Considering the issues and controversies related to the demonic and religious themes in early Magic, I would bet my left arm that WOTC / Hasbro’s lawyers were heavily involved in the wording and presentation of fictional deities in modern Magic cards. I am sure that they wanted to create the world of Theros without the threat of needless negative publicity.
Also, you have to remember that the Gods genders weren't that established, particularly among Romans, which had a less "corporeal" and more "ideal" vision of the gods. I have failed to find it but in Latin classes we had to translate a pray to Jupiter that refered to him as "You that can be a man, or a woman, or neither if that's what you want".
They could still be named goddess and have type God, just like Bogbrew Witch is called witch, and not Wizard.
Witches in Magic are not female wizards, nor are wizards female witches. There are female wizards and male witches. A witch is a Black-aligned wizard or shaman.
Goddess should have been used instead of god, since they are female entities. Truth is that they probably never thought of that, and of course they won't admit it. It skiped design..
Are you people just not reading the thread?
God is correct. God is not an inherently masculine term unless we are talking about YHWH or contrasting it with the word goddess. Do you see every single mention of the Greek pantheon use "gods and goddesses"? No, you see both that and, more often, the much more convenient "gods". It is shorter to say "gods" than "gods and goddesses", it makes card cycle names more consistent, and it drops the rather silly idea of referring to 100 foot tall enchantments by different titles according to whether they look like human females or not.
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Witches in Magic are not female wizards, nor are wizards female witches. There are female wizards and male witches. A witch is a Black-aligned wizard or shaman.
mistmeadow witch
Not necessarily black aligned. (admittedly, all non-black witches are from lorwyn though)
A witch in magic as far as I've seen is just a spellcaster who is more in tune with nature.
That is, witches use herbal remedies, boil stuff in pots, blood sacrifices, etc for spells.
Wizards are your typical warlock/necromancer/harry potter spellslinger types.
Shamans of course use more focus on summoning elementals, spirits, animating lands etc.
But yeah, you are right that either no one read the thread or they just want to stir up controversy. Feminism is a hot button issue online nowadays and they might just be trolls trying to get some people riled up.
"God" is correct. The term goddess came into use around 1350 - in other words the ancient greeks called both male and female deities God.
God only became gendered when it became synonymous with "He," "Him," and other capitalized male-gender pronouns due to Jewish and Christian belief in a single male God overseeing the world and all that is in it. Before this became the standard of how God and religious beliefs were handled due to the spread of Christianity over Most of the known world most terms for deities were not gendered that way.
The language has evolved so God is male, and Goddess is the exception to the rule, but if you are setting your world in an ANCIENT GREEK THEMED UNIVERSE then the answer is that God is the term for deities, gendered or not. Full. Stop. To use the term Goddess would be incorrect for the lore of the setting.
The term goddess is sexist because it differentiates between the two sexes when the sex of the god shouldn't have anything to do with their status. Yes, it's part of the English language, but that doesn't make it not sexist. People are starting to come around though. For example, many 'actresses' now prefer to be known as 'actors'.
In the end, this is really a non-issue, and I wouldn't be offended no matter which term Wizards went with. I just wanted to point out the irony of people saying Wizards not using the term 'goddess' is sexist.
Nowadays, anything you want to consider "sexist", will be sexist.
Three male gods and two females? That could be considered sexist.
Right, but I'm just arguing over the literal definitions of the words, which are provably sexist just by virtue that there are two words for the same thing depending on gender.
It's not really about sexism (or at least I hope it isn't because that's just plain stupid). You're making a set based on the greek gods so why are you messing up such a basic thing that made them who and what they were (ie gender). The greek gods were constantly talked about by their gender
Ancient Greece did not differentiate between male and female gods in their language because pre-Christianity, the word "God" was not assumed to refer to a male. English adopted "Goddess" in an effort to clarify this.
Right, but I'm just arguing over the literal definitions of the words, which are provably sexist just by virtue that there are two words for the same thing depending on gender.
same thing with actor and actress. No need to call a female actor actress. But main stream media control whats in and whats out, that might not change (still doesn't make it right).
Just like others in this thread have said GOD IS the right word as this set is based upon
Greco-Roman mythology to an extent and the gods in that mythology were almost always gods and not gods and goddesses,it only is in other religions such as Christianity and Judaism that the distinction is made, And yes it is sexist to make that distinction in the first place.
