MEDUSA
I want to reclaim #medusa
To turn the telling of her story
On its serpentine head.
Externalize the monster
Draw it out; poison from
A festering collective wound
Left by a god-culture
Intent on subjugation.
To place every slut-shaming
Victim-blaming stone
Where they belong
In a graveyard of petrified beliefs
That no longer serve
Acknowledged even as
They are laid to rest.
I want to reframe, retell
Remember to her,
—to every so-called Medusa—
The strength in survival
The wily adaptations
that transmute trauma
into body-borne wisdom.
To bear witness
As each fierce survivor
Sheds their gorgon terror
And rebuilds a new temple
Of resiliency and power
From the rubble of despair.
A story of reclamation.
A process of meaning.
To honour and celebrate
The voice finally speaking
Reintegrated and transformed
From the altar of identity.
October 16, 2020: Medusa was raped. The only thing monstrous in her story has been the spin, sad and all too common, repeated over and over in our literature, in our public forums, in our justice system, and the lived experience of so many. A tale of oppression, of victimization, and of the patriarchal attack on female power and sexuality. Her story requires a reckoning, a retelling; a reclaiming. If she could speak would her blog say #metoo? Her story points to the power of perspective and the power of authoring. Who gets to tell the story? Who's perspective is valued? What is skewed, hidden in the lost pages never written by voices that have been systematically silenced or discredited throughout the millennia? What voices am I not hearing through the roar of my own bias? Whose stories do I need to reexamine? Whose gaze petrifies me? Part of reckoning with culturally embedded stories is understanding that they are narratives, put forth from a particular point of view that may need to be retold as we integrate new information and perspectives such that participants in each story are no longer objects of the story, but are active authors (Brisson, 1999).
Brisson, S. J. (1999). Trauma narratives and the remaking of self. In M. Bal, J. Crewe, and L. Spitzer (Eds.), Acts of memory: Cultural recall in the present (pp. 39-54). University Press of New England.