> The sexual identity of this goddess is controversial. In one late text, Ishtar says of herself: "I am a woman, I am a man." Ishtar could be viewed as a beautiful goddess of love who rules the day and as a bearded god(dess) of war who rules the night. It is claimed that the androgyny of Inanna/Ishtar provided a powerful symbol of the ambiguities of pure sexuality reflected in her cult, and in the transvestism of her cultic personnel (Groneberg 1986).
Nice reference. It’s a source from 1986 about text written thousands of years ago. Well before so called woke culture. I wonder if BaculumMeumEst will admit to jumping to conclusions and realize that they might be a victim in this instance of a propaganda induced reaction.
Maybe this gender fluidity notion isn’t just post-modern made up nonsense.
(I'll leave this helpful comment for historians of future). "Fluidity" is the trip wire word that is not immediately suggested by the Goddess' pronouncements regarding its sexual ambiguity and or nature. 'Diversity' would be the non-ideological term of choice.
For example, castration for the goddess was a big deal. (Kali had her crazed devotees as well. Modern S&M gives you echoes of this urge of the male pysche..) So there is no going back, no back and forth, no "fluidity" when you plop ye old bloody member on the temple floor in front of the goddess. Gender change. Yes. Fluid? No.
Btw, can't recall the source, but there are mystic schools that insist the '[Mother] Goddess' slaughters all these males because she is seeking her Perfect Man/Lover. So the drones that go 'fluid' for her are really just playing their part in the selection process.
[p.s. for historians. Since this comment was posted, I have lost 10 karma points in minutes - it is a touchy topic that elicits emotional responses. ;)]
I’m no expert on the precise definition of gender fluidity. Groneberg used the terms transvestism and androgyny. In colloquial language that’s an aspect of gender fluidity, right? Maybe gender fluidity is the wrong term but it’s certainly a splash of cold water, so to speak, to those that think this is all wokist nonsense. A scholar in 1986 uses transvestism and androgyny to describe beliefs of people from thousands of years ago.
Human sexuality is a very complicated business and I agree that the binary norm is (obviously imo) not the only naturally present modality, and historic matter shows this was also recognized for thousands of years in various cultures. I only remarked on the word fluid and the implied facility, substitutability, and reversibility of the transitions and modalities of human sexuality.
I assume that the 'fluidity' is referring to Ishtar _herself_ rather than the behaviour of her worshippers, though like I say above I'm pretty sure the author is being somewhat tongue in cheek.
(Though, also, where are you getting the castration thing? There were definitely goddesses whose priesthoods went in for that in that general part of the world, eg Cybele, but I don't think Ishtar was particularly one of them?)
I agree that it likely refers to the divine but as you say it also leaves the door open for confusing mere mortals. I am not certain about Ishtar's priesthood, you may be correct. This article mentions Inana/Ishtar:
I don’t think a source saying the deity’s gender was controversial and calling their followers “transvestites” supports the description “defender of gender fluidity”.
I was responding to your response of dude, come on. That response said much about your frame of mind. You didn’t know about the research article that weakfish linked to when you made it. It appears you had no context or knowledge on the topic of this deity or its followers’ beliefs. It appears it was a knee jerk response assuming the reporter was engaged in some wokist propaganda.
An intellectually honest response to the link supplied by weakfish would be to question why defender of gender fluidity is the right description while acknowledging that this is new information and that your initial response was wrong. That the description defender of gender fluidity might have some merit to it but you remain skeptical and would like to learn more about why people use this description.
> It’s a source from 1986 about text written thousands of years ago. Well before so called woke culture.
A bit unacknowledged fact is that many books Nazi burned were about transexuality. The modernity they hated was also this. Transexuals and gays were particular target.
“Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.”
― Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?
It's interesting to know that, hundreds or thousands of years from now, historians will be studying this piece mentioning Ishtar, not to learn any more of Ishtar or the Assyrians, but to help corroborate the zeitgeist and ethos of our own time, of 2023, by studying this historian's personal impositions onto this ancient deity, in this case, the historian's claim about the deity's ostensible role as a "defender of gender fluidity".
Your comment makes me think you didn’t read the scholars’ paper. I think you might be imposing your own, baseless, assumption on the scholar’s intent. I think a person writing a research article intended to be read by experts isn’t going to just spout unsubstantiated nonsense. There must be at least some merit to the assertions made. The assertions may be wrong but they are not just personal impositions.
