teashoesandhair:

(This post has got v v long now – press J to skip if you don’t want to read it all!) 

bluelikeblood:

teashoesandhair:

urulokid:

di-abolis:

quick reminders about Greek mythology:

• Persephone is black/has dark skin
• Haphaestus is disabled and has some mental illness(es)
• Gaia is black/has dark skin
• Hades is disabled
• Zeus is a rapist [ on multiple occasions ]
• Eros is pansexual
• Athena is most likely asexual
• Dionysus is bisexual
• all of the nymphs are nonbinary
• Persephone is the goddess of spring growth
• Thanatos is the god of death, not Hades

whoever made this post knows jack shit about greek mythology and I would like to invite teashoesandhair​ to this party

how is hades disabled??? what mental illnesses does hephaestus have??

where are you getting that persephone or gaea is black? i mean gaea is the actual planet earth so like….I mean I guess soil is black so??? these are greek myths not african. it stands 2 reason that your greek gods are…greek looking. since, you know, they were invented by the people that used them.

artemis is asexual, not athena (hello, diomedes?). taking a vow of chastity is not the same as being asexual in the slightest. her entire shtick is being able to control her sexual urges through intelligence and wisdom which is why she was an archetypical ideal Greek daughter, remaining ~unspoiled~ and loyal to her father, Zeus

eros is pansexual???? im sure Pan is very flattered. nymphs? are all pretty feminine spirits of trees that’s basically their defining feature. (incidentally if you wanted a case for nb/androgynous gods, hermes would be a good bet) (OH!!! AND APOLLO IS ACTUALLY BISEXUAL BY TODAY’S STANDARDS AND I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU LEFT HIM OUT OF THIS POST) and thanatos is a daemonic personification of death, kind of like our Grim Reaper. hades is the god of the underworld, therefore he rules over the dead and is the god associated with the dead.

but we’re all forgetting the most important thing: that the ancient greeks had such different attitudes about sexuality, disability, race, etc that literally none of this would have made any fucking sense to them

congrats you’ve appropriated an entire culture’s religion for social justice points

I’m like 99% sure that the OP was listing their personal headcanons and trying to pass them off as fact, because this whole list is whacked. 

