I can’t believe Miss Congeniality, a movie from 2001, tackles internalised sexism, women’s self-defence and rape (”did you report him? “no, that stuff happens all the time.” “no, no it doesn’t!”) and shows the story of a tough, independent woman learning that she can still be all of that, and so can other women, while still being beautiful and sexy
also, competing women supporting each other??
“which one of these… is… the lipstick…”
*huge group of women freak out and converge on her to help her prepare*
HER WHOLE FINAL PERFORMANCE IS LITERALLY JUST TEACHING WOMEN HOW TO DEFEND THEMSELVES FROM ASSAILANTS
AND I FORGOT ABOUT CALIFORNIA SHOUTING TO THE CROWD ABOUT “I WANNA LET ALL THE LESBIANS KNOW, IF I CAN MAKE IT TO THE TOP 10, SO CAN YOU”
“I realised that these women are smart, terrific people, who just want to make a difference in the world.”
“For me, this experience has been one of the most rewarding, and liberating experiences of my life.”
Also, and everyone forgets this, Cheryl, the “dumb blonde” (really she was just sheltered and naïve) who won the pageant? She’s majoring in nuclear physics. Odds are she was the most scientifically intelligent of the bunch.
Here’s to another year in the Homestuck and Hiveswap community! It’s been very quiet and inactive compared to the excitement of previous years, but at least the Homestuck community is having a good time in its retirement home.
On the Reddit side of things, it’s been SILENT but pervasive, a quiet forum pludding along posting silly content. Nothing compared to its golden years but immortal all the same.
Here are the Best of r/Homestuck rewards and they’ve reminded me that, although day to day browsing on the reddit can be lacklustre, people are still producing High Quality Content that deserves to have more praise.
i have been fucked up ever since i took a mythology class in college and learned that the greek mythology we know today is not only deliberately patriarchal (i mean duh) but was put in place specifically to abolish the matriarchal religion that came before it, nearly all traces of which were systematically erased. AND, the reason the modern west is so obsessed with greek mythology specifically is that it aligns so closely with our own patriarchal values. like we are literally taught greek mythology IN SCHOOL, that’s how hugely important it is in our culture. (i mean think about it… there is no real benefit to placing that much emphasis on greek mythology specifically over any other part of history)
learning this literally ruined greek mythology for me lmao
artemis and aphrodite are the classic madonna (virgin) and the whore
athena is deliberately stripped of her femininity in order to be goddess of wisdom, springing fully formed from zeus’ head instead of being born from a woman
hera is the jealous, vindictive ball and chain, etc etc.
and the kicker? pandora was a revamped character from an older myth, in which she created every single thing in the universe, good and bad. she didn’t just open a box and ruin everything by not being able to follow orders. pandora literally means “all-giving”. and in the greek mythology we know today, she’s the first woman on earth and manages to fuck things up for everyone. sound familiar? like eve, maybe?
i don’t have sources because i learned this in a college class like 3 years ago but if anyone has access to their college’s academic database and wants to source this for me that’d be awesome. i haven’t tried but i’m guessing you’d be hard pressed to find info about it on google.
here’s a book i’m reading abt it that i picked up at a half-price bookstore. it’s a bittersweet read. there’s references inside the front cover, too, for further reading.
Thank you for adding this! Reblogging so y’all can see it
This book is the bomb diggety. Bittersweet read indeed.
Greek mythology is deliberately patriarchal (which should be obvious, because it was written by people living in a patriarchal culture, so of course it reflects their values)
myths changed with time
Pandora had another, more positive role
Ancient Greece is given more attention than other, equally deserving cultures
the OP doesn’t have sources
That’s it. That’s literally it. As for the things that this post gets wrong, let’s take it step by step:
1. Pre-Greek matriarchal religion, “nearly all traces of which were systematically erased”
This pre-Greek matriarchy is usually identified with the Minoans of Crete, who depicted many women in prominent positions in their art. Unfortunately, as I’ve outlined before, this isn’t enough to prove that the Minoans had a matriarchal society and religion. What’s more, the Minoan script (Linear A) remains undeciphered to this day. So until the Minoans can tell us about their myths, beliefs, and social hierarchy in their own voices, I’ll be very skeptical about anyone who claims they were definitely matriarchal (or patriarchal, for that matter).
