The Perfect Victim: The Medusa Story

As a little girl, Medusa fascinated me. I remember that head full of snakes. Hissing, writhing, warning everyone to stay away. She was frightening. A monster. One look from her and you would turn to stone.

But even as a child, I remember wondering…

What happened to her?

Because somewhere underneath the snakes and the story we were told, there was a woman. And I always felt there had to be more to the story.

Perhaps I didn't have the words for it as a child. But now I do.

Medusa was never the perfect victim.

And perhaps that is exactly why her story still matters.

There are different versions of the ancient Medusa myth, but in the version that has stayed with me, Medusa was once beautiful. She was desired by men for her beauty, and Poseidon pursued her. She rejected him, yet he took what she did not freely give.

And then came the part that has always troubled me.

Medusa was punished.

Not Poseidon.

Medusa.

In some telling's of the story, Athena cursed her after the violation took place in Athena's sacred temple. Her beautiful hair became a mass of venomous snakes. Her face became something people feared. Her gaze became deadly.

And suddenly, the woman who had been violated became the monster. She was hunted, hated and feared. Eventually, Perseus was sent to kill her.

And so, the story became one of a hero slaying a monster.

But I wonder…

What if we have been telling the wrong story?

What if Medusa wasn't the monster? What if she was the victim? And what if, somewhere along the way, we became so uncomfortable with her pain that we needed to turn her into something easier to hate?

What does the Perfect Victim look like?

Perhaps she is the girl next door. She dresses appropriately and works in a library. She's quiet, polite and kind. She doesn't cause trouble, doesn't argue, and knuckles down and gets on with things. She smiles beautifully, cries when she's hurt, but doesn't become angry.

She doesn't swear.

She doesn't drink too much.

She doesn't make questionable choices.

She certainly doesn't shout.

She is vulnerable in a way that makes us comfortable.

And when something terrible happens to her, we gasp.

How could anyone do that to such a lovely girl?

We understand her suffering because she fits the mould. She looks like someone who doesn't deserve to be hurt.

But here's the uncomfortable question.

Who decided what a victim is supposed to look like?

We seem to have created an imaginary template for victimhood. The perfect victim is innocent. Beautiful and vulnerable, like a sacrificial lamb.

Her suffering is tragic, but somehow still easy to understand. We can wrap our sympathy around her, tell her story and cry for her.

But what happens when the victim doesn't fit the picture?

What happens when she is angry?

When she drinks?

When she has addiction issues?

When her mental health is fragile?

When she’s made mistakes?

When she swears?

When she fights back?

When she's difficult?

When she's messy?

When she’s spent so long surviving that survival itself has changed her?

What happens when she has a head full of snakes?

Do we still recognise her as a victim?

The Questions we ask

I've often wondered why, when someone is abused, we so quickly start examining the victim's behaviour.

Why did you let him into the house?

Why did you offer him a coffee?

How much had you been drinking?

Why didn't you leave?

Who was looking after the children?

What were you wearing?

Why did you go back?

Why didn't you tell someone?

Why didn't you fight?

And underneath all those questions can sit another one.

What did you do to cause this?

Perhaps we don't realise how much shame is hidden inside that question.

Because if we can find something she did wrong, perhaps we can make the world feel safer.

Perhaps we can tell ourselves:

That wouldn't happen to me.

I would never do that.

I would have left.

I would have known.

But abuse doesn't happen only to the perfect.

It happens to human beings.

And human beings are complicated.

What about the Woman with the Snakes?

What about the woman who has been mistreated, abused and discarded? The woman whose identity has been torn in two. The woman who doesn't always make sense.

The unpredictable one.

The misfit.

The woman who has spent years trying to please everyone else because somewhere along the way she learned that her safety depended upon it.

The woman who has become angry.

Wild.

Unruly.

The woman who speaks her mind and sometimes says the wrong thing. The woman who has been shaped by the very world that now judges her for how she behaves.

What about her?

Is she still a victim?

Or do we quietly decide that she has become too difficult to deserve our empathy?

Maybe her suffering isn't pretty.

Maybe it's uncomfortable to watch.

Maybe she doesn't cry quietly in the corner.

Maybe she lashes out.

Maybe she carries resentment.

Maybe she doesn't trust people.

Maybe she bites.

Maybe her pain has grown teeth.

Can we still see the victim underneath it?

Can we look beyond the snakes?

Athena's Judgement

This is the part of Medusa's story that stays with me. A woman was abused. Violated. And somehow, the shame became hers.

