epicene-writings:

Medusa concept

(Just an exploration of Medusa’s story)

Since Medusa was a priestess who was raped in Athena’s temple and was given the “monstruous” gift of turning people who looked at her into stone…

What if Poseidon actually raped her while “being” a statue that was inside the temple? I mean, we know Greek gods love to transform into…… various things to rape women so….

This would explain how he got into the temple in the first place, and would shed a… terrifying light on her “curse” while being a pretty accurate metaphor of sexual trauma imo. Like – we know that Athena cursing Medusa for desecrating her temple is a misogynistic reconstruction of the myth and that it was actually bound to protect Medusa from future assaults (with Medusa’s head being a symbol for women’s houses & shelters). But what if Medusa misunderstood the curse or… somehow made it herself?

She would turn every person (cough man cough) who stared at her into a statue, thus reliving her trauma each time which is… something that happens to rape survivors and would be ironic because it would both make them unable to harm her and similar to her rapist (so, a case of both externalisation and retraumatization)

Now i know greek statues actually had eyes and not just the… blank unnerving white thing we see them having, but still – a statue’s eyes are just… chiseled void. Which means she had seen the statue’s blank stare becoming an actual stare and, after that, could turn any living stare into a blank stone one. Is it a good or a bad thing? I guess it depends on how you understand it

I find it pretty symmetrical this way because, after all, the gods are creative and their “curses” are usually just the cursed person’s behavior reversed into a punishment or gratification. So that would explain the fact she turns living breathing people into statues

Anyway. I’m done with mythology ramblings