I named the kitty who followed me home in the rain Cassandra! For obvious reasons, I thought, and it really surprised me how few people even knew about her.
Relevant comic:
Those two comments dangling at the bottom are like a modern day laugh track.
Tell me how I’m supposed to feel, so I don’t have to decide myself.
Edit: Shit, piefed combined the comment section with c/196. I didn’t realise this was c/WomensStuff. Sorry for the intrusion.
Not to worry, I fixed it:
Haha. Yes.
damn, get fucked Apollo
My fave was the one where it was phrased “nobody will believe you” and then she was adopted by odysseus
Haaahahaha this is great
I maintain that Zeus is the absolute fucking worst.
Because the story of Cassandra doesn’t help kids get wiser, it just helps them get more cynical
Yeah. This post sounds good, but the actual moral of the story sucks.
One is “don’t lie all the time or nobody will believe you, even when telling the truth.”
The other is “nobody will ever believe you, regardless of how truthful you are.”
Is that the moral… I remember one who would say that it is
Never tell the same lie twice.
Unless it’s for consistency. If you have a long-term lie going, you need to keep it consistent, or others will notice the plot-holes.
Plain and simple
One is “don’t lie all the time or nobody will believe you, even when telling the truth.”
I’m not sure this moral sucks though.
The other one sucks, but it’s true.
We agree. I’m saying that one is good, and the other sucks.
<3
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Hey TrickDacy, thanks for stopping by - have you had a chance to read the rules for this community?
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Nope, just checking, you’re good if you’ve seen them! I’ve seen you around before quite a bit, but not a familiar “face” to me here.
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Ah yes, that does mean that men aren’t allowed to comment here. Very happy to chat about Cassandra or feminism or the patriarchy in another community anytime though! [email protected] is rather active :)
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I think it’s opposite sides… One is telling lies and being believed until not, so that’s you, don’t tell lies or you won’t be believed eventually. The other is telling the truth and not being believed, so don’t dismiss another person’s story unless you know it to be untrue just because everyone else doesn’t believe them. I think they’re both good lessons.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Being cynical can prevent you from being vulnerable.
I’d rather we were taught stories like that than stories like this or… worse.
So it helps them get wiser, just not in a way that makes them compliant.
Cassandra was cursed by Apollo because she refused him sex.
I can see a situation where a priest or a camp counselor or an uncle tries to rape a kid, and the kids thinks “well if I try to stop it, I’ll just get in trouble like Cassandra”. And then later when they think about reporting the rape, they think “nobody will believe me, like Cassandra”.
Cynicism helps people survive in a cruel society, but it also makes society crueler. I’m glad that our modern society is a little bit better than the Hellenes. I don’t want it to get more like that society.
The way past cynical detachment is with material change, not pretense and deception.
Children may well have parents or an environment where reporting rape gets them in trouble. At least a cynical child may recognize an adult being angry at them for reporting a rape as an enemy who can hopefully be circumvented. A naive child would be blindsided and could probably be cowed into silence.
So tell them the story of Cassandra, tell them how it can really happen, and then tell them in what way they live in a society that is different from back then.
Tell them about the impulse to stay quiet and not make a fuss. Tell them about the impulse to shut down inconveniences, about gatekeepers and victim blamers and perpetrator apologists. Tell them about transformative justice, about police violence, about child protective services and its abuses. And maybe make a plan with them to find their own justice if shit were to hit the fan and the parents are unavailable/unreliable.
If it’s any consolation, none of this will be nearly as daunting as them realizing they were born into a dying world and the people in charge are actively trying to make things worse.
Cassandra was given the gift of uttering true prophecies, but was cursed so that they would never be believed. Commonly, Cassandra incurred Apollo’s wrath by refusing him sexual favours after promising herself to him in exchange for the gift of prophecy.[15] In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, she bemoans her relationship with the god:
Apollo, Apollo! God of all ways, but only Death’s to me, Once and again, O thou, Destroyer named, Thou hast destroyed me, thou, my love of old!
And she acknowledges her fault:
I consented [marriage] to Loxias [Apollo] but broke my word. … Ever since that fault I could persuade no one of anything.[16]
Latin author Hyginus writes in his Fabulae:[17]
Cassandra, daughter of the king and queen, in the temple of Apollo, exhausted from practicing, is said to have fallen asleep; whom, when Apollo wished to embrace her, she did not afford the opportunity of her body. On account of which thing, when she prophesied true things, she was not believed.
However, other versions of the story have been given; Tzetzes wrote that Cassandra and her brother Helenus received their gifts of prophecy after being left overnight in the temple of Apollo, and in the morning they were found with serpents licking their ears.[18] Additionally, Euripides wrote that Apollo left Cassandra to be a virgin, and the god was angered when Agamemnon took her as a concubine.[19]
Her cursed gift became an endless pain and frustration to her. She was seen as a liar and a madwoman by her family and by the Trojan people. Because of this, her father, Priam, had locked her away in a chamber and guarded her like the madwoman she was believed to be.[20] Though Cassandra made many predictions that went unheeded, the one prophecy that was believed was that of Paris being her abandoned brother.[21]
Oh fabulous. She was cursed to never be believed because she dared to say no to having sex with Apollo.
The fact that women are often questioned and not believed in this way shows this myth has not lost it’s reasons for existing.
I always liked the interpretation of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” as a cover story created by a negligent villagers that let a kid get devoured by wolves.
The villagers send a small boy alone to the top of a tall hill to look out for wolves. He sees a wolf approaching from the direction opposite the village and sounds the alarm. The villagers show up, but the wolf hears the alarm and runs away before the villagers get there. The villagers ignore the boy and his pleas that there was a wolf, scolding him for wasting their time. A few days later, this repeats. Finally, on the third time, the boy calls for help again, the villagers don’t show up, and the boy is devoured. When the villagers eventually find the resulting horror scene, they get their story straight to defend themselves. They tell people that the boy lied, that he laughed when they came to the top of the hill, when in reality he told them the truth, and they didn’t believe him.
What kind of reasonable adult sends a small child out alone to guard against viscous predators? That sounds like negligence to me. Exactly the type of thing someone would lie to cover up.
Isn’t the Cassandra story retold in pretty much every sci-fi tv show at some point? I feel like it’s so common it’s almost a trope now.
Ripley from Alien immediately comes to mind
How so?
None of the crew believe her in the first movie. And then they all die. Except her.
Hey there, have you read the rules here?
I have, and I apologize. I didn’t notice which community this was posted in. I won’t be offended if a mod wants to delete the thread.
Because the boy who cried wolf story is a good parable for anyone, and the story of Cassandra is only useful for people who will either never understand the lesson, or those who already know it too well.
Because we’re teaching kids not to lie.
Kids not listening to women isn’t natural, that’s also a thing we teach them. We should stop.
I think the moral of the story for Cassandra is that if women do not bow to men and allow themselves to be subjugated, they are cursed to never be believed.
It’s a cautionary tale of patriarchy.
Personally, I think it would have been better if I had been taught that the world at large will automatically not take me as seriously as men because of my gender rather than having to stumble on that all my own in my young adult stage.
I’m just musing and building off of your comment, not arguing to be clear :)
Thought this was going to be a joke about how the boy who cried wolf story being repeated too much made it lose its impact lol.
I suppose because one is a fable and the other is my average day.
Damn. Fair point.
I appreciate your posts. This one included. Thank you! :)
Deleted my comment because I didn’t realize the poster was Ninki minjaj, not Nicki Minaj. Ignore me!
Parody account names always fuck me up lol
I call ADHD Cassandra disease
I don’t believe the story of Cassandra is real. 😉
