It's Time to Listen

I don't generally like to let harsh realities invade this blog. It's my happy space where I get to blather about stories, not a soapbox from which I shout what I think you should be thinking. But then Todd Akin opened his idiotic mouth, and I remember how little has really changed since the days of the stories I love. Rape is a huge plot point in so many myths, but so often the victim's story is rarely even listened to. Worse, his or her experience is mostly brushed aside, with the rape-conceived child being seen as justifying the assault.

It all sounds a little too familiar.

The Rape of Europa, Noel-Nicolas Coypel

Take, for example, Europa. Really, you could take any of Zeus' conquests, including his wife. But Europa's the one who gets the word "rape" in the title of her story. Search for "Europa" on its own, and you get images of a moon and the official EU website. Search "Rape of Europa" and you get stories, pictures, and a film about stolen art treasures that turns the seizure and assault of a girl by a god-turned-bull into a metaphor for the loss of Europe's artistic identity. In our cultural mindset, Europa is nothing without the rape. Before, she's not even a blip on the radar; after, she's only important because she conceives from that rape, and gives birth to the future king of Crete and the greatest judge of mythological Greece. The only story we tell about her - the only one we know about her - is that she was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull. Oh, and did I mention stolen away to a freakin' island afterwards, by her rapist? And then handed over to the current king of Crete like a door prize once Zeus gets bored?

The Rape of Europa, Felix Edouard Vallotton

It actually gets worse. When her father, showing a unique moral and familial affection, sends his sons out to look for his missing daughter, Zeus distracts them by giving them their own cities, thus barring them from ever locating their sister and depriving Europa of anything from her pre-rape life. But this ban isn't forever; when Europa's sons Minos and Sarpedon clash over a boy they both love, Sarpedon flees Crete for his uncle Cilix's kingdom. Obviously he can leave the island; obviously he knows, or has been allowed to discover, where his mother's family is. A young man who's never seen his uncle is easily permitted to take up residence with him, but a rape victim torn from her home is flatly denied even a glimpse of her brother. "Double standard" doesn't begin to cover how appalling this is.

Sun, Moon, and Talia, Chris Beatrice

We've been over the arguably-worse horror that is "Sun, Moon and Talia," the original Sleeping Beauty. But it bears repeating. While in the grip of an enchantment, Talia is raped while unconscious and left pregnant by an already-married king. She only wakes up when her newborn son mistakes her finger for her nipple and sucks the spindle splinter out. Again, it gets worse; when King Rapist returns to his perma-sleeping sex doll and finds that, whoops, she's awake and he has twins, he doesn't even have the guts to own up to what he's done. He keeps her in her castle and goes about his life, blissfully unaware that his actual wife (or sometimes his ogress mother, depending on whether it's Perrault or Basile telling the story) is trying to serve him his children for dinner. It is purest luck that Talia and her children survive; the only time the king ever takes responsibility for what he's done is when he marries Talia at the end, which is both a foregone conclusion and a horrifying ending.

Talia, like Europa, does literally nothing to deserve or earn the fate she gets. Both are victims of passing proprietary lust. Both bear children conceived in rape. Both are cut off forever from their families, and from any support system to help them cope with the upheavals in their lives. Their stories are ones that we've heard many times. They're the realities that too many women live with every day. And if they were real and alive today - a kidnapped young woman and a teen mother - they would be among the many that Todd Akin suggested were not "legitimately" raped.

While you let that sink in, let me introduce you to Chrysippus. Because surely you don't think only women get raped.

The Rape of Chrysippus, KidaGreenleaf

If Talia's and Europa's stories make me think of faces on milk cartons and sexual slavery, Chrysippus reminds me of the also-too-common priest scandals in the Catholic Church. Chrysippus, an athletic young nobleman, sets off for the Nemean Games (basically the Olympics), accompanied by his tutor Laius. He never gets to compete in the Games, because Laius abducts him, rapes him, and carries him to Laius' home city of Thebes. Stories vary on the precise details of the ending, but in all of them Chrysippus dies: sometimes by his own hand out of shame, sometimes by his half-brothers, afraid that he would inherit their father Pelops' throne. In all of them, Laius feels no guilt or remorse for his hijacking of the life of a young man whose well-being is his responsibility. In all of them, only Chrysippus bears the burden of what has happened to him.

