So I sadly do not get to talk religion as much as I might like. Generally because most things with religion, at least the heathen religion, don’t tend to piss me off that much and it’s mostly nitpicking stuff these days. Then again, I don’t troll around the various pagan web much anymore so it might just be that. I’m sure all the shit that used to piss me off is still going on, but the divine mission now isn’t to go out and refute shit like it was a few years ago. Still, I do occasionally look through the tags in case something catches my fancy for a reblog, comment, or inspires a post.

Such as the case with the post, “Valkyries aren’t your babes,” on Wyrd Designs whose author escapes me. Which, you know, I probably wasn’t going to even notice till I saw it was about some “horrible carving” thingy and, well, curiosity gets the better of me. So here’s some of it with my thoughts.

Women are sadly accustomed to being sexualized to ridiculous extremes, seemingly everywhere. For those of us who (aren’t imbecilic womanizing wannabes that) identify with the religious practices surrounding Northern Tradition Polytheism, we know that women held (and should still hold) power and respect.

Which, really, tells me almost everything I need to know about what I’m going to read in one paragraph. Which, if I remember my college writing classes, means its a well made paragraph. And because I remember my “college” politics tells me this is probably going to be a shit show of a post.

Now, it is true that women in the old Norse/Germanic ways were beings who held power and respect. This is also true of men. Given that the entire culture was based around respect and power, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Of course this is also the culture that had Freya, the goddess of battle and lewd, as one of the top members of the pantheon, so women being sexualized was, well, kinda the norm. As for women being “sexualized” today…that is a really big post of its own.

I also like how this opening paragraph almost makes it seem like it is impossible for a woman to be sexualized and respected. Given the author seems to be a female (or one of those uber possessed male feminists), that’s…quite the hot take, as it were.

Despite such a rich background, it never ceases to amaze me the ridiculous attitudes that propagate within our religion, carry-overs of bigotry and sexism from the culture at broad. Some will refer to these men as Bro-satru, typically characterized by those who play fight and talk of being warriors and being waited on hand and foot by valkyries who are little more in their minds than mead-bearing tavern wenches around for eye-candy and pleasure toys. (insert heavy sarcasm and eye-rolling here): Like they’re so amazed by your warrior prowess they’ll just fuck you right there: Hardcore! In the mead-hall.

I will be honest, I never heard people (men) like that called “bro-satru.” In my experience the only ones called “brosatru” were the guys everyone hated for calling everyone else “brother,” which I’ve talked about in the past as well. Because fuck that guy for wanting to build a kinship of faith, apparently. Again, another post, another time.

That being said, this supposed “bro-satru” attitude is…not really incorrect. One need only look at modern day athletes to discover that women will literally throw themselves at strong warrior types simply because they kick some ass upon the grass. And if I remember my lore correctly, even in the oldest lore it did state that the valkyries did engage is “the lewd” with the slain who made their way to Valhalla. Because, let’s be entirely honest here, if you’re a guy who made it into the 1%, you’re a guy who is going to get laaaaiiiidddd. Also, Odin is the God of Wisdom and if you think he’s dumb enough to lock up a bunch of horny, a-list fighters with no women and expect them to stick around, you have some serious religious issues. Hating this attitude, the reality is based on, and the women who happily engage in it, is petty. Sure, you random person might have “too much pride” to jump some guys bone just because he kicked some ass, but for every one of you there’s probably at least three who will. Two of whom will post a selfie about it on instagram.

And let us remember, our ancestors happily engaged in sex at the dinner table, especially during feasts. So yes, they will fuck you hard core in the mead hall. It’s tradition!

A prime example is a “valkyrie decor plaque” I recently stumbled upon an ecommerce shop online. Since I think it’s pretty reprehensible, ignorant, and just plain tacky, I am NOT publicizing where I found it, let alone the name of the artisan behind it. Clearly we see a dehumanized woman, her only worth is in her breasts and between her thighs. She can’t have a face or head because then that means she has a brain and she starts to become a real representation of a human being with arms and legs. Limbs she can use to avoid or fight the warrior-wanna-bes who have no idea what it means to sacrifice a limb, let alone a life to protect their community including the women who they should have been raised to respect as far more than sex objects. This plaque is nothing more than a masturbatory visual aid for use.