Consider the possibility that experts who study this stuff came to the conclusion because that is where the evidence lead them. That if you had expertise in this area that you too would see this as at least extremely plausible.
While I understand what you're saying, it's cultural and personal bias, and it's present in everyone and everything. Experts are experts, and they are able to sort through field of specialty better, stronger, and faster than non-experts. But, they still all carry their own biases. That's what the original poster was about, I believe.
Looking at historical works about prior historical works can absolutely teach you about the source event. But it is also an incredibly relevant and accurate way to learn about cultural norms and the society the piece was created in.
Most experts go their entire career just trying to identify their own biases and eliminate them from their scholarship; it's harder than it looks because they're so ingrained into our personality.
In theory, the perfect expert follows the evidence to the appropriate conclusion. Only in theory.
In execution, they follow only specific lines of reasoning, certain thought patterns, and certain investigation patterns because of the cultural expectations and social mores the expert has developed, was trained under, and has lived with their entire lives.
edit; OP also said nothing about baseless claims. Just that the scholarship we read will be relevant in the future as a snapshot into our lives, as well as whatever the research is about.
VoodooJuJu said: …this historian's personal impositions onto this ancient deity…
This gives me the impression that VoodooJuJu thinks the historian had an ideological agenda and was making a square be a circle so to speak. If the historians claims are not baseless then how can personal imposition be an apt description?
I agree with what you wrote but I think your edit is wrong. VoodooJuJu didn’t use the word baseless but I think that is the essence of their claim. How can the historian’s claim be an insight into today’s culture, views, and lives if the claim is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts? A claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by known facts is a claim that could be made by anyone whose language has words for what we call transvestism, gender fluidity, and androgyny. It seems to me at most, with a claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by known facts, one can only infer the level of permissiveness that experts had to discuss such topics.
I think maybe I didn't get my point across as well as I should have.
>How can the historian’s claim be an insight into today’s culture, views, and lives if the claim is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts?
Because the facts are evaluated through the lens of the historian. The lines of reasoning, logical conclusions, and modes/methods of investigation are all, inherently influenced by how the historian was raised, trained, and how/when/where they live. It's just part of being human. It is impossible to present literally anything without it being biased in some fashion. In deciding what to report and what not to, how much weight to give to historical accounts versus other historical accounts, what sources to chase down, even where to look in the physical world, we are imposing our own beliefs on the event.
That's what I'm trying to get across.
Not about this specific article, or the concepts of gender fluidity, etc. But the actual process of investigating and reporting historical facts. It is an inherently biased process. It just is.
I understand what you are saying and agree with it but not as it pertains to JuJu’s comment and intent.
A baseless claim says much about the person making it. A claim that is well reasoned and supported by the facts says very little about the person making it.
If I say: The IQ of blacks in the U.S. is on average lower than that of whites. that says nothing about my ideology. If I say: Black people are stupid. that says much about my ideology.
Making a claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts says that the person making the claim reasoned it well and had facts that supported that reasoning and they possessed the vocabulary and permissiveness to discuss those ideas. One can not infer a person’s ideology from such a claim. Of course biases and experience play a role in these things but looking from the outside you can’t say of well reasoned claims: personal imposition. That is too strong of a conclusion.
The parent made a point about trust and how all historians are subject to biases. You responded with an appeal to authority, one of the many ways “history is written by the victors”.
Appeal to authority is not an argumentative fallacy. I say this in case you think it is. Almost all of what you believe comes from “authorities”. What is an argumentative fallacy is an appeal to a false authority. I have some expertise in mathematics and a person using me as a reference in an argument about English literature is making an argumentative fallacy. A person using me as a reference in a matter about mathematics is not making an argumentative fallacy.
What is interesting about your comment is that I made no appeal to authority. I did not quote anyone or make any references to an authority. What I did was to ask JuJu to consider something and to state what I think.
What’s ironic about your comment is that JuJu did make an appeal to an authority.
EDIT: You believe 1+1 equals 2. I doubt you know how to prove this rigorously. Your belief is based on an appeal to authority. Have you independently verified that electrons exist? Or that the moon is a little more than one light second away? Have you ever supplied links to an article to support a position you have?
It is a fallacy, but you’re right ultimately one we have to live with. There’s no way to function doing all the research yourself. This is why trust is so critical.
