this whole exceptionalism thing.
Yeah.
So I really appreciate youexplaining the whole exception
because it does one more thingthat I notice, which is it, it
(16:07):
removes us from community.
oh, look at, oh, look at mygrandmother who did this, and my
auntie who did that, and myneighbor did this.
Like It isolates women, which Ithink is one of the tools that
have been used to take away ourpower is to isolate women.
PAMELA D. TOLER (16:23):
There's a wonderful Peanut cartoon where
Lucy is making a report inschool and she stands up and
talks about what her grandmotherdid in World War II and then
says, you should go ask yourgrandmother what she did.
'cause it's not just all bakingcookies.
It does.
it isolates you.
(16:44):
And the whole idea that you gohome and you don't talk about
it.
And admittedly, a lot of men whofought in World War II also went
home and didn't talk about it.
The difference is that we knewmen fought in World War II, and
with the exception of Rosie theRiveter, we didn't have a real
clear sense of just how muchwomen did and what they did.
(17:05):
And those stories are onlystarting to be told now.
And some of that's because therewere documents that were not
able to be released until acertain number of years after
the war.
So that's the reason some of thestories don't get told, but also
there's a sense of going homeand not talking about it.
And the Russian governmentactually told the women who were
fighter pilots and bombers andmechanics in World War II not to
(17:30):
talk about their service.
BETH BARANY (17:32):
Wow.
PAMELA D. TOLER (17:33):
And obviously the Bletchley Park people had
signed secrecy act documents tonot talk about their service.
But yeah, sometimes it's just anact of we don't talk about this.
BETH BARANY (17:44):
And that's really too bad.
That goes back to my, how comewe don't know the stories?
And people are being toldactively not to talk about it.
And I feel like maybe because Icome from a family of
storytellers who tell thestories of their communities,
but I feel so strongly aboutbringing forth these women
warrior stories because womenbeing brave, I don't want it to
be an exception.
I want it to be part of ourcharacteristics.
(18:05):
And that's why I write storiesabout brave young women on the
one hand in my fantasy worlds.
And then in my sci-fi, I've gotthis lead investigator doing The
Brave.
And, As a matter of course.
Like of course women get to bebrave.
Women are brave.
And so I feel like, Pamela, wecould keep going for a long
time.
You're such a font ofinformation and, I really like
(18:29):
finding out how women wererepresented, but also bringing
women back into the conversationand into the dialogue, by
telling their stories.
Again, everyone check outPamela's books.
I'll put these up on the screenand I'll put links to these
books.
and I know you're working onmore projects.
as we wrap up today, Can youspeak to the future since this
(18:50):
podcast theme is about lookingtoward the future and how do we
wanna make our future?
And of course there's manyfutures, but as you look to the
future, maybe, one thing that'spersonal, like what you are
working on, and also your wishor hope for the writers who are
listening to this and those whocare about the future.
Those are my audience.
A lot of writers listen to this.
What can you tell us abouthelping us write more positive,
(19:14):
optimistic, and inclusivefutures?
PAMELA D. TOLER (19:16):
First.
I don't know what I'm working onright now.
I'm looking so that I can't helpand right now what I really want
is for us to not lose what wegained.
But if we're talking abouttrying to write about a more
positive world, about a worldwhere it's assumed that women
are strong and smart and doingwhatever men do, and on the
(19:39):
alternate side that men have theoption of being the one to stay
home and take care of children,to be caretakers too, because
those two things go together.
Again, to use something thatgets said a lot, but women's
rights are also men's rights.
I would say, keep that in mindwith whatever you are writing
(19:59):
about whatever future worldyou're creating is that if you
open the opportunities for onegroup, it doesn't mean you're
closing the door for someoneelse.
You are not taking somethingaway from someone else.
You in the best versions ofthat, you are actually making
(20:19):
the opportunities broader foreveryone.
BETH BARANY (20:22):
I love that.
That's a great note to end on.
Oh my goodness.
Thank you so much, Pamela.
I just wanna encourage everyoneto check out, Pamela's
resources, and I'm gonna end onthis, everyone.
Write long and prosper.
Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast.
(00:03):
I'm your host, Beth Barany.
I'm an award-winning sciencefiction and fantasy teacher,
editor and filmmaker.
