Episode 222: Women and Other Monsters (with Jess Zimmerman)
/We’re joined by author Jess Zimmerman, making her Spirits return, to talk about women and monsters from Greek mythology. We chat Aerosmith music videos, mansplaining, and rant about the lack of allyship from Athena.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of misgendering, transphobia, sexualization, misogyny, body horror, death, drowning, violence against women, animal death, body horror, death by suicide, menustration, pregnancy, xenophobia, murder, matricide, and rape.
Guest
Jess Zimmerman is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature and the author of Women and Other Monsters, from Beacon Press. She is also the author, with Jaya Saxena, of Basic Witches (Quirk, 2017). Her nonfiction writing has appeared in The Guardian, Slate, The New Republic, Hazlitt, Catapult, and others. Follow her on Twitter at @j_zimms and subscribe to her newsletter.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers and The Disordered Cosmos by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out all of Multitude’s merch at multitude.productions/merch!
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Find Us Online
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda and I am a solo this week. And this is Episode 222: Women and Other Monsters with Jess Zimmerman. I was so excited to see this newest title from Jess. She was on the show, I think, in its first year many, many moons ago talking about Circe. And it was so much fun. She was such a good guest. I love following her on Twitter. And this book was just a fantastic read, I think, for all conspirators. You're gonna love it. But we go through some of the monsters in her book that we have not covered on their own on the show. So, we've mentioned many of them before, but getting to do this deep dive and sort of seeing Jess’ interpretation is absolutely fantastic. So, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I also enjoy every single time I get an email telling us that there's a new patron on the show. So, thank you so, so much to Anastasia, Jessima, Chris, and Justin for joining the Patreon this week and our supporting producer level patrons; Uhleeseeuh, Allison, Debra, Hannah, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Keegan, Kneazlekins, Liz, Megan Linger, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Polly, Sarah, Skyla, and SamneyTodd as well as our legend level patrons – a side note, I just achieved 100 percent completion on Stardew Valley, which seemed impossible because of the legend fish. Stardew Players, you know what I mean. So, this week, the legend level patrons have even more resonance for me. Thank you. You are not as annoying to catch as the legend level fish; Audra, Drew, Jack Marie, Ki, Lada, Mark, Morgan, Necroroyalty, Renegade, Sanna, and Bea Me Up Scotty. I also have two fantastic books to recommend to y'all today; one fiction and one nonfiction, just that you have this little duets – this little pairing so you can start with whichever you're in the mood for. The first is called Honey Girl, a novel by Morgan Rogers, and the kind of, like, logline of the book is when becoming an adult means learning to love yourself first. And the protagonist, Grace Porter, just completed a PhD in Astronomy and I love it. The book is fantastic. You got to read it. It's a wonderful, heartfelt, lovely book, but also it absolutely paired well with the second book I read this week, which is called The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who is a physicist and talks all about dark matter, the physics of melanin in skin, the standard model of particle physics and what might actually lie beyond that. So, the two of these books together will get you in a fantastic sciencey lovely, introspective mood. And I recommend both of them so highly. As always, you can go to spiritspodcast.com/books to see a list on bookshop.org of both the books we’ve recommended on the show and books by our guests. So, if you want to check those out, go for it. bookshop.org is also a great place to shop online. I use it to buy mystery novels for my grandma pretty much every other week because they support independent bookstores and have kind of a coop model, where they do profit sharing with the stores that are members. So, I love it. We love the coop here. You know that we do. So check out spiritspodcast.com/books to pick up a copy of Honey Girl and The Disordered Cosmos. I would also like to remind you all about our merch store. At multitude.productions/merch, you can see merch items for all of the members of the Multitude collective. Horse has some new merch out right now. And Join the Party had Chad dice very briefly and then they sold out. So, in the meantime, you can get a Chad pin, but we are working on getting those dice back in stock. And, obviously, Spirits has lots of posters, hats, t-shirts, pins. You got digital coloring books. You got wallpapers for your phone so you can rep Spirits. So, if you want to check that out, that is multitude.productions/merch. Well, without further ado, guys, we hope you love this Episode #222: Women and Other Monsters with Jess Zimmerman.
Intro Music
Amanda: We are welcoming a, a two-time returning guests. We're gonna give you a robe, by the way, after the show, Jess, so you can have a, a little memento. Jess Zimmerman is back because she has a fantastic new book out that came out yesterday and you should all buy it. So, Jess, welcome.
Jess: Thank you so much for having me back on. I cannot believe, like, how much more – not more appropriate, but how equally appropriate this book is for you guys’ podcast. It's almost as if I wrote this just to have an excuse to come back. I'm not saying that's true, but it seems really plausible.
Julia: We wouldn't be mad about that.
Amanda: [Inaudible 4:08].
Julia: Genuinely, we wouldn’t be mad about that.