The crux of your post was “I trust the intent of the experts because they’re experts”. I don’t think that is a good reason to trust somebody.
we will absolutely lose the ability to validate the trust chain on every piece of information available trough the network. it's too late to retrofit old documents with signatures and the ability of generating everything from artiact picture to fake research document complete with fake citations (generated in full, not only in titles) will make very hard in a hundred years (or less!) to understand history before we decide to implement (if ever) a global trust chain for information.
agreed, a global trust chain for information seems like a pipe dream. between the publishers and wikipedia volunteers/admins, it seems like there's too many conflicting parties. i've been collecting rare/old books, its a pricey hobby, but they are often beautifully made and feels good to have something that can't be edited or revised.
As much as it pains me to say it providing a publicly accessible audit trail that no single party can alter is one of the better use cases for blockchain.
Always was? There is no history untainted by the historian who wrote it. Whoever owns the current interpretation of history, can change it to suit his aims. Which is a big part of the state "support" for universities and institutes of history, going back many centuries: the state power wanted to redefine history. Before them, the church. This is nothing new, I believe Foucault wrote about it extensively, but also many others. Knowledge is quite directly power.
If someone would for example say that gender fluidity is a new concept with no known history, that claim would be very hard to defend because there are certainly cultures where it was present, but with carefully choosing which historians to cite, any claim can be supported. Lying by omission.
yeah there's always been new takes on history and events but this was pre-internet. most western people get their info via internet, media, tv, podcasts, etc. i think we're in uncharted waters here and chalking it up to "its always been like this" is disingenuous. information distribution is becoming increasingly centralized and ran by a few corporations. the internet and smart phone era seems like a wet dream for propagandists.
> information distribution is becoming increasingly centralized
No, exactly the opposite. It was much much more centralized before the internet: you had one or two dominant TV channels with news in each country (mostly somehow state-operated), same with radio and a few big newspapers. And the institutions where deep knowledge was produced (mostly universities) also functioned as gatekeepers for knowledge, deciding what can be dispersed and who is worthy to receive it.
Internet changed that: there are no gatekeepers and distribution is free. Anyone can write and distribute anything. Now actually grabbing attention of enough people to matter is a different issue and you are right this is a big problem. But it's a different one: before it was easier to control the history-writing and publishing at the source, now that's impossible and you have to control the attention of consumers.
We are on Hacker News debating an article published by Lapham's Quarterly. No big corporation in sight.
I assume it's a little tongue in cheek; like a number of deities, Ishtar's gender was sometimes ambiguous (though not in quite the same was as the Abrahamic God, who is not considered by most Abrahamic religions to have a gender at all).
Most Christian denominations, and mainstream Islam, don't ascribe Him a gender. Catholicism is particularly explicit about this; see CCC 239: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P17.HTM (the argument is substantially the same for most denominations). Things are a bit more complex in Judaism AIUI. Mormonism is the major exception, and considers God to be explicitly male.
Now, that's the theology, of course; if you were to poll a few thousand Catholics or Anglicans or Muslims on whether God had a gender and what it is, they'd probably say yes He does and that He's a he. Though even then it'd get messy if you poll in more detail; virtually no followers of Abrahamic religion would think of God as having _physical_ male attributes, say.
EDIT: I see you were downvoted for that. Wasn't me; it's a fair question IMO, and something that people are often unaware of.
Very interesting link to the Catechism. I had no idea that this was the official Catholic position.
As for the male attributes, my guess would be that the majority of Christians would assume that God, being male, was equipped with an appropriately sized shlong, but did not avail Himself of it for any purpose.
To support that view, I submit that in Christian art, He generally is depicted with a sizable beard, and without functioning testicles, that beard would have to have been immaculately grown.
I'm not sure about that; do many Christians actually personify God? You're not really meant to.
(Back vaguely to the topic, that's a big difference for Ishtar; she would have been thought about far more in terms of being a _person_ than the Abrahamic God).
The art thing is a bit of an oddity, arguably; Christians didn't really depict God in art at all much until the Renaissance, and many Protestants in particular objected, and sometimes still object, to it. The art has no theological significance in any case (it's obviously not canonical) but yeah, it may have reinforced the idea of God as a _person_ in peoples' minds.
Aphrodite is thought to have been influenced by Ishtar-like gods from the Middle East, and there are gender bending things associated with Aphrodite like her son Hermaphroditus is where we get the term hermaphrodite from and there was male version of her in some areas called Aphroditus.