As for their traces being “systematically erased”, I can only laugh. The Minoans (like the Pelasgians, i.e. the pre-Greek people of the Greek mainland) weren’t erased. The Mycenaean Greeks eventually took over Crete, but Minoan civilisation continued to exist, and many cultural and religious elements were incorporated into Mycenaean society - including writing. From an article about an early Mycenaean tomb:
The griffin warrior’s grave at Pylos offers a radical new perspective on the relationship between the two societies and thus on Europe’s cultural origins. As in previously discovered shaft graves, the objects themselves are a cross-cultural mix. For instance, the boar tusk helmet is typically Mycenaean, but the gold rings, which are rich with Minoan religious imagery and are on their own a hugely significant find for scholars, says Davis, reflect artifacts previously found on Crete.
(…) This has led Davis and Stocker to favor the idea that the two cultures became entwined at a very early stage. It’s a conclusion that fits recent suggestions that regime change on Crete around the time the mainland palaces went up, which traditionally corresponds to the decline of Minoan civilization, may not have resulted from the aggressive invasion that historians have assumed. The later period on Knossos might represent something more like “an EU in the Aegean,” says Bennet, of the British School at Athens. Minoans and Mycenaean Greeks would surely have spoken each other’s languages, may have intermarried and likely adopted and refashioned one another’s customs. And they may not have seen themselves with the rigid identities we moderns have tended to impose on them.
TL;DR: The Mycenaeans didn’t erase Minoan religion. They liked it, and syncretised it with their own.
The only reason many of these Minoan beliefs vanished was due to the Late Bronze Age collapse, which saw the end of Mycenaean Greece and Minoan-Mycenaean Crete. Many elements of early Greek civilisation were lost, or preserved in fragments thanks to mythology and epic poetry. This collapse was obviously not a systematic erasure, but a widespread destruction of civilisations, caused by foreign invasion, drought and famine, internal revolts, earthquakes, or a combination of the above. Eric Cline’s book 1177 BC: The Year Civilisation Collapsed(2014)is an excellent discussion of the topic.
2. Earlier versions of Greek myths
Any time someone mentions the “pre-patriarchal” or “original” version of a myth, be skeptical. Be very skeptical.
The problem with these “original” myths is that we have little to nothing to base them on. Their reconstruction is a theory - often a modern feminist theory - not a certainty. I should also point out, as @rembrandtswife did, that Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece is “basically AU fanfic of the Greek mythology we have”. It’s retellings and speculation, not earlier myths that we can confirm existed.
You know what are earlier myths that we can confirm existed? Mesopotamian and Anatolian myths. These have been extensively studied, and it’s been shown time and time again that they influenced Greek mythology - especially Homer and Hesiod. Martin West’s The East Face of Helicon(1997)and Mary Bachvarova’s From Hittite to Homer(2016)are good introductions to the topic. Here’s a recording I made which shows obvious parallels between the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Hurrian-Hittite Song of Kumarbi, and Hesiod’s Theogony. Looks pretty different from the modern speculative retellings, doesn’t it?
This isn’t to say that there weren’t earlier myths in which women had different, more influential and positive roles. Pandora does in fact fit into this category: her names (Pandora, “all-giving”, and Anesidora, “sending up gifts”), as well as ancient sources (scholia on Aristophanes’ Birds being one example), attest to her originally being an earth deity. Hesiod is well-known for his misogyny, so him transforming her into a mortal woman and giving her a negative role makes sense. However, I would advise against applying this theory more broadly, and taking it as proof that there was a widespread revamping of female deities to make them fit patriarchal ideals. I would especially advise against taking any of this as confirmed fact, when the “original” myths themselves are lost.
3. The Gods as archetypes
I am personally very against interpreting the Gods as archetypes (i.e. Artemis as madonna, Aphrodite as whore, etc). There are far, far more aspects to them than these, and reducing them to single-word descriptions erases the complex reality of Greek mythology (and religion, while we’re at it).
What’s more, these archetypal interpretations are incredibly modern and don’t reflect Ancient Greek perceptions. The idea that Athena is “deliberately stripped of her femininity” because she is not born from a woman, for one, sounds very much like late 20th century radical feminism. (I’d also love to know if Typhon, who was born from Hera alone (see the Homeric Hymn to Apollon), was “stripped of his masculinity” for the same reason.) But more broadly, these Jungian-like archetypes correspond perfectly to 19th century views, which liked to fit the Gods into neat categories. Most notoriously, Apollon, who represented order and enlightenment, was opposed to Dionysos, who represented chaos and madness. Thanks Nietzsche.
I’ve said this before, but to interpret Greek mythology, we need to look for Greek sources. Not the theories of a 19th century philosopher. Not the speculation of a 20th century feminist. If the Gods were viewed as complex figures in Ancient Greece, then we need to study them as complex figures. Simple as that.
