Cixous/Kristeva

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question these myths, if we would "look at the Medusa straight on," we would find out "she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing."
Cixous characterizes women as "black and beautiful", "we're stormy, and that which is ours breaks loose from us without our fearing any debilitation. Our glances, our smiles, are spent; laughs exude from all our mouths; we're not afraid of lacking." Cixous characterizes women's bodies and women's writing in response to the "inevitable man-with-rock, standing erect in his old Freudian realm" (which symbolizes woman lacking the "symbolic" power so therefore she lacks power) as we don't have to accept that. We are not obligated to men in any way, shape or form and do not have to conform to their standards of masculinity. Men have "riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the medusa and the abyss." The myth of the abyss was created when men made women believe that the questions surrounding the male-created myths were "too dark to be ...

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