[ExI] female heros?

[SR Ballard]

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘hero’? Because ‘hero’ can mean a lot of things. It could mean a ‘superhero’, or it could be your role model, or someone who inspires you so much that you nearly worship them, or someone who does something selflessly brave, like running into a burning building to save someone, or someone who will speak up in a scary situation to protect you. 

Normally when I use “hero” I usually would mean it in all of the ways except for the ‘superhero’ way. I guess the general trait that they would share would just be that they inspire you to do and be better.

Let me sort of explain myself by way of example:

Growing up I was very inspired by Hawking but got really upset (and disillusioned) when I heard about his divorce. I have a terminal case of hero worship for Elon Musk, but it seems increasingly like he’s not that great a guy (but shit he’s inspiring, so I continue to look up to him despite his shortcomings). I have always been fascinated with “Cap’n Chrunch” the phone phreaker.

In terms of like a ‘role model’ I looked up to when I was growing up, that would have been Buffy, Xena, and Samantha Carter & Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1, as well and Blossom from Powerpuff Girls. When I was younger I would have answered these as my heroes.

In my teen years I identified heavily with Alanna from the Tamora Pierce books: a young woman who wants to be a knight, so she pretends to be her twin brother. I also identified with Milla in the Garth Nix books: a shield maiden who lives in an icy world of near total darkness, whose clan survives mainly by whale hunting.

I like to read about acts of wartime heroism and perseverance, such as Finland’s “White Death”, Frances “Cher Ami”, the Japanese soldier in Korea who never stopped fighting the war, the Italian bicyclist who helped all those Jews get fake papers. To me, these kinds of things are extremely heroic, and they’re inspiring, I would even call them heroes, but I don’t identify with them the same way as the people in the first three bits. They’re not “my hero”.

If someone were to come up and ask me, “Who’s your hero?” I would either Elon Musk at the moment, but clearly that hasn’t always been the case.

What would you consider to be ‘heroic’, and what would define a ‘hero’? And who would you consider to be your hero, if you have one?

I’m not sure it’s going to have a heavily gendered difference in what people consider heroism, that probably would be more tied to cultural views. For example, I’ve heard a lot of people call the Japanese soldier I mentioned earlier some very nasty thing and have very negative attitudes towards him. Which confuses me, but oh well. A lot of people might also question my designation of a pidgin as heroic, but I stand by it.

The gendered difference will probably come in with other ideas of hero, such as an inspiration, or a role model. For me, clearly, I was very interested in the ‘strong woman in the world’ which is just a desire for personal adventure. But you can so see an  overarching ‘smart vanguard’ theme as well, a real desire to be someone incredibly intelligent who can change the boundaries of what is considered possible.

So yeah, what/who is a hero, and is that different from your idea of ‘heroic’ actions?

> On Aug 6, 2018, at 20:03, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> OK, I admit the subject is just a try to get some of our female members to chime in here with my off the wall question for our not-the usual-people group, and very unusual for the group I am sure, but what's the harm in asking?
> 
> What is a hero?
> (hint - Mighty Mouse is not one of the answers)
> 
> bill w
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180807/4c12c432/attachment.html>