4. Why we are taught Greek mythology, aka “the reason the modern West is so obsessed with Greek mythology specifically is that it aligns so closely with our own patriarchal values”
Actually, no. If you think Greek mythology aligns closely with our own values, then you’ve been reading retellings and Mythology 101 books, not the original texts. (Or, alternatively, you’re very confused about what modern society’s values are.) Here is an abridged list of gender-related values from Ancient Greece that we don’t share:
female identity is tied to weaving
rape can only happen in the countryside or in deserted places
men who cry openly are still manly
marriage is between a 15-year-old girl and a 30-year-old man
funerals are women’s business
it’s okay to have gay sex if you’re a top
wearing boots and being a shopkeeper is unmanly
and more
The more you study Ancient Greece and read the texts themselves (preferably in the original language, so as to avoid as much modern bias as possible), the more you realise how different the Ancient Greeks were from us. This is a foreign culture with foreign values. Yes, a lot of it is familiar, too - much of European civilisation has its roots in Ancient Greece, hence why it aligns with a certain number of our values. But claiming that the ideas promoted in Greek mythology are virtually identical to our own is doing a disservice to the rich, unique culture that was Ancient Greece.
So why do we focus on it so much, as opposed to other cultures? Unfortunately, this is because of how history played out. Ancient Greece highly influenced Rome, which went on to conquer most of Europe; many countries went on to claim it as their ancestor, from the Ottoman Empire to the Napoleonic Empire to Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, other cultures which had influenced Ancient Greece itself (and therefore modern Western culture) disappeared: the Hittites of Anatolia had been virtually forgotten since the Late Bronze Age, Mesopotamia was on its way out by the first century AD, and Ancient Egypt by the beginning of the Middle Ages.
As a result, a lot of emphasis is put on Ancient Greek (and Roman) culture when in reality, we don’t owe much more to it than to the Sumerians. I absolutely think that we should study other cultures more. I also absolutely think that the fact we don’t has nothing to with patriarchal values.
5. Sources, aka “I don’t have sources because I learned this in a college class like 3 years ago”
Okay, so I have nothing against people taking electives in college and posting about what they learnt. By all means, do so. But it becomes a problem when people start reblogging without fact-checking or thinking twice about information that is presented without sources, by someone with very little experience in the field, and lathered in rhetoric.
Speaking of rhetoric, other people have pointed it out in the comments, but the person who shared the Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece book is a TERF. This obviously doesn’t mean OP is a TERF as well (I had a look through their blog and they seem not to be), but you may want to think about what ideas the LGoAG person is encouraging here, as well as what could appeal to a TERF in this post, and consider whether that’s something you want to align yourself with.
TL;DR: Don’t believe something just because it appeals to you. Check out my Layperson’s Guide to Online Research for more details on how to fact-check.
Concept: a magic-heavy D&D campaign where the party is charged with investigating the gradual proliferation and expansion of dead magic zones, with the mid-season twist that the “dead magic zones” are discovered actually to be bubbles of a setting with a different magic system.
For magic improvements on thing that is already perfect:
Use one spoon white sugar, and one spoon brown if you have it.
After microwave, before noms, add vanilla ice cream.
\o/
salt is a flavour enhancer, add just a tiny dash, not enough to make it salty.
Because I love you all.
reblogging cause i need to save this
A note for those who have trouble measuring butter with a spoon as I do: one cup I am sixteen tablespoons. Butter/margarine bricks are usually a half a cup, so just cut one eighth of that amount
These are really good! And yes, for the love of god, if you have it use white sugar and brown sugar, add just a pinch of salt, and as many chocolate chips as you darn well please. Great with icecream, whipped cream on top, or a tall glass of milk (keep in mind you gotta eat it with a spoon, you can’t dip it in milk)
Super college friendly (trust me)
My brother and I made some, and it’s…okay.
I had to microwave it for 80 seconds, and it’s pretty dry. It could benefit for about half a tablespoon of water.
It is super time-friendly though, it only took me about five minutes to make. All in all, I think I’ll make this again sometime.
Can I do it without the chocolate chips? We dont have any rn
Yeah man. I would reccomend adding vanilla extract and cinnamon and a shitload more sugar so it’s a spiced cooky
Spider-man Noir’s timeline takes place in 1933. I don’t believe his age is stated in the movie (though I may be wrong), but Aunt May and Uncle Benjamin can be assumed to be in their 40′s-50′s since they’re usually starting to grey by the time we see Peter. This means that they would be young adults in the 1910′s and surrounding years. Why is this important?
Because the song “I’m A Member of The Midnight Crew” by Eddie Morton came out in 1909.
Imagine Spider-man Noir showing Miles some of the songs that his aunt and uncle used to play when he was a kid, songs that they’d dance to just as wildly as when they were a young couple fresh in love until they’d worn holes in their shoes—and with almost no fanfare, he puts this record on.
And Miles Morales, a teenage artist in the year of our lord 2018 who has definitely read Homestuck at some point in his life, will have a choice to make.
Reblogging this again because it gets better:
This is the only addition I’m reblogging because out of all of the bullshit people have added to this post, this one is the most infinitely cursed.
It’s my opinion that like if a white supremacist/Nazi is going to be reformed. They need to do so willingly. The only times I’ve heard of successful rehabilitation of fascists is when they made the conscious decision to no longer be one anymore and seek atonement. People who try to like hug and change fascists that don’t want to change are fucking morons
Correct. I was crypto-facist for a few years, and the people trying to hug me didnt change me because at that point I wouldnt have listened. It was only when I started to see the movement for what it was that I was finally able to listen.
I’m not derailing your addition but I’m horrified you’re only 18. When did you become a fasc?
Yeah trust me it *is* horrifying. I’m ashamed of who I was and I think my only atonement is to talk about how damn easy it is to become one when you’re young.
This is gonna be a long post.
For a little bit of background, I am a mixed race person, half brown and half white. I was raised in a Muslim family and am still closeted around them.
I started to have issues with Islam at around 12 or so, when I first started to get the idea that I might be gay. Now I never would have admitted that was my reason. If you had asked me I probably would have said “logic” or something. Because of that I went hard into atheism and atheist circles.
Now people hate to admit this but ex-Muslim spaces are predominantly right wing. Ex-Muslims often see the left as “too tolerant” towards a religion that hurt them. This was the only community I had though, and I read through everything. I was 13.
The other thing that people hate to admit is that, especially when you’re young, being mixed race is so damn hard. If I acted “too white”, following my mother’s German/Austrian traditions, I was accused of hiding my true nature. But if I acted “too brown” I was just another camel jockey. So I hid my “Indian” customs from others and tried passing as white. Especially online.
So I’m not saying this is all youtube’s fault or anything. I was raised to believe that the brown half of my family was lesser and stupid. And with my hatred of Islam, I believed it doubly.
Then came Anita Sarkeesian. I was watching pewdiepie and from there my recommendations were all set. If I’m remembering the pipeline it was pewdiepie - Philip Defranco - Chris Ray Gun (sp?) - Thunderfoot - Sargon - etc. But I was pretty much acquainted with all of the right wing youtube of the day.
Funnily enough, I found her through Thunderfoot. That got me into antifeminism, and more specifically, GamerGate.
I was primarily on the subreddits KIA (Kotaku In Action) and TIA (Tumblr In Action). Both made fun of the SJWs. I kid you not, I would gleefully wait for “Sanity Sunday”, where the people would talk about how feminism is disgusting, cultural appropriation is fake, the wage gap isnt real, etc. I would scroll through this tag for hours.
I got most of my youtube recommendations from those subreddits. This led me from GamerGate to more fascist lines of thinking, such as watching videos about why BLM is a terrorist organization, why all muslims were evil rapists, and why I was fundamentally right to reject my Indian heritage and follow my “correct” heritage.
From here I delved into “race realism”, and I believed it all. I had to. This was the only community I had felt safe in. One of the fash guys even offered to shack me up at his house if my parents kicked me out for being atheist. I was 15.
To say that again, I was 15 and believed that white was right, blue lives matter, “we wuz kangs”, etc. I never would have called myself a fascist or a Nazi. How could I? I used my brown skin as a token, so that people could point to me and say: “See, we aren’t misogynistic and racist! We have this brown girl right here.” But I believed in all the things the Nazis did. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. I will never pretend I didn’t.
But then something happened. I admitted to myself, and to a few others, that I was gay. And suddenly, the homophobia that I had molded myself in, it didn’t fit right. I happened to, by accident, click on the reddit thread of GamerGhazi, the opposition to GamerGate. And after a long bout of introspection I found out that they were accepting of gay people, that the things I had been experiencing were common, that maybe, just maybe, we didn’t need a white ethnostate.
I don’t want to be dramatic but that accidental click saved my life.
From there it was a road of recovery. I deleted all my old accounts, made new ones, and started to read leftist theory. I found better friends, cut out old people. So now, just about two years later, I’m healing.
I think that’s everything. I probably got some times and dates wrong because I’ve been trying to move on from it. But if you need more info or anything like that, please let me know.
Just thinking about people making year-end summaries of their accomplishments and also about reasons to keep yourself alive through the next year. Sorry, it’s a bit of a sappy comic.