At this point my first thought (especially after that last line) was to ask the authoress if she happened to own any “masturbatory aids” herself. Because, honestly, any woman who happens to own something that reduces a man down to nothing more than a 6-12″ piece of plastic has got literally no right to complain about “men reducing women’s bodies to masturbation aids.” And if she doesn’t, then congratulations ma’am, you’re not yet a hypocrite and I will be expecting a post from you also decrying the use of dildos by women forth width.

For those curious, here is the “decor” in question. Sadly I have not found the seller.

So, you know, not the worst thing out there. It appears to be some sort of casting, in which case they’ve done a pretty good job. I’ve watched videos about doing that sort of thing and it’s pretty complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. Nothing is horribly out of proportion and the designs seem well done as well. I mean, given I can go on amazon and find something that is at least five times more lewd, this seems fairly tasteful in comparison. I wouldn’t hang it around the kids, but it’s not like leaving a bunch of porn mags on the coffee table. To me anyways. And given the absolute dearth of headless, limbless statues of women and men in the historical record…

Not only is that an insult to women, it’s an insult to the valkyrie, and an insult to the religion. While we might have a few references to marriage rites where a hammer was used to help bless a woman for fertility in the marriage, the valkyrie are not connected to Thor, nor were they connected to fertility in women. it’s wrong. it’s an abomination.

What are we, protestant christians now? I mean, for someone complaining about “evil attitudes from the culture at large” you could forgive me for thinking back to my baptist childhood where anything remotely lewd was considered an abhorrent sin, and how dare you sexualize women’s bodies!!! A far cry from the more, libertine, Asatru of my youth. As for complaining that “Thor has nothing to do with the valkyries” all I can say is Mjolnir has become the default symbol of our religion so putting it on something Norse related is basically the same as putting a cross on some christian artwork. Always correct? No. Horrific blasphemy worthy of being shot? Hardly.

But, and here’s a black pill that is part of why I might be writing this post. I was reading through a conversation about porn and women, and someone asked if “porn didn’t degrade women into sex objects,” and the reply was (for me) thought provoking and interesting. “No,” the anon replied, “porn raises women up into sex objects.”

On the most basic level, the human race divides into two genders: a) women who exist as sexual objects of reproduction and b) men who exist as sexual and disposable objects to gather resources for reproduction. That is literally it. Everything that exists, exists on this foundation. Men exist to fund reproduction, and women exist to enact reproduction.

Getting mad that women are viewed as sexual objects, even in todays society, is fucking stupid. Actually, especially in today’s society. In this glorious age of “attempted gender equality” the only thing that separates men and women is literally sex and reproduction. Any job a woman does, can also be done by a man. The only exception to this is, well, childbirth. Yet, if we look at society as a whole we find an ever growing gap between men and women. And, if we get right down to it, an ever growing number of men are doing just as feminists wanted, they are no longer viewing women as sexual objects.

Instead, they are viewing them as threats. Threats to careers (as women are given jobs over men), threats to safety (as claims of sexual harassment and rape sky rocket), and many other paths. To a growing number of men, women are nothing more than much more bitchy, weaker, unstable men who offer literally nothing except demands for special treatment and threats, both socially, politically, privately, and publicly, and who have the backing of powerful organizations and the state to carry out those threats. The only thing standing in the way of this attitude growing more accepted more quickly is…pretty much only female sexuality. If it wasn’t for porn and “masturbation aids” like the above decor, more men would forget there’s something beautiful about women and just see a bunch of screeching, demanding harpies out for blood (and money).

And, hilariously on some levels, porn is starting to lose that battle as more and more men turn away from it and things like #thotaudit grow as movements every day.