Really liked the reading at first, but was surprised it ended on the note it did. I would imagine at least some of husbands must have loved their wives? Are there any inscriptions on those or all cuneiform tablets just woman-bashing?
They will either swiftly throw it back into the dust whence it came, or they will immortalise it as new scripture. Depends on the direction of future society, really.
They were human beings just like us, and I think it is safe to bet the farm that love in all its forms was also present back in Assyria. Arguably, any form of 'urban love' -- from prostitute to thine neighbor's wife or daughter/son of wrong family -- likely found its first expression in levant in Assyria.
If you were wondering like me what the heck were the "Presence" and "Path" of a "liver omen", this is a clay model of the sacramental sheep liver used for divination according to ancient Babylonian geeks and/or charlatans:
I was very surprised when I read the article. He's talking about the Assyrians. Lamashtu is known as Albasti among Turks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Basty. The Assyrians are a nation that lived in the Middle East before the Turks appeared in Mongolia. Interestingly, Lamashtu and Albasti sound similar.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadDude, come on.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-a...
Weird source but I’m in mobile.
Maybe this gender fluidity notion isn’t just post-modern made up nonsense.
For example, castration for the goddess was a big deal. (Kali had her crazed devotees as well. Modern S&M gives you echoes of this urge of the male pysche..) So there is no going back, no back and forth, no "fluidity" when you plop ye old bloody member on the temple floor in front of the goddess. Gender change. Yes. Fluid? No.
Btw, can't recall the source, but there are mystic schools that insist the '[Mother] Goddess' slaughters all these males because she is seeking her Perfect Man/Lover. So the drones that go 'fluid' for her are really just playing their part in the selection process.
https://aratta.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/inannas-sumerisk-og-...
[p.s. for historians. Since this comment was posted, I have lost 10 karma points in minutes - it is a touchy topic that elicits emotional responses. ;)]
(Though, also, where are you getting the castration thing? There were definitely goddesses whose priesthoods went in for that in that general part of the world, eg Cybele, but I don't think Ishtar was particularly one of them?)
https://www.willsworld.org/priests.html
An intellectually honest response to the link supplied by weakfish would be to question why defender of gender fluidity is the right description while acknowledging that this is new information and that your initial response was wrong. That the description defender of gender fluidity might have some merit to it but you remain skeptical and would like to learn more about why people use this description.
A bit unacknowledged fact is that many books Nazi burned were about transexuality. The modernity they hated was also this. Transexuals and gays were particular target.
― Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?
It's interesting to know that, hundreds or thousands of years from now, historians will be studying this piece mentioning Ishtar, not to learn any more of Ishtar or the Assyrians, but to help corroborate the zeitgeist and ethos of our own time, of 2023, by studying this historian's personal impositions onto this ancient deity, in this case, the historian's claim about the deity's ostensible role as a "defender of gender fluidity".
Really makes you think.
Consider the possibility that experts who study this stuff came to the conclusion because that is where the evidence lead them. That if you had expertise in this area that you too would see this as at least extremely plausible.
Looking at historical works about prior historical works can absolutely teach you about the source event. But it is also an incredibly relevant and accurate way to learn about cultural norms and the society the piece was created in.
Most experts go their entire career just trying to identify their own biases and eliminate them from their scholarship; it's harder than it looks because they're so ingrained into our personality.
In theory, the perfect expert follows the evidence to the appropriate conclusion. Only in theory.
In execution, they follow only specific lines of reasoning, certain thought patterns, and certain investigation patterns because of the cultural expectations and social mores the expert has developed, was trained under, and has lived with their entire lives.
edit; OP also said nothing about baseless claims. Just that the scholarship we read will be relevant in the future as a snapshot into our lives, as well as whatever the research is about.
This gives me the impression that VoodooJuJu thinks the historian had an ideological agenda and was making a square be a circle so to speak. If the historians claims are not baseless then how can personal imposition be an apt description?
I agree with what you wrote but I think your edit is wrong. VoodooJuJu didn’t use the word baseless but I think that is the essence of their claim. How can the historian’s claim be an insight into today’s culture, views, and lives if the claim is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts? A claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by known facts is a claim that could be made by anyone whose language has words for what we call transvestism, gender fluidity, and androgyny. It seems to me at most, with a claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by known facts, one can only infer the level of permissiveness that experts had to discuss such topics.