Jess: I think it probably just proves that all of our interests are very, very much in line.
Julia: Absolutely. And it's, it’s been a minute since we had you last on to talk about Circ. So, I think it's a perfect kind of transition to talk about your new book, which is Women and Other Monsters.
Amanda: Hell yeah. And can you just remind anybody who missed the first episode or who has listened to so much Spirits since then who you are and what you make online?
Jess: Yeah. So, my name is Jess Zimmerman. I am the Editor in Chief of Electric Literature, which actually might be the kind of thing that your listeners really dig. It's, you know, digital magazine. We publish fiction. We also publish essays that are about literature but really literature writ large. So, books but also movies, television, games. What we really want to do is make literature relevant exciting and inclusive. And, so, that means that we're sort of looking at literature from, from various different angles and trying to look at ways that it operates in people's real lives and how our lives can illuminate literature and vice versa. I also – obviously, I write separately from that in, in my spare time for that. And, so, this book is about feminism and female mythological monsters from Greek antiquity and really sort of reevaluating those monstrous women to show sort of the ways that they instantiate these kind of patriarchal stories that were told about what it's okay for women to be like, and what it's okay for women to want, and how all of those are really embodied in these, these monsters that we can then reclaim and rewrite our relationship to.
Julia: I think this is really great, too, because I – as you can imagine, I blasted through the book. It was fantastic. And you talked a lot about several monsters that we've talked about on the show before, but there are several that we haven't talked about that I think people would recognize just from knowing anything about mythology or just like culture in general. But I, I would love for you to start kind of like you start the book. One, kind of like defining who this book is for because I thought you had a really interesting take on, like, what “women” is in the sense of, like, defining what a monster is.
Jess: Yeah, I mean that's, that's a really important aspect of the book, I think, because we went with this title because, to me, it sounds good as hell, Women and Other Monsters.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: And because, you know, women is, you know, useful shorthand, but it encompasses, in the context of this book, a much, much larger segment of the population than just people who identify as women and, and, certainly, a larger segment of the population than people who were assigned female at birth and we're raised as women. The way that I use women in the book – identity doesn't even really figure into it because what I'm sort of looking at is the way that people are sort of treated by society. So, so, it includes both people who were raised as women and so who were feminized in their upbringing and that affected what they were told was possible for them. It also includes people who are reacted to as women. And, so, that may be men. That may be non-binary people. There are a lot of ways in which people will feminize you in their reactions to you that have nothing to do with who you actually are. And that's also, you know, people putting you in a – in a pigeonhole or people, you know, taking you seriously or not taking you seriously. And, so, it really is more a question of kind of the societal niche that is defined for women and some of us fit very comfortably, I think. I've never met anyone who does fit very comfortably into that niche. But I think some people fit in more comfortably. And then other people don't feel at home in that niche but are still often forced into it. That's kind of the concept of womanhood that I'm talking about because these are – these are the stories that were told about what it means to be a woman and what women are allowed and what makes women natural or unnatural and what makes women acceptable or grotesque.
Amanda: I think anybody who's had the baggage of how society treats women foisted upon them, if anyone on the street has been like, “Here, hold this for a second,” you will take something away from the book, which, which I really appreciated.
Jess: That's exactly it. Yeah, the baggage – and which, which often is literally the baggage. You've got a purse. Can you hold this for me?
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Hey, it seems like you're here to help me. Can you answer an irrelevant question that I could have googled?
Jess: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. Sure.
Jess: And then can I tell you about the ways that you are wrong?
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: You start the book, too, with a very helpful definition of, like, what monster is in terms of what we're going to be discussing today and in the book. Would you mind just giving that quick, like, definition for our listeners before we really dive in?
Amanda: And then we're gonna ask for, also, the word other, which I think is – no, I’m kidding. They’re both important definitions.
Julia: And breaking down that whole title.
Jess: Let’s go. I got a lot to say about and actually.
Julia: Yes.
Jess: No. But I mean both these, these things, the definition – you know, starting with a good definition – I actually used to teach rhetorical writing. And the first thing that we would always make students do is to write a definition paper defining, like, a word that was very important in the argument that they were making. You do have to do that. And it makes your writing better. So, monster, actually, I didn't go deeply into the scholarly pursuit of monster studies. There is a scholarly area. It's pretty much just this one guy, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and he really defined monster studies. And it's very academic. So, I don't go into it too deeply. But the ways that, that he defines the monster, kind of the layperson’s version, is that the monster is defined in kind of the boundaries of what's acceptable and the monster police's those boundaries. And, so, when we're asked to think of something as monstrous, what that means is that we are thinking of it as something that's outside of what's natural, outside of what's normal, outside of what's acceptable. And kind of the project that I'm after in the book is, is kind of demonstering these monsters. They're presented as monsters in myth. And then because you know, these specific myths underline so much symbology that we see in, like, literature and art and in language. You know, when you hear people talk about as a harpy, they become presented as monstrous kind of throughout this, like, very Western literature-based culture. But that doesn't mean that they need to be monstrous in terms of kind of what we think is normal and what we think is acceptable. And, so, if the monster sort of patrols the boundaries and we expand those boundaries, then there's a whole lot of stuff that is actually not only normal, but maybe admirable.
