I thought about it. The emailer was correct that the word Ovid uses to describe their sexual intercourse does not emphasize consent. But, in the end I decided not to for two reasons: 1) I’m pretty sure Ovid considered Medusa responsible for the sex, and that is not a description of rape I am comfortable with, and 2) having re-read Ovid’s version, I now think that Medusa is an awesome resister of the patriarchy!

There is a third possible reason as well, namely that earlier versions of the myth describe “laying together in a soft meadow among spring flowers” and even Ovid later describes this event as a “mingling of soft embraces.” This could easily outweigh the one word “vitiasse” (which I have arbitrarily decided to translated as “spoiled”). But the reality is, I don’t think we SHOULD write off “vitiasse.” In fact, quite the opposite! I think that Ovid is making the point that Poseidon “spoiled” Medusa for marriage. I mean, Ovid’s whole introduction to this is about what a hot potential wife Medusa was! This would have been considered illegal for both parties in ancient Rome, which helps explain why Ovid continues that Athena’s mutation of Medusa was a punishment of her “filthy crime.”

So, if you believe as Ovid appeared to that Medusa was complicit and responsible for this whole sexy-sex with Poseidon (which, for those who don’t remember the details of the story, took place in the temple of Athena), then Medusa is not the pathetic victim that a current reading of the word “rape” might suggest. Instead, she becomes this totally awesome radical damn-the-man feminist! She says, “F* you, suitors, maybe I just want to have sex with a cute guy instead of sitting inside your women’s quarters for the rest of my life!” She says, “F* you, you daddy-loving, girl-power-hating Goddess! Maybe I don’t think you or any other representation of the system should get to decide where or with whom I get it on!” And, yeah, she totally suffers the consequence of breaking the rules, and, yeah, she is totally turned into this awful threat to women of “this is what happens to women who sleep with sexy men when they should be the property of their fathers,” but DAMN if she doesn’t go down fighting. Looking at it with a BIT of a revisionist eye, she lives out the rest of her life fighting against those “heroes” of patriarchal Greece. Even sitting on Athena’s shield should remind you of the dangerous power of a woman who decides to stop accepting the sexist rules and strikes out to do what she will!

Go Medusa!

What Wendy took issue with was not my dilemma, but the foundational concept underlying my dilemma: Are We Authentic? Her post is well written, and I suggest you read it, but there are two points that I want to respond to in particular: 1) that even if we’re not “authentic,” it’s okay to re-use other people’s stories

Are all of those mentioned above, and many more, examples of appropriation as the legends and myths travel with us to new places and times? Very possibly. But is it wrong, is it a sort of cheating? No. They all serve our very human need to explain ourselves, not just to ourselves, but to the universe, to our ancestors and descendants.¹

and 2) we very well may be more authentic than the source material we have available to us

I can’t agree that your ‘appropriation of Greek Goddesses isn’t authentic’. Oh yes, the records we have today come down to us mostly in male voices, from men who lived in a society that feared and hated women, but are we much different than that today? … I don’t believe the myths and characters from ancient Greece were born in a vacuum, but that they were revised, re-written and co-opted from earlier times, changed to appeal to the audience of the day. … So… a reinterpretation for today’s women and purpose is as authentic as the Greek myths were in their time.²

She is right, of course, that stories are constantly being reframed, and, indeed, that is how they continue to live and remain meaningful. And she is right that, “in reality, we cannot know what they thought,” and that our reframing may give voice to people we cannot hear in the textual sources. The problem comes, however, when you erase someone else’s voice to do that. And it’s really a problem, when that erasure reproduces oppression. And that’s exactly what is meant by appropriation; that’s why it’s not a neutral word. (more…)

And yet I would normally give something four stars that had all of those things. Five stars, saying, “I loved it,” needs something more. Something which is unique to my reading of it, instead of everyone else’s. A person reason. I just realized what it is.

I have read a bunch of fiction that plays with Greek Myths, from The Penelopiad and The King Must Die to The Lightning Thief and Roman Blood. I often enjoy these books, but I am almost always frustrated by them as well. The problem is that making Greek myths relevant and interesting often decontextualizes them so much that they lose what makes them truly meaningful and timeless. Of course, there are NEW ideas that have the potential for deep meaning as well, but I always grumble to myself, why did they have to erase the original meaning to do it?!

This book does not erase the original meaning of anything. It does not attempt, to explain the original meanings in their depth. Instead, it seems to simply celebrate that they WERE meaningful. But [author: Tom Robbins] doesn’t stop there. He examines history. How meaning (and identity) grows over time. How it lives. And in doing so he brings the ancient Greek characters to life again. Forever. Yay!

I recommend this book for Classicists who don’t like retellings of mythology; people interested in religion; anyone who likes good stories.

As some of you may remember from my post on Age-Appropriate Definitions in Greek Myths, I am hardly a radical on the question of how to talk about sexuality with kids, but (if people stopped forgetting that greek myths are full of this sort of thing) the book I dream of one day writing (discussed here) would probably be screwed, too.

ETA: Yeah, Lovers’ Legends Unbound got stripped of its Amazon Rank. Jerks.

