what if medusa was a real woman. i mean: what if the woman with snakes in her hair was once a tiny girl with beautiful braids in her black hair.
what if the stories came from her smooth hands. when she was six she could make pottery that looked like flowers blooming in your palms. could carefully create replicas of any plant she saw.
and medusa was smart. ran from home, tucked up her hair so it looked short, made herself into a little boy. besides, they liked pretty boys. medusa at school with top grades, sending her unknowable stares at the other men. because the whole time she’s learning the planes of their faces, the way they look while they’re thinking, the slight twist of their hand that meant they were lying.
medusa going home to sketch every little figure. comes to school in the morning with her hands caked in pottery clay. medusa learns. scrubs dirt on her face to mimic their planes. tilts her head the right way when she’s thinking. doesn’t twist her hand when she’s lying.
in her back yard, a little garden grows. statues of ceramic boys only three feet tall. at first, she can’t quite get the faces right. men are not the same as plants. there is something weird about the proportions she uses. medusa frowns.
she starts making animals instead for a bit, annoyed and disheartened. she’d always just been naturally good at it, and the fact she couldn’t just make something felt as if she’d lost her gift.
she makes cats and dogs and her neighbor’s birds and keeps going.
the snake wasn’t her favorite. he just wouldn’t leave her alone, so she gave up and let him sleep on her in the cold nights. besides, he was a small garden snake, couldn’t even bite her hard, just wanted a place of warmth. she let him rest on the angles of her shoulders, right near her neck, even if he sometimes forgot and held her too hard. that was okay. when she was little, she forgot too, sometimes, and shattered the slim walls of her pottery. the snake had a lot of growing up to do.
she loved no one. not because she was cold-hearted. just because it wasn’t something she wanted. she was busy with her artwork.
she chose an apprenticeship under a master craftsman. his sculptures made her breath stop. she was careful in the workshop, kept her things simple, kept her mouth shut. he called her stupid often. she would duck her head. sometimes she would make mistakes on purpose. all the while he only made sculptures of men. said there was no beauty in women. often made savage remarks about those they saw in the market.
and all the while, she watched him. she watched him and she went home and sketched. this is how his hands were when he made a vine. this is how they were when shaping a nose.
and her back yard garden would grow. little boys became her master, over and over and over, until she could get his jaw right. ceramic became sculpture.
he was who took her to athena’s temple. who shouted at her about how beautiful the statues were against her own. every week he’d come back and shame her. asked how the women there were smarter than the man she was supposed to be. medusa ducked her head and grit her teeth.
in her back yard, she made them. she made every god and goddess she’d seen in the city. her favorite was athena. she ached over her features. had spent so long in the world of men, was blinded by the beauty of women.
it was a black night. and medusa thought her master had left the temple before her. she loosened all the bindings that kept her from breathing. took her hair out. worshiped in peace. placed on athena’s alter a small and beautiful thing. the goddess, head tilted, thinking.
when he found medusa, what made him angry was not her small frame. it was the statute. a delicate thing. much better than the ones he had ever made.
he took it and snapped it in half. threw it deep in the temple’s well to rot. pulled her by her hair. demanded to know where it had come from.
medusa, angry, tired of hiding, tired of late nights and being a boy and pretending: medusa, athena-mad, spat on him. “I did it,” her voice is strong and full of hatred, “A woman made something better than a man could.”
He meant to kill her. To bash her head into the temple steps, claim it was an accident - or better yet, the spite of a god made flesh.
when he grabs her hair, the goddess bites back. athena, patron of creators, patron of the arts, patron of girls and those who are smart - she turns medusa’s hair into snakes.
it is a quick little thing, darts out and draws blood, almost falls from her hair as a result. she catches the creature and runs, runs until she feels numb.
and what if - while her master is making up a story about poseidon and athena’s rage, explaining medusa’s back yard full of frozen men as being evidence of her evilness - what if medusa finds friends in blind women. and they teach her how to feel what she is seeing. how to use her hands with her eyes closed to make maps of whatever she holds. she starts with plants again. her snake is big now, and has babies. she moves on to their little wiggling forms, amused when they make tiny rings around her fingers. she does not live in a cave. she dresses as a man again, goes to market, sells her roses and vines and beautiful (simple) things. buys herself and the women a nice house out beyond all the noise of it. fills their garden with frozen men.
