Day Nine: Deity Gender

I think deities, as beings outside of our comprehension, do not have gender. I think gender is either assumed or communicated to us through whatever ways deities communicate. Or some combination of the two. I think some deities are both assumed to be women and "show" themselves to worshipers as women because of cultural norms, for example.

Of course, their are deities that are assumed to be different genders in different places or under different circumstances. The most famous one being Loki, who is both a shapeshifter and genderfluid/sex-fluid (since primary and secondary sex characteristics also change). There are also deities that were worshiped in some places as gods and other places as goddesses. An example being Attar from various ancient Semitic religions.

I generally refer to deities by the gender we know them as from mythology or surviving texts/archaeological sources. If my view of them differs, I'll keep it to myself, I don't really want my UPG to influence how other people view the gods. I generally don't assign genders to local land spirits.

As for sexuality, since that isn't addressed in any other prompt, I don't really like to impose modern understandings of sexuality onto ancient texts, nor would I want to impose human ideas of sexuality onto the gods. I'm usually careful to say things like "Apollon is portrayed in mythology as having both male and female lovers" than to say "Apollon is bisexual". The various lovers of various genders is an observable fact. Saying he's bisexual is assigning an identity.