#medusa and feminism

[animentality]

[guulabii]

from women in the picture: women, art and the power of looking by catherine mccormack

[patheticbookaddict]

Medusa

Lore has it, I was a maiden of poise.

Goddess Athena had mercy

and I was her maiden.

Lore has it, I was a miscreant.

Poseidon,

Oh, Neptune!

You marred me,

you defiled me,

you ravished me.

Had to beg for the mercy of the mother,

Oh, Minerva!

You knew it,

didn't you see?

I, your child was righteous,

innocent.

Oh, Athena!

You had no mercy,

neither of a goddess nor of a mother

or of a woman,

mercy.

My locks were no more beguiling,

you gave me the ropes of poison,

slithering snakes.

My eyes were not enchanting then,

they were malice,

malice enough,

enough to turn the flesh of mortal

hard, cold, dead and of stone.

I was trapped in the flesh of atrocious creature.

Lore has it, I was a monster.

Why not?

A misjudged victim was me,

a victim of the pride of two immortals.

Lore has it, I was killed.

Annihilated by the mortal son of Zeus.

I left the flesh and head behind,

but my soul still subsist.

I seek vengeance,

from the Gods.

04/08/23

[ihavehisdvds]

“Man kills woman who only attacks those who attack her. Holds head up in display of cowardice with eyes turned down and uses her head as a weapon because her power, even in death, was greater than his prowess in life.” - A modern opinion.

Original piece: Perseus with the head of Medusa, c. 1571, Benvenuto Cellini

The story of Medusa is convoluted. She was either cursed by Athena, her patron in the the temple that she served the goddess, for being “allowed to be” raped by Poseidon (who Athena had a horrific grudge against) or Medusa was given power at the goddess’ blessing (still kind of a curse?) to be the most fearful monster alive to protect her.

Either way…

[thenewwomensmovement]

[psychoanalysisandchill]

The wrathful glare of Kali and the callous gaze of Medusa – the emergence of the femme fatale in the female psyche.

Legend of Kali

In Hindu legend, goddess Durka and her helpers, the Matri goddesses, slay the demon Raktabīja, only to find out that the stains of Raktabīja’s blood act like seed on soil as every drop manifests another duplicate of him. Durka becomes enraged and summons Kali, whom then proceeds to slay and devour Raktabīja and his legion of duplicates. She dances on their corpses and parades around with Raktabīja slain head in her hand, securing the droplets of blood through holding a plate underneath it, so as to prevent further bleeding on the soil. Motivated by her insatiable fury, Kali proceeds with the destruction of all else that crosses her path, but after stepping on the corpse of Lord Shiva, Kali is struck by embarrassment and remorse as her supressed superego is released from her shadow and brings her back to her senses. Lord Shiva’s has the power to liberate Kali from her fury as he is the transcendent Self. He is the benevolent patriarch, yogi supreme, yet also husband and father, suggesting the achievement of harmonious balance between wordily duties and that of holy men. His anima, being integrated, is neither possessing him nor is it plaguing him as a result of repression. He neither falls prey to the manipulative trickery of deceitful women nor does he view women as disdainfully inferior sexual objects.  Only he can liberate Kali from her all-consuming misandry and soothe her sorrows.

Shiva’s non-threatening benevolence makes itself known through the act of laying underneath Kali’s feet. Possessed by wrath, Kali has lost sight of that which is holy. Without recognition of the benevolent aspects of Shiva, Kali’s fury is bound to drown the universe in her flames, however, Durka’s initial intention behind the summoning of Kali was to defeat Raktabīja and his legion of duplicates, rather than bring about the destruction of the universe.

Durka and the Matri goddesses are at loss at Raktabīja’s lack of chivalry in combat and the injustice of his supernatural power. They are the modern-day women whom get harassed by demonic and demeaning men despite enforcing their boundaries. Such men seek to dominate through ridicule rather than reason. The lack of decorum in both combat and dialogue makes the summoning of Kali inevitable for a woman as all else has failed to shield her vulnerability from the malevolence of a demonic beast.

In recent memory, Raktabīja and Poseidon manifested themselves as Harvey Weistein and Jeffrey Epstein, powerful demonic beasts, seeking to preserve their authority whilst uninterested in the discontinuation of their predatory behaviour. The faith in the punitive power of the rule of law arrests Kali from flooding the consciousness of their victims, making Durka and the Matri goddesses persevere in a civilized manner, unlike the instance in which 200 Indian women, armed with vegetable knifes, stones and chilli powder stormed the court hearing of gang-leader and rapist Akku Yadav, dismembering his genitals with a vegetable knife, robbing him of his phallus through a vengeful barbaric act of literal castration, dead in a matter of 15 minutes, leaving his lifeless corpse daggered by kitchen knives on the white marble floor of the court, in an exhibition of gore galore, resembling the sublime beauty of a transcendent piece of art in the eyes of Kali.