Chrysippus and Laius, KidaGreenleaf

And as so often happens, the victim does not see justice done. Chrysippus dies long before Laius meets his fate at the hands of his son Oedipus (you might have heard of him). Typically for Greek myths, divine vengeance for Chrysippus' suffering comes too late and very over-the-top: the family of Laius, from Oedipus to Jocasta to Antigone, all pay an impossibly high price for the sins of the father. But Chrysippus is long dead when that happens, and his life in tatters even before his death. What can it matter to Chrysippus that the children and grandchildren of his rapist suffer agonizing moral and physical torment? What difference can it make now? It can't. Nothing that the Theban royal house endures can change or heal Chrysippus in any way. It's an empty vengeance, and the rapist who set it in motion gets off lightest of all. Laius is allowed to marry, to have a child, to rule for decades after he destroys Chrysippus' life. And worst of all, he wins. Chrysippus' is a forgotten story. Even though his tale jumpstarts Oedipus', you never hear it when you hear the story of the fall of the house of Thebes. Laius successfully spins the story to make himself essentially an innocent bystander, a victim of Oedipus' irrational wrath, rather than the root cause of such destruction.

Math Son of Mathonwy, Margaret Jones

I can think of precisely one rape myth with a somewhat happy ending. The Welsh king Math lives under a spell that requires him, whenever he's not in battle, to rest with his feet in the lap of a maiden. Being a king, he chooses Goewin, the most beautiful virgin at court. Things go swimmingly until Gilfaethwy, a warrior kinsman of Math, falls in lust with the king's designated virgin. Gilfaethwy's sorcerer brother sets up a smokescreen war to distract Math, and the two men together rape Goewin while Math is away fighting.

Appalling as this is, Goewin has, crucially, what Europa, Talia and Chrysippus do not: access to a support system. When Math returns, she confides in him that he can no longer put his feet in her lap, since she's no longer a virgin. And Math responds in a manner that makes him a strong candidate for Best Human Being Ever: he comforts Goewin, marries her, and makes her his co-ruler, with as much authority and power as he himself has. And he punishes Gilfaethwy and his brother

Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, Margaret Jones

Gwydion by turning them into paired animals for three straight years, alternating who is male and who is female so that by the end of their punishment, they have both experienced rape firsthand.

We never hear from Gilfaethwy again. But Gwydion, the enabler and co-rapist, is one of the greatest and most popular figures in the Mabinogion, the great Welsh collection of tales and sagas. He's a consummate trickster, on par with Loki and Coyote; he wins praise and accolades for his magic and his skillful manipulation of his enemies; and after his three-year punishment is over, Math welcomes him back to his court and relies on his skills just as he always did.

Olwen, Alan Lee

You wonder what Math's queen had to say about that. You wonder how many women have to look their rapist in the eye every day. You wonder how many bite their tongues and keep quiet for fear of disturbing the peace, sacrificing their own inner peace in the process. You wonder how long it's been going on.

What stories like these tell us is that it's been going on forever. This has been happening all around us, basically since humans figured out what they could put where. We're supposed to learn from the past, from the stories we tell. Why haven't we, yet?

Because, for as long as it's been happening, we've been excusing it. It's okay that Uther raped Igraine; it produced King Arthur. It's no big that Zeus raped Europa; she got to be queen of Crete. Todd Akin is the latest in a long line of whitewashing assholes who have been telling us for millennia that the experience of a rape victim does not matter.

But what seems to shut them up, or at least make them think twice, are stories. The stories of the victims, not the rapists or the narrators; the stories told by the people whose experiences are routinely dismissed and belittled. It takes courage, in such a cultural climate, to speak; to insist that your experience is "legitimate"; to demand recognition from those who would prefer to shrug you away. The victims in legend have been used to justify one way of looking at the world; the victims of today, more and more, are refusing to be so used. It's astonishingly, heartbreakingly brave of them.

And we all need to listen.

Troy and Other Ten-Year Problems

There's a conundrum I've been puzzling over for, ironically, ten years. I have never been able to figure it out. And it's a little embarrassing, as a fan of mythology, not to have a good reason for it. But nevertheless, it stands.

You know those two epic poems that provide some of the most basic foundations for Western society? The Iliad and the Odyssey? Well, I've read them both. I like them both a lot. I especially like Odysseus, the quintessential lovable trickster. He and Nestor provide the most reliable voices of reason in the Iliad, which makes it great fun to watch him really act out in the Odyssey. I don't really like any of the Iliad's characters as much as I like - no, let's do this right, love - Odysseus.

But despite the fact that many of its main characters are morally deplorable creatures who whine, mope, and pet their own egos, and despite the fact that the Odyssey is a far more thoughtful and touching character study... I like the Iliad better.

