verymilkytea: kisu-no-hi: “Milking and birthing like a cow” That’s not nice to t

verymilkytea:

kisu-no-hi:

“Milking and birthing like a cow”

That’s not nice to talk about your son like that, Odin.

So Marvel!Oden is a TOTALLY MISOGYNISTIC DICKHEAD >:( I blame Marvel writers to be honest, this was uncalled for and seems like maybe OOC…Odin is a bad parent sure but this is outright malice and bigotry and that’s a whole other ballgame

Most of that section of Marvel’s Loki #4 is derived from the Lokasenna (Loki’s Quarrel) in the Poetic Edda, including Odin’s accusation above:

     Eight winters you were under the earth
     a milk cow and a woman,
     and didst there bear children.
     Unmanly thy soul must seem.

Loki (who spends the entire night being drunk & thoroughly nasty to everyone before Thor arrives and threatens to shut him up with Mjolnir), rejoinders with:

     They say that with spells, in Samsey once
     Like witches with charms didst thou work;
     And in witch’s guise, among men didst thou go;
     Unmanly thy soul must seem.

Context: a “milk cow” was apparently a Norse insult towards a man, accusing him of passive homosexuality and feminine cowardice. In regards to witches, Loki is accusing Odin of working women’s magic, and cross-dressing as a woman. They accuse each other of being “argr” (ergi) which in Norse society was the gravest insult towards a man under law, meaning all of the above; passive homosexuality (ACTIVE was okay, it’s the taking it like a woman that’s the insult), cowardice, lying, being like a female animal, being like a woman! Pretty fucking sexist >:(

It’s interesting to note in that (imo not very well written) scene in Loki #4, Loki’s rejoinder from the Lokasenna that Odin cross-dressed like a witch did not appear; Odin in Marvel comics tends to be pretty macho (and a real douche), whereas he has quite a few coded “female” traits in Norse mythology. Marvel’s Norse-verse also doesn’t divide types of magics into “masculine” and “feminine”.