Julia: Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm – oh, gosh, I'm just very excited to talk about this with you. I want to dive in. You talk about a bunch of different monsters that we've talked about on the show, like I said. But I wanted to dive into a couple of the ones that we haven't, like, really gone into deep detail with and, also, talk about kind of the way you contextualize them in the book. So, I'm gonna start with the sirens because I love that you contextualize sirens with Aerosmith’s music video for Crazy. That's wonderful. I love that. Can we talk about that real quick?
Jess: Yeah, my friend, Brad used to run a karaoke reading in Queens, which was such, such a genius idea, where people would read a little piece of writing and then sing a karaoke song that was related to that. And I, I hope that they can start doing that again someday when, you know, things like that exist again and then – because I've been sort of promising/threatening to them for a long time that I'm gonna – that I'm gonna read that part of the book and then sing Crazy. Yeah. So, honestly, siren was a very hard one for me to write because the concept of the sirens, as this story comes down to us, is really a story about being seductive, having this kind of promise of something. And one of the things that I talk about in this chapter is that it varies depending on the telling what exactly the sirens are promising to people. So, it's not always, obviously, sex related, but it's always something enticing, something seductive. And that's not really something that I have a lot of personal experience with, like, as the monstrous person. Like, I don't think anybody has ever been, like, “You know what? You're too sexy.” Like, that's not – that's not like – that's not my personal experience. But I have been on the other side of that, you know, looking at these images of women that are presented to us as, you know, this is enticing to you or this is the way that you're supposed to be enticing to others and that's where your value is. And, so, I ended up having to write this chapter from a sort of, like, I'm confused about this too perspective and maybe you are also. Because we're given all of these sort of images of women as seductresses. And it's hard to know if that's not the role that you play. It's hard to know what relation you're supposed to stand in to it. So, the reason that I started with Crazy is that, like, I thought – I mean it's not – it's not okay for me to think it anymore because I'm 40 years old. But Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone were, I think, probably 16 in that video and I was like 14 when it came out. And I thought they were the hottest thing I had ever seen. Like, I – it just burned into my brain every frame of that video. Their sort of siren quality was operating in two ways for me. I could see them in the video, basically, getting whatever they wanted because they were so attractive. They weren't necessarily giving anything. There's a scene where they go into a gas station and, and the guy behind the counter kind of motions to them to take whatever they want. And they start, like, sticking bread in their purse and, like, getting candy and sunglasses. And then they go into the photo booth and they --
Julia: Classic gas station photo booth. Right.
Jess: Gas station photo booth. And they take some pictures. We don't see those pictures. And, later, Liv performs at, like, an open mic pole dancing night and she doesn't really take her clothes off, you know. So, nothing is – nothing is really given. It's all about the promise, right? Like, they're not – they're not really giving anything to the gas station guy. They're not really giving anything away to the men in the audience. But they get all that bread and candy at the gas station. They get their gas for free. They get $500 from the open mic night. So, I'm watching this as a teen and I'm simultaneously thinking, “Okay. This is the way that you navigate the world. This is the way that you succeed.” And I'm also thinking this – but I don't even know if I was thinking, like, this is extremely sexy. I was just – like, I was fascinated by it. I was – I was, like, obsessed with it.
Julia: It's the power that they're, like, using rather than like, “Oh I find these people particularly sexy,” which we can talk about Steven Tyler. Is that it? The --
Jess: Yeah. Steven Tyler is the – is both the lead singer and Liv’s father. So, that's interesting.
Julia: Exactly. Yeah. We can talk about that and sexualizing your own daughter another time, I guess. But, yeah, no, it's, it's more about the power that they are exuding and using for their benefit with the promise of, like, sex or desire that they never actually fulfill. And I think that's, like, the really interesting thing that ties well to the sirens because it is a promise that they don't plan on ever fulfilling. It's just to get what they need/want.
Jess: Exactly. And I kind of think, “Great. Like, good for them. Get – literally, get that bread.” Yeah.
Julia: Like, gas station bread.
Jess: But, of course, in the form of the story of the sirens, they're a menace. And they're – and they're, literally, deadly. And, so, the way that we're kind of encouraged to read that story in the context of women actually, you know, embodying this power and using this power is that promising something where someone has not been able to collect is kind of a fundamentally, you know, about criminal, but, like, a fundamentally, like, monstrous and cruel act.