Let's be clear. My favorite character in the Iliad alternates between Hector, Diomedes, and Aeneas, depending on the mood I'm in that hour. Menelaus doesn't get enough screen time, Agamemnon's obnoxious, Helen's underused, Zeus is a bitch, and do not get me started on Achilles. I cannot with the glorification of a whiny self-absorbed mama's boy. I just cannot. And the characters I do like? Well, Hector is Hector, i.e. Living Awesome, but sometimes the sheer wow factor gets overwhelming. (Is there anything wrong with him? Anything at all?) Aeneas, to my surprise, turned out to be a very active participant in the war; before I read the Iliad, I thought of him as the sequel guy, and I enjoyed seeing him kick ass before Dido and Virgil got hold of him. And Diomedes... okay, he has basically one chapter, but in that chapter he makes Achilles look like a wuss, gives Aphrodite the bladed bitch-slap we all wanted her to get, and sends the freaking god of war crying home to Dad, in what is arguably the funniest scene in literary antiquity. Including everything in Lysistrata. If you can only have one chapter in which to shine, this is the one to have.

There's really no comparison with Odysseus. He's charismatic, brilliant, fast-thinking, and good at what he does. (Which is everything.) He knows exactly what he's worth, but unlike Achilles or Paris or any of the other entitled "heroes" of the Iliad, he doesn't sit around waiting for the world to give it to him. He goes after it, and if he fails the first time, he comes back with a better plan.

Calypso Takes Pity on Odysseus,
Henry Justice Ford

And oh yeah - he fails sometimes. Big time. He is the only man on his flagship (at least; he took eleven others to Troy) to make it back to Ithaca; that's one lousy rate of retention. He dozes off among his suspicious men, leaving Aeolus' bag of winds carelessly unguarded. Worst of all, he basically gives his address and phone number to an enraged and blinded Cyclops whose father rules the sea, right before he starts off on a long sea voyage. But he pays the price for those failures. He loses the men whose safety is in his keeping; he spends ten years trying to get home; he nearly dies about a million times. And he learns. By the time he gets back home, he's able (with some help from Athena) to diffuse a civil war in the making. He has the best character arc of anyone in Greek mythology.

But I confess it: when I read the Odyssey, I was bored.

Telemachus Arming, Luigi Bienaime

Maybe it's because Odysseus' adventures have crossed so deeply into popular culture that I already knew the whole story. The suspense of his escape from Polyphemus, the seductive threat of Circe, the innocent relief of Nausicaa and the Phoenician episode, all lost their full impact because I already knew how it ended. "Okay, Odysseus, you stabbed the Cyclops in his one eye. Good for you. Can you tell me something new, please?" (Full credit, by the way, to the d'Aulaires, who valiantly refrained from spoiling the Odyssey. That being said, I would have LOVED to read a d'Aulaire version.) What did make an impression on me were the Telemachus side plot and the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope. Telemachus surprised me just as Aeneas did; I kind of knew he was there somewhere, but I hadn't expected him to be

Odysseus and Penelope, John Flaxman

energetic and enterprising and very much a worthy son to Odysseus. And even though I knew the plot summary of that reunion, I was utterly unprepared for the exquisite language it's written in, and the aching sweep of love and shock and joy that carries it forward. When I read the Odyssey, I read Penelope's speech to Odysseus aloud. I can't help it. There are sentences that exist to be spoken. I had thought of that scene as the standard capper to the hero's journey; I had never envisioned it as the emotional climax of lovers estranged for twenty years. That scene broke me in all the wonderful ways literature is supposed to break you.

But no one spoiled the Iliad for me. I mean, I knew Hector died, but I didn't know Diomedes was a badass, or that there was so much divine machination, or that Helen gave Paris a verbal emasculation that rivals Lady Macbeth. No one told me about the agony of the fight over Patroclus' body. I was unprepared for the scene where Priam begs Achilles for his son's corpse. And most of all, I was stunned to find that the war epic to end all war epics is actually anti-war.

Achilles Triumphant, Howard David Johnson

Really, who does that? Who paints a masterpiece of how art sucks, or compiles a complete and working investment portfolio illuminating all the flaws of Wall Street? The guts and the vision to decry war while writing the war story astounded me. People who dismiss the death lists and the catalogue of ships completely miss the point. For chapter after chapter, the Iliad sets you up with all the glorious claptrap, applying epithets to the war leaders, giving us gorgeous details like the red bows of the Ithacan fleet, the pathetic offering of three ships from Nireus the pretty boy, and Ajax of Salamis' seven-layer shield covered with bronze.