And I care very much abouthumans being able to shape their
own future, both through thestories we write, as well as the
way we approach the world in theway we think about our future
because I believe that we humanscan create positive, optimistic
(00:27):
futures through our stories andalso through how we live our
day-to-day lives.
And so on that note, we areactually gonna do some history
deep dive today because where wecame from totally affects how we
are today and how we perceivethe future.
And let's shed a light on one ofmy very favorite topics: women
(00:47):
warriors.
I am so excited today to havewith me a special guest, Pamela
D.
Toler author, and fabulous humanbeing.
Welcome Pam.
or Pamela, what do you prefer,Pam?
Pamela?
PAMELA D. TOLER (01:00):
I prefer Pamela.
BETH BARANY (01:01):
Pamela.
So welcome, Pamela.
I'm so glad that you're heretoday.
PAMELA D. TOLER (01:05):
Oh, I'm delighted to be here.
BETH BARANY (01:07):
Let me read your bio for everyone.
so they can learn about you.
Lemme tell you all a little bitabout Pamela.
Armed with a PhD in history, awell thumbed deck of library
cards and a large bump ofcuriosity, author, speaker, and
historian, Pamela D.
Toler writes historicalnonfiction for a popular
(01:29):
audience.
She goes beyond the familiarboundaries of American history
to tell stories from other partsof the world, as well as history
from the other side of thebattlefield, the gender line, or
the Color Bar.
Toler is the author of 10 booksof popular history for children
and adults, including WomenWarriors: An Unexpected History,
(01:52):
and The Dragon from Chicago, theUntold Story of an American
Reporter in Nazi Germany.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Pamela.
I'm really grateful that youtook the time today and I just
have to do a little showing off.
I have your Woman Warriors book.
And I also have your Dragon fromChicago book.
So very exciting to have theseboth here.
(02:15):
And I just wanna say it's reallyfascinating to me that you took
the jump from having your PhD inhistory to deciding to write
books for the popular audiences.
I'm really grateful because weneed people like you who can
translate, and bring thesestories to life.
So I'm really grateful thatyou're doing this work.
I do wanna invite everyone tocheck out Pamela D.
(02:37):
Toler's material.
Her links will be in the shownotes and the article that
accompanies this podcast.
So everyone be sure to checkthose out.
She has a fabulous column abouthistory.
I love reading it.
Now I have a question for youthat has been, I swear to you,
plaguing me since I was a child.
Which is...
PAMELA D. TOLER (02:56):
no pressure.
BETH BARANY (02:57):
No pressure, no pressure.
And because I come from a familythat prized itself on being a
feminist family, but also I'm achild of the seventies, and
okay, I just have to tell thispersonal story.
When I was 16, I turned to mymom and I said, mom, how come
women aren't equal to men?
I thought they were.
I was brought up to believe thatthey were.
How come they're not?
(03:17):
And she said to me, well,essentially social change takes
a long time.
It's takes generations.
And my family had already beenworking on it for four
generations.
I have a great-great-grandmotherwho was an advocate for
abortion.
I know that's very controversialthese days.
but in the Midwest, it wasillegal then, completely illegal
and.
and my great grandmother who wasan advocate for women's rights
(03:39):
and and her mother was the onewho was, also pro education for
women.
And then here I am, fivegenerations later in the
seventies or eighties by thenlooking around, how come
equality isn't here yet?
And my mom was like, she's arealist.
She's like, well, mm-hmm.
Takes a long time.
And I'm like, you know, sadabout that.
Yeah.
So this segues me to our firstquestion, which is: How is it
(04:03):
that women have been disappearedor women disappear from history?
We are 50% of the humanpopulation.
PAMELA D. TOLER (04:11):
There are a lot of reasons.
and at some level, the first onecomes back to: what people have
thought were worth telling.
What were the stories that wereworth telling?
And if history was the story ofpower, then you are largely
talking about men in positionsof power.
(04:32):
And when you're talking about awoman in a position of power,
she's always an exception forwhatever reason, despite the
fact that, if you look over thebroad range of history, the
number of women who haveactually ruled, and in many
cases ruled with an iron fist isextremely large, but a lot of
(04:54):
their stories end up thengetting erased or told with
extreme prejudice by the peoplewho record the history.
They either remove women fromhistory, which has happened in
some really egregious ways.
