I really appreciate your care in having a supportive tone here—it is a bit heart aching to read some of the more directly critical comments.
great point about the non-consentual nature of Ea’s actions—it does create a dark undertone to the story, and needs either correcting, or expanding (perhaps framing it as the source of the “shadow of sexuality”—so we might also remember the risks)
the heteronormative line I did notice, and I think could generalize straightforwardly—this was just the simplest place to start. I love your suggestion of “”sex” as acting on a body specifically to produce pleasure in that body.”
And yes, there are definitely many many aspects of sex that can then be addressed within this lore—like rape, consent, STD, procreation, sublimation, psychological impacts, gender, family, etc. Taking the Freudian approach, we could really frame all aspects of human life within this context—could be a fun exercise.
I guess the key hypothesis I’m suggesting here is that explaining the many varied aspects of sexuality in terms of a deity could help to clarify all its complexity—just as the pantheon of gods helped early pagan cultures make sense of the world and make some successful predictions / inventions. It could be nicer to have a science-like explanation, but people would have a harder time keeping that straight (and I believe we don’t yet have enough consensus in psychology as a science anyway).
yeah I don’t know how cultural myths like Santa form or where they start—now they are grounded in rituals, but I haven’t looked at how they were popularized in the first place.
I know of a blog you might find interesting: “Small Gods” is a series of portraits of contemporary deities (the author made up) with short explanations of their domains. There are plenty of puns, and also some surprising seriousness. Maybe you’ll find it inspiring to explore some other work in the genre?
I really appreciate your care in having a supportive tone here—it is a bit heart aching to read some of the more directly critical comments.
great point about the non-consentual nature of Ea’s actions—it does create a dark undertone to the story, and needs either correcting, or expanding (perhaps framing it as the source of the “shadow of sexuality”—so we might also remember the risks)
the heteronormative line I did notice, and I think could generalize straightforwardly—this was just the simplest place to start. I love your suggestion of “”sex” as acting on a body specifically to produce pleasure in that body.”
And yes, there are definitely many many aspects of sex that can then be addressed within this lore—like rape, consent, STD, procreation, sublimation, psychological impacts, gender, family, etc. Taking the Freudian approach, we could really frame all aspects of human life within this context—could be a fun exercise.
I guess the key hypothesis I’m suggesting here is that explaining the many varied aspects of sexuality in terms of a deity could help to clarify all its complexity—just as the pantheon of gods helped early pagan cultures make sense of the world and make some successful predictions / inventions. It could be nicer to have a science-like explanation, but people would have a harder time keeping that straight (and I believe we don’t yet have enough consensus in psychology as a science anyway).
yeah I don’t know how cultural myths like Santa form or where they start—now they are grounded in rituals, but I haven’t looked at how they were popularized in the first place.
I know of a blog you might find interesting: “Small Gods” is a series of portraits of contemporary deities (the author made up) with short explanations of their domains. There are plenty of puns, and also some surprising seriousness. Maybe you’ll find it inspiring to explore some other work in the genre?
https://smallgodseries.tumblr.com/