It was interesting to see the difference between Western European and precolonial societies’ attitudes and beliefs towards women. It was equally interesting to see those attitudes reflected in how they viewed mermaids. The patriarchal ideas held within European Christian doctrine stand stark against the more egalitarian precolonial views of gender, reflected in how European mer-wife plots tended to be tales about female infidelity or served as implicit calls to action for their male audience to control the women in their lives, (Bacchilega, et. al., xix) whereas precolonial societies like precolonial Hawaiian myths of human men and their mer-wives (mo’o) found no need to control their otherworldly spouses. (Bacchilega, et. al., xx) 

In my personal and cultural experience, we also have a mermaid equivalent called the sirena, but the name itself and its associating facts are borrowed from the Spanish. The sirena has a reputation for using their beauty and their enchanting voices to lure sailors to watery deaths, similar to the way Europeans paint mermaids as temptresses. However, in precolonial Philippine myths, sirenas are seen as protectors of the waters, sea life and the gods themselves. In one myth, a sirena stayed loyal to their human lover, who earned the sirena’s trust and loyalty