Hatshepsut of Egypt, where hersuccessor simply takes their
(05:14):
name off the monuments.
So sometimes it's literalerasure, but you also get
instances where someone who'swriting the history, and a lot
of times, particularly in theancient world or even the
Medieval world, we're gettingsources that are written a long
time after the fact and you geta lot of trash talking.
You get a lot of (05:33):
there was really a man behind her pulling
the strings or, she was ahorrible human being, or, she
didn't exist, or she didn'treally do what the records say
she did.
I was just astonished how manytimes, particularly in women
warriors where I was readingsecondary modern historians
(05:55):
looking at older histories,making the argument that she's a
metaphor (06:00):
This isn't someone who actually was there.
She's a metaphor, or, yeah, shewas there, but all this other
stuff has accumulated and shedidn't really do what our actual
source says she did.
And not always in ancient times.
There's a woman named Amina ofHausa who was a contemporary of
(06:20):
Elizabeth the First of England,and there are historians who
said, yeah, we're not reallysure she existed.
So yeah.
BETH BARANY (06:26):
So it seems like it's a lot of either overt
erasure.
What happened to the Egyptian?
I don't know the name for theEgyptian leader.
PAMELA D. TOLER (06:37):
She's a Pharaoh.
BETH BARANY (06:38):
Pharaoh, that's right.
Thank you.
My brain went blip.
Or just male, dare I say, maledominated bias.
PAMELA D. TOLER (06:45):
Mm-hmm.
BETH BARANY (06:45):
And, And woman couldn't do that- kind of thing.
Would you say, so that seems topredominate over the last, I
don't know, what, two, three,5,000 years.
it seems to have been for a longtime.
PAMELA D. TOLER (06:57):
it's
BETH BARANY (06:57):
for a long time We really start having the idea of
women's history around 1980.
PAMELA D. TOLER (07:05):
That's when women's history as a discipline
begins and historians beginlooking at different sources to
tell us what women's lives werelike.
But also since then, you getincreasing numbers of people
like me going and bringing tolife stories that are put in the
(07:25):
footnotes, because a lot oftimes women don't disappear
completely.
their sources end up attached totheir husband's papers is one
thing.
Or they just show up in afootnote.
Or in more traditional writing,they get used as a horrible
example (07:42):
This is someone you don't wanna be.
So it's really only about 1980that you get a body of work
that's attempting to bring womenback into the light.
BETH BARANY (07:51):
That's fascinating and also explains a lot in terms
of why that material wasn'thandy when I was a child.
PAMELA D. TOLER (07:59):
And the other thing, I'm sorry, you have other
questions, I know not just whywomen get erased, but it's also
a question of what sources getkept.
Yeah.
Who decides what archives areworth keeping?
If you're writing women'shistory, you're often having to
work around the archives in somereally interesting ways because
papers may not have been kept.
BETH BARANY (08:20):
Yeah.
That's fascinating.
'cause you go back as far as youcan to original sources, right?
PAMELA D. TOLER (08:25):
More or less original sources in some cases.
BETH BARANY (08:28):
Let's segue to our next, my other very fascinating,
I would say, obsession that I'vebeen dabbling in for years and
hope to do something verydefinite with at some point.
I loved your book on womanwarriors.
I was also frustrated at thelimitations of history, like we
only have certain historicaldocuments, but it sounds like
you took your time to figure outwho to include in your book.
(08:50):
And so how do you define womenwarriors for- I'm just gonna
show it on screen for everyone.
Women Warriors (08:57):
an Unexpected History, beautiful cover.
And, and
PAMELA D. TOLER (09:00):
Defining turned out to be really important
because despite the fact that insome ways there's this sense
that women didn't fight.
In point of fact, I had so manyexamples that I had to make hard
choices, and I went in with areally simple definition, which
was I wanted women who literallyfought, that this is not women
(09:24):
for whom fighting was ametaphor.
These were women who picked up arock or a gun or a sword and
actually fought.
And that's a pretty gooddefinition if you're talking
about women on the front linesin any way, whether they are
regular soldiers or aredefending a besieged castle.
(09:46):
It gets less clear when you'retalking about commanders because
there's a real wide range thatwomen commanders can take.