Julia: I feel like we should also give a little context in case people haven't read the Odyssey and the – and the Iliad and stuff.
Jess: Oh, yeah.
Julia: Like, I feel like everyone knows, like, siren, siren call, siren song, I just want to, like, give explicit context for what that story is.
Jess: That's a really great point because one of the – one of the things that happens when these stories, like, really make their way into the culture is that you get kind of a version of them that you understand through just, like, language and reference. But you don't always get the original story.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: The sirens actually show up in a couple of different classical epic poems. They show up in the story of Jason and the Argonauts.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: Then they also show up in the Odyssey. And, in both cases, what it is is that they're depicted as bird women. So, they're mostly birds and they have a, a woman's head. They're not actually described that way, I think, in either of the poems because they're not really seen. But they are these creatures on these lonely rocks that each of these ships, you know, has to sail past. And they're essentially an obstacle in your journey because, as you pass them, their song is so, so beautiful that anyone who hears it leaps into the water and drowns.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: Each of these sort of classical boats of myth takes a different approach that, on the Argo, they have Orpheus with them and Orpheus plays a song that is louder and equally beautiful. So, they essentially have, like, a classical battle of the bands.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: They still lose one guy. So, one guy is able to hear them and he jumps off and his loss and is presumably drowned. And then Odysseus, for his journey, he has all of his men stop up their ears with wax and then he wants to hear the song because --
Julia: Odysseus.
Jess: It's fine for him. Yeah, right. So, he has them tied to the mast. So, they can't hear it. He can, but they won't. They won't let him go. And, yeah, so, in both of these cases, the sirens don't really appear as physical creatures. They are essentially this kind of, like, wafting seductiveness that you hear sort of over the waters.
Amanda: Like, ambient temptation.
Jess: Yeah.
Julia: Exactly.
Amanda: When I first really understood what the siren story actually was, I remember thinking like, “Wow, it's really amazing the kind of, like, entitlement to fulfill the promise of sex.”
Jess: Mhmm.
Amanda: That explains so much gender based violence. And it also is, I think, like, the backbone of this story, which is obviously bad to, like, lure somebody to their death no matter how you lure them. But the monstrousness really comes from the fact that, like, this, in particular, is the promise and that it's not just not fulfilled, but it, it is, like, used against men.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. Because if the story was there are these very beautiful women with very beautiful voices who live on an island. They sing very beautifully. And, if you hear them, you will jump into the water, swim to their islands, successfully have sex with them and leave. Like, that one – no one would have had a problem with that.
Julia: Like, “All right. Fine.”
Amanda: In terms of outcomes in the Odyssey, it sounds like a pretty good one.
Jess: You’d be like, “Oh, sounds great. I guess I'll be an adventurer now.” It's the promise and then the promise kind of going wrong. And I think that that's, in many ways, the way that, that people react to sexual seductiveness or even, even kind of sexual adjacent seductiveness. It’s the fact that I am attracted to you is somehow now a burden that I've made with you. That you are drafted into and that that is an obligation to you.
Amanda: Yeah.
Jess: One thing that's really interesting about the siren – so, this isn't true in every story and I can't, offhand, remember which ones it is. But, in some of the stories, they actually die if you are able to sail past them without jumping into the water. So, it is – it is a matter of life or death for them to be able to entice people. And that's something that, like, really feels true sometimes to the female experience also.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. Depending on your kind of, like, marketability of very conventionally defined attractiveness and, without that, just send me off to sea. That's all.
Jess: Yeah, exactly.
Julia: Or, like, the classic I must laugh at this man's joke because I don't know if he'll get angry and kill me if I don't.
Jess: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely.
Julia: I would love to move on to, I think, classically or at, least later on, another depicted bird woman group. And that is the harpies.
Amanda: Yay.
Julia: Either I don't remember the story or, I guess, I just hadn't heard the story that you recount in the book about the Aeneid and Aeneas coming to the land and finding all of the cattle there. Would you mind giving us a recap on that one?
Jess: Yeah, it's, it's an incredible story, honestly, because, like, obviously, Virgil, like, did not intend for it to be read the way that, to me, is so obvious to read it. So, basically – so, Aeneas has men land on this island. The islands very beautiful. It's very green. And they see these cattle grazing there and they're like, “Oh, great cattle. Those must be for us because – why not? We don't see anyone else around here.” So, they slaughter the cattle. They cook them up. They make a big feast. There's a part where they, like, make couches out of turf. So, they're – they're essentially just, like, digging up the landscape so that they can lounge around and eat these cows. And then the harpies show up. And the way that the harpies are described – it's really interesting to look at them kind of across translations of the Aeneid because the translators tend to really extend themselves on how absolutely disgusting these creatures are. That's the main difference between them and the sirens. They're both, like, birds with women's heads, but the harpies are just gross.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: So, they show up. They're very gross. And they're trying to, like, get the cows. And, so, of course, Aeneas and his men chased them down with swords. Once they corner them and the lead harpy is able to speak to them, what she explains is that this is their island and those are their cows. And that, actually, they're just trying to take back their cows. They're not actually trying to, like, snatch something away.