And while this plaque doesn’t depict it, another depiction of valkyries in art that shows up often is that of female warriors wearing “boob armor” which would kill them with one good blow: a solid thunk to the boob armor would force the metal divet between their breasts to impact the sternum most likely causing it to fracture, and bone splinters would then pierce the heart and lung. Good armor is designed to not just block penetration of a weapon or minimize the impact of a crushing blow, but also is designed to redirect the blow. Boob armor essentially redirects the blade to a perfect kill shot. They weren’t going around in mid-riff exposing skimpy chainmail bikinis either. And of course horned or winged helmets would throw off a person’s balance, so they’re impractical in combat. I grow so weary of seeing them as accoutrements in artistic depictions. They would simply put be dressed like the men. In clothing functional to the task at hand and weather, in armor equally functional.

Case in fucking point. This is one entire, long, paragraph complaining about artistic expression. “Waah, it’s not functional! I hate it! Make it go away!!!!!” And yes, I know I’m being an absolute dick here, but I’m a comic book nerd who had to endure the last two decades of people stripping out everything fun and sexy and cool from my comics because of this exact bullshit. First off, THEY ARE FUCKING VALKYRIES! Assuming they don’t already count as “dead” and thus “cannot be killed” you’re ignoring the fact these are divine beings to whom the laws of human biology do not exactly apply. This would be like complaining it’s unrealistic for Thor to take an entire mag to his bare chest, despite the fact he is a God whose flesh is strong enough to take impacts hundreds of times harder and still keep going like nothing happen. Complaining that “le boob plate would shatter a valkyries sternum” is on the same freaking level of stupid.

This is, of course, disregarding that said armor most likely has magical qualities which boost it’s protections probably to the point the armor itself doesn’t even matter. Or that their outfits are probably ceremonial in nature because who the flying fuck is going to try and kill a valkyrie. But noooooo, no fun is allowed. We have to “respect wamyns” and “not into lewd” despite the fact the Norse and the Aesir are a society completely at home with their sexuality and embrace it. And the fact that if you go back in human history, it was completely common to find people fighting in the absolute nude.

And I’m not even going to get into how 90% of the time Mordgud looks like she walked out of a Boris vallejo panting while she’s guarding the Gjallarbru…

The word valkyrie is composed of two Old Norse words. The first valr means ‘corpses on the battlefield’ and the second kjosa means ‘to choose,’ thus the word valkyrie means ‘those who choose the slain.’ Most of the valkyrie are named for various weapons and accessories of warfare. These aren’t ‘babes’ these are women who very much could kill you. And while Odin, and Freya both received battle-slain, there is nothing, anywhere that says all the battle-slain go to them. We don’t really know Their criteria for accepting warriors to their halls, but when Freya gets half the slain who are chosen for the halls, do you really want a reputation of not respecting women and then finding yourself facing a Goddess?

We are literally talking about the Goddess who sold her body to four dwarves over a necklace. A necklace, for four days of dwarf sex. And if I remember correctly, this wasn’t “you get me one time” dwarf sex, this was “you have 24 hours to bang the hell out of me each as much as you can” dwarf sex. These being pureborn dwarves, by the way, who were born of maggots. And before you get mad at me, the other Gods gave her shit for doing that. Like, a lot of shit. Soooooo, I honestly don’t think she’s really going to say much about it. And trying to use her as an example of…upstanding morality based on “respecting” women…when she get’s first pick on half the slain that go to Asgard, and a lot of those guys probably raped a fair number of women?

Talk about bringing in “the culture’s” baggage.

Additionally the whole “do you want a reputation of disrespecting women when you face a goddess” thing isn’t even about respecting women. All you’re doing at that point is using fear, not respect or anything actually worthy of being respected. Putting a gun to someone’s had and screaming “respect me!” isn’t going to earn you their respect. Fear, sure, but hardly respect.

Also, who the fuck actually thinks that a woman who can kill you can’t also be a babe? Seriously, the fuck kinda sexist idea is that? If anything, it shows our authoress has actually no idea whatsoever about how men think, much less think about women. If anything, the fact a woman could kill you, much less an entire army, is generally nothing more than a turn on.

In addition to Freya’s roles in connection to both warriors and skill with magic, we also have other female figures doing non-typical “female gender roles”: the Goddesses of Hlin and Syn who guard the meadhall and the guests. Two female Powers do this, not males. Skadhi is fiercely independent, skilled archer, and has no problem standing before the Holy Powers and demanding Her due.