Legend of Medusa (Ovid´s version)

In Greek legend, Medusa is the sole mortal among three gorgon sisters, depicted as a beautiful maid with plentiful of potential suitors, longing for the reciprocation of her attention. She is brutally raped in the temple of Athena by God Poseidon as a result of the rejection of his advances. Enraged by the desacralization of her temple, Athena curses Medusa, turning her hair turned into snakes, metamorphosing her into a monstrous form armed with a glare that petrified anyone who dared to meet her eyes.

As if Medusa hadn’t suffered enough, she was later beheaded by demigod Perseus. Many men had tried to behead her prior to Perseus, but all had been turned into stone at the sight of her petrifying glare. Perseus however, was clever enough to stare into the mirror moments before the beheading, instead of in her eyes. As he flew over Libya with Medusa’s decapitated in his hands, blood dripped on the soil and snakes sprout from the droplets. Medusa’s head is later gifted to Athena, whom attaches it to her shield, supplying her with the power of Medusa’s deadly glare in combat.

The legend of Medusa is one of horrific injustice and betrayal. After the violation of her person through the act of rape, her boss, Athena, does the unimaginable: curse her. The ancient equivalent to the modern-day slut shame of a genuine victim of rape. The horrors of rape alone didn’t metamorphize her hair into serpents, it was that the aftermath of her rape was followed by the ultimate betrayal by a deity she had bestowed with trust.

If Kali’s fury has lit her heart on fire, then Athena’s betrayal has frozen Medusa’s heart into ice. In Kali, the Nietzschean will to power is alive and striving, but in Medusa it is nowhere to be found. Medusa, as a beautiful maiden was pure, pure in the sense that she couldn’t conceive of the unfathomable betrayal of Athena, thus when it dawned upon her   hope in both humanity and divinity was lost. Anyone who’s superego isn’t as disturbed as that of Athena and Poseidon will be overwhelmed by their conscience upon meeting Medusa’s gaze. The burden of her victimization is a collective bearing for all to carry, reminding us of the consequences of vicious cruelty.

Every young boy has looked into the eyes of Medusa as their, otherwise loving, mother coolly hit them with the “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed,” remark. Such disappointment, from women, causes a man to cringe in an instinctive act of clenching the gut muscles.

In yogic philosophy, masculine consciousness is associated with fire and believed to reside in the solar plexus. One believes to be speaking figuratively when alluding to bravery as “having guts” but embodied bravery, is quite literally impossible without having a strong presence in the gut area.

The act of cringing is the act of shame as a biological reaction rather than an emotion. Medusa’s ice-cold gaze, cursing one to cringe in shame, is the true extinguisher of a man’s masculine consciousness, making him think twice before he acts next time, however since Medusa has lost hope in the redeeming qualities of man, there will be no next time, whomever meeting her gaze is doomed to freeze for all eternity. The many men whom attempted to behead her prior to Perseus couldn’t bear the collective burden of a restless conscience and thus instinctively attempt to rescue their phallus from the prospect of psychic castration through beheading the source of their restlessness. Such an act of profanity, is nothing short from foolish desperation, a last resort for restoring balance in one’s psyche, bound to fail from the get go, which is why all men prior to Perseus freeze to stone upon their attempted murder.

Perseus only finds success through looking in the mirror at the moment of execution, sparing his phallus from castration as his conscience remains unaffected, but his heinous crime is not without consequence as Medusa’s spilled blood sprout to life venomous serpents on Libyan soil. Medusa is Mahsa Amini, as the Iranian morality police seem to mistake the beauty of a woman’s hair for poisonous serpents. The serpents sprung to life by Medusa’s blood are the many Iranian women unleashing the terror of their liberated hair upon the morality police. Nothing terrifies fundamentalist Islamists more than the emergence of their own anima, as it becomes projected upon an enchanting woman. 

Raktabīja’s blood stains produce duplicates as a reaction to fair female resistance, Medusa’s blood stains produce serpents as a reaction to horrific injustice and a cowardice murder. The moral of the story is that injustice and disrespect of self-assertion lay the groundworks in which mayhem may flourish.

Lastly, Athena attaching Medusa’s head to her shield is a ploy to harness the power of a victim’s hopeless disappointment and masquerade it as her own. Athena, despite being a deity, could impossibly freeze her opponents with her own gaze, as she created Medusa’s through initiating the destruction of her reputation. It is solely through a masquerade in which Athena cosplays victimhood that she can harness the powers of it.