Julia: Mhmm.
Jess: Harpies actually comes from the word for snatchers. This does not matter at – and it just absolutely doesn't matter at any point. The men don't end up killing them because they essentially have invulnerable skin. So, the swords don't do anything. So, the harpies end up just cursing the men instead. The, the curse is a little toothless, but we won't get into that. But, but this entire kind of face off is based on these guys being like, “Cows, those are mine.” And then the harpies are like, “Actually, they're ours.” And then that is, like, a monstrous thing to do. You know, that, that's the thing that makes them monsters. It’s reasserting their right over this property.
Julia: Yeah, if I can quote you at you for a second.
Jess: Sure.
Julia: You have a great line here which is, “A man who lays claim to unguarded property is a hero. A woman who grasps for her share is an abomination.” I'm like, “Oh, Jess. Oh, so good. So true.”
Jess: I mean an abomination is the way that, like, people describe the harpies. Like – and then, you know, that they're, like, dripping with discharge and whatever. They're so gross for essentially being, like, wombs obscene. Yeah.
Julia: The virgin face and then dripping with – just, like, putrid womb, I think, was one of the translations and I was like, “Oh, boy. Okay.”
Amanda: You might as well just call them used.
Jess: And, literally, all they're doing is being like, “Umm, excuse me, sir.”
Julia: Can you not steal my cows, please?
Amanda: Sorry. That was mine. That's, like, the mythological equivalent to me of someone cutting you in line and me being like, “Sorry. I think there's a line here,” when what I really mean is, “Hi, you took my spot. Prepare to die.”
Jess: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then they look at you like you're the bitch.
Amanda: Because bitches are people who point things out that are true.
Jess: Mhmm.
Julia: Yeah. God forbid I stand up for the thing that I deserve and is mine.
Jess: Yeah.
Julia: Right. Call me a harpy. Fine. Love it. I will take it. We're gonna talk a little bit more about some of the other monstrous women in Greek mythology. But, first, we're gonna grab a quick refill.
Amanda: Let's go.
Midroll Music
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Julia: So, now that we are back with our drinks in hand, I would love for you to talk about the Sphinx. Sirens, yes. Harpies, yes. And we'll, we'll talk a little bit about the Furies later. But the Sphinx, I guess, I never really considered, like, monstrous in my head. I know it's like a half woman lion thing. But, in my head, I'm like, “This is a majestic creature.” So, let’s, let's talk a little bit about that.
Jess: I mean both of those things are true, right? Like, it, it is a majestic creature. It also very much follows the monsters of antiquity formula of just being, like, either half person, half animal or several animals stuffed together. Or, sometimes, multiple instances of the same animal. So, I should back up, I think, probably and, and kind of give a précis of that. The story of the Sphinx in Greece – there's a lot more about Oedipus that, I think, probably people know a little bit by association. But the Sphinx part is that she is this half lion, half woman creature that is laying waste to the city of Thebes. You know, killing their cattle and not obviously killing people, but, like, basically, destroying their livelihood and not letting anyone into the city to try to rescue it. So, the only way to get past her to get into Thebes is to answer her riddle. And that's really what we mostly have associated with the Sphinx. It’s that she is a mysterious creature that has this riddle. The riddle it turns out is not that hard. Although, possibly just because we've known it for, for thousands of years.
Julia: Heard it a million times.
Jess: But the riddle is what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night or some variation on that. And the answer is man, who is a baby and crawls around, then walks, you know, on two legs, and then uses a cane when older.
Amanda: I do like the normalization of, like, mobility devices. So, fair enough.
Julia: Pretty legit.
Jess: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it is – it is kind of nice to, to recognize the cane as part of the body. I do appreciate that. One of the things that I talked about in the chapter on the Sphinx is like, of course, the answer is man. Like, of course, you couldn't just let this powerful female creature be terrorizing the city. So, Oedipus answers the riddle just because he's very, very smart, which turns out, in some ways, to be his downfall. So, he's able to get past her and go into the city. You know, he doesn't fight her at any point. He just answers her riddle. She kills herself. So, she dashes herself on the rocks because somebody has, has figured out her, her secret.
Julia: I felt like doing that when people have mansplained things to me. Of course, I get it.
Amanda: That suck so much though. Like, it really just kind of reduces her to a sort of transactional being and that's what I think of when I think of the Sphinx having not read the original story. I was like, “Oh, yes, a transaction. You know, it gives you the riddle. You give the answer and then you can like proceed in the maze or whatever.” I think that the Sphinx should have made any kind of riddle to do with menstruation or pregnancy and then Oedipus never would have known.
