Wednesday, November 16, 2005

YOU'RE Joking, RIGHT?




My letter to a site for kids called "Mysteries of Catalhoyuk," and put together by The Science Museum of Minnesota:

Yo! Nice graphics. On your "artifacts: figurines" page, however, I see an obviously female figurine [see above]-- quite regal, well-made -- and another figurine [see also above] sporting no signs of either sex.

This latter figure, which I've never seen before, you label "god," while the former figure, which I've seen often, is labeled as -- nothing.

Could you please email me and tell my why the unimpressive, sexless figure is a deity, while the impressive, stately female figure seated on what could be a throne and flanked by lions, is not?

Thank you.

Looking forward eagerly to your reply,

Athana

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

They might just tell you that the file name for the top photo has 'goddess' in it, and then act like that makes up for it not being labeled.

Because as we all know, kids view the image properties of every picture they see on the internet.

Sigh.

Anonymous said...

How can we take male scholarship seriously when it calls a half visible male figurine a God, and then in the comic section asks, is the heavy breasted women in the throne representative of male or female it makes no sense. Glad you've questioned them athana.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and http://happyfeminist.typepad.com/ has an
article on The First Sex. Not the nicest of articles, however...

Anne Johnson said...

Now there's a bored goddess getting no respect. I wish I knew her name, I'd invite her to air her concerns on my site.

Morgaine said...

Anybody up for a project to insist on equal time for our Mother?

Athana said...

Dove, I tried clicking on the Goddess figurine several times, like they said to do, and nothing happened. But when you click on the figurine on the leopard, a window opens and informs us that this leopard rider is a god. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

Ursa, you're right! Hodder and his team are so transparently, so obviously "punishing" the female figurines. It's obvious something deep and heavy is going down. Like pleasing Deep-Pocket money, maybe? Or even fear of these guys for some reason?

Anne, it's true -- the Neolithic Goddesses go back too far to have names. This one's an unbelievable 8000 years old! We have some idea of what the Minoan Goddess(es)' name was, but then She came on the scene almost 3000 years after this one. 3000 years is almost the distance between us and the ancient Minoans.

Athana said...

YES Morgaine! Count me in. What did you have in mind?

Morgaine said...

Well, I'm inspired by your letter writing. I do a bit of it myself. I'm thinking that a group of focused women who write about a particular topic at once might have more impact. If we had a group of us working together, from our respective IPs and addresses, with everyone pointing the group to various issues and us acting in concert, I think we might be more effective. Larger projects have been attempted in the past, but they always result in Witch Wars.
I know that when dealing with politicians, the magick number is often 10 comments or complaints to provoke action. If we could get a group of 12-13, we might get their attention. Surely we can find that many women who will agree that our Mother Goddess deserves equal time? What do you think?

My preference would be to set it up as a yahoogroup. That way everyone gets the same information, and we can work together through emails. I'm open to suggestions, though, so anyone jump in any time.

Athana said...

I like this idea, Morgaine! And 13 is the Goddess’s Magick number, giving us a buffer of three over our necessary Magick 10 missives (in case one or two of us is incapacitated at any one point in time and can’t write).

The only Yahoogroup I know much about is the rcgi group. I can guess what a “Witch War” is, and I think a tiny one is flaring now in the rcgi group (SAMPLE: “No one is lecturing anyone….” … “I am simply responding to the tone that *I perceive* in your posts….” … “BTW, by "it" I meant the concept of reverse agism and not what I am
"spoiling" for--which is really nothing. And besides, who are you?...” Etc.)

Do ya think we could start a group that from the very beginning at least puts some thot into how to nip these Witch Wars in the proverbial bud?

How would we find/choose our 13? Open enrollment?