On the one end there isElizabeth The First on her white
horse with her silver cuirassover her gown saying, I have the
(10:07):
weak body of a woman, but theheart of a king.
And she's sending people off tofight, but she's not going into
the field.
And at the other end, you havesomeone like Boudica so just
stay in the British Isles, whoclearly is right there, sword in
hand fighting.
And you've got everything inbetween.
(10:27):
I ended up using a modernAmerican military definition
called a"combatant commander,"where they might not necessarily
be holding a weapon.
After all, you don't think thatgeneral Eisenhower wasn't a
warrior in World War II, even ifhe wasn't shooting.
(10:48):
But where they're at the front,they're making command
decisions.
They may be making tacticaldecisions, logistical
arrangements.
So someone who is activelyinvolved in the the unwinding of
a war where they're, they arehands-on, even if they are not
physically fighting with aweapon.
The other decisions that Ineeded to make- I really did
(11:10):
want this to be a globalhistory.
So I took time to choose peoplefrom all around the world and
from across time, beginning fromthe second millennium, B.
C.
E.
I think the last person I talkabout was actually in the
Falklands War, but she's almosta footnote because basically I
(11:35):
didn't go much past World War IIin looking at active combatants.
So, no.
Tibet and with the Chineseinvasion, but first half of the
20th century is where I end.
So I also had to make thosekinds of decisions.
And I didn't want all queens andI wanted regular women.
I didn't want it to be a wholebook of exceptions.
(11:57):
I wanted ordinary women fightingbecause they needed to as well.
So lots of choices that had tobe made.
BETH BARANY (12:05):
You can't include everyone.
On this book, what was the mostsurprising thing that you've
discovered about women warriors?
PAMELA D. TOLER (12:13):
Really just how many of them there were.
I went in with a really fatfolder of stories that I had
been accumulating for 20 years,maybe before I even thought
about writing the book, but Ijust kept finding more and it
became clear that even ifindividual women were exceptions
(12:37):
in their times and places,there's a point at which: How
many women do you have to haveover the history of time for it
to stop being an exception?
So the real thing that just gotme was how many they are and how
unexamined that is.
BETH BARANY (12:51):
So I appreciate that you have taken your time to
ask all these incrediblequestions, including this next
one that I would love to explorewith you, which is: how does the
trap of the individualexception, and you're gonna have
to define what that means,contribute to the erasure of
women from history?
PAMELA D. TOLER (13:11):
There's been a long tradition of saying that
women were exceptions that, thatwomen who ruled were exceptions,
that women who fought wereexceptions.
That, it's Joan of Arc, it's notGI Joan.
And that trap gets us over andover again, not just with women
warriors.
I recently was reading a bookcalled The Swans of Harlem about
(13:35):
black dancers in our lifetime,and how that book got triggered
by Misty Copeland being treatedin the news as if she were the
first, as if she were anexception, and this journalist
going back in, finding thisgroup of women.
So what the trap of theexception does is it stops you
(13:59):
from looking more broadly.
It stops you from seeing whothat exception built on.
It stops you from seeing whoelse is doing something that
looks a lot like that.
In the case of women warriors,the other thing that the
exceptional does is if we startdefining women warriors as
(14:22):
exceptions.
If you start dubbing the blackwomen who fought in Dahomey as
the black Amazons of Dahomey.
If you call women who arenational heroines, because they
fight the Joan of Arc ofwherever it is, you start
creating a definition that meansthis is something you can't
(14:46):
aspire to.
This is a big heroic thing thatstands apart.
But you person who is having todefend your home because the
Nazis are marching into Russia,you're not really a warrior.
So the real trap of theexception is not even that it
means we don't see it, but thatwe don't think we can be it.
(15:09):
I guess we come back to that:"Ifyou can't see it, you can't be
it" phrase.
But it's true and it's very muchtrue as a historian looking, is
that exceptionalism idea willget you every time.
BETH BARANY (15:21):
I actually do love that you've tied it back to,"if
you can't see it, you can't beit." I know, Geena Davis uses
that in her promotions.
Because it's really true.
When I was a child, I wanted tobe a doctor, or at least that's
what I told all the adults.
'cause that was what impressedthem the most.
But also, I had a deep desire tohelp people and I knew that
hospital thing.