Julia: No, no, no, no, no.
Jess: Right.
Amanda: Yeah, Oedipus never would have known. And then she'd still be having her way with Thebes today.
Jess: It would barely even have to be a riddle.
Julia: Yes.
Jess: It could just be like a really straightforward question.
Amanda: Define the cycle.
Jess: A friend of mine many, many, many years ago went around D.C. asking a bunch of cis men how different contraceptives worked. And it was really, really something to watch them try to answer, like, how does the NuvaRing work, what does it actually do. So, she could have just done that one. I think there were probably fewer forms of contraception at the time. But --
Amanda: Yeah.
Jess: Yes.
Julia: It was a lot of, like, sticking, like, waxed up things --
Jess: Yeah.
Julia: -- in orifices. Yeah.
Jess: Pessary or whatever. Yeah.
Amanda: The present is definitely better in one way and it's menstrual care.
Jess: Right. But one of the things that's interesting about the Sphinx, I mean, I think people know that there's, there's a Greek Sphinx. There's an Egyptian Sphinx. And, and the Egyptian Sphinx is the one that there's, you know, a huge statue of outside the great pyramids. That one's pretty male. I mean and I say, in the book, like, nobody's turned it over to check. But it – you know, it has a beard. It's got kind of the male aspect. Greek Sphinx is definitively female. The story of the Greek Sphinx is actually that she came over. That she came from North Africa. And, so, essentially, like, her background in the story also follows the trajectory of the story. But I think it's interesting that this was, like, not an exclusively female creature comes into kind of the realm of this story that Sophocles is telling about Oedipus and then becomes a female creature. There is a --
Julia: Sorry. That was such a deep sigh there that I had to hold back.
Jess: There is a version of the story that is really hard to track down. It appears in, like, one playwright’s version of Oedipus that we don't have any more. So, we only have, like, fragments of historians talking about this play much later. So, it may – it may be totally apocryphal, but it's possible that there has existed a version in which the Sphinx asks another question. And that riddle is actually kind of about birth.
Julia: Ooh.
Jess: Metaphorically, it's the – it's something like there are two sisters and one gives birth to the other and the other – while the other gives birth to the first. And that's day and night.
Julia: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
Amanda: Ooh.
Julia: Very Greek answer.
Jess: I put it in the essay because it was so good. And then I did more research and I was like, “Oh, I don't even know if this is true.” But then this is the nice thing about writing essays as opposed to, like, scholarship is that I could be like, “Okay. But let's say that this is like --
Amanda: Yeah, someone at some point made it up.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And, therefore, it's a cultural artifact even if it doesn't, you know, originate at the same time as the first one.
Jess: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and, like, you know, I sort of acknowledged, like, this is hard to track down. But, also, it's so metaphorically robust. And here's what it would do as part of a robust metaphor. So --
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Julia: I also really liked when you talked about kind of the fear of other and the power of both other and knowledge when you're talking about the Sphinx because, absolutely. Like, this is a creature that came from another place and is being a threat because it is foreign and, also, because it is a female with knowledge that most others don't have.
Jess: Yeah, that's what I think is very interesting about the Sphinx. It’s that she's sort of – she's multiply other. The fact that she's from Africa, like, the racial aspect of that is not made a huge deal of in the stories. But the fact that she is from another place, that's a big deal. So, so, sort of the xenophobic part of it. And she has, like, this sort of innate foreignness to her. And the way that people we see as feminine and the way that people we see as foreign are kind of diminished are often different versions of the same thing. So, so, women are often treated like children. Foreigners are often treated like aliens or animals sometimes, especially, like, you know, people who are racialized often are treated like animals. But all of these are ways of kind of denying true humanity and denying sort of full, you know, intellectual capacity and full brain function to people that are not essentially the ones telling the stories. So, the, the Sphinx, in her capacity as a woman, is not supposed to have these secrets and not supposed to have these unanswerable riddles. And then, also, the Sphinx, in her capacity as, as a foreigner and an avatar of foreignness, is not supposed to have these secrets and these unanswerable riddles because it essentially puts her in a place where she is intellectually over the people who are trying to answer the riddle and failing. And I also feel like that's the reason that the story has to have her kind of dash herself on the rocks at the end. Like, how dare you?
Julia: Mhmm.
Amanda: Yeah, doesn't it feel bad to have other people with either the answers, the power, or the resources that you don't have access to? Like, does it not feel bad? Huh, guys? Yeah?
Julia: We can probably close out our monster section talking about the Furies, which you point out are also known as the kindly ones in the same way that we, we refer to, like, the fae as fair folk because we don't want to piss them off. Can you give us a little bit of context for the background of the Furies? As I remember it, they're usually tied to the story of, like, Agamemnon being murdered by Clytemnestra and then Clytemnestra getting murdered by Orestes.
