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alexseanchai) wrote2015-10-27 04:55 pm
alexseanchai) wrote2015-10-27 04:55 pm
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Hey, how come we never hear about the triple goddess Hera? Hera Pais (girl), Hera Teleia (adult woman), Hera Khera (widow). Fits right in with the Maiden Mother Crone deal, but whenever someone's trying to shoehorn a Greek goddess into that framework, it always seems to be Hekate...
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*Not biased against or irritated with it, nope
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Fair enough! I have no shortage of irritation with it myself, but.
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Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.
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I think that, in general, Hera gets a bad rap from the myths that most folks in the US are familiar with. I'd expect that to carry over for anyone who hasn't done much research and who hasn't really thought about it. The myths kids study all focus on how vicious Hera can be and how she punishes people for things other folks (mostly Zeus) did. She doesn't get to be an individual at all. There's never any mention of her doing anything good or useful, so a lot of people end up assuming that people worship(ped) her only because she'd hurt them horribly if they didn't.
All of that makes people uncomfortable with her. I don't think they even consider the misogyny implicit in how they see her and respond to her. In terms of the goddesses, people seem most comfortable with Athena (who's sort of one of the guys in that many people assume that her being female isn't important), Artemis (who's terrifying in a different way than Hera is, a way that's still somehow appealing. Maybe they associate her with tomboys-- girls who aren't quite girls. I think she gets less attention than Athena or Aphrodite), and Aphrodite (sex! I don't know that there's respect for Aphrodite, but people want her around). Demeter, Hestia, and Hera relate more to things associated with women in our modern era, and a lot of people still think that that stuff is less important. It's not, but people think that.
Weirdly, the most respectful approach I've seen to Hera in stuff aimed at kids is Rick Riordan's recent Heroes of Olympus series (she didn't really feature in the earlier series).
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That makes a lot of sense, actually.
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