Our goal in this dissertation is to analyze the ideas of gender (more specifically, of femininity), freedom, and feminine liberation mobilized in different discourses about the YPJ (Women Defense Units). The YPJ are a Kurdish militia, composed by women only, which acts in Rojava (northern Syria), a self-proclaimed Kurdish independent territory since 2012. Rojava s organization is inspired by the precepts of Democratic Confederalism, a political system idealized by Abdullah Ocalan, which advances decentralized governments and women s emancipation as the only way to popular liberation. In the last few years, the YPJ have been gaining more and more attention internationally (especially in western countries), in academic mediums, political collectives, and media vehicles. In that sense, these military women are inserted into different narratives, in different ways, by vehicles as diverse as mainstream international newspapers, Christian media, magazines about female well-being, anarchist media, Kurdish activists, leftist academics, among others. Our aim is to navigate through different representations of these women, in different political contexts, searching for continuities and ruptures relating to the meanings of femininity, the ideals of freedom mobilized, and the relationship of women to these ideals. With that, we seek to understand the processes that allow for different forms of appropriation of the same elements (femininity and freedom) on behalf of different political goals.