Hector Brought Back to Troy, artist unknown

And then they die. Then they all pour onto the beach and start fighting, and we see all the men who die in their last moments. "The end of death covered over his eyes and nostrils." "The spear-point went right through [his helmet] and smashed the bone, and all his brains were spattered inside, and the man brought down in his fury." "He shrieked as the life breathed from him, and fell screaming in the dust, and his spirit flitted away." These are visceral, claustrophobic moments, rendered with sympathy for the dying and an implicit condemnation of the reason they died. It happens over and over. The Iliad is relentless. It will trick you into thinking you're reading something golden and glorious, and then it'll throw a chapter of death lists in your face and dare you to believe, after all that, that war is a good thing.

I had no idea. And I could not put the thing down.

Ulysses and the Sirens, Roman mosaic, 3rd century CE

The Odyssey, in comparison, is structurally far simpler: it's a quest, told with unusual timing but still straightforward. Odysseus starts at Point A, zigzags through a maze of adventures, and ends up at Point B. The Iliad starts exactly where it ends: two great nations, both with admirable and appalling people, destroying each other. There's no journey, no revelation, no catharsis. Achilles manages to find his humanity in the end, but that's a hollow victory, because we all know he too is soon to die; his emotional progress matters not a jot. Come the next day, these flawed and brave and blind people we've come to know so well are going to go back to that beach and keep killing each other. The Odyssey is the emotional arc of three complicated characters, disguised as a simple story; the Iliad is a message disguised as a series of episodes.

The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy, Domenico Tiepolo

And I have no reason for why I like one better than the other. The secrets that both were hiding blew me away. They're both seminal pieces of Western culture; I wouldn't want to live in a world without them. But the one that moves me most is the story of despair at human nature, not the uplifting and adventurous yarn. Odysseus is the best of all traveling companions, but he's only one man. The Iliad tells me hard truths about human nature, using beautiful language to create horrific images. And in that very act, it affirms the good as well as the bad in humanity: no matter how low we sink, there will always be voices like Homer's, to tell us with such blunt grace what we're doing wrong.

Holy Insecurity, Batman!

You'd think being a god is one of the sweetest jobs out there. Incredible power, tons of perks, the ability to shape the future... a person could feel good about themselves if they were a god, right?

Wrong. Gods are some of the most insecure beings ever created. From Greece to Alaska to Egypt, gods across pantheons just can't stop showing off the extent of their power and control over every other living thing. It's as if, divine and omnipotent as they are, they still have something to prove, either to themselves or to us. I would make a "compensating for something" joke, but I'd probably get turned into rock if I did. Because the one thing gods can't stand is a lowly mortal pointing out their flaws.

Take Arachne. Granted, she was a moron for willfully engaging a goddess in a contest of skill; the barometer of stupid probably shattered when she challenged Athena. But her prideful idiocy doesn't change the fact that she was also right. Athena's entry into their weaving contest is a complacent pat-on-the-back to herself and her entire extended family; Arachne had the guts to depict the gods' ignoble moments and reveal how ridiculous and petty they often are. And sometimes the narrator even admits that Arachne's work, if blasphemous, is also better than Athena's.

What does she get for shining an irreverent but honest light on the less-than-glorious lives of the gods, via a contest she technically won? Turned into a spider. Athena is so embarrassed that she throws an appalling and uncharacteristic hissy fit: she rips up Arachne's superior tapestry and erases all evidence of the crime by disposing of the accuser. Clearly the mob missed out on a fantastic hit woman. But even in high dudgeon, Athena remains sensible enough to phrase her anger in terms that no other potentially challenging mortal could mistake: this is Arachne's punishment, not for being humiliatingly right, but for her arrogance. The message is clear: do not piss off the gods. Even if you're better. Just don't do it. We don't want to know.

Sedna, Antony Galbraith

Sedna, in comparison, gets a much better deal. But her story is still very troubling in what it says about the capricious willfulness of gods. Sedna starts out as a beautiful mortal who refuses all her suitors, until a mysterious and skilled hunter comes to town. She's interested; more importantly, her father wants her off his hands. He drugs Sedna and hands her over to the hunter, who takes her back to his "home" - an enormous nest on a clifftop. Surprise - your new husband is actually Raven, turned into a human because he spotted Sedna and fancied her!

