The Rape of Callisto And The Silencing Of The Female Voice
Rape and Victim Shaming
This piece was inspired by a colleague and virtual friend on Medium. I say virtual friend as it is difficult to describe a person you have engaged with in cyberspace but that you have not met in person. So this has been prompted by an important piece from @JesstheAvocado
The paintings are undoubted of great artistic beauty but the subject matter and the outcome are certainly not, as Jess explains very succinctly.
According to the story of the myth given by Ovid in the Metamorphoses Callisto (Kallisto in Archaic Greek) having joined Diana/Artemis in the woods as a nymph is raped by Jupiter/Zeus who had disguised himself as Diana. Callisto had fallen in love with Diana and in the paintings shown Cupid is seen with his arrow aimed at the embracing couple. But this is Jupiter in disguise, not Diana.
Callisto is ‘seduced’ and ‘tricked’ by Jupiter — these euphemisms for rape are quite sickening — and becomes pregnant, which Diana discovers during a bathing scene which is again shown in one…