Jess: Yeah. The play, The kindly Ones, is, is part of a – like, a three-part play cycle that those are the other parts of it. And the Eumenides, which is the Kindly Ones, is essentially an early courtroom drama.
Julia: Sure is.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Jess: It's an early courtroom drama kind of about the invention of the courtroom. So, the Furies are hunting down Orestes for exactly what you said. For killing Clytemnestra and her lover. Instead of them being able to sort of take their bloody revenge, Apollo and Athena set up this court where they can put him on trial and then essentially decide that what he did doesn't matter because he only killed the lady.
Julia: Oh, okay.
Jess: Like, it's not – it's really not subtle at all. Like, essentially, Athena has a line where she's like, “Well, I'm more or less always on the side of men. And, so, to me” – oh, and they, they also discussed, like, whether a mother is even really involved in birth.
Julia: Or if she's just the, the bearer of a seed.
Jess: Yeah.
Julia: Oh, god, it’s, it’s awful, and misogynistic, and gross.
Jess: Like, does it count.
Julia: Your book and just Greek mythology in general, not kind to Athena. She's fucked up a lot.
Jess: Yeah, she was – she was, like, really one of my favorite. I mean I went through – I went through various favorites. I, I was like a huge mythology head when I was a little kid. So, she wasn't my first favorite, but she was actually one of my favorites. And then I kind of looked back at her.
Julia: And you're like, “Hmm. Girl.”
Amanda: A problematic fave at best.
Jess: But the thing is, like, I, I sort of – I said in one of these that she was the original not like the other girls girl. And I think that was also – that was why I liked her and then also why I had to think twice about her.
Julia: Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jess: So, yeah, she comes off terribly in, in the Eumenides. She ends up, like, essentially, giving the Furies a new job and saying, “Okay. Well, you, you no longer get to exact revenge, but you can exact exactly the kind of revenge that I tell you is okay.
Julia: Sure. Why not?
Jess: It’s really a disaster. The thing about the Furies to begin with is that they're not – I mean they're called Furies, but they're not chaotic beings, right? They are essentially order keepers. Their positioned to, you know, keep the souls of the dead under control. When they are called upon to take vengeance for something, it's generally something that is a crime against the natural order like matricide if matricide matters, which – oh, no.
Julia: Apparently, not.
Jess: Do, do moms even count as parents?
Julia: Yeah, they're – they're just a creature that – or a being that I associate with, like, the phrase Righteous Fury.
Jess: Ooh.
Julia: Like, they are angry for a reason and because there deserves to be anger over that thing. And – I'm sorry. I have to go back to Athena for a second because I'm still mad about it. Every once in a while, people will listen to our Medusa episode. And I will get emails, or messages, or DMs and people would be like, “Well, actually, I heard a story about how Athena really did that to protect Medusa turning her into this monstrous creature after she was raped.” And I'm like, “Not really. I mean, like, that is a very generous reading of what Athena did here.” It’s that like, “Oh, okay. No man could ever touch you again.” But, like, that's not how you help a victim. That's --
Jess: Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: I have a lot of opinions about Athena and her victim blaming, but that's besides the point.
Jess: I mean – and, like, obviously, I'm all about recontextualizing Greek myths to make them tell a different story. So, like, is there a way to tell that story? God, I don’t know because, because, like you say, like, even if it's coming from a place of kind of misapplied and misjudged good intention, it's terrible.
Amanda: Yeah, it's like a capital T tragedy.
Julia: It’s not like she and Medusa had a conversation like, “I want you to make me extremely ugly and I can now petrify men and turn them to stone.”
Jess: Right.
Julia: It was just Athena was like, “Okay. I hope this helps.” No.
Amanda: Maybe Athena exists to show us how not to help people.
Julia: I hope so.
Amanda: And, instead, you can say, “Hey, what do you need and how can I give it to you?”
Jess: I mean I kind of think that she, she does frequently – you know, in the couple of times that she comes up in this book, she does kind of play that role of, like, being a woman who is also kind of an avatar of the patriarchy and who is trying to maintain the status quo. The thing that’s a real insult to injury in the Medusa story, I think, is then, then, after Medusa is decapitated, Athena uses her – puts her head on her breastplate. Like, “Oh, hey, this power is useful.”
Julia: Like, come on – you can't – there's no way of making that into a good thing, especially when she, basically, assisted the murder of Medusa.
Jess: Yeah.
Julia: Like, it's not like she was like, “No, don't go kill her.”
Jess: Right. Right. She was like, “Here's the stuff. Sorry. I’ll make her ugly.”
Julia: Here’s how you do it.
Jess: Yeah.
Amanda: Classic.
Julia: [sighs] There's, there’s no winning there. Sorry.