[memoriesofthingspast]

👑🌻✨🐍🌒🎑🌚🥮🪲

[the-darkness-of-a-lamppost]

"Reading Ovid's Rapes"

Apollo and Daphne, Francesco Albani, 1615-1620, Louvre, Paris

"A woman reading Ovid faces difficulties. In the tradition of Western literature his influence has been great, yet even in his lifetime critics found his poetry disturbing because of the way he applied wit to unfunny circumstances. Is his style a virtue or a flaw? Like an audience watching a magician saw a lady in half, they have stared to see how it was done. I would like to draw attention to the lady.

"Consider Ovid's Metamorphoses, cast as a mythic history of the world: more than fifty tales of rape in its fifteen books (nineteen told at some length). Compare his Fasti, a verse treatment of the Roman religious calendar: eleven tales of rape in six books. These vary in their treatment; some are comic. In general, critics have ignored them, or traced their literary origins, or said they stood for something else or evidenced the poet's sympathy with women.

"But we must ask how we are to read texts, like those of Ovid, that take pleasure in violence - a question that challenges not only the canon of Western literature but all representations. If the pornographic is that which converts living beings into objects, such texts are certainly pornographic. Why is it a lady in the magician's box? Why do we watch a pretended evisceration?" (emphasis is mine)

~ Excerpt from Amy Richlin, "Reading Ovid's Rapes" in Arguments with Silence (2014), p134.

{Posted by @the-darkness-of-a-lamppost (me), Tumblr}

[wheremyhugat2003]

[marszvirgovenus]

Being woman

[bees-drawings]

labour- paris paloma

[darkcrowprincess]

My thoughts of Percy Jackson show so far(I'm on episode 3):

I want to hug tv show Annabeth because her mom does not deserve her. I'm watching the show the whole time and I'm like "honey"

Percy reacts like a normal kid in this quest situation/filed trip. Grover and Annabeth act like kids in a cult or a deeply religious community were to react in a different way is sacrilege. Like all these kids are child soilders in a cult I'm telling you.

You can tell Percy grew up with a mom who loved him.

All these kids need thearpy.

Zeus is so fucking petty!

The gods use their children like chess pieces.

Medus is hot, and I'm a weak weak bisexual woman. Whatever you say pretty snake lady.

You can tell when you've truly turn into adult when you see all these little kids with swords, and are constantly like "who gave knife!!"

SHES SO BADASS AND PRETTY! 😍 I feel so bad for her.

[lacymoonchild]

(via Womens Liberation — Lacy Chenault)

[sarafangirlart]

Screw this by the end of Ramadan once I get my full energy back I’ll write a Perseus and Andromeda retelling and make all the Perseus haters stfu once and for all.

[angerfemme]

𝚠𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚗 𝚒𝚗 𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢

Anita Rocha da Silveira.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

We do really need more Perseus & Medusa retellings where Medusa is the youngest of an important sea monsters family, a proud Monster Girl cursed with mortality and protected by all of her family: her Gorgon sisters, the Graeae, etc. And also she is Poseidon's beloved Monster Concubine, always ready to support her man in his silly feud with Athena; and Medusa should also be portrayed as a true menace to humans; taking all of this into account when writing would make of her a complex, interesting characters; mucho more interesting than the lonely mortal girl raped by one god and punished by another; this narrative is overused, it is inconsistent with the rest of Perseus' story and the Greek Canon, it is sold as something it is not (it's not the Ancient / accurate / "true" version, it is not even a Greek version LOL) and I really feel we should give other versions of Medusa a voice, not only those rooted in #MeToo and Ovid.

This type of story would be indeed more interesting and deep than what is popular today. From beginning to end, it makes sense if one considers our myths.

Sure, we need stories inspired by the #MeToo movement and one can even...base their writing on Ovid (😢). But many Anglophone authors nowadays, in their passionate attempt to protect SA victims don't double-check, and end up doing also some harm. (Like straight-up slandering national heroes of a foreign culture which leads to actual Greeks being berated online and being seen as savages for having and admiring this hero) "Western feminism" one can call it since the entitlement over the Greek myths doesn't stop to the US WASPs.

Also these writers are writing so much about SA as if they're the first people who ever thought about the hidden emotions of those figures. Honnneyyss the Greek culture has existed for more than 2.500 years I'm SURE someone thought of it. We are not dumb or uncreative as a people, thanks.

I also feel that because countries outside the US have a huge influx of US media, the way/expression/narrative of local victims when discussing SA will slowly fade. For example, in a few years, we Greeks might read old Greek narratives from SA victims or about SA and not feel for the victims. Or worse, we will never consider checking these stories cause the US industry is feeding us SA stories all the time and because the language will be foreign to us and might disgust us. There might be a disconnect between generations and the older SA victims might be accused of "wrong language" to describe their experiences if it's not cookie-cutter USAmerican "female rage".