15.1.19 I have finally submitted all of my assignments from teaching block 1. This is from doing my research project for Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies. I did it on Milan Kunderas The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and the experience of Soviet colonial technologies from the perspective of an exile. I wasn’t that proud of it in the end but it’s submitted and gone now! I only had 10 days to do it. Just two weeks into the new year and I’ve written 33'000 words for essays! Xxx Emily
Artemis: *lounging by a spring on piles of deerskin surrounded by three dozen naked girls with a dead pan expression* Virginity.
“Heracles, they’re lesbians”.
Note that the concept of “virginity” in Ancient times merely meant “unmarried”, and had nothing to do with sexual activity. Some priestesses were “virgins” because they chose (or were committed to) a life of worship, but it was merely a question of social status, not of personal choice or practice. Of course, one can suppose that this lifestyle would be rather attractive for lesbians.
So when Artemis is said to be the Goddess of Virgins, it is meant to be understood as “Goddess of Unmarried Women”, or, quite possibly literally, of lesbians.
(It’s only Christianity that reframed the concept of virginity to mean “never had sex”. Many ancient religions has “Virgin goddesses”, which symbolized feminine power, and in this case too it meant “untied to a man”, or “whole for herself”)
