30 Day Awesome Women Meme, Day 6

[featherxquill]

1. Someone you've loved since you were little
2. Someone you discovered recently
3. A leader
4. A mother
5. A fighter

6. A goddess



~ Medusa ~

Although Medusa could arguably be called a monster rather than a goddess, I think the title fits well enough. I remember first reading the myth of Medusa when I was in primary school, and thinking she was awesome. Because she was a girl, and she was scary and powerful. Also, snakes for hair. Fuck yeah.

Some thoughts on the Deeper Meanings of the Medusa Myth from this website:

Many have connected Medusa with sexuality, men as well as women. Freud, as you might expect, was one such theorist, linking her to the male fear of castration. Earlier, Goethe and Dante both interpreted Medusa as a dangerous seductive force to be resisted. One feminist perspective is that Medusa represents the personification of rape. Another feminist perspective, put forth by Page DuBois in her 1988 book Sewing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women, is that Medusa symbolizes women's subversive, self-sufficient sexuality.

But the most horrifying psychosexual explanation, detailed among other places by Ellen D. Reeder in her 1996 book Pandora: Women in Classical Greece, is that the fundamental meaning of Medusa is a symbol of male fear of devouring female sexual potency. Building upon Freud's earlier thinking, Reeder theorized that Medusa's snaky locks represent pubic hair, her face female genitalia. In the mythology, Reeder points out, only men are turned into stone by gazing at Medusa.

This has to do, according to Barbara G. Walker in her 1983 book The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, with what's been termed the "toothed vagina." This symbol of biting, devouring female sexuality is thought have originated with the primordial fear that a woman's privates might amputate a man's privates during sex. This superstition, according to Walker, has existed in many different cultures around the world throughout history, among other places in China, Polynesia, Persia, the Islamic world, and medieval Christianity. And perhaps, even if subliminally, it existed in ancient Greece and Rome as well.

The psychosexual explanation ties in with how the Medusa image was used in patriarchal Greece and Rome. It could well be, at least on some level, that it's behind the fright caused by looking at the Medusa image and why men placed it on their armor when fighting other men and on coins when trading with other men.


7. Someone funny
8. Someone bitchy
9. Someone sexy
10. A writer
11. A singer
12. An artist
13. An actress
14. An athlete
15. Anyone you like
16. A woman of colour
17. A woman with a disability
18. A lesbian, bisexual, transgenderd or genderqueer woman/individual
19. Someone you'd love to have teach you
20. Someone you'd love to get drunk with
21. Someone you wouldn't want to cross
22. Someone you'd love to be for a day
23. A woman from traditionally male arena (politics, science, medicine, military, etc)
24. A woman over 50
25. An activist
26. A woman from the past
27. A woman of the future
28. Someone you once disliked but now admire
29. Someone from your own life
30. Anyone you like

Comments

[nimielle.livejournal.com]

I love this meme you are doing! Can't wait to see who the rest will be!

[minervas-eule.livejournal.com]

Thank you - this is interesting; just that I with my snake-phobia shudder looking at the image... something for nightmares...
My choice, of course, would have been Athena/Minerva, the brain-child of Zeus (isn't that interesting, too?), and not to cross either *gg*.

[incapability87.livejournal.com]

Actually, there is a version of mythology that claims Medusa and Athena were once identical but that with Athena's ascence to the Olympus, the demonic part of her became a new entity, namely our very own Medusa.

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

Fascinating - I didn't know half of this. Thank you so much for posting!

[addyit.livejournal.com]

medusa has been my favorite for YEARS. i've always wanted an icon for her, to use here, cf/crohnie journal or in my kink journal. heck, i'd use one in each! <3<3<3