Blog: Happy Women’s History Month. People Still Don’t Know What a Woman Is.

At this point, anything having to do with Rick Riordan or his publishing imprint, Read Riordan, has become a reliable content cow for this blog since they just can’t seem to keep their mouths shut about cultural issues that are particularly dangerous for teens. In today’s episode of Rick Riordan/Disney being stupid, I’ll be providing some commentary on one of the newest posts on readriordan.com which (as noted in the title) is all about women’s history month. Told from the perspective of the different goddesses from the pantheons that Riordan has written about in his books, the post was supposed to be a celebration of women’s history as seen by the gods, showing how powerful us females are, but it failed miserably as stereotype after stereotype popped up in this post to the extent where I wondered if Dylan Mulvaney himself wrote it. Let’s jump in. (Full article can be read here: https://www.readriordan.com/2024/03/07/celebrating-womens-history-month-2024-with-the-goddesses/)

First of all, let’s start with what Read Riordan got right in this post. In the last sentence of the first paragraph, it says that women were the ones that moved humanity out of the – as they put it – “Let’s Hit Each Other with Stones Age.”

I couldn’t agree more with this statement.

Not only would humans not have survived long without women because there would be no one to produce any babies (sorry-not-sorry, but men can’t have babies, contrary to popular belief), but women still play a huge role in maintaining civilization. While the men build and protect civilization, women are the ones who nurture what the men have built for them and produce the generations to come. As Jordan Peterson puts it (and I’m paraphrasing here), society is like a garden. Women – mothers – provide a place for the children to play and grow, while men – fathers – are like the walls around the garden that provide healthy limits that help the civilization – the child – grow. One cannot exist without the other. If one were to stop existing, we would be totally screwed. In many ways, we can see this already in the LGBTQ+ community. Without women, men act like animals and seem to mostly operate to satisfy base needs and the women also become like that to a certain extent.

However, this is the only thing that that post got right. The rest of it is woke gobbly-gook.

In the first paragraph, right before they give a nod to the civilizing effect of women, they claim that gender was invented. In the few paragraphs “written” by the character Sif, the Norse goddess of the Earth, they lean even more into this, with her saying:

“Women’s History Month? Aww, the Midgardians are so adorable. Personally, I don’t see much difference between a mortal woman and any other type of mortal, but if they want to draw an arbitrary distinction, I have no problem with that. If the mortals are truly worth honoring, I’m sure I’ll meet them in Hotel Valhalla at some point. Heroes are heroes, no matter their gender expression.”

Um…excuse me?

There’s no difference between a mortal woman and any other type of mortal (i.e. human).

Well…good job, feminists. You brought us ladies so much equality that we’re actively being pushed back in time to the point where we might as well be called the “Baby-Maker 2.0” since there’s no other defining feature to us except our ovaries, and even that’s being taken away.

If what is meant here is that anyone of any gender expression can celebrate women’s history month, I could agree with that, if they were to acknowledge the psychological definition of “gender” and the realty of the XX and XY chromosome. In psychology, your gender is essentially your personality/temperament as it relates to your biological sex, therefore it is somewhat fluid. There are masculine girls; there are feminine guys; there are people who are somewhere in between. Just because you don’t fit the norm doesn’t mean that you aren’t any less of a man or a woman. It doesn’t mean you need to go get hormone replacement therapy. You are not transgender or non-binary. It just means that you are your own distinct person, with your own quirks, which can be attributed to a number of different things from your genes to your community.

For example, I am a young woman who – though I have many feminine traits – tends to act a bit more stereotypically masculine than some of my female peers. Does that make me a guy? No. It doesn’t. I still have “XX” written over every cell in my body, making me a woman. Moreover, I experience emotions in ways that only a woman can, that no man, no matter how hard they try, can truly, fully understand.

However, what the writers at Read Riordan mean by “gender expression” is the radical acceptance of anyone who just claims they’re a woman. To them, it doesn’t matter if you have a very prominent Adam’s apple or five o’clock shadow indicating that you’re a dude making a gruesome mockery of women as he flounces around in a dress he got at Target. No, no. To them, what’s important is that you tote the line and promote a lifestyle that is destroying actual women because they know that women have been the cause of civilization for millennia and they want to destroy that.

My third complaint against this article is where Nut, the Egyptian goddess of the sky basically insinuates that all women are mentally ill Keurig-coffee-pod thieves, but that’s okay because Nut sees you and that lifestyle is totally valid and isn’t mediocre at all. Once again, what the hell are you saying about women? While I will agree that most women nowadays do have some serious struggles with mental health for a variety of reasons that could be a whole separate blog post, many of them are not “skipping their therapy appointments to stay home and binge trashy reality TV.” Combine this with what the writer has to say about women through the character of Aphrodite, and you get a whole other bundle of harmful stereotypes, mostly that women are self-absorbed bimbos who don’t care how much trouble we cause. These are harmful stereotypes about women that need to stop, especially since society seems to think that this is what it means to be a woman nowadays.

Lastly, though I realize that Read Riordan pretty much centers around bringing mythology to life through the media in the 21^st century, why did they feel the need to use these goddesses to promote Women’s History Month even though historically these same goddesses were the reason why so many women were brutally oppressed, often being raped, used as human sacrifices, sold into slavery, etc.? Sure, in the context of the Percy Jackson universe, these goddesses did see a lot of advancement in human rights, but in the original myths, they would most likely have been very against seeing women be allowed to climb the social ladder, mostly because these gods were written by men who did not believe in women’s rights. In fact, though there were some powerful female leaders in pagan societies, it wasn’t until Christianity was introduced that women were gradually given the same rights as men, and even when they didn’t have those same rights, they were still capable of amazing acts of bravery that strike a chord with us even today.

In conclusion, this Women’s History Month, instead of listening to people who don’t understand what a woman is or why the hell we’re essential to society, how about you actually do some research and listen to the stories of real women who actually contributed something to society. For example, one of the many notable women in my family history is Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was the mother of King Richard the Lionheart and in many ways single-handedly saved the Plantagenet line of England. Another woman in my family who has contributed to society is my mother who has dedicated her time and energy into teaching me and my brother at home so we can grow up into functional adults who can also contribute to society, in my case, by writing posts on the internet yelling truth over idiocy.

Until next time,

M.J.