>How can the historian’s claim be an insight into today’s culture, views, and lives if the claim is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts?
Because the facts are evaluated through the lens of the historian. The lines of reasoning, logical conclusions, and modes/methods of investigation are all, inherently influenced by how the historian was raised, trained, and how/when/where they live. It's just part of being human. It is impossible to present literally anything without it being biased in some fashion. In deciding what to report and what not to, how much weight to give to historical accounts versus other historical accounts, what sources to chase down, even where to look in the physical world, we are imposing our own beliefs on the event.
That's what I'm trying to get across.
Not about this specific article, or the concepts of gender fluidity, etc. But the actual process of investigating and reporting historical facts. It is an inherently biased process. It just is.
And I believe that was the OP's point.
A baseless claim says much about the person making it. A claim that is well reasoned and supported by the facts says very little about the person making it.
If I say: The IQ of blacks in the U.S. is on average lower than that of whites. that says nothing about my ideology. If I say: Black people are stupid. that says much about my ideology.
Making a claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts says that the person making the claim reasoned it well and had facts that supported that reasoning and they possessed the vocabulary and permissiveness to discuss those ideas. One can not infer a person’s ideology from such a claim. Of course biases and experience play a role in these things but looking from the outside you can’t say of well reasoned claims: personal imposition. That is too strong of a conclusion.
What is interesting about your comment is that I made no appeal to authority. I did not quote anyone or make any references to an authority. What I did was to ask JuJu to consider something and to state what I think.
What’s ironic about your comment is that JuJu did make an appeal to an authority.
EDIT: You believe 1+1 equals 2. I doubt you know how to prove this rigorously. Your belief is based on an appeal to authority. Have you independently verified that electrons exist? Or that the moon is a little more than one light second away? Have you ever supplied links to an article to support a position you have?
The crux of your post was “I trust the intent of the experts because they’re experts”. I don’t think that is a good reason to trust somebody.
If someone would for example say that gender fluidity is a new concept with no known history, that claim would be very hard to defend because there are certainly cultures where it was present, but with carefully choosing which historians to cite, any claim can be supported. Lying by omission.
No, exactly the opposite. It was much much more centralized before the internet: you had one or two dominant TV channels with news in each country (mostly somehow state-operated), same with radio and a few big newspapers. And the institutions where deep knowledge was produced (mostly universities) also functioned as gatekeepers for knowledge, deciding what can be dispersed and who is worthy to receive it.
Internet changed that: there are no gatekeepers and distribution is free. Anyone can write and distribute anything. Now actually grabbing attention of enough people to matter is a different issue and you are right this is a big problem. But it's a different one: before it was easier to control the history-writing and publishing at the source, now that's impossible and you have to control the attention of consumers.
We are on Hacker News debating an article published by Lapham's Quarterly. No big corporation in sight.
Like, the majority? Can you support that?
Now, that's the theology, of course; if you were to poll a few thousand Catholics or Anglicans or Muslims on whether God had a gender and what it is, they'd probably say yes He does and that He's a he. Though even then it'd get messy if you poll in more detail; virtually no followers of Abrahamic religion would think of God as having _physical_ male attributes, say.
EDIT: I see you were downvoted for that. Wasn't me; it's a fair question IMO, and something that people are often unaware of.
As for the male attributes, my guess would be that the majority of Christians would assume that God, being male, was equipped with an appropriately sized shlong, but did not avail Himself of it for any purpose.
To support that view, I submit that in Christian art, He generally is depicted with a sizable beard, and without functioning testicles, that beard would have to have been immaculately grown.
(Back vaguely to the topic, that's a big difference for Ishtar; she would have been thought about far more in terms of being a _person_ than the Abrahamic God).
The art thing is a bit of an oddity, arguably; Christians didn't really depict God in art at all much until the Renaissance, and many Protestants in particular objected, and sometimes still object, to it. The art has no theological significance in any case (it's obviously not canonical) but yeah, it may have reinforced the idea of God as a _person_ in peoples' minds.
> We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God.
> Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /roundtable/family-matters on this server.
Tumblr was a source of fragility and fearful censorship.
And, thanks to Twitter, Tumblr won.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/688/love-sex-and-marria...
(that slave-master dialogue reminded of a chat gpt session .. how to prompt your slave for accurate feedback, circa 2000 BC)
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co85238...
(Oddly enough reminded me of SAM segmentation ..)