Gender Swapped Greek Myths

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Which is of course much more like reality than the mythological and storyline pigeon holes that characters are put into. I think it is fair to use gender (although I've not read the books) because they keep the stereotypes and it highlights how, frankly, psychopathic behaviour is just accepted in male characters. Karrie and Jonathan love these stories, and have found a way to breathe new life into them by making one crucial change.

At one point in the story the queen even tells him to put down his spear and go and play ball in the garden with the other boys! There is something shocking and simultaneously exhilarating about seeing women displaying such brazen acts of violence and egotism. Jake Alexander(Two Hoots)When Rosa finds herself bored during the holidays, her dad suggests going to the library to borrow some books. Simply swapping the genders, rather than rewriting the texts meant that we couldn’t influence the stories with our own prejudices or assumptions about how each character should act. He saw lots of the papers covering the meeting between Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon but was surprised to see many focused on the shoes the two politicians were wearing.

This blew William’s mind and he is now having a lot of fun trying to gender swap Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Tales of King Arthur and Robin Hood among others. The Greek myths were first told thousands of years ago, by poets and singers who wanted to tell how the world came to be. Did the authors think to change gender of Queen Pasiphae and in the story of her rape of the Cretan Bull?

I think there will be some incredible discussions and I hope that some children, like William, will be inspired to try changing the stories that mean the most to them to see a reflection of their world and to continue breaking down boundaries in stories and the world around them. It is not difficult to spot the hyper-macho Greek heroes like Theseus, Odysseus and Perseus in modern superhero comics and movies.The myths really change and the way you see them varies a lot now that the powerful male gods are female. It might not sound like that much of a change, but you’ll be dazzled by the world this swap creates – and amazed by the new characters you’re about to discover. There are a lot of conflicting creation myths in Egyptian mythology and a great deal of what we know is filtered through layers and layers of what we don’t. But – spoiler alert – the brave heroine slays the beast, then uses a previously unravelled thread to find the way out of the labyrinth to freedom. Some of them I had to reread a few times because the plot was slightly confusing me (although this may just be because Greek myths are confusing in themselves, I’m not sure).

The art, both in the book and on the cover are eye-catching, which adds another dimension to the stories. The seven bachelors shrieked, but tried to stand up bravely and face their fate; and the six young women stood together with firm-set teeth and clenched fists, ready to fight to the last. I used to be fascinated by Greek mythology, but, even as a teenager, knew that they were fiction and a reflection of a long-gone society. Also, the change of dryads to satyrs was confusing, as they are already both established groups of characters in the myths. The male characters have feminie traits, they do the things originally done by women, they behave the way women do in the original stories, say the things women say and it really makes you stop, look up from the page and really think.My favourites were Odyssea and the Cyclopess because it is very clever, and Pandorus and his Casket. Whether you identify as nonbinary or are someone who has never thought much about your gender, we want to get everyone thinking about how gender defines us all. It is hard to put into words how clever these books are and for me to explain why these gender swapped myths and the original Gender Swapped Fairy Tales are so important. 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.