Jess: But I do think this could be a challenge for Madeline Miller wrote Circe. Like, if she wants to – if she wants to revisit Athena and give Athena, like, a whole new --
Amanda: I trust it.
Jess: Yeah, I, I'd read it.
Julia: I would read it.
Amanda: I'd read it.
Julia: That's the only person I trust with it to be quite honest.
Jess: Yeah, exactly.
Julia: I'll probably cry through the last third of it like I did for a Song of Achilles. And I’ll be fine.
Jess: Oh, my god. Yeah.
Julia: But back to the Furies. Sorry. Not to detract from how wonderful they are and their true justice.
Jess: So, the Furies, you know, I kind of bring up the phrase social justice warrior in the book because it's the same kind of idea. Like, it's – they are warriors for social justice. That is literally what their job is. And there's no real reason for that to be a bad thing unless social justice and your own particular sort of hegemony are at odds. I'm not, by a longshot, the first person to try to kind of reclaim the Furies. Like, that, that has a long history. I think, for a lot of people, that's, that may even be kind of a first insight into the way that these stories are weaponized against us because, if you think too much about the idea of these, like, angry women who are punishing unnatural crimes and then how that makes them into, like, these disgusting, monstrous beings, then you're like, “Wait a second.” So, they can be kind of, like, like, an index case.
Julia: I think that really ties in well with kind of what my, my final question is, I suppose, which is why is it we're drawn to monstrous women. You know, like, as a modern society, why are we so fascinated with these stories? Why do we want to recontextualize them? Why do we want to retell them? Why do we want to reclaim them?
Jess: Yeah, I mean, I think, people recognize instinctively. Even if we don't sort of know right away the way that these stories are operating on us and the way that they were designed to operate on us, I think, people recognize that there is a power in monstrousness and, I think, they, they see that immediately. Because, if you're looking at the Sphinx, you know, that's a lion. So, I think that it does sort of introduce that cognitive dissonance where you're like, “Okay. I can see that these are powerful creatures. And I can see – in some cases, I can see that they haven't done anything wrong.” That's not always the case, but it's certainly the case for some of these monsters. It’s that they're just trying to live their lives. So, so, sort of understanding the disconnect and recognizing the disconnect between what you see in these creatures and how you understand them and the stories that are told about them, I think, can be really illuminating for people. And, and the power is immediately obvious. So, like, one of the things that, that sort of convinced me that the time was right for this book is that I have been able to – like, not to – not to sort of reduce things to capitalism, but I have a lot of, like, accessories and stuff that are like, “Oh, here's a pin with the Sphinx on it. Or, you know, here's a – here's a, like, harpy necklace.” You know, I have – I have a friend who was making music under the name The Harpy. Like, like, you see sort of these images and these symbols being used as symbols and images of power. Like, people immediately see the power in them. And, so, then the question is like, “What do we do with the story behind it?”
Julia: Yeah.
Jess: And how do we kind of rewrite that or reunderstand that in order to bring it in line with what we can immediately sort of instinctually understand?
Amanda: I think it's also really helpful signaling to each other that, if you see somebody else with a Medusa pin, it says like, “I too am on the fringes. You know, I too have felt on the outside. I too have been made into the monster. And you're gonna find a friend in me.”
Jess: Yeah, absolutely.
Julia: And I think a great way of learning how to retell these stories and reclaim them is by buying Jess’ book.
Jess: I won't disagree.
Amanda: Hooray! It came out yesterday as of when this episode comes out. Or you can request that your local library buy it, which also ultimately goes to the same place. Jess, please tell us all about where folks can get the book and also to follow you and your work online.
Jess: Yeah, I mean you can get it at pretty much any place that you – that you get books. I like bookshop.org because it's a way to support independent bookshops without having to necessarily pick a specific one. But it's also great if you have a favorite independent bookshop. You can order it through them. I've tried it from a couple of places and it always seems to work. So, it will probably work from your store too. And there's also – there's an audio book at libro.fm, which also supports independent bookstores.
Julia: Awesome.
Amanda: Hooray!
Julia: And people can find you online where?
Jess: Yes, you can find me online probably mostly on Twitter. Probably more on Twitter than I should be @j_zimms. It's j_Z-I-M-M-S. I hope I said the correct number of Ms there.
Julia: We'll link it anyway. They can just click.
Jess: All right. Thank you. And you can sign up for my newsletter, which is deadchannel.substack.com.
Amanda: It's great one.
Jess: It has not mostly been about monsters, but it might be about monsters at some point.
Amanda: If we talk long enough, everything becomes about monster for sure.
Julia: That's what it’ll be. That’s just my life.
Amanda: Jess, thank you so much for coming on the show. I look forward to the next time we can see each other in person and I can complement your monster accessories.
Jess: Yes.
Amanda: In the meantime, everybody, remember.
Julia: Stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.
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Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil