All the ‘Zeus isn’t a rapist, it’s a metaphor for transcending interactions with the gods’ is such absolute bullshit. Zeus WAS a rapist. Yes, heroes transcended. Yes, the morals of the time were different. That doesn’t change that Zeus, in reality or as a metaphor, raped.

Action or metaphor, it teaches that women are baby making machines whose bodies can be used by men, in order for other men to be created and transcended. Metaphor or action, that is problematic. And I’m not saying we should cancel Zeus for being problematic.

I’m perfectly happy to accept that the past was the past and moral vary and gods learn too. I’m even willing to accept that the stories had metaphorical merit... hell, I’ve written rape between gods into my own novels, because their is a modern story to be told via that method...

What I’m not willing to accept, is a bunch of pagans and academics whitewashing Zeus to absolve him of his past at the expense of the experiences of women. These stories come from a time when women were raped by conquering armies. When slaves were raped because more powerful men

Had that right. To deny the influence that Zeus’s entitlement (whether you call in rape or something else, the metaphor does show an entitlement) may have had on mortal men. We can sit here debating the academic merits of a tale, as I’m sure Greek scholars did too, but that is

Not to say the common soldier or uneducated beggar had the same understand of ‘Zeus tricked this woman and she bore a demigod’. That’s part of why the stories are problematic, because metaphor or not, not everyone is going to see is as some transcendence trial. And the could see

It as a right to rape. And I hate to tell you, people with cocks, but many of us with vaginas have a real and valid fear of being raped. 78% of women admit to being sexually harassed. Rape by force and rape by deception happen. I’ve had the latter happen to me.

And you know what? It’s not taken seriously. Women don’t report it because they aren’t believed or it’s their clothes that is to blame. Conviction rates for rape and sexual assault are incredibly low. Policemen feel entitled to rape or be sexually violent. Look at what’s

Happening in the UK. A cop abducted and killed a woman. A week before he was reported for exposing himself and nothing was done. At protests about it, women are being beaten and intimidated by cops, and even stripped in the street. Violence against women is real and was real

It was real in Ancient Greece too. The last thing we need is Zeus to be given a free pass because it’s a metaphor for a trial. Raped should not be metaphorically seen as some transcending trial as that puts the duty on the raped and their children to transcend, and casts the

Rapist in the role of gift giver. How many homosexual people have been raped in order to turn them heterosexual? Does that not echo the transcendence myth? Forced sex becomes a gift given by the rapist so the raped might become the rapists idea of transcended. And if a baby

Is born from it, well that’s a gift too. And the idea that babies are a gift from the giver is also such grace a bill shit, and is tied into men’s control of women’s fertility and sexual health. The wombs of those born with them, whether woman or trans man, are not the property

Of those born with cocks. And no amount of academic metaphor is going to make the surface level encouragement of rape, deception, and ownership in mythology go away. Do I think that gods and mythology should be cancelled? No, not at all. My patron deity is Woden/Odin and he has

Problematic mythology too. I’m happy to have the discussion about metaphor and the past being the past, but I need there to be a discussion of the affects of mythology at a non-academic level too, and in context of cultures that used rape as part of the way they subdued people,

And in the context of societies that thought claiming ownership of other people was ok. We need to accept that the past didn’t have our morals without ignoring our morals to do so. The problematic past is context, not something that can be ignored because ‘metaphor’.

Personally, I believe that as society learns and changes, the morals of the gods would learn and change too, and the metaphors of the past do not necessarily work in the present. That’s part of why I wouldn’t cancel the gods. Who the gods are today is not going to be the same as

Who the gods were thousands of years ago. We don’t need to twist the past isn’t something better. We don’t need to absolve the gods ‘because metaphor’ when the gods may have atoned in better and more meaningful ways than us just wiping the slate clean over the course of history.