Jeanne d'Arc

Joan of Arc is, essentially, a women's equality activist.  Don't remember her from your history class?  That's okay, because I do.

Joan was born into the Hundred Year's War.  This was a fight between France and England about the region of Normandy and it lasted not 100 years, but about 130. Joan, or Jeanne d'Arc, was French and was acquainted with war from an early age.  British soldiers attacked her village and mutilated it.  Only a young girl when the attack occured, Joan hid in a closet while her older sister tried to stop the English soldiers from coming in.  Unfortunately, one teenaged girl was nothing compared to the multiple men that descended.  From the closet, Joan watched as the soldiers first ran a spear through her older sister, sticking her onto the wall, and then ravaged her as she died.

It's no wonder Joan had anti-English sentiments.

Joan claimed to have had divinely-inspired visions, telling her how to defeat the English.  She was accused of being a heretic of all natures and a communer with the devil.  But, at the seige of Orleans, Joan charged at the city walls, pulling the French army with her.  As men, how could they let a teenaged girl ride to her death?  They won the city, and the French begrudgingly accepted her at war councils.

The French, being French, betrayed Joan and sold her to the English.  She was tried for heresy and found guilty because she was coerced into signing a confession.  She couldn't read, so she signed.  Joan was executed and her head was hung outside a city wall.

Even in light of her extraordinary skills as a strategist, Joan operated under the control of men.  Her life was in their hands, and they disposed of her.  Had she been alive today, can you imagine how the Maid of Orleans would have blossomed?  It is for her, and for every other woman of amazing talent that has lived her life on a man's whim that women now fight for full gender equality.  For too long have they been utensils of pleasure and vessels of childbearing.  Now, we must fight for our right to be in the world and be our own masters... well, mistresses.  Jeanne d'Arc is a perfect example of an extraordinary woman who fought for all the women to come and an inspiration to many women today.