Gender Swapped Greek Myths

I think my favourite gender-swapping eye-opener is that video someone did where they swapped the Batman and Catwoman characters in a cutscene in a video game, so you can see more clearly how ridiculous the body animations are. We get used to seeing female characters moving in this hypersexualised "feminine" way that isn't much like how any human being actually moves, but seeing Batman do it jolts you into noticing how daft it is.

I liked the phrase “ once you’ve got your gender swapped goggles on, you see the world differently”

So I’m off to get my goggles and start raging!

Is this like the clown fish? Mythical Greek gods could change sex therefore...

Given that all the gods are products of incestuous relationships and many of the rapes take place in the form of animals I can honestly say Greek myth never seemed that relevant to my idea of gender.

Did the authors think to change gender of Queen Pasiphae and in the story of her rape of the Cretan Bull? I doubt it.

Well the Greeks themselves recognised that the stories of their gods were shocking - Plato even said in his Republic he would ban plays about Greek gods doing all these terrible things, because it showed them in such a bad light and would corrupt the young to see their gods behaving so badly.

Red Riding Hood was probably a warning to not enter prostitution

I've not come across this interpretation before, would you mind elaborating on it?

Sure, but I think what I'm trying to say is that the concept of sex doesn't necessarily apply the same way to non-human beings that never in reality existed with physical bodies, and never had to physically reproduce within the confines of how their biology was configured. So gender may be a more appropriate word to use when talking about swapping them.

Actually, Zeus giving birth to Athena is only part of that story. It is preceded by him hearing a prophecy about the child of Metis, the Titan goddess of shrewd thinking, being greater than its father. Zeus determined there should be no such child. He invited Metis for drinks amd initiated a game of who could transform into the most difficult shape. Thinking he had a gotcha, he challenged Metis to turn into something very small like a fly, which she did, and landed on the rim of Zeus' winecup, whereupon he swallowed her. Sometime later, he had to engage Hephaestos to split his head to let out Athena. I think this puts him in the realms of the midwife toad or a seahorse as far as motherhood goes. Athena's skills certainly relate to Metis' area of influence, not Zeus's.

Swapping sex of fictional characters in mythology as a thought exercise is fine - the fiction of swapping sex by actual people in the real world can be problematic, though...

Sounds great!

What is interesting is some of the fairy stories we know were specifically cautionary tales for girls. (Red Riding Hood was probably a warning to not enter prostitution).

(Although they've become something quite different as commonly told now).

Even if it doesn't work, it's an interesting exercise.

How bizarrely naïve not to recognise that the Greek heroes were rapey, misogynistic psychopaths.

When I was reading kid’s versions of the Greek myths I was bizarrely naive. Or perhaps just ordinary levels of naive for a child that age. I had to make my own inferences and deductions about sexism and misogyny from my reading material - and I think I did a pretty good job all things considered, but it drove me a bit nuts that nobody ever talked about it.

I really like this project. I do think that bookworm kids need to get the talk about sexism and representation that I never got, and this seems like an amazing way to go about it because the stereotypes in Greek myths are so stark. I’m sure the creators are probably devoted genderists but I still love this idea.

I'm not sure that works with gods. Zeus gave birth to Athena via his skull as an EMCS. But he's definitely gendered masculine.

If they had (correctly) named it 'Sex Swapped Greek Myths' I might have been interested, but as they cannot even get this basic word right there seems little hope for the book.

How bizarrely naïve not to recognise that the Greek heroes were rapey, misogynistic psychopaths. I wonder whether the villains seem more or less psychotic as the opposite sex.