when the men come to kill her - because now her name is known, it is whispered, sticks in the throat - they don’t find her. they find a tall man who tells them: look in the mountains. when they don’t come back, it’s no fault of medusa’s. frankly, she thinks they should have brought more supplies than their swords into the deep woods. she’s not cruel. when they leave, she makes a statue of them, as her version of a memorial.
but one man is not like the others. he finds her with her hair down, humming, dancing around a marble stone. her snakes are warming in the sun.
medusa? he asks her. it’s a name she hasn’t heard in a long while.
she is tired of being hunted. she just wants to make art. she waits for the sword point. but he hesitates. looks at her full in her face.
strikes a bargain. if she makes him a head for his shield, he will tell the others that she is good and dead. and he will sell her art to better patrons when he could - although he suggests at least hiding the signature she has with maybe a little less snake-like scrawl - he would make her name known.
but medusa knows men. knows they will chomp down on a horror story faster than that of the artist. she is already permanent. she says: no, here’s what happens.
after many months, he has his shield. she wouldn’t let him leave with the first nine hundred versions, always found something wrong with them. he grows fond of her in this time, agrees to her terms. even he can’t really look at the shield head-on. she has captured a scream, a rage, too much. it is so utterly human and at once not that it makes his skin crawl.
where medusa’s blood drops, serpents sprawl. or at least, that’s the code she uses. when he finds little girls who can make art, he sends them to her.
medusa does not expect to be known for the school that she starts. she is a women artist in a time of men, and her name is already dead to them. but i know medusa. i know her. she is known for her work.
after all, who can speak about medusa without mentioning how she froze the world?
here’s what happens when you call out white feminists
[start transcript]
Hey, Snapchat. My eyebrows are on, but I’m about to go the fuck off—because I’m sick—fucking white feminists.
So long story short, I asked why a show that’s all about “championing feminism” ignores women of color and makes fun of Asian women? And then, while everyone was sitting there patting themselves on the back for how “progressive” this show is, like, the black dudes are the punchline, in it?
So afterwards, the moderator comes up to me, to white-splain to me what it “really” was about. And this woman—whew! “We’re not fetishizing black men because, you know, as a Jewish, plus-sized woman, black men really love me, and I’m just speaking my truth!” When the punchline is, “I’m too fat for cute white guys, but black dudes will fuck me because they’ll fuck anything,” you’re a fucking racist!
And what I’m not here for is so-called white feminists white-splaining to me how “I don’t understand” what they meant. No, I understand! And what really got me fucked up, is when this woman said, “Well you know, it’s true, black guys love me,” I was like, “I have to go.” She, like, wouldn’t let me leave!
The moderator, Jill Soloway, cornered me, and would not fucking let me leave, because they were so desperate to absolve their white guilt and make me understand that they weren’t racist.
Jill Soloway’s ass had the fucking nerve to say to me, “Yeah, we should be intersectional. I think women and people of color need to work together!” I’m like, “Bu—but—women of color?!” You clearly don’t understand what intersectional feminism is if when I ask you why isn’t your show intersectional, your response is to separate women and people of color.
Then—this is what killed me—then she had the nerve to be like, “You know, I’ve been looking for intersectional voices, but I can’t find them. Where are they? Just, where are they?” Hi, um, so yeah, I’m here with the Sundance Serial Content Lab, and I have a web series at MTV, and I just accepted my first TV writing job, so—here?
I am so fucking sick of these women patting themselves on the back for calling out the patriarchy while being fucking racist. And what pisses me off, is even when I don’t curse, and I’m so professional and complimentary of your work, you still gaslight the fuck out of me! And this is why respecability politics are not shit. Cause even when I don’t curse, and I play nice and compliment your work, y'all still treat me like the fucking angry black woman.
And, like, Emmy-winning Jill Soloway like, invited me to her house, to like, be her friend, like. I don’t wanna be your fucking friend. Like, fuck your white guilt.
It just sucks, cause it really takes a lot of—like I was really, really fucking upset that these women treated me like this. And I’m the one that has to be professional, because I wanna work in this business, but I don’t wanna compromise my morals, but that’s what you have to do to fucking get a check.
