On Mutual Magnetism, Patriarchal Rewrites, and Why the Sea (and the Song) Were Never Meant to Be Still

Being called a siren is deliciously complicated. It’s the kind of backhanded compliment that makes you want to curtsy and roll your eyes simultaneously (I attest), equal parts flattery and warning label. As someone who’s been accused of “bewitching” rooms (apparently, my presence alone is a health hazard), I’ve learned that sirens are less mythological creatures than convenient explanations for male fragility.

There’s a pattern to these stories: some people drift back into your orbit, drawn by the same gravitational pull they once found so unsettling. They read between your lines, searching for confessions you never wrote, haunted by the echo of a song they claim to resist. It’s anthropologically fascinating how influence lingers—how some tides never quite recede, no matter the years or the weather. Some resurface after decades, still carrying the embers of old love and passion, and others who orbit closer—appearing at family gatherings, devouring with their eyes, lingering a little too long in the ritual of cheek-kissing. (It’s always the sober ones who keep their distance; the bolder gestures are reserved for the haze of celebration. Some tides, it seems, are best navigated with a glass in hand.) Desire, fear, resentment, nostalgia—sometimes all in a single glance. If the past teaches us anything, it’s that the tides are never truly one-way.

But here’s what’s fascinating about siren mythology—it’s basically a masterclass in patriarchal revisionist history. Once upon a time, before men learned to weaponize bedtime stories, powerful women weren’t villains. They were goddesses. Ninhursag literally invented people. Tiamat ruled chaos itself. Inanna went to hell and came back with souvenirs. These weren’t cautionary tales but origin stories, and the women in them didn’t apologize for taking up space.

Then, someone decided that it needed editing. As societies reorganized themselves around masculine authority, the stories got makeovers. The wise queen became the wicked stepmother. The life-giving mother transformed into a child-eating witch. Divine feminine power was systematically rebranded as feminine danger because, apparently, the only thing scarier than a woman with influence is a woman who knows she has it.

The siren was perfect for this project. Initially, she was wisdom incarnate—part oracle, part iTunes playlist, her voice a GPS system for navigating life’s mysteries. But revision is a hell of a drug. The same voice that once guided heroes through existential crises became the thing that crashed them into rocks. Her crime wasn’t malice but audacity, not cruelty but the radical act of having opinions while female.

It’s almost mathematically elegant in its predictability. A woman has influence → Men feel unsettled → Obviously, she must be dangerous. The quantum observer effect offers a nice parallel here: some things change reality just by existing. Maybe that’s what really terrifies the established order—the realization that power doesn’t always flow through official channels.

The myth always frames the siren as the one holding all the cards, her song the irresistible force. But anyone acquainted with true magnetism knows that attraction is rarely a solo act. The gaze that lingers, the attention that returns, the unspoken tension in the air—these are not just responses but sources. If the siren’s song is haunting, it’s because she, too, is listening. Every longing glance is a tide; every encounter is a subtle exchange of energy as if the sea pulls at the moon just as the moon pulls at sea.

Perhaps that’s the real secret: the siren’s song endures not because it destroys but because it reveals—and because she, too, is changed by those who dare to draw near. Power, after all, is always a tide: coming and going, shaping and shaping. The music lingers for both the singer and the listener, echoing long after the ships have passed.
We see these patterns play out not just in myth but in the microdramas of daily life. The siren’s song is not always a literal melody; sometimes, it’s a glance, a word, a silence that lingers longer than it should. Sometimes, it’s the way a woman’s presence shifts the mood of a room or the way her absence is felt like a missing note in a familiar tune. Influence is rarely about volume—it’s about resonance.

I see this pattern playing out in miniature whenever certain men circle back into my orbit, drawn by whatever it was about me that initially disrupted their internal weather systems. They’re like moths with graduate degrees, simultaneously attracted to and resentful of the same flame. It’s anthropologically fascinating: how someone can spend decades processing an encounter that you’ve frankly forgotten, reading your casual observations like sacred texts that might contain the key to their existential unrest.

This is the siren’s actual superpower—not destruction but revelation. She doesn’t wreck ships so much as expose what was already unseaworthy. The sailors who crash were never great navigators, to begin with; they just found, in her song, permission to stop pretending they knew where they were going.

The whole archetype endures because it’s multipurpose. For those intimidated by feminine power, she remains a useful villain. For those reclaiming it, she’s something else entirely—a reminder that influence is a feature, not a bug. That the ability to shift atmospheres and alter outcomes isn’t witchcraft but Wednesday.
So when someone calls you a siren these days, consider it free market research. After all, it’s considerably easier to blame the singer than to examine why the music still haunts them, why they keep returning to shores they claim are treacherous, and why they never quite learned to swim in calmer waters.

Perhaps that’s the real secret: the siren’s song endures not because it destroys but because it reveals. It’s a melody that outlasts the storm, echoing long after the ships have passed—reminding us that power, like music, is felt before it is understood.
And if, from time to time, the tides bring a familiar sailor back to your shore, don’t be surprised. Some journeys are measured not in miles but in the courage it takes to listen—really listen—to the song that’s been there all along.
So curtsy if you must, roll your eyes if you wish, but never silence your song. The world, after all, has always needed a siren or two to remind it that the sea was never meant to be still.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. Abracadabra, I create as I write