Medusa wasn't always a monster

According to Ovid:

"Medusa was once a beautiful woman, the jealous aspiration of many suitors. But Poseidon, the god of the sea, saw her and raped her in the temple of Minerva [Athena]. In anger and shame at the desecration of her temple, Minerva punished Medusa—not Poseidon—by transforming her hair into snakes and making her face so terrible that the mere sight of it turned onlookers to stone."— Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV.794–803 (translated by A.D. Melville)

This version frames Medusa’s transformation not as a punishment for vanity, as earlier myths suggested, but as a cruel twist in which the victim of sexual assault is punished by a goddess whose temple was defiled.

Later in the myth, Perseus, a hero sent on a quest by King Polydectes, is instructed to retrieve Medusa’s head. With help from divine gifts—Athena's shield, Hermes' sword, and Hades' helm of invisibility—Perseus beheads Medusa while she sleeps.

This transformation mirrors what often happens to real-world survivors of sexual violence: they are stigmatized, isolated, or even blamed for the assault. Medusa, a victim, was made unrecognizable by her community—feared, vilified, and ultimately hunted down by Perseus. Her decapitation was hailed as a heroic act, and her head became a trophy and weapon—her trauma commodified and used for others’ purposes.