But not by herself. In every culture, the Goddess has many lovers. This exposes another weakness in our later understanding of her role as the Great Mother. To the children of patriarchy, “mother” always includes “wife”; Mother is the woman who is married to Father. That puts a further constraint on the idea of the good mother. The good mother does not fuck around. She does not even choose the one man she does have, but is chosen by Father. Hence the insoluble paradox of the Goddess for the custodians of succeeding moralities—she was always unmarried and never chaste. Among Eskimos, her title
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