A mythical (yet, like all myths, is there not a bit of truth to the myth?) group of women who had traditionally male characteristics. The amazons lived in the jungle alone, entirely without men. They only took men into their homes when they felt it was time to reproduce and, as soon as the act of fertilization was over, the man was made to leave.

The amazons mythically removed one breast, so that shooting arrows out of a bow and arrow would be easier. This characterization has made them a bit of the patron saints or at least the mascot of breast cancer survivors.

The Amazons were not a race or a nation, because they did not reproduce. New Amazons were not born, they were dedicated.

As far as the sketchy historical record will let us penetrate the period of time in which the Amazons were most active (pre-Homeric Asia Minor, so we're talking western Turkey in the first half of the first millennium BC), they were priestesses of Artemis/Ishtar, dedicated to her service and virginal (hence the man-hating stigma).

They had their own Polis, Thermagont (I'm not very sure about this transliteration, so apologies in advance), in which there were in fact quite a few men - mostly blacksmiths, grooms, dog trainers and other labourers. Many of them were quite high-born, and their dedication usually entailed a generous gift to the temple of Artemis by their families, so the Amazons rarely lacked finance, and were little inclined to be the marauding viragos they are sometimes made out to be.

The myth about the Amazons cutting off one breast comes from the way that the Greeks of the period used their bows - much like people do today, they shot with the bow to one side of the body. With such a position the breast on the side of the dominant arm would indeed be a hindrance (I sure as hell wouldn't want a rebounding bowstring to hit one of mine!). However, the Amazons used smaller, more steeply curved bows than the Greeks, and shot stright ahead of themselves so that the string would rebound towards the center of their chests.

In Classical Helenic culture, and later during the Renaissance and Neo-Classical revivals, the Amazons, who were great horsewomen and cavalry soldiers, are depicted off their horses, armour lying in the dust, being dragged by the hair or otherwise subjugated by Greek mythical heroes (Jason, Theseus, Heracles - they all supposedly had a stint at subjugating the Amazons). From the titles of the works you can see that the men are often in the process of avenging a previous humuliating defeat - but of said defeats the artefactual record presents not a single scene.


16-05-02

As a potentially interesting aside, I have recently taken up the longbow, and I find that provided one follows instructions the risk of hurting one's breast is quite low. In my neophitic bumblings I managed to catch a nipple on the backtwang once only, and even that didn't hurt as badly as you'd think. To me, this makes the mystery regarding the Amazons' breasts even greater. Then again, Greek bows may have been sufficiently different to Welsh longbows to have given rise to this rather grisly misconception.

Everyone remembers how Amazon.com patented the one-click shopping feature, and has sued people since that offer the same feature? They didn't invent the technology. It's just the expected use of cookies that any browser utilizes for the users' convenience. Amazon patented the widely used technology and has been getting heat from the tech world about it since, and they should. They have patented a widely-used technology that is considered "owned by the Internet," and to put it bluntly, it's just wrong.

Better yet, Amazon has recently been discovered to be varying prices on the same items across their site, dependent on the user. This means if you're on their site for the first time, they can price everything down to suck you in as a loyal customer, and then when you get used to the idea of shopping at Amazon because of the good prices, the prices start to rise, and you're most likely not going to notice. It's misleading, and it's unethical business practice.

And if that's not enough to convince you, Amazon also recently decided to revise its privacy policy, which now states that it considers consumer data a saleable asset. Yes, this means they are selling your personal information.

People are citing real world commerce, saying that airline ticket prices vary in the same way and that brick and mortar stores sell your personal information. That's exactly the reason why Internet shopping is so important. The Internet is built for and through revolution, and a part of it's purpose can be considered the weakening of real world stores. Amazon.com wants to be a mall. They are now near bankruptcy, and are trying to swim their way out.

People also cite how they remember how good Amazon used to be, how they used to have reasonable prices and good customer support. They they go on about how those days are over, and that they've found new online shopping places.

If you shop around, you've never bought anything from Amazon and weren't planning to. But some people don't have the time or knowledge of the Internet to shop around thoroughly enough. If you can find three good stores that always have competitive prices that are lower than most other stores, then you can stick with those three stores unless an online coupon comes floating around to you, at which point you should take advantage of it and buy just enough from another store to use the coupon. Amazon is not your only choice, and that no one should settle for a given price (especially if it's randomly generated or biased) on the Internet. Be a good consumer. Make what was once an economical vote (your money) count as a vote once again.

To clarify Sarcasmo's point about Amazon.com's privacy policy: That was a modification they made to their policy in the wake of the recent ToySmart debacle. In short, they reserve the right to consider your privacy information a sellable asset when and if the company goes bankrupt. Up until that point, your information is kept inside Amazon.com.

They are nowhere near bankruptcy now, at least not any nearer than they've been over the last several years. They simply haven't turned a tangible profit. In the world of business, they're not the same thing, since a non-profitable company may be able to secure financing or venture capital to keep afloat.

I won't disagree with the rest, though.

About a month ago Yahoo carried a Reuters news report about the uncovering of Amazon.com's pricing experiment. Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos apologised for a random price test in which the price quoted for certain DVD's was randomised in order to test the relationship between pricing and sales.The scheme, which was apparently trialed for five days, was discovered after an Amazon.com customer discovered that the price displayed for a certain DVD dropped after he removed the Amazon.com cookie from his PC. Amazon.com have since refunded money to all those who payed more than the baseline price for merchandise during the experiment.

Whilst I do not condone such a policy, it has caused me to question whether Amazon.com is conducting business any differently to, say, a petrol company whose price for a gallon of petrol is adjusted from one petrol station to the next, depending on factors such as proximity to competitors, whether the petrol station is at a motorway service site, how affluent the neighbourhood where the petrol station is situated is, and so on.

Is it possible that Amazon.com are exploiting customer loyalty by attempting to charge a slightly higher price to those customers who have previously purchased items from them? Perhaps.

Is this price-adjustment morally or legally wrong? Surely, the onus is on the buyer to establish that they are getting a good deal when they purchase goods, whether online or elsewhere? By not researching alternative sources, the customer is sacrificing value for convenience.

I guess that with their current revenue/profit trend, Amazon.com need to look at creative ways of maximising profitability!

Amazon.com to change name

Seattle(AP)- Leading Internet retailer Amazon.com stunned markets today with a surprise announcement of a radical change in the company's focus and a brand new name.

According to Terrance Phillip, company spokesman, Amazon will be changing it's name to Amazon.org effective immediately. The name change is to reflect the reality that the company, while organized as a corporation, is in fact a non-profit organization working to enhance the lives of several thousand Seattle area yuppies.

Shares soared more than 25% as analysts widely hailed the move as a bold step in a new direction. According to Ian Affluence, chief analyst for investment bank Cognomination, Agnomen, and Orismology, "This is brilliant. They're way ahead of the curve, again! I expect that they'll be able to lose much more money, much faster, now that they won't have to pay all of those pesky taxes. They should really start to see some economies of scale in their non-profit efforts over the next few quarters."

The Volvo Amazon, or P120 was manufactured between 1956 and 1970. 667323 cars were made.

The feminine lines gave it the name Amazon. The design is more like Volvos current models than the boxy cars (Volvo 240, Volvo 740) Volvo is famous for.

Αμαζονες

A race of women descended from Ares the god of war, and the Nymph Harmonia. Their kingdom was believed to lie in the north, either on the slopes of the Caucasus, or in Thrace, or yet again in southern Scythia, in the plains on the left bank of the Danube. They conducted their own government; they were ruled by a queen. They could not stand the presence of men except as servants for the most menial jobs, and at certain times had intercourse with strangers to preserve their race keeping only the baby girls. According to some accounts they mutilated the male children at birth by blinding them or making them lame. According to others, they killed them. They removed one of the breasts of the infant girls so that they should be unencumbered and able to shoot with the bow or to handle a spear, and it was from this custom that they were given the name of α-μαζων (those who have no breasts). Their main love was war.

A number of legends tell of Greek heroes fighting these strange women. Bellerophon fought them at the command of Iobates. Heracles received from Eurysthenes the mission of going to the bank of the river Thermodon in Cappadocia and taking the girdle of Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons. Hippolyta would have been willing to give him the girdle but Hera, in jealousy, incited the Amazons to mutiny and Heracles was forced to kill Hippolyta. On this expedition he was accompanied by Theseus, who abducted an Amazon called Antiope. In search of revenge the Amazons marched against Athens and the battle took place in Athens itself, where the Amazons set up camp on the hill later to be called the Areopagus (the hill of Ares). They were defeated by the Athenians led by Theseus. There was also a story that the Amazons had sent a contingent commanded by the queen, Penthesilea, to help Priam. But Achilles lost no time in killing her, though her last look aroused his love for her.

The goddess worshipped above all by the Amazons was, naturally, Artemis, whose legends have so much in common with the life attributed to these huntresses and female warriors. They were sometimes regarded as the founders of Ephesus and the builders of the great Temple of Artemis.