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So we have some people complaining that the new archon is female and some other people complaining that they should have referred to the female divine beings as "goddess"
First of all, I think it was established that "goddess" didn't fit on the card
Second of all, why does this, or the new archon, matter? Some of you really have too much time on their hand (and I'm typing this while at work!)
The term goddess is sexist because it differentiates between the two sexes when the sex of the god shouldn't have anything to do with their status. Yes, it's part of the English language, but that doesn't make it not sexist. People are starting to come around though. For example, many 'actresses' now prefer to be known as 'actors'.
In the end, this is really a non-issue, and I wouldn't be offended no matter which term Wizards went with. I just wanted to point out the irony of people saying Wizards not using the term 'goddess' is sexist.
I'm not going to debate the bolded further than in this post
The bolded is something I just cannot ignore: it is NOT sexist to refer to a female divine being as a goddess. Just NO. The representation of the being is clearly meant to be identified as a female: nature and the sea are usually associated to feminin (el mar or la mar Hemingway would argue!) and there is nothing inherently wrong in recognizing it. WotC chose to go with God rather than Goddess for practical measures: Goddess did not fit and it is also a well-intended, thoughtful measure to avoid having to deal with people who think that everything and everyone in the universe is the same and should be treated the same.
Differentiating between the sexes is NOT sexist; in fact I'd argue that stating that there should be no difference between men and women in language and culture to be much, much more offensive intellectually than someone using the word Goddess to refer to a FEMALE representation of a divine being. Neither is ideal but we are imperfect beings: rather than try to fix that cannot be fixed, accept and deal with the real world.
To me, the point seems to be that Theros isn't Earth, or Greece. Using "God" for all deities rather than "God" or "Goddess" as gender dictates is a simple way to establish that these gods are not quite the same thing as gods as we know them.
The Gods of Theros may not be sexual beings at all. They're entities from Nyx, beings of pure magic. Unlike Earthly gods, they don't go around having lots of romantic drama and screwing mortals. It's been said in one of the articles that the creative team knew this was a key part of the myths of ancient Greece and they deliberately decided not to go there.
I think the point of this language choice is to give the setting a just slightly alien feel, to subtly cue people in that their intuitions about ancient Greek/Roman gods may not be applicable, and thereby add an air of mystery.
Well, if they do born of the gods, and the god's kids are all two color combinations...wouldn't that mean this set would get a lot more realistically greek?
Perhaps there will be cards that interact with the GOD type and it makes rules text smaller and simpler if just one of the two are used? Seems like the logical thing to me
This guy knows what's up. I'm 100 percent certain he is correct. I'm sure the word 'Goddess' crossed their mind, but in the end it was probably just deemed better to use the word God, for mechanics reasons.
I'm not going to debate the bolded further than in this post
The bolded is something I just cannot ignore: it is NOT sexist to refer to a female divine being as a goddess. Just NO. The representation of the being is clearly meant to be identified as a female: nature and the sea are usually associated to feminin (el mar or la mar Hemingway would argue!) and there is nothing inherently wrong in recognizing it. WotC chose to go with God rather than Goddess for practical measures: Goddess did not fit and it is also a well-intended, thoughtful measure to avoid having to deal with people who think that everything and everyone in the universe is the same and should be treated the same.
Differentiating between the sexes is NOT sexist; in fact I'd argue that stating that there should be no difference between men and women in language and culture to be much, much more offensive intellectually than someone using the word Goddess to refer to a FEMALE representation of a divine being. Neither is ideal but we are imperfect beings: rather than try to fix that cannot be fixed, accept and deal with the real world.
Here's why "Goddess" is sexist. Because God, in the Christian faith, is an all powerful all knowing all capable definitely male figure. And as a result, a derivation in the language was made so that female divine beings had to be given a different name because they definitely weren't as all capable as He who is called I am. That God, as a proactive and active figure of creation was clearly a masculine figure (part of western culture's separation of positive masculine aspects from negative feminine aspects).
The early Germanic word God was simply 'deity' and had no gender to it, other languages had similar gender neutral applications of the concept. Having the difference isn't sexist, the reason for the difference is.
No, it is not sexist in any way; sexism is when a person believes that one sex is inherently superior to another sex or when a person make derogatory comments about a person's sex, and the word "goddess" does not meet either of those criteria.
If you do put in Goddess, then you are assuming male is the default and females are an exception, which makes you a sexist.