The punishment became hers.

The transformation became hers.

She became the one people feared.

She became the one people hunted.

How often does this happen in real life? Not through snakes and curses, perhaps. But through judgement. Through not being believed.

Through whispers.

Through assumptions.

Through headlines that carefully choose which victims deserve our sympathy.

We love the good girl next door story. But what about the woman with the addiction? The homeless woman? The woman with a history? The woman who has been in and out of relationships and struggles with mental health issues? The woman who doesn't behave the way we think a victim should behave?

Would we look at her differently if we knew the whole story?

And perhaps that's the point.

We rarely know the whole story.

Shame Doesn't always Belong to us

Survivors can carry enormous amounts of shame. Sometimes we collect it slowly. An accusation here, a judgement there.

We gather these little pieces of shame like collecting marbles. And somehow, we end up carrying them around inside our bodies. Heavy and uncomfortable.

They are NOT ours to carry...

But we carry them anyway.

Because when someone repeatedly tells you that something was your fault, eventually you start wondering if perhaps they're right.

Maybe it is me…

And this is where finding your voice becomes so important. Because finding your voice isn't just about speaking. Sometimes it's about learning to separate yourself from everyone else's version of you.

To say:

That shame isn't mine.

That story isn't mine.

You don't get to define what happened to me.

The Perfect Victim Doesn't Exist

Perhaps the perfect victim is a comforting idea. She makes suffering easier for us to understand. She is pure, innocent, beautiful and tragic. Her pain attracts sympathy because we can see ourselves in her.

But real victims aren't characters in books. They don't always behave gracefully. They don't always respond perfectly.

They can be angry, confused, frightened and contradictory. They can make terrible choices and hurt other people. They can become difficult to love. But none of those things erase what was done to them.

This doesn't mean that harmful behaviour should be excused or that we shouldn't hold people accountable for the things they do.

It means we need to be capable of holding two truths at once:

A person can be flawed and still have been abused.

A person can behave badly and still have been wronged.

A person can carry their own shadows and still deserve justice.

Perhaps that's where true empathy begins. Not in deciding whether someone is good enough to deserve our compassion. But in becoming curious enough to ask:

What happened to her?

And not What's wrong with her?

Looking Beyond the Snakes

I think that's why Medusa has stayed with me for so long. Perhaps I was never really frightened of the snakes. Perhaps I was fascinated by what they represented.

The warning.

The rage.

The transformation.

The part of her that said:

Stay away!

Maybe the snakes weren't the monster. Maybe they were what remained when the world had hurt her so badly that she could no longer be the beautiful, gentle woman everyone expected her to be.

And perhaps there are Medusas walking among us.

Women whose pain isn't pretty.

Women whose stories are complicated.

Women who have been labelled difficult, unstable, angry, damaged, promiscuous, unreliable, bitter, or broken.

Women who don't fit neatly into the story of the perfect victim.

But underneath all those labels is a human being.

A woman with a story.

A woman who deserves to be heard.

So, Who is the Perfect Victim?

Perhaps she is none of us. Because none of us are perfect. We are messy, complicated human beings. We carry our histories around with us. We make mistakes and survive in different ways.

Some of us become quiet.

Some become angry.

Some become invisible.

Some become loud.

Some become people pleasers.

Some become fiercely independent.

Some grow a head full of snakes.

And perhaps the real question isn't:

Was she the perfect victim?

Perhaps it is:

Why did we need her to be?

Why do we find it easier to empathise with the woman who looks innocent than the woman who looks damaged? Why does a woman have to prove her goodness before we believe her suffering? Why are we so quick to ask what she did, rather than what was done to her?

And perhaps, if we are brave enough, there is another question.

One that turns the mirror back towards ourselves.

Who have I judged?

Maybe you've looked back at your own story and judged why you weren't stronger, smarter, quieter, kinder. Maybe you have spent years trying to become the perfect victim of something that was never your fault.

You don't have to be perfect to have been hurt.

You don't have to be innocent of every mistake you've ever made.

You don't have to behave beautifully while you are breaking.

And you don't have to remove every snake from your head before you are worthy of compassion. Perhaps healing begins when we stop trying to become the victim everyone else can comfortably understand. And start becoming the person we know ourselves to be.

Because Medusa's story doesn't have to end with Perseus raising his sword. Maybe there is another ending.

Maybe the woman underneath the snakes finally gets to tell her own story.

And maybe this time...

we listen.

By Rosie Morris