1. Carrie is 100% right to call out the asexual thing. As an asexual person, I have no idea what the OP was thinking with that one. Celibacy and asexuality are not the same thing. Saying that Athena is asexual because she took a vow of chastity is just offensive. Celibacy does not negate sexual desire. The entire reason that Athena took a vow of chastity was because the Greeks were huge misogynists who believed that women were unable to control their sexual desire (see the play Lysistrata, and the myth of Tiresias and how he came to be blind) and so she would be more deserving of respect if she could overcome her natural feminine ‘disadvantages’ and remain celibate.
   Ditto Artemis, really. There are some examples of her having taken lovers in the past (such as Orion) but she does appear to have kept within romantic boundaries rather than sexual, so the reading of her as a heteroromantic asexual is not necessarily inaccurate if you really feel the need to give modern identifying labels to historic cultures.
2. On that note, don’t give modern identifying labels to historic cultures. Just don’t do it. It erases the experiences of an entire culture, who simply didn’t have such concepts as homosexuality, bisexuality or even asexuality. Sexual identifiers were not part of Greek culture, where sex between people of the same gender was more freely permitted, although admittedly only within certain social constructs, such as pederasty and the sex industry.
   It’s all well and good to read an ancient text and say ‘by today’s standards, we can infer that Dionysus would be considered bisexual’. That’s accurate. But to say ‘hey, Dionysus was bi!’ is just plain wrong. He wasn’t. He was a male who, due to the privilege afforded to him by his social standing in the culture of Ancient Greece, was permitted freely to engage in sexual activities with men and women. Many males in Greek mythology are portrayed as doing such; Zeus with Ganymede, Achilles with Patroclus, Apollo with Cyparissus and Hyacinthus – sexuality was not rigid in Ancient Greece, and so did not need to be defined.
   Greeks would not have defined themselves as heterosexual / bisexual / any other sexual identifier, so it would be inaccurate for us to define them as such. Such categories did not exist because there was no need for them. Ascribing one culture’s sexual norms to another’s is cultural erasure. This is sexology 101. 
3. Just to quickly summarise other points:
1. Yes, Zeus is a rapist, as are most men in Greek mythology, owing to the fact that Greek society was entirely patriarchal and rape was a way to lay claim / ownership to a woman. Hades was also a rapist, as he raped Persephone. Poseidon raped Medusa. Thetis, the mother of Achilles, was raped by Peleus. Most myths that you were taught as a child were about marriage are actually about rape. That’s how society worked.
2. I don’t actually know what disability Hades is supposed to have here. He’s certainly never portrayed canonically as being disabled. Maybe someone else can shed some light on that one!
3. Hephaestus was disabled (he’s described in The Iliad as ‘the crippled smith’) but there’s no evidence of him having any mental illness, beyond a very quick temper, which is a trait often exhibited by men in Greek mythology as it was considered masculine up to a point (although only up to a point, as excess rage was deemed animalistic and against civil society – see Achilles’ rage and his subsequent demise).
4. I also don’t know where the whole ‘Gaea and Persephone are black’ thing comes from – all I can think of is that some language about death / blackness has somehow become conflated with ethnicity, so if anyone else knows anything about that, please feel free to enlighten me! 
5. Nymphs are not non-binary. I don’t know where that comes from. Nymphs are all female. That is literally the defining feature of a nymph. The only thing I can think of here is that somehow the myth of Hermaphroditus is being mistakenly invoked, which offers an ‘explanation’ for intersex people within the context of a nymph forcing herself on a man and ultimately joining their bodies as one dual-sexed individual, but that has nothing to do with gender identity / expression; only biological sex. 
6. Thanatos is the god of ‘non violent’ (ie natural) death. Keres is the god of ‘violent’ death. There is no one god of death / deity linked with death in Greek mythology, although Thanatos is usually described as such because he was the embodiment of death. Hades is the god of the dead rather than death. That, at least, is accurate.
7. Eros is not pansexual in any sense of the word; be it a modern interpretation or a canonical one. His only consort is Psyche, a female. The name ‘eros’ does indeed encapsulate all types of romantic / physical love, and Eros himself is often depicted as the embodiment of sexual desire, but Eros as an individual is one of the few gods who is portrayed as explicitly – if we’re going to do the naughty thing and use modern identifiers – heterosexual.

Representation is incredibly important. As an asexual person and thus someone who is barely ever represented, I can understand it completely. However, misinformation and cultural erasure is not the way to go about it. 

teashoesandhair

oh my, I have so many questions, may I?

• First, all I remember about Athena is that she was the worst headache of Zeus and how she really wanted Athens to herself, thus the olive tree and annoyed Poseidon. Oh, and the apple story and its consequences. I completely forgot about her vow of chastity (if I ever knew, I’m so ashamed of myself for not taking Ancient Literature lectures more seriously), and I suspect the post author did too. Anyway. Had she ever had any sexual urges (at least in the literature we know)? Was she ever interested in sex at all? Or in romantic relationships? Can’t a person (oh, sorry, a god) take a vow of chastity and be asexual (if we want to use this term for Greek gods)? I mean, I understand that it kinda diminishes the meaning of such a vow, but… I just don’t remember her involved with anyone. I know, I should just google it, but I like asking questions so much more.
• Second, I just want to ask about sex between people of the same gender. Only certain social constructs? I was under the impression that it wasn’t that much frown upon in general… I mean, yeah, it should be more common for the certain areas of Greeks’ life, but I thought there were no official restrictions against such relationships.
• As for the colours — I’d just say that I also wonder where it could come from, but the colour of eyesskinanything invokes the biggest confusion. Like, were Poseidon’s hair blue or black? I’d vote for blue, because blue is a beautiful colour and so magical, and it should look amazing on Poseidon, and also why not if he’s the god of seas and oceans? So, I have no idea where ‘Gaea and Persephone are black’ comes from, but… who knows. What about images though. We could check remaining images (if we can believe the colours now). (I’d rather say Dionysus might be black, bc he’s not of Greek origins, as far as I know, he’s like… international… so, my money are on Dionysus in this department)
• Nymphs being non-binary seems to come from the whole idea of ‘putting labels of our reality on Greek mythology’. Why, we don’t really know how nymphs identified themselves. Greeks didn’t have issues with that, I guess. So, perceived as females that could pretty much be non-binary…? Idk. Hermafroditus has nothing to do with this category… ok, that’s weird. All I want to say is that if someone wants to see nymphs as non-binary, I’d let them, even though it’s just wrong to put these labels on Greek mythology, as you mentioned before.
• Yeah, I love how mythologies develop personifications of the World of the Dead, give me a minute to adore it with Hades. It’s so beautiful. OK, I’m done.
• Also, I really need the word ‘romantic’ to be defined, bc in my language ‘romantic’ can be an opposite of physical (somewhat between physical and platonic and closer to platonic), and I’m just constantly confused with the usage of the word. I meant to point out that ‘eros’ hardly covers platonic relationships and we have this beautiful diversity in ‘love terminology’ in Ancient Greek we’d rather appreciate, but I’m like. “Am I just confused?”

