Are Artemis and her Hunters attracted to anyone? What's their sexuality?
We all know that Artemis and her Hunters swore celibacy for the rest of their lives and if anyone were to get involved in any romantic or sexual relations (mostly sexual) then Artemis wouldn't have tolerated it.
I feel it's disrespectful to assume someone's sexuality if it's very unclear what it is. But since there's a lot of speculation about this, I have to take a look.
Now, if you see a girl flirting with a boy or getting intimate with him or the other way around, you could assume that he/she is either straight or maybe bisexual. If you see a girl flirting with a girl or getting intimate with her or in the same case as a boy would with another boy, you could assume that they are lesbian/gay or maybe bisexual. The point is, there are some near to obvious tellings of a person's sexuality in a social or work place. You see day to day interactions with people of different genders.
You see how sexualities would be hard to identify if Artemis and her Hunters hunt in the woods alone and rarely have interactions with other men or woman. So this is just a bit of theorizing who they might be attracted to.
First of all, if identifying as a different gender was accepted back then (which maybe it was) then we would treat them as the gender they identify as. If Artemis's Hunters can only be woman, then if someone born a woman identifies as a man, they are a man. Period. Which means that they can not join the Hunters of Artemis. Assuming people had a say in their gender in those times of course, then every Hunter would have to identify as female. Artemis probably wouldn't have accepted anyone who identified as a male regardless of who they were born as, and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have accepted anyone who was binary as well.
Next, since we can come to the conclusion that every Hunter identifies as a female, we still have to figure out if they're straight, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual, (I am aware there are more sexualities but these are the ones with the most speculations and what applies to these would apply to others). Like I said before, the Hunters have only so much interaction with the outside world. We would have to check their interaction with each other first.
Artemis is very intolerant about intimate relations and would obviously kill the Hunter who would defy their vows. So even falling in love with each other and showing intimacy would be guaranteed to have Artemis turn you into some bear and kill you. But just because it isn't allowed doesn't mean they aren't lesbians, you can't control who someone is attracted to. But it's mentioned so many times that the Hunters were like family, they were sisters who lived together, took care of each other. All of the idealistic sibling things that usually don't always happen in real life. So I find it hard that they could be so tight in sisterhood but still have romantic feelings for each other. It's obviously possible that some are still lesbian, but I don't think it's the majority so I'm going to rule out that possibility. Bisexuality is definitely more of a possibility but still not majority in my understanding.
Now, we're going to have to focus on Artemis a bit. I would say that she isn't very fond of men, she possibly hates them. Her father's wife, Hera, was the reason that her mother was tortured for so long. Artemis looked at the struggles her mother faced giving birth to Apollo and decided she was going to be a virgin goddess because of everything that woman in those times had to go through. She may have projected her anger on Hera onto Zeus for letting her mother go through all of this stuff. Rape was very common in those times and we know how majority of the rapists in the gods' times were mostly, if not all, men. Artemis being the protector of woman (virgin woman especially) would have hated men for what they did.
But then came along Orion, he was the handsomest man ever, a great hunter, and was very respectful to Artemis. If she was straight or bisexual, then why would she not be attracted. Sure, they were great hunting buddies and great friends, but I say that she was attracted. They obviously didn't engage in sexual relationships but she was still attracted. Until Apollo tricked Artemis into killing Orion, from then on, maybe Artemis didn't want to get close to anymore men.
Remember that time when a Hunter engaged in intercourse (with consent) with another man, she was killed when Artemis came to know of it. She also killed one of her Hunters who was a rape victim, though she did kill the rapist as well. So to Artemis, it doesn't matter who you are attracted to, you do not let that be known, nor do you have sexual relationships or even those without consent.
I came to the conclusion that majority of the Hunters are straight because of the situations they are living in, some of them could be asexual. Artemis is probably asexual and is not attracted to anyone under any circumstances and if she was, she wouldn't engage in intercourse.
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I'm also aware that many say that the Hunters of Artemis could have been lesbians and that the group was a safe place for lesbians. If that is the case, (I have not researched that far) then it's very much possible. It's just that in those times, I was under the impression that men could afford to be more free of their sexualities than woman.
I also apologize if I offended anyone with a misusage of any term and I will gladly edit that out if you tell me where and why.
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Let me know if you agree with my reasoning but/or you still believe that the Hunters had a variety of sexualities. I will now rest my fingers for a while.
-Wirelo
Chief Journalist: Daily Olympus
