K Tempest Tumbles

realmaco:

ktempest:

psychiclilies:

I have to laugh.

People constantly portray Hades in new age media as this totes evil bad guy, yet Zeus and Poseidon have fathered more monsters and people than he has and have raped women

while Hades is just there in the underworld with the one girl he kidnapped and agreed to let her free in the summer months with no children of his own, probably rolling his eyes and going ‘Guys, can we have a normal family dinner for once? Please?’

I hear you. But… he did rape that girl. Just gonna point that out.

Still, in the mythology, Hades wasn’t evil. Everyone had a job. And you’re right, Zeus and HIS kids were the ones running around terrorizing people and especially women they found attractive.

I was super confused when I heard someone use the phrase “the rape of Persephone” for the first time. I don’t recall anything about sex in the story, just marriage.

Took a bit for me to realize that many people think marriage means you have to have sex, or even that married people tend to have sex.

Not quiiite. When people talk about the Rape of Persephone in the mythological sense, they’re using the term the way it was used long ago: to mean kidnap. It’s the same sense as the story of the Rape of the Sabine Women. I mean, some of those women may have been sexually assaulted, but in that story rape means that the Sabine Women were taken/kidnapped.

However, when I say “Hades raped that girl” I do mean that he forced himself on her sexually. This has nothing to do with marriage. It has everything to do with the fact that Hades didn’t scoop her up in a chariot against her will instead of asking for her hand in marriage because he intended to have a platonic time with her.

Also, you speak of “the story” as if there’s just one version. There isn’t. It’s a myth, there are a lot of versions. the version you read may not have mentioned sex. You may also notice that a lot of versions of myths talk about how Apollo “chased after” some nymph or how Zeus “carried off” some woman. Those are euphemisms for sexual assault.

Lastly, a lot of the myths that involve the Olympian pantheon are, on a larger level, about how a patriarchal culture came in and took over more goddess-centered ones. A lot of the nymphs and dryads and supposedly mortal women in these stories were actually goddesses if you go back further. So of course the culture who wishes to dominate would have their folk heroes and gods subjugating the goddesses, and they somehow become less powerful…

So yeah, the story of Persephone is not really about why we have seasons. And that girl was indeed sexual assaulted. But the perception of the culture of the time was NOT that Hades was the evil one.