Is Medusa a victim or villain?

Athena couldn't punish Poseidon, so she punished Medusa

Question: Is Medusa a victim or villain?
Position‹2 of 3›: Medusa is a victim
Argument‹2 of 2: Athena couldn't punish Poseidon, so she punished Medusa

Medusa was punished by Athena because she couldn’t punish Poseidon, who was a deity that outranked her.

The argument

Another reason Athena may have punished Medusa is that she could not punish Poseidon. Athena, while a very influential goddess in Greek mythology, is outranked by Poseidon in terms of status. If Athena were to hold Poseidon accountable for his transgressions against her, the goddess' father, Zeus, would have to punish him. The situation becomes trickier since Poseidon is also Athena's uncle (Zeus' brother). In a case like this, Poseidon would arguably garner more favor with Zeus as opposed to Medusa. In these kinds of disputes, the gods tended to have the upper hand as opposed to mortals as well, which also probably contributed towards Athena's verdict. In turn, the only way for Athena to punish Poseidon is by punishing Medusa. Athena knew that Poseidon lusted after Medusa, this was made evident by his ravishing her. So to get back at him, Athena cursed Medusa so that Poseidon couldn't seduce him anymore. One can argue that Medusa is caught in the middle of a crossfire between two deities. Due to her involvement in their feud, Medusa likely suffered a punishment that was not explicitly intended for her.

Premises

[P1]Athena could not punish Poseidon, who outranked her and was favoured by Zeus as his brother. [P2] The only way for her to strike back at Poseidon, who lusted after Medusa, was to curse Medusa so he could no longer desire her. [P3] Medusa was thus caught in the crossfire of a feud between deities, suffering a punishment never truly meant for her. [C] Therefore, because Athena couldn't punish Poseidon and so punished Medusa, Medusa is a victim.

Counter-arguments

Despite Poseidon outranking Athena within the Olympian hierarchy, that has not stopped her from challenging the rival god before. Both gods desired to be the patron deity of Athens, so much so that they almost went to war with one another. They would eventually settle this dispute with a contest between the two gods to decide who would become the patron of Athens. If there were an imbalance between Poseidon and Athena, then Poseidon would have claimed Athens as his city regardless of what Athena wanted.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The counter-argument on record notes that Athena did contest Poseidon directly: the two competed for the patronage of Athens and Athena prevailed, which is hard to reconcile with a hierarchy so rigid that she had no recourse against him at all. [Rejecting P2] Even granting that Poseidon was beyond her reach, "the only way to punish him was to punish Medusa" is a reconstruction of divine motive, not something the myth reports. No source is offered in which Athena states this reason, and the argument treats a modern psychological reading as though it were part of the received account. [Rejecting P3] The crossfire premise depends on selecting one version of the story: in the earlier tradition Medusa is born a Gorgon rather than transformed as a punishment, and the ravishment-and-curse sequence the argument relies on comes from Ovid, centuries later. On the older account there is no punishment to be caught in the middle of.