Hi I'm Mike Rugnetta, this is Crashcourse Mythology and today, rather than focus on how the earth and what's around it was created, we're going to look specifically at what's on it, more specifically people, and even more specifically, men and women.

People.

Also the occasional animal.

No, not you Thoth.

You're a god with an animal head, it's different.

Anyway, we're going to see how myths explain our origins and our relationships with each other, or at least how they try to explain them.

It's couples therapy, myth style.

Myths don't usually incorporate contemporary ideas of gender fluidity, although sometimes they do — Tireisias, ancient seer, I'm looking at you.

As we've seen from the Chinese and Zoroastrian creation stories, myths often tend to focus on dualities, or binaries, and one of the key ones we find is a distinction between men and women.

And this binary opposition frequently sets women as subordinate to men, at least on earth.