And literally the first due Skadi demanded was to have Baldr, the most beautiful, hottest, big dick mother fucker in Asgard as her husband. So do not, I repeat, do no try and play it that Skadi does not into the lewd. Because believe me, Skadi most certainly can into the lewd. I mean, she literally picked her husband, Njord, based on having the most attractive feet! FEET DAMN IT!

Skjaldmær or shield-maidens, pop up from time to time in the lore. In Saxo Grammaticus we have a description of Viking women who “dressed themselves to look like men, and devoted almost every instant of their lives to the pursuit of war…” these fierce women “offered war rather than kisses” and “assailed men with their spears whom they could have melted with their looks.” Adam of Bremen recounts as he chronicles the Hamburg-Bremen archdiocese that an area near lake Malaren in a nothern region of Sweden was inhabited by war-like women. Unfortunately he doesn’t clarify what he means by war-like.

Yes, and for every Lagertha we have at least one to  two Aslaugs. You know, women who used their beauty, sexuality, and magic to get what they wanted by, you know, being into lewd. And as for “war like women” being near a archdiocese, if we base shit off of christian views, that probably meant they knew how to use an axe and spear, not that they were the long lost tribe of amazons who don’t need no man between their chaste, virgin legs!

Now, valkyries do seem to have some aspects in the lore that appear to be part of the much greater disir tradition, of which other roles such as the norns and the weaving of fates, fylgja, seeresses (volvas) and prophecy interconnect. To my mind all this points back to how women were revered by the Northern Tradition peoples as being holy, imbued with magical power, and with a special ability to prophecy, a reverence which endured from ancient Germania and through history into Scandinavia until the rise of Christianity. So while the nuances of the complete role of the valkyries, and the exact nature and prevalence of shield-maidens may be long contested by scholars, it doesn’t negate the fact that women were respected. And sexualizing them as headless torsos, is absolutely, abhorrent. So when you see such ridiculousness call it out. This is not normal, but rather harmful. Nor should we ever find the attitude women are only good for brewing and serving the mead and to fuck ever be acceptable within our religious traditions.

Again, authoress, I am eagerly awaiting your “anti-dildo” rant based on this paragraph.

Now, should we accept the attitude that “women are only good for brewing, serving, and fucking” into Asatru? No. But in a very, very black humor sort of way, I want to say that women have to prove they can be good for those things, just like every man has to prove he is good at whatever he is supposed to be good at. Respect and positions aren’t just given. I’m not going to give a woman the job of brewing mead simply because she is a woman, but because she can brew good mead. Again, I’m not going to just let her serve it unless I know she can be trusted to serve it (I’ve seen too many fucking horror stories about servers in restaurants to blindly trust shit!). And again I’m not going to trust a woman to fuck me just because she is a woman, but because she is a woman of honor and loyalty. I don’t think we should just believe women are only good for these things, I think we should insist that women prove they are good for these things just as they prove they are good for all things. Or, too put it in MGTOW terms “no free pussy passes.”

That being said, and in all seriousness, we should respect our kinsmen and kinswomen in faith. But respecting them also doesn’t mean denying them shit either. Insisting that women “brewing, serving, and fucking” is the height of disrespect, that viewing women as sexual objects is the height of disrespect, and that (gods forbid) we make fucking art related however tangentially to women and (gasp!) sex, and viewing these things with desire and/or in a positive light deserves (what, execution?) is just as asinine if not more so. Vilifying women’s sexuality is the exact shit that Christians and Muslims do, and vilifying male sexuality because it appreciates female sexuality is the shit feminists pull. It is not something our ancestors ever did. You want to talk about carrying over toxic shit from other cultures, talk the fuck about that. Do not bring that shit in here. If men and women want to fuck at the dinner table, you let them fuck at the (proverbial) dinner table!

But seriously, I want to see an anti-dildo post at least as long and researched as this one was and how it’s an insult to the men and gods of our faith. Why? Because fuck the double standard, that’s why. And I wanna see what happens when women get told off like guys were being told off in this fucking post. I think it would be fucking hilarious.

 

Hela Bless