Large Fierce Mammal

Guillaume Herbaut photo. Source: http://www.popgive.com/2009/01/tough-ukrainian-girls.html

“I wanted girls to gain confidence to be themselves, and not just quiet wives working, working and swallowing all the time their own dreams….” ~ Katerina Tarnouska, founder of Asgarda

If you’ve spent any time here, you’ll know a couple of things. First, how much I appreciate strong, intelligent women; and second, that the foundation for the True Love Mrs. LFM and I have for each other is based, first and foremost, on mutual respect and admiration.  In the past year alone, there were three LFM items that spell that out –

• Mrs. LFM’s The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Learn …, from 10 August 2011;
• My Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 22: An Insidious Curse, from 22 October 2011; and
• My This Makes Me Happy, from 17 November 2011.

There’s lots more here in the same vein, but that selection will serve.

It’s always gratifying to learn that people in other far flung corners of the planet share our philosophy, and today I learned of an entire organization that does. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Ukrainian Asgarda movement.

In a part of the world where sexual slavery and abusive relationships are spectres that haunt women to a degree most here would find hard to grasp, and the current Prime Minister can publicly justify an entirely male cabinet on the grounds that, “Reforms do not fall into women’s competence,” thirty-seven year old Katerina Tarnouska formed Asgarda in 2004. Now, deep in the Carpathian Mountains, the martial arts of the Cossacks are practiced and taught by a group of women who will be nobody’s victim, and I tend to think that if one of these Ladies goes down, all the blood on the ground won’t be hers, and all her wounds will be in the front.

Some excellent journalism has already documented Asgarda, most notably Sally Howard’s piece titled Fight Club that appeared in the 12 September 2010 edition of The Telegraph, and the Popgive pictorial featuring the work of French photographer Guillaume Herbaut, a representative sample of which graces the top of this article. I encourage you all to use the links embedded herein to acquaint yourselves with Asgarda while, for reasons of our own, Mrs. LFM and I retire with a bottle of vodka to consider opening a branch office. I believe we can give the Girl Guides a run  for their money.