Sedna, Tara Borger

In a shocking twist, this freaks Sedna out. (I have to wonder if Leda had a similar reaction when she was accosted and assaulted by a damn swan. What is it with randy gods and birds?) Sedna escapes from the nest, which in turn offends her putative husband's pride and dignity. Determined not to let his new bride escape - whether he's more concerned about having his disguise revealed, or losing face by losing Sedna, is rarely clear - Raven whips up a storm to drown the girl he went to such lengths to obtain. In hopes of making amends, Sedna's father kayaks over to rescue her, but only until his own life is threatened. When the storm nearly flips his boat over, Sedna's father pitches her straight into the god-sent waves, sacrificing his daughter again for his own sake. And when the poor girl, probably now thoroughly pissed at men in general, clings to the side of the kayak, her paragon of a dad cuts her fingers off so she can't hold on. Luckily karma takes a hand at this point; Sedna's severed fingers become whales and seals and fish, the creatures of the as-yet-unpopulated sea, and Sedna herself becomes a sea goddess. It's a much-deserved reward for her seriously crappy run of luck.

But having been the firsthand victim of a god's fickle pride, Sedna has a hard time learning the lesson of good behavior. She throws temper tantrums when her hair gets tangled underwater, requiring tribal shamans to travel to her ocean home to comb out the knots (since they, after all, have fingers). Only when she is appeased will she release the sea creatures for humans to catch. On one hand, yes, the lack of fingers and the inability to attend to her own personal grooming would get on someone's nerves; on the other, you'd think someone so shabbily treated would know to be helpful rather than coercive. The only lesson Sedna seems to have learned about divine-human relations is the one that led Raven to kidnap her: humans exist to serve the will of gods.

And lest you think this is just a hormonal female thing, we haven't even gotten to the most appalling divine exhibition of power.

Back in the bad old days before the Ten Commandments, Yahweh was a Mesopotamian thunder god with a lot to prove. His chosen people go nomad for a couple generations, essentially run the richest country in the known world, and then promptly get enslaved when a trigger-happy Pharaoh thinks they've gone too far. When Yahweh finally wakes up to the less-than-ideal state of his worshipers - and the affront to him implied in the subjugation of his chosen ones - he seriously loses his cool. He snags a passing Moses and makes him a divine mouthpiece for Yahweh's over-the-top display of vindictive power.

Who does he unleash this power on? The Pharaoh who enslaved his people? The overseers and taskmasters who make their lives hell? The priests who deemed him so helpless?

How about everyone?

The Plagues of Egypt, John Martin

Yahweh's reputation and career are on the line. He's up against the far more experienced and entrenched might of the Egyptian pantheon. And he is not happy with being ignored. So he makes damn sure that no one will ever forget what happens when you make him angry. He systematically ravages the entire country, forcing every single Egyptian to pay literally in blood for the insult to his prowess. His opening act is to turn Egypt's only source of potable water into blood. Once dehydration sets in, Pharaoh relents and calls Moses back. "Okay, I'm sorry, you guys can go now, but for the love of Hapi, can you get me a freaking drink of water?"

The Plague of Locusts, James Tissot

To recap: Yahweh has brought a country to its knees with one stroke. The most powerful king in the world is begging with his chosen spokesman, acknowledging Yahweh's superior might. But this is not enough. Yahweh's just getting started on his revenge. Exodus explicitly states that "God hardened Pharaoh's heart," and proceeded to unleash the other nine Plagues on the population of an entire country, just to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was awesome. He does it again and again, bringing Pharaoh to desperation and then refusing to let the king's own admission of Yahweh's power stand. He kills all the cattle; he withers all the crops; he plunges the entire country into permanent darkness. And ultimately, as his master stroke, Yahweh slaughters the firstborn of every single Egyptian family. When this is depicted, the dead firstborn are nearly always children. Innocents. Noncombatants. Some of whom had probably never met an Israelite in the whole of their short life.

Death of the Pharaoh's Firstborn Son, Lawrence Alma-Tadema

They die to prove a point. They die to show that Yahweh is not a god to ignore. They die because of a god's authority crisis. They are collateral damage in a war of divine attrition, because a couple of powerful humans wondered what would happen if they poked a sleeping dragon.

Gods are not nice people. Gods are primordial creatures, wearing a sheen of civilization over the basest impulses known to man. They exist to be worshiped. And if you forget, they will be more than happy to remind you - brutally, savagely, in a triumph of self-conscious insecurity - what happens when you don't give them their due.