But, just as the ancient Greeks worshipped their heroes, so did I. Antigone just about blew my mind (and even if I didn’t want to end up the way she did, you better believe I looked at the way she stood up to her uncle and cheered and wished my uncle were half so awful so that I be that cool). And the monsters? The Harpies can hardly fail to inspire your imagination, and in them it is easy to see the hunger, the snatching, selfish NEED that we all must carry somewhere inside us …

When I learned about them, really learned about them, I realized that they didn’t “really” mean to the ancient Greeks what they meant to me. That my use of them, my appropriation of them, wasn’t “authentic.” And as I started to learn more about ancient Greece - and, for example, the meaning of a motherless virgin like Athena who wants nothing to do with power for women - I began to have a great respect for what the world might have looked like for them.

The myths stopped being about me. And when they did, I stopped having a personal relationship with them. And when that happened, when the mystery about their place in the world was gone, I could not worship them any more. Not even in the little syncretic way I was attempting.

Maybe I should post a disclaimer on my site so that unsuspecting worshippers won’t stumble into relativism and out of their sacred cosmoses.

I am, however, still thinking about stories, and myths, and religion, and women, and goddesses. Hopefully, that’s still interesting to the people who make their way to this website. I’ve been considering trying another start-up like the attempt I linked to in my post on Celtic Pretties, but this time doing it on some of the myths and goddesses of Mexico and Central America. There are tons of amazing goddesses to learn about - take the goddess Coyolxauqui, the moon, who tried to kill her brother Huitzilopochtli, and whose body was broken into pieces, or their mother Coatlicue (the Lady of the Serpent Skirt). I would love to learn more about them and share the awesomeness with you.

But I face a dilemma. I do NOT want to write about this in a way that goes: look! exotic! and encourages cultural appropriation. On the other hand, I do believe that these stories - while they should continue to “belong” to the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America - should be known and respected and retold and made relevant in new ways as continues to be done with Greek mythology. That said, I don’t necessarily think that I, as a white person with very little background in the topic at hand, should necessarily be the person making the call on how to go about doing that. While what I’ve done with (women in) Greek Myths hadn’t really been done when I got started, I’m not sure that it’s an appropriate approach to other mythologies.

The description of the book is, “older than the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah, this stirring epic [is] the world’s oldest written story.” I can’t speak to that myself, not having looked farther than this book, but it is easy to believe. Apparently, it was written in cuneiform and wasn’t translated until the 1970’s!

And, even though this story is about a boy, it is also about Inana, the most important Goddess in the Sumerian pantheon and the Goddess of Love and War. (See, I’m making the ancient goddess connections!)

Highly recommend!

(As always, feel free to join me on Goodreads.com!)

1) It doesn’t even come CLOSE to other sites on similar topics with regard to completeness, prettiness, citedness, or funniness

2) It was an experiment I wasn’t sure I would ever follow up on. Turns out, I pretty much abandoned it.

That said, if you are still reading this blog, I feel like the least I can do is throw this out there in case anyone is really curious. So here it is:

Women in Celtic Myth

and the beginnings of a Gallery of Celtic Women.

And if you go there and then wish there was some way to get back those wasted minutes? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

From what I have previously read, this movie was pretty crippled by copyright stuff with the music and the lack of money available kept it from going big. So contribute if you like it!

http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/blog/watch-sita-sings-the-blues-online/347/

ETA: And here’s a link to an awesome post called Sita Pays Her Dues by bossymarmalade. It critiques the film and the appropriation of Indian stuff.

The answer is that I wanted to know about women in Greek myths. Duh. But, really, that’s it. I mean, I wanted to know, not just their names, but why they were interesting.

I wanted to understand why some Goddesses, like Hemera, Gaia,  and Amphictyonis were relatively simple personifications of their names when others, like say, Persephone, have names, backgrounds, and myths so deeply ensconced in the past that we may never know what the deities represented.

I wanted to understand why the Greeks, so very long ago, had Great Goddesses like Demeter when we modern people, so much further along towards enlightenment (yes, I was a Hegelian youngster), didn’t even write spunky heroines that weren’t relying on men into movies!

And, perhaps most of all, I was hungry for stories of women that I could be proud to tell. Stories imbued with the rich respect of our mythical ancestors, but stories that I could make mine, that could make me stronger, that could root me.

I realize, now, that, although I still long for such things, I have given up on finding them in ancient Greek myth.

The first blow came when I fully appreciated that, in fact, things weren’t as feminist as they appeared. I learned that, while visibility is definitely a powerful thing, being visibly powerless isn’t nearly so exciting. I also discovered, somewhere along the way, to reject a progressive history and with that I lost the need to rely on the authority of our mythical ancestors in Classical civilization.

My interests changed, and I began to find more stories I could be proud of today (go see my Goodreads shelf to find some) and saw ancient Greek myths interesting primarily as a cross-culture comparison. And, for a few years there, I was allowed to read these myths in exquisite detail. But now that I do not, and now that I am surrounded by so many more cultures with rich mythologies to learn from, I am not sure what my new connection to this will be.