Here’s a third piece of artwork to complete my trilogy of artist themed posts. This is entitled Femdom Goddesses 2 (free deviant art login required) and is by the artist humon.
According to humon’s notes on it, Ishtar was..
…a Babylonian goddess of sex and prostitution, and was know as the concubine of the gods. But though she had many many many lovers she was also quite cruel to them, and the less powerful ones ended up as her slaves or died.
That sounds like my kind of Goddess. The other pair on the left is, according to some Jewish texts, the first man and woman. Lilith apparently wouldn’t do as she was told and tried to rule Adam. Eve was therefore a backup plan for Adam, created with all Lilith’s sass taken out. Obviously the guys (and no doubt it was guys) creating the original version of that story wanted to send a pretty clear message about what they thought correct female behavior was.
The word ‘goddess’ in this context is interesting, if you agree with feminist author Jessica Benjamin when she says:
“Erotic masochism or submission expresses the same need for transcendence of self…formerly satisfied and expressed by religion.”
I’m glad you pointed that out, as it reminds me of a post I want to write linking religion and kink! Thanks. Camille Paglia had a couple of interesting comments in that context, and I’ve been meaning to get back to them for ages now. I do very much agree with that view on the transcendence of self.
-paltego