Dionysus inspiration?
This myth is violent and gruesome, so fainthearted DUers please turn back now! Dionysus is the Greek god of wine and theater. In Orphic Hymn (#41), he is identified as both male and female, making him an icon among some in the LGBTQ+ community. Euripides' play "The Bacchae" features the god and was first performed in 405 BCE. In the tragedy, King Pentheus violates women's right to follow their own religious beliefs and violates their right to privacy. It doesn't end well for him. The Theban king, and his followers, forbid the worship of Dionysus. Under the angered god's influence, Pentheus' women followers madly rush into the mountain to practice wild rituals. Dionysus retaliates against the king by weakening his mind. Appealing to his purient interests, Pentheus is persuaded to climb a tree to spy on the women's rites. In so doing, he violates women's privacy. Dionysus causes the women celebrants who had rejected him to mistake their king for a wild animal. In a frenzy, the women sacrifice the apparent animal by tearing him apart, limb from limb. The king's mother had been complicit in repressing worship. So, thinking she is seeing the body of a slain lion, she places her son's head on a pike and parades it back to town. Only then did the god drop the veil from her eyes. The god's retribution was brutal and pitiless. But for the barbarian women who worshipped Dionysus and accompanied him in his travels, "The madness of Dionysus enabled these women to come together in large groups and to feel their solidarity and power independent of the control of men" (Arthur Evans, The God of Ecstasy, 1988).
In America, solidarity among women and those who care about them is needed now, but with more political organizing and saving mad drunken dancing for Kamala's victory. And for those who would be king, who would interfere with our right to choose our own religious beliefs and nonbeliefs, who would violate our right to privacy, and who would interfere with our right to vote (our civilized way of registering opposition), could The Bacchae serve as a cautionary tale?