Again, that is completely wrong; in no way, shape, or form am I presuming that males are the default and that females are the exception, so how did you form that idea?
There's absolutely nothing sexist about it, it's just correct. They are female dieties, therefore they are "god-desses".
In that case, why could WotC not simply use the word "deity," as they do in Dungeons and Dragons, as that word truly is a gender neutral word?
I myself am a very egalitarian person, for I never make any comments or presumptions about people based upon their sex alone, and I definitely consider men and women to be social equals, but I simply do not like this practice by WotC, as it simply does not feel right, to me; to me, it seems inherently wrong to not use the word "goddess" when it would be so appropriate to do so, so I intend to use that word, even if other people do not approve of that practice, because I have freedom of speech, something that I do not allow anyone to impede.
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Bread Connoisseur brought up another important point: If they're going to print more gods with the same name format, they can't exactly waste space on using a bigger word.
How really now? God is a neutral term to describe a deity that has no gender. But that's not the case here, there are male and female ''gods''. In plural you are going to use the term ''gods'' since the male term in plural includes the female. If you have a simpleton god that is also a female then you call it goddess, that's why the word exists and is used. Another example from the language ''male dog''=dog, ''female dog''=*****, ''many dogs''=dogs. It's like calling a waitress, waiter instead, we will get what you mean but it is still a bad use of words.
No, God is a term to describe any deity. Where on Earth did you get the idea that it must be used for deities without gender?
Your dog example is wrong and demonstrates exactly the issue here. Most people call a female dog a dog (And I say this as the owner of one). They do it because she's a dog. Same thing here: A female deity can either be called a god or a goddess. She can be called a god because she's a god.
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Here's why "Goddess" is sexist. Because God, in the Christian faith, is an all powerful all knowing all capable definitely male figure. And as a result, a derivation in the language was made so that female divine beings had to be given a different name because they definitely weren't as all capable as He who is called I am. That God, as a proactive and active figure of creation was clearly a masculine figure (part of western culture's separation of positive masculine aspects from negative feminine aspects).
The early Germanic word God was simply 'deity' and had no gender to it, other languages had similar gender neutral applications of the concept. Having the difference isn't sexist, the reason for the difference is.
Actually, there is a Japanese manga series entitled Ah, My Goddess!, which is not exactly identical to that, but very similar, so some people do, indeed, say that phrase.
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“Those who would trade their freedoms for security will have neither.”-Benjamin Franklin
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
It's especially egregious when you look at the foreign translations for Thassa and Nylea; all of them use the feminine term.
Are you people just not reading the thread?
God is correct. God is not an inherently masculine term unless we are talking about YHWH or contrasting it with the word goddess. Do you see every single mention of the Greek pantheon use "gods and goddesses"? No, you see both that and, more often, the much more convenient "gods". It is shorter to say "gods" than "gods and goddesses", it makes card cycle names more consistent, and it drops the rather silly idea of referring to 100 foot tall enchantments by different titles according to whether they look like human females or not.
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mistmeadow witch
Not necessarily black aligned. (admittedly, all non-black witches are from lorwyn though)
A witch in magic as far as I've seen is just a spellcaster who is more in tune with nature.
That is, witches use herbal remedies, boil stuff in pots, blood sacrifices, etc for spells.
Wizards are your typical warlock/necromancer/harry potter spellslinger types.
Shamans of course use more focus on summoning elementals, spirits, animating lands etc.
But yeah, you are right that either no one read the thread or they just want to stir up controversy. Feminism is a hot button issue online nowadays and they might just be trolls trying to get some people riled up.
"God" is correct. The term goddess came into use around 1350 - in other words the ancient greeks called both male and female deities God.
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The language has evolved so God is male, and Goddess is the exception to the rule, but if you are setting your world in an ANCIENT GREEK THEMED UNIVERSE then the answer is that God is the term for deities, gendered or not. Full. Stop. To use the term Goddess would be incorrect for the lore of the setting.
In the end, this is really a non-issue, and I wouldn't be offended no matter which term Wizards went with. I just wanted to point out the irony of people saying Wizards not using the term 'goddess' is sexist.
Right, but I'm just arguing over the literal definitions of the words, which are provably sexist just by virtue that there are two words for the same thing depending on gender.
err wrong. see below.