{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}

Table of Sources:
- Apollod. Bibl. 2, 3, 2; 2, 5, 9; Epit. 1, 16
- Hom. Il. 6, 186
- Apoll. Rhod. Arg. 2, 96ff. with schol.
- Plut. Thes. 27
- Diod. Sic. 4, 28, 2
- Val. Flacc. Arg. 5, 132
- Paus. 1, 2, 1; 1, 15, 2; 1, 17, 2; 1, 25, 2; 1, 41, 7; 2, 31, 4; 2, 32, 9; 3, 25, 3; 4, 31, 8; 5, 10, 9; 5, 11, 4; 5, 11, 7; 5, 25, 11; 7, 2, 7f

The possibility that a civilization of women could exist without the assistance, protection, or need of men in today’s society is considered unthinkable. In Ancient Greece however, the idea was a very possible one. The name Amazon comes from the Greek word meaning missing one breast. In Greek mythology it is said that they were descendants of the god of war Ares and the naiad Harmonia. Legend says they came from the area around the Caucasus Range and were of Scythian origin and eventually settled on the bank of the Thermodon River in Asia Minor. They were always depicted as being foreign, and thus as with any other foreign tribe, seen as barbarians by the Greeks. Two ways they are said to strengthen the population of their tribe were going to the neighboring Gargarean men once a year and keeping men as slaves for the sole purpose of mating. Male children born of these unions were either sent back to the Gargareans or killed.

Their society was one ruled entirely by women and had two queens, one for defense and one for domestic affairs and they shared sovereignty jointly. They fought on foot and by horse carrying crescent shields and using spears, bows, and axes. As an infant, they had their right breast seared off to enable them to draw a bow or throw a javelin with greater ease. It is said that they were particularly devoted to the goddess of hunting, Artemis.

Tales of the Amazons were in the earliest of Greek stories. Homer mentions them and through his tale it is implied that his targeted listeners were familiar with them. When the Greeks arrived in the Thermodon region and found no evidence of Amazons they assumed that it was either because they were driven off or that Heracles (Hercules) had destroyed all of them. Because of the former, in later legends the Amazons were placed farther and farther away from their place of origin.

Most pictures depict them as single-breasted women in middle of battle. Literature describes them as brave and daring fighters who could be defeated by only by superior Greek heroes such as Heracles and Achilles. They were never shown in a cowardly light and were said to be courageous and loyal to their own, often bringing their injured companions in from battle and often risking their own lives to help others.

During the earliest period of art, they were depicted as being dressed like warriors and with only one breast. After the Persian Wars though, they were represented in oriental garb and wearing caps and trousers. These pictures related different elements of their legends and never were they shown with only a single breast.

One of the most popular scenes in literature is the battle between Heracles and Hippolyte the Queen of the Amazons. This battle took place as one of Heracles twelve labors. Queen Hippolyte had a special piece of armor which was a leather belt given to her by Ares, the war god, in honor of her fighting abilities. She wore this belt across her chest and used it to carry her sword and spear. Eurystheus wanted Hippolyte's belt as a present to give to his daughter, and thus sent Hercules to bring it back.

Heracle’s friends jumped to his aid in case there was a battle. Upon reaching them Hippolyte came to them and asked why he had come. After telling her his mission, she agreed to give it to him. The goddess Hera however disguised herself as an Amazon and went to the village and told Hippolyte’s subjects that Heracles was kidnapping the queen. When he saw the women in armor, Heracles killed Hippolyte and took her belt from her. In a long grueling battle the Greeks were able to escape and en route to Mycenae, Heracles stopped at Troy to deliver the belt.

One explanation for the legend of Amazons is that they may have been armed slave-girls who served Asian deities. While the association between the Amazons and Artemis supports this, it is probably an elaboration of matriarchal tribes in Anatolia or other tribes in which women led a freer life than in Greece.

The amazon fantasy is all about role reversal.

If you're a manly man, you do manly things, like hold down a job, head your family, discipline the kids, and move the couch when the wife wants to redecorate. You're expected to be strong, dominant, and independent. Everybody relies on you, and believes that Father Knows Best.

Now if the women in the audience will please stop snickering, I can continue.

If a woman is going to hold any power in a relationship with her manly man, she's going to have to do it through skillful subterfuge or withholding sex. She isn't as educated, doesn't make as much money, isn't as strong, and doesn't know how to change a flat tire.

You in the back, I said stop snickering. Reality is not to intrude upon fantasy, and you're not allowed to make fun of it, lest someone make fun of yours.

As I was saying. The amazon fantasy reverses the traditional roles of power in male/female relationships. The woman is taller, stronger, and more dominant, both physically and in personality. Don't confuse this with dominance in the sadomasochistic sense, though. The man in an amazon fantasy is typically not a sniveling submissive, eager to please his mistress. Rather, he's often a willful and proud man, reduced to a pitiful state by someone larger and more powerful than he.

