Divoká Šárka

Šarka was a Bohemian warrior during the Maiden’s War in the fifth or sixth century CE. She was the second in command to Vlasta, the fierce warrior who led the women’s army against the men.

The war began when the Czech queen Libuše died and her husband Přemsyl began ruling the country. Czech society had been a matriarchy under Libuše, and the country as a whole prospered while women were given many rights. Under Přemsyl’s rule, these rights were taken away, angering the women so much that they declared war on the men. The army of women was led by Vlasta, who chose a woman named Šarka as her right-hand woman. Šarka was a noble and skilled warrior and was as cunning as she was fearsome.

It was Šarka that realised that, if the women were to stand any chance of defeating the army of men, they would have to take out their most skilled warrior, Ctirad. To this end, she planned an ambush. She organised to meet with Ctirad and had her comrades tie her naked to a tree with mead stored nearby. When the warrior and his men came upon her, she claimed to have been captured and tied to the tree by the women, who had then abandoned her in view of the mead to taunt her. Ctirad untied her and she shared the mead with the men out of gratitude until they were unconscious. Once she had given the signal, her warriors descended from the forest and killed the men, except for Ctirad, who was tortured on a wheel before he was slain. The valley where this took place was later named Divoká Šárka, or Wild Sarka.

The loss of Ctirad weakened the men’s army for a time, but ultimately the women did not win the war. Refusing to go back to a patriarchal society, Šarka committed suicide by throwing herself off a cliff.

_{Disclaimer: All of this information comes from my own research and knowledge, so if I have missed anything out or got something wrong please let me know and I’ll try my best to fix it. Thank you!}

Laka

Laka is the Polynesian goddess of wilderness, fertility and reproduction. She was the wife of Lono, the fertility god and is credited with inventing the traditional art of hula dancing and teaching it to humans.

According to Hawai’ian legend, she is the daughter of Hina-hawa’e and Wahieloa. When Wahieloa was murdered, she decided to sail to Hawaii to avenge him but her efforts were impeded by the interference of forest gods who messed with the canoe she was constructing. She made offerings to the gods, who then gifted her an outrigger boat and she went on to rescue her father’s bones.

Laka invented the hula dance as a means for humans to preserve their history and tell stories, as well as to honour gods and goddesses. Hula halaus usually contain altars to Laka and are filled with her favourite plants. Rain is a sacred time for this goddess as it connects her to her husband, who came to earth on a rainbow to marry her.

_{Disclaimer: All of this information comes from my own research and knowledge, so if I have missed anything out or got something wrong please let me know and I’ll try my best to fix it. Thank you!}

Lili Elbe

Lili Elbe was a successful Danish painter and one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Lili Ilse Elvenes was born on the 28th of December 1882 in Vejle, Denmark under the birth name Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener. Not much is known about her early life. She met Gerda Gottlieb while studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. The pair were wed in 1904 and worked as illustrators upon graduating. Gerda did illustrations for fashion magazines and books, while Lili did landscape paintings. She received the Neuhausens prize in 1907 and exhibited at the Saloon and Salon d’Automne in Paris, as well as Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling at the Vejle Art Museum in Denmark.

Lili began dressing as a woman after she discovered that she enjoyed wearing the heels and stockings she donned to fill in for a model who was late for a sitting with Gerda. They travelled through France and Italy, then settled down in Paris in 1912 as it allowed Lili to live openly as a woman by acting as Gerda’s sister-in-law. By the 20s, Lili regularly presented as a woman under the name Lili Elvenes, and often modelled for Gerda, who became famous for her paintings of petites femmes fatales. She stopped painting after her transition.

Lili travelled to Germany to receive sex reassignment surgery in 1930. This surgery was incredibly experimental at this time, and she underwent four operations over two years, first in Berlin, then at the Dresden Municipal Women’s Clinic. That year, a Danish court annulled her marriage to Gerda Gottlieb and she was able to legally change her name and sex. When she returned to Dresden, she took the last name Elbe after the river that runs through the city. She entered a relationship with Claude Lejeune, a French art dealer with whom she planned on marrying and raising a family.

In 1931, she received her final surgery, a vaginoplasty and a uterus transplant (she was the second person to receive this kind of surgery). Unfortunately, Lili’s body rejected the uterus and the ensuing surgery to remove it caused an infection. She died on the 13th of September from cardiac arrest due to the infection.

You can read more about Lili in her biography ‘Man Into Woman’ by Ernst Jacobson.

_{Disclaimer: All of this information comes from my own research and knowledge, so if I have missed anything out or got something wrong please let me know and I’ll try my best to fix it. Thank you!}