Ignacio's Heroism: LGBTQIA Identity in an Ever-Changing World

After the first month, I knew that at least one of my fellow adventurers was queer.

I didn’t know anyone’s name – we were forbidden to use them in case they could be used against us by our enemies. I just knew that we had a couple of women with us.

In our first battle, they had kept behind while the men fought. They hadn’t even shot their pistols, although they had them with them and would have been useless if we had been ambushed. The men all called them “The Ladies”, or simply “Ladies”.

This being a new country, there weren’t many roles for women other than wives and mothers, but clearly these women weren’t here for that – they were too tall and tough-looking. They wore trousers like the men did, except theirs had slits down the side so you could see their stockings underneath. They wore shirts with exposed clavicles and open necks which showed off their collarbones and pectorals. Their hair was long, left loose on their shoulders or tied up in elaborate styles which made it look like they were wearing helmets made of hair. As far as I knew, no man dressed this way – not unless he was an actor or a dandy (and we were none of those).

The first time I saw one of these women fight, it took me by surprise. We were travelling along a riverbank when suddenly the men started shouting: “Enemies! Enemies! To arms! To arms!” An enemy force appeared over a ridge ahead of us, about five hundred metres away. One of the women picked up her pistol from where she had left it on the ground beside her and walked forward towards the enemy lines. The rest of us ran towards them, and fired as we ran. The woman walked to within twenty metres of the enemy line before she stopped and stood perfectly still facing into their ranks. She drew her sword and raised it above her head. Then she turned to face us and let out a yell that carried across the distance between us – shrill and fierce, loud enough to make your ears ring and your heart beat faster in your chest.

At once, every enemy soldier fell to his knees before her: men, women and children alike dropped their weapons to the floor as they knelt in front of her, bowing their heads low as if in prayer. Our men stopped firing at once – none of us had ever seen anything like this before – and watched in astonishment as she walked through the kneeling crowd towards us until she was standing beside one of our soldiers who looked just as stunned as everyone else did.

She held out her hand to him – palm up – and spoke softly: “Do you have any rope?” He fumbled around in his pack while she looked at each one of us in turn, holding our gaze with hers. In silence she seemed to be demanding something from each of us without saying what it was; without speaking a word she demanded obedience from our souls as well as our bodies; without saying anything she commanded respect through some magical power only she possessed which lay hidden inside her eyes which danced with life despite all our efforts to extinguish it back home where we came from.

The soldier found what he was looking for: a length of rope, which he gave to her without meeting her gaze directly himself. She took it from him then pulled out her pistol from its holster on her belt (a strange choice for someone who wanted to tie someone up with rope) and pointed it at him at point blank range: “You do realise I could kill you right now if I wanted to?” he nodded dumbly: “And yet you won’t because I haven’t told you to do so?” He shook his head but still couldn’t look at her directly: “If I tell you that you have to run into your own army ahead there now with your sword raised above your head screaming that same battle cry until every last one of them is kneeling on the ground with their heads bowed before you...what will you do? If I ask you - beg you - to do what most of us here can barely even imagine doing - what will you say? Will you do it? Can you do it? Are you strong enough? Brave enough? Smart enough? Enough? Enough? ENOUGH?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!" Her voice grew louder with each word until she yelled out so loudly at him that even some members of our enemy army could hear it: "ENOUGH?!" And he shouted back "YES!! YES!! I WILL DO IT!! PLEASE JUST LET ME GO!!" She laughed: "That's good," she said calmly then lowered the gun back down again: "Now go." And he ran off towards his own army waving his sword above his head until all those people knelt down before him too; all those people followed his lead until they bowed their heads low while he walked among them like some kind of god walking through the land creating both fear and awe wherever he went.