The subject of an amazon fantasy is a very tall, strong woman, at least in comparison to the man involved. She usually plays the role of a bully, wrestling, trampling, and even raping men while gloating about her power and making humiliating comparisons to her victim's lesser size and strength.

There's a lot of crossover here with other power-related fetishes. An amazon fantasy may contain female bodybuilders, plumpers, torture, bondage, humiliation, foot fetish, rape fantasy, and more. Drawing deeper from the fantasy well and getting farther from reality, we can find superheroines, giantesses, transformation, and vorarephilia. On the other side of the spectrum, we can find gentle amazons. Oh, they'll still beat and humiliate their men, but afterwards she'll care for him like a baby, with all the associated rights and privileges thereof (and no more).

There's a video market for this stuff, but nothing as big as the Anal Invaders series or Lusty Lesbian Librarians, which I believe is up to part XXXVII and still with no resolution to the story's primary conflict in sight (will Natalie ever get over her sexual hang-ups, I wonder?). Women in these videos are usually very tall, close to or over six feet and ranging from hefty to BBW. The men are invariably short and scrawny types, and look even smaller when the woman is wearing those platform heels that are de rigueur in these flicks. The women could wrestle, trample, face stomp, or smother her puny victim, always in such a way as to accentuate the size discrepancy between the two. They're available from specialty distributers on various internet sites. Just don't expect the latest big-budget special effects, some of these places are lucky to be able to afford the camera.

So what in the heck is this all about?

For some men, it might be about a temporary escape from the responsibility inherent in being a man in modern society. The same stereotype I presented above means that the man has a lot of weight on his shoulders to bring home the bacon, fix problems for people who depend on him, and act as both judge and role model for any kids he might have. The idea of someone forcibly taking that responsibility away could be an escapist fantasy. He's been absolved of responsibility, but not of his own free will.

On the other hand, it's possible that some just like to see other men humiliated, and have no interested in being humiliated themselves. The character of the victim isn't an audience surrogate for them, just a guy who's getting abused.

Then again it could be deeply Freudian, involving unresolved mother issues manifesting themselves in a need for a powerful female figure to punish them.

Or are they closeted gay men, rationalizing away their desires to be ravaged by someone more muscular and dominant by thinking of their hypothetical partner as female?

Quite frankly you could sit around and come up with meaningless rationalizations all day. Fantasies don't have to be rational, or logical, or even sane, and a guy who likes to watch a video or read a story about something wouldn't necessarily want it to actually happen to him. The simple fact of the matter is that some guys like this, and therefore there's money to be made in fulfilling it. Why? It doesn't really matter.

Amazon.com has a special importance if you're an author or editor. Once the cover of your book is set, check with your publisher to make sure the book will be listed on Amazon. This is pretty much a given if your book is being produced by a large publishing house. If your publisher is a small specialty press, a little (or a lot) of wheedling may be necessary. But if you've got more than 300 books to sell after pre-orders have been accounted for, it's best to get the book listed on Amazon.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Amazon.com; some of you may have a hate-hate relationship with them. If so, I sympathize completely. Amazon demands a 55% commission on top of account setup fees*, and they've been bullying some POD publishers into using their Booksurge service instead of LSI and other printers. Amazon is the 80,000-pound gorilla of book sales, and they've been taking full advantage of their status, often to the detriment of small publishing companies.

So, I understand a small-press publisher's desire to tell Amazon to go blow; the publisher's got their own site and can sell books through their own secure shopping cart just fine, so distribution's covered, right?

The problem is, for many prospective readers, if your book isn't on Amazon, it's as if it just doesn't exist. Your book's being available at the publisher's site won't help if a reader has never heard of the publisher before and is therefore reluctant to release their credit card info to them.

So: if your book's not on Amazon, you will lose potential sales. Also, because so many other sites grab book information directly from Amazon's feeds, your book's absence from that site means it will also be absent from (or difficult to add to) a bunch of other sites like LibraryThing and BookMooch.

And finally, because book information posted on Amazon gets distributed far and wide, double-check that the publisher is posting accurate, complete information about your book from the start. The publisher can make changes later, but I've noticed changes often don't propagate to Amazon.uk and other sites. It's better if the book description is correct from the beginning.

 

* 50-55% commissions are pretty standard for big book chains like Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon; indie book stores generally charge lower commissions.

Am"a*zon (#), n. [L., fr. Gr. .]

1.

One of a fabulous race of female warriors in Scythia; hence, a female warrior.

2.

A tall, strong, masculine woman; a virago.

3. Zool.

A name numerous species of South American parrots of the genus Chrysotis

Amazon ant Zool., a species of ant (Polyergus rufescens), of Europe and America. They seize by conquest the larvae and nymphs other species and make slaves of them in their own nests.

 

© Webster 1913.

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