There is Power to be Found and Claimed in Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology
What if instead of concealing and centering secret shame on our ugliness - we claimed it? Weaponized it? What if we accepted our hunger? Our voracious needs? Or stopped needing to justify ourselves every time our self-defense is crudely misspoken as an act of violence?
“In a just world, Medusa would have mounted Olympus and turned Athena into a not-like-other-girls rock. But the world is not just and gods are gods, however corrupt. Instead she visited death on every challenger on Earth. She became a demigod, a legend, a monster, and the mother of monsters, Beauty had not protected her; ugliness was her armor and her blade.
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People look through your face, or past it, when there’s nothing there they want. They’re not afraid to your eyes—they just don’t see the point.
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Better for them to be afraid. Better for them to think they’ll turn to stone.”
Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology is part non-fiction study of mythical monsters, part-memoir, and all delivered through a sharp and unwavering feminist lens.
I screamed after multiple lines. I clapped. I texted multiple friends lines that resonated (of which there were many). I finished this book a few weeks ago and it has stayed with me, stickily clung to my ribs and vibrates with every breath.
The shiny, glimmering possibility that the stories could have gone another way and can (and should be) endlessly interpreted as is comforting. Zeus was a motherfucker and we know that, but what if the sirens became villainous only in the telling and retelling of stories that center the male POV - all conquering, killing, rape, and forceful examples of single-minded power?
On The Sphinx, “Men do not like for women to outdo them. Some of them will lie to keep from being outdone. Some will hurt you. Some will find you young and keep you small. And some will trap you in a story like a cage, a story where only he can crack your riddle, a story where he is a savior just for knowing more than you.”
