Amazons

The Amazons were a mythical tribe of all-women warriors from Greek mythology that were both respected and feared due to their unusually high levels of man-hating behavior, especially for the time-period and the large amount of power they seemingly held both within their native lands and in their raids.

Varying from story to story the Amazons could be seen as vicious, neutral or a mix of both but common stories held that no man was allowed within Amazon society and those that dared stray into their territory were killed or enslaved, some tales went as far as saying Amazons would not permit any male at all in their land and thus did not even bother to enslave any unfortunate male that came in contact with them.

In order to avoid dying out the Amazons would on rare occasions break their solitary lifestyle and have sexual intercourse with men of a nearby tribe - any male children born of this union were either killed or left to fend in the wild, with only the females being taken back to be raised as future Amazons.

Despite their great hatred for men the Amazons were respected due to the fact they were blessed with incredible military might and knowledge, according to legend the Amazons invented the cavalry and were also expert archers (in some stories Amazons would even remove one of their breasts to improve archery skills, though like most myths this is only found in some stories and excluded in others).

The word Amazon continues to be used either positively as a symbol of strong, independent women or negatively as a stereotype of the radical feminist (or alternatively a stereotype created by men afraid of strong women).