I’m, like—I wanna make a video about this, but, like, I just—I’m so tired of being the only person that, like, says anything, you know what I mean? It’s exhausting. And it’s alienating. And it’s lonely. And, like, I just wanna make, like, smart shit. I wanna be able to watch something and not be shit on.
It’s 2016. There is no excuse. If some racist shit—shitting on Asian women and black men slip through your show—that tells me there are no people of color on your staff. You can throw a stone in any direction and see a talented person of color out here. Like, come on.
You’re gonna look me in my face and tell me that “you can’t find any intersectional feminists anywhere”? You aren’t looking.
Cause we out here.
[end transcript]
thanks for transcribing!
I’m really not here for the tears… Because you’ll say ALL this shit and still go lay up under your white husband….
FUCK begging white women to act right….
Tired of this shit…
yup. I go home to a white husband and yet I still won’t stand for black men being fetishized and dogged out by the industry I want to be a part of. The only scripted representation of black men in this shit show was a teenager forcing himself on an intoxicated white girl. and that’s of course after he makes a gross joke about the main character’s “Jew titties.” you’re tired of this shit? so am I. representation matters. how black people are depicted in shows that will then reach MILLIONS, influences how black people are treated and seen in the real world. that fictional image of a slimy black kid trying to assault some white girl is the image that these white women see when they call the cops on black boys for being “scary.” and you’re lying to yourself if you fail to see the correlation.
question. where are the black dudes in interracial relationships out here standing up for black women? honestly. where are they? cause I only see them on Twitter & Tumblr sharing nasty memes about anyone darker than beige and fetishizing their unborn mixed babies. can you take a break from doing backflips to shit on me and my incredible husband to send me their links?
I’m so tired of this bullshit logic. I deal with DAILY HARASSMENT because I dare talk about social justice online. and then I deal with this mess IN REAL LIFE because I refuse to be quiet when someone disrespects my blackness, black people or any marginalized person for that matter. Are we pretending I didn’t mention that this show didn’t also make digs at Asian women? cause it did. and I wasn’t here for it either. but that goes away….cause my husband is white?
did my white husband protect me from getting threats at my home? does my white husband prevent racist assholes from re-editing my videos to make me say things I haven’t said? did it stop someone from making a video game walk through where they kill a character because it looks like me? or what about the meetings I’ve been in where I’ve been pet like a dog by people who “loooove my work.” please show me all the ways my white husband has prevented ANYONE from seeing me as black or calling my black ass a nigger. then show me how any of those experiences is made less hurtful because of who I climb into bed with. I’ll wait.
while you sit on your computer judging me (but still watching & sharing the content I produce) I’m out here doing the work. not because its glamorous, but because it’s right. and even though you’ll swear up and down my husband makes my experiences less authentic, I’ll keep doing the work. I’m not out here begging for shit. I’m demanding a world that let’s us have a voice to tell our own stories. I’m demanding a world that treats all of us fairly no matter what we look like or who we love. and instead of waiting for anyone else to create that world, I’m making it for myself. I’m developing THREE scripted projects (one is why I’m at Sundance) that will hopefully prove that it’s possible for socially conscious comedy to exist in the real world and that we don’t have to punch down for laughs. I don’t need a white woman to write it. I’m writing it myself.
honestly, I hope you find someone who loves and cares about you .2222222% of what my husband cares for me. cause it’s incredible. I hope you get 10 years out of a relationship with someone who encourages you, respects you, challenges you, makes you smarter, makes you laugh and feel like the most beautiful person on earth. maybe then you’ll worry about who you go to bed with instead of being so fucking pressed over me and my man.
CHESCA COME THROUGH BITCH YES!!!!
SHE KICKED HER WIG CLEAN OFF
i wanna bring this back cause she really did go the entire fuck off
legalizing pot is 100% worthless if we as white people aren’t going to 1. release and forgive the sentences of those thrown in jail for pot, 2. actually allow black people into the legal pot industry w the same ease white people enter it and the same ability to get rich off it, and 3. stop fucking arresting black youth, not allow it to go up by 58 fucking %
