Kuwait Times

Published Date: March 09, 2007
By Shamael Al-Sharikh

International Women's Day (IWD) was yesterday and I already wrote about women in Arab culture. Today, I would like to discuss a different side of women. The IWD has become a publicly recognised holiday in many countries and almost all women's organisations use it as a day to commemorate women's accomplishments and advancements.

However, I think that sometimes, the day can be taken a tad bit too seriously. While it is true that women have been oppressed for many years and in many cultures, and have had to struggle to rise to positions of power, it is also true that one or two women out there would have done the rest of us a service by staying out of the limelight. Therefore, I would like to dedicate my column today to crazy women; women who have risen to power and through their maniacal characters, have ruined it for the rest of us.

(For all my sister feminists who are about to get offended, my advice is to lighten up... there ain't no shame in a little self-criticism!)

My list of the craziest women leaders that have ever lived:

Hind Bint Utbah: I thought our lovely Lady of Cannibalism should be the first name on the list, to add a little local flavour to it. Hind Bint Utbah was an Arab woman who lived during the times of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). She was the wife of Abu Sufyan, one of the Prophet's bad uncles and his most ardent opponent, and was the closest thing to a community leader in Mecca at her time. She and her husband fought many battles against the early Muslims, as they were opposed to the spread of Islam. In one battle, both her brother and her father were killed by Hamza, the Prophet's good uncle (he accepted Islam and was one of the Prophet's biggest supporters.)

Angered by Hamza's murder of her kin, she asked her slave, Wahshi, to kill Hamzah, cut out his raw liver and bring it to her to eat. Historical claims state that she gnawed at it, but did not swallow, a claim not so different from "I smoked, but did not inhale."

Cleopatra: Cleopatra VII was the last Pharaoh of Egypt and was known for having many illicit affairs with powerful men, namely Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. She was also known for being wild. In one of her many bouts of craziness, it is claimed that she bet her lover Marc Anthony that she could spend ten million sesterces on one dinner. I am not sure what the US dollar equivalent of ten million sesterces is, but I'd wager that it is a substantially large sum of money.

As the story goes, Marc Anthony accepted the bet. The next night, Cleopatra served a regular meal to Marc Anthony, which he did not find impressive. Following the meal, she served him one glass of vinegar. She removed her pearl earring and dropped it in the vinegar and watched it dissolve. Once the pearl was dissolved, she drank the mixture of vinegar and pearls. Cleopatra won the bet.

Catherine de Medici: The Italian born Catherine was the wife of the King of France, Henry II and mother to three French Kings. She was orphaned at a young age and married to an unfaithful husband, albeit king, as a teenager. At the death of her husband, she banished his favourite lover and exercised extreme control over her children during the French Wars of Religion.

A Catholic by birth, she was determined not to let the Protestant Huguenots take control over France and thus orchestrated the St. Bartholomew's massacre in August 1572, in which Catholics murdered Protestants violently. The massacre was initiated in Paris but later spread to other cities and even to the French countryside, leading to a wave of murders that lasted months. One of the ugliest massacres in French history, it led to several civil wars between Catholics and Protestants in France.

Catherine de Medici was the one who taught the rest of the world what sectarian violence is all about. Al-Zarqawi could have used a few pointers from her!  
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Empress Dowager Cixi became the ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the last years of the nineteenth century. Ruling for 47 years, the Empress was calm, cool and cruel. She was chosen as a concubine for the Chinese emperor at that time, but having given him his only male heir, rose through the imperial ranks.

After the death of the emperor, she collaborated with the younger and ambitious princes to murder the eight ministers that the deceased emperor has chosen to help his young son rule over China. Of the eight ministers, she executed three, one by beheading and the others by white silk. The silk was supposed to be used by the ministers to commit suicide by hanging themselves with it.  

When her son reached marriage age, she found of him a wife from one of the opposing families as a means or reconciliation. However, not happy with her son's attachment to his new empress, she had them separated under the pretext of both of them needing to concentrate on their studies of governance. The young emperor, missing his beloved wife, had to resort to prostitutes and brothels for physical gratification. He eventually caught syphilis and died. His young widow committed suicide shortly after. The Empress Dowager Cixi appointed her nephew as the new Emperor. So much for the demure Asian woman stereotype, but right on the money for the controlling Asian parent one!

Tsarina Alexandra: Known officially as Alix of Hesse and by the Rhine, Alexandra was the wife of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, prior to the Bolshevik revolution. She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and one of the most notorious carriers of the royal disease of the time, haemophilia.

She was neither popular with the Russian Romanov court nor with the people of Russia, as they both saw her as an outsider. The fact she bore one male child and passed on the haemophilia gene to him did not help. She resorted to mystic healer Rasputin to cure her son. This angered the royal court, as it gave an outsider who was seen more as a witch doctor than a healer, significant political power.

When Nicholas went to visit his troops during WWI in 1915, Alexandra was given control of Russia. Since she was under the spell of her witch doctor, she became more unpopular and some royal court members even spread rumours that her relationship with Rasputin was of an illicit nature. Rasputin was later murdered by junior princes in the Russian court and Alexandra unpopularity was seen as one of the reasons for the fall of the Russian empire.

The list can go on and on, but these historical characters struck me as the craziest women ever. Whether they were vengeful cannibals, promiscuous spendthrifts, controlling mothers, conniving politicians or victims to shamans, history has many examples of crazy women.

They do not represent the rest of us women and they do not set the standards for women leaders in the future, but I believe that if we cannot look at our past with a critical eye, then we will never see our future clearly. Furthermore, we must also take comfort in the fact that craziness is by no means the domain of the feminine. For every crazy woman in power that ever lived, there are tens of crazy men in power, and this fact cannot be swept under history's rug.
For the lady readers, go on, enjoy your weekend, and be crazy. Just don't eat anyone's liver or consult a witch doctor in the process, and please oh please, stay away from the vinegar.

Email me at shamael@kuwaittimes.net