Tag: greek mythology

epicene-street-light:

epicene-street-light:

ok but can you imagine a worse, more terrifying fate than medusa’s one? just imagine. first of all you’re raped in your goddess’ temple. which, apart from the obvious trauma, means you can’t keep doing what you devoted your entire life to. your goddess gifts you with the ability to turn those you look at into stone and your hair into snakes so that you can defend yourself and be a threat rather than a victim to men. and then?????? a fucking MAN decides hes gonna hunt you down and slaughter you for…. sport like just because he can?????? and not only does he kill you but he keeps your head as a weapon???????? effectively using you and your body for his own purpose exactly like your rapist??????????????? like??? and this man is considered a hero while you’ll be remembered as a monstruous, dangerous entity???????????????????? medusa deserved better smh

i want to emphasize the fact that i just checked ovid’s metamorphoses again and every occurrence of medusa’s name is, in fact, said by perseus or used to characterize him. its not enough to have her raped and slaughtered; we also need to remove her completely from history, to the point she’s not even given her own story. we only learn about her story via perseus who explains in a single sentence where his weapon comes from, emphasizing the “danger” that she was & how clever he was – without mentioning why he went to murder her in the first place. after that, there are about 12 or 15 occurrences of her name – each time referring to her head used as a weapon by perseus, i.e as a lifeless object strapped from her humanity and personal identity, a part of her body used by a man for his personal desire, i.e exactly the same depersonalization process that lead to her being raped.

:))

special thanks to @uncarnetmaisvirtuel for the additional info about why Perseus decided to kill her on the first place and like….. i didnt know this could get any worse but it do lmao

epicene-street-light:

ok but can you imagine a worse, more terrifying fate than medusa’s one? just imagine. first of all you’re raped in your goddess’ temple. which, apart from the obvious trauma, means you can’t keep doing what you devoted your entire life to. your goddess gifts you with the ability to turn those you look at into stone and your hair into snakes so that you can defend yourself and be a threat rather than a victim to men. and then?????? a fucking MAN decides hes gonna hunt you down and slaughter you for…. sport like just because he can?????? and not only does he kill you but he keeps your head as a weapon???????? effectively using you and your body for his own purpose exactly like your rapist??????????????? like??? and this man is considered a hero while you’ll be remembered as a monstruous, dangerous entity???????????????????? medusa deserved better smh

i want to emphasize the fact that i just checked ovid’s metamorphoses again and every occurrence of medusa’s name is, in fact, said by perseus or used to characterize him. its not enough to have her raped and slaughtered; we also need to remove her completely from history, to the point she’s not even given her own story. we only learn about her story via perseus who explains in a single sentence where his weapon comes from, emphasizing the “danger” that she was & how clever he was – without mentioning why he went to murder her in the first place. after that, there are about 12 or 15 occurrences of her name – each time referring to her head used as a weapon by perseus, i.e as a lifeless object strapped from her humanity and personal identity, a part of her body used by a man for his personal desire, i.e exactly the same depersonalization process that lead to her being raped.

:))

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