AND FINALLY. I remembered the Androgynous story from the Plato’s Symposium and I think I meant to make a point of it in ‘how Greeks perceived same-gender relationships’, but I thought better of it. So, I know it’s not a myth, strictly speaking, but how about retelling it some time?..

Yo yo! I will try and answer some of those in between filing invoices, because my life is one long thrill. If any of this sounds really blunt, I apologise – I don’t have time to proof read or tone check, but I’m not intending to sound anything but informative!

1. Athena is never depicted as being involved with anyone, but whether this is due to her vow of chastity or because she simply wasn’t interested is open to interpretation. There are some people who believe that her relationship with Diomedes had romantic undertones, but that’s not an interpretation that I personally ascribe to. Either way, it would be inaccurate to say that Athena was asexual for two reasons:
1. assuming asexuality because of chastity / celibacy is to conflate asexuality with chastity / celibacy. The two are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive, and are not necessarily linked at all. 
2. sexuality was not a construct described in Ancient Greece, and so the use of modern identifiers erases their sexual culture (sexology, yo).
2. The idea of homosexuality being openly embraced in Ancient Greece is a slightly erroneous one; it was permissible and indeed encouraged within educative and aristocratic (and solely male) circles, but not in a form that is equatable with modern day homosexuality. I did a post on that here, but to summarise, male/male relationships always – in an ideal societal model – took on a very rigid structure, with the older man being the dominant educative figure and the younger man being the submissive learner. No penetrative sex was permitted as this was seen as feminising and demeaning; penetrative sex between males was only permitted when the man being penetrated had no sexual agency (ie he was a slave or a prostitute). 
   Same sex relationships of this model, known as pederasty, were encouraged due to the inherent misogyny of Ancient Grecian culture. It was believed that the bond between two men was a bond between two greater minds and should transcend the boundaries of physical expression and reach the loftier heights of enlightenment. 
3. Nymphs all identify themselves as females in all Greek mythology, but the OP (I read their blog) thought that this was wrong because the nymphs were spirits and thus didn’t have a gender identity. Seeing as they readily define themselves as women throughout all classical texts, it’s sort of erasure for the OP to say ‘well, they thought they were women, but were they really?’ They identified as such, and so they were. They were not non-binary.
4. As for the race / disability part, I think that the OP had some cool headcanons there, but that’s all they are – they literally said (as per the link above) that ‘Persephone would be black because she spent time in the sun’. I mean, that’s firstly offensive and secondly factually inaccurate, seeing as she spent half of every year in a sunless Underworld. 
5. By ‘romantic’ I mean either erotic or sexual; to form an emotional attraction to another person, usually with the desire to enter into a relationship. ‘Eros’ as a concept refers to intimate / romantic love, although not necessarily physical. I don’t mean platonic love, as that’s entirely separate (‘philia’ is the equivalent concept). It’s hard to define! Oh, language.  

OP also erroneously believed that Hades suffered from memory loss and would have had dementia, which is a complete crock, frankly. Dementia is a degenerative condition, with marked deficiencies and a noticeable, continuous worsening of faculties (which I see in my own grandmother every day) and there is absolutely no evidence in any text to support this theory. The things in that original post are resolutely not fact and should not have been presented as such. The OP’s post was absolutely fallacious; they literally used the Percy Jackson films as source material to say ‘well, they made Persephone black, so maybe she was!’. OP should have known better, frankly.

Also, good idea! I will totally add that to the retellings list.