But when I went looking forother doctors, women who were
(15:43):
doctors, my parents were like,there's this woman, It's like
they couldn't give me very manystories when in fact there was
probably a lot more stories outthere that existed.
They just couldn't give them tome'cause it wasn't because of
this whole exceptionalism thing.
Yeah.
So I really appreciate youexplaining the whole exception
because it does one more thingthat I notice, which is it, it
(16:07):
removes us from community.
oh, look at, oh, look at mygrandmother who did this, and my
auntie who did that, and myneighbor did this.
Like It isolates women, which Ithink is one of the tools that
have been used to take away ourpower is to isolate women.
PAMELA D. TOLER (16:23):
There's a wonderful Peanut cartoon where
Lucy is making a report inschool and she stands up and
talks about what her grandmotherdid in World War II and then
says, you should go ask yourgrandmother what she did.
'cause it's not just all bakingcookies.
It does.
it isolates you.
(16:44):
And the whole idea that you gohome and you don't talk about
it.
And admittedly, a lot of men whofought in World War II also went
home and didn't talk about it.
The difference is that we knewmen fought in World War II, and
with the exception of Rosie theRiveter, we didn't have a real
clear sense of just how muchwomen did and what they did.
(17:05):
And those stories are onlystarting to be told now.
And some of that's because therewere documents that were not
able to be released until acertain number of years after
the war.
So that's the reason some of thestories don't get told, but also
there's a sense of going homeand not talking about it.
And the Russian governmentactually told the women who were
fighter pilots and bombers andmechanics in World War II not to
(17:30):
talk about their service.
BETH BARANY (17:32):
Wow.
PAMELA D. TOLER (17:33):
And obviously the Bletchley Park people had
signed secrecy act documents tonot talk about their service.
But yeah, sometimes it's just anact of we don't talk about this.
BETH BARANY (17:44):
And that's really too bad.
That goes back to my, how comewe don't know the stories?
And people are being toldactively not to talk about it.
And I feel like maybe because Icome from a family of
storytellers who tell thestories of their communities,
but I feel so strongly aboutbringing forth these women
warrior stories because womenbeing brave, I don't want it to
be an exception.
I want it to be part of ourcharacteristics.
(18:05):
And that's why I write storiesabout brave young women on the
one hand in my fantasy worlds.
And then in my sci-fi, I've gotthis lead investigator doing The
Brave.
And, As a matter of course.
Like of course women get to bebrave.
Women are brave.
And so I feel like, Pamela, wecould keep going for a long
time.
You're such a font ofinformation and, I really like
(18:29):
finding out how women wererepresented, but also bringing
women back into the conversationand into the dialogue, by
telling their stories.
Again, everyone check outPamela's books.
I'll put these up on the screenand I'll put links to these
books.
and I know you're working onmore projects.
as we wrap up today, Can youspeak to the future since this
(18:50):
podcast theme is about lookingtoward the future and how do we
wanna make our future?
And of course there's manyfutures, but as you look to the
future, maybe, one thing that'spersonal, like what you are
working on, and also your wishor hope for the writers who are
listening to this and those whocare about the future.
Those are my audience.
A lot of writers listen to this.
What can you tell us abouthelping us write more positive,
(19:14):
optimistic, and inclusivefutures?
PAMELA D. TOLER (19:16):
First.
I don't know what I'm working onright now.
I'm looking so that I can't helpand right now what I really want
is for us to not lose what wegained.
But if we're talking abouttrying to write about a more
positive world, about a worldwhere it's assumed that women
are strong and smart and doingwhatever men do, and on the
(19:39):
alternate side that men have theoption of being the one to stay
home and take care of children,to be caretakers too, because
those two things go together.
Again, to use something thatgets said a lot, but women's
rights are also men's rights.
I would say, keep that in mindwith whatever you are writing
(19:59):
about whatever future worldyou're creating is that if you
open the opportunities for onegroup, it doesn't mean you're
closing the door for someoneelse.
You are not taking somethingaway from someone else.
You in the best versions ofthat, you are actually making
(20:19):
the opportunities broader foreveryone.
BETH BARANY (20:22):
I love that.
That's a great note to end on.
Oh my goodness.
Thank you so much, Pamela.
I just wanna encourage everyoneto check out, Pamela's
resources, and I'm gonna end onthis, everyone.
Write long and prosper.
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