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Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
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same thing with actor and actress. No need to call a female actor actress. But main stream media control whats in and whats out, that might not change (still doesn't make it right).
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
Only EDH:
Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
Greco-Roman mythology to an extent and the gods in that mythology were almost always gods and not gods and goddesses,it only is in other religions such as Christianity and Judaism that the distinction is made, And yes it is sexist to make that distinction in the first place.
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First of all, I think it was established that "goddess" didn't fit on the card
Second of all, why does this, or the new archon, matter? Some of you really have too much time on their hand (and I'm typing this while at work!)
I'm not going to debate the bolded further than in this post
The bolded is something I just cannot ignore: it is NOT sexist to refer to a female divine being as a goddess. Just NO. The representation of the being is clearly meant to be identified as a female: nature and the sea are usually associated to feminin (el mar or la mar Hemingway would argue!) and there is nothing inherently wrong in recognizing it. WotC chose to go with God rather than Goddess for practical measures: Goddess did not fit and it is also a well-intended, thoughtful measure to avoid having to deal with people who think that everything and everyone in the universe is the same and should be treated the same.
Differentiating between the sexes is NOT sexist; in fact I'd argue that stating that there should be no difference between men and women in language and culture to be much, much more offensive intellectually than someone using the word Goddess to refer to a FEMALE representation of a divine being. Neither is ideal but we are imperfect beings: rather than try to fix that cannot be fixed, accept and deal with the real world.
The Gods of Theros may not be sexual beings at all. They're entities from Nyx, beings of pure magic. Unlike Earthly gods, they don't go around having lots of romantic drama and screwing mortals. It's been said in one of the articles that the creative team knew this was a key part of the myths of ancient Greece and they deliberately decided not to go there.
I think the point of this language choice is to give the setting a just slightly alien feel, to subtly cue people in that their intuitions about ancient Greek/Roman gods may not be applicable, and thereby add an air of mystery.
This guy knows what's up. I'm 100 percent certain he is correct. I'm sure the word 'Goddess' crossed their mind, but in the end it was probably just deemed better to use the word God, for mechanics reasons.
Here's why "Goddess" is sexist. Because God, in the Christian faith, is an all powerful all knowing all capable definitely male figure. And as a result, a derivation in the language was made so that female divine beings had to be given a different name because they definitely weren't as all capable as He who is called I am. That God, as a proactive and active figure of creation was clearly a masculine figure (part of western culture's separation of positive masculine aspects from negative feminine aspects).
The early Germanic word God was simply 'deity' and had no gender to it, other languages had similar gender neutral applications of the concept. Having the difference isn't sexist, the reason for the difference is.
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Yes, that would have been the best solution, in my mind; surely, the word "goddess" would have not occupied too much additional space on their cards?
No, it is not sexist in any way; sexism is when a person believes that one sex is inherently superior to another sex or when a person make derogatory comments about a person's sex, and the word "goddess" does not meet either of those criteria.
Again, that is completely wrong; in no way, shape, or form am I presuming that males are the default and that females are the exception, so how did you form that idea?
In that case, why could WotC not simply use the word "deity," as they do in Dungeons and Dragons, as that word truly is a gender neutral word?
I myself am a very egalitarian person, for I never make any comments or presumptions about people based upon their sex alone, and I definitely consider men and women to be social equals, but I simply do not like this practice by WotC, as it simply does not feel right, to me; to me, it seems inherently wrong to not use the word "goddess" when it would be so appropriate to do so, so I intend to use that word, even if other people do not approve of that practice, because I have freedom of speech, something that I do not allow anyone to impede.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
No, God is a term to describe any deity. Where on Earth did you get the idea that it must be used for deities without gender?
Your dog example is wrong and demonstrates exactly the issue here. Most people call a female dog a dog (And I say this as the owner of one). They do it because she's a dog. Same thing here: A female deity can either be called a god or a goddess. She can be called a god because she's a god.
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Sigarda, Host of Herons: Enchantress' Enchantments
Jenara, Asura of War: ETB Value Town
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Global Punishment
Xenagos, God of Revels: Ramp, Sneak, & Heavy Hitters
Ghave, Guru of Spores: Dies_to_Doom_Blade's stax list
Edric, Spymaster of Trest: Donald's list
Actually, there is a Japanese manga series entitled Ah, My Goddess!, which is not exactly identical to that, but very similar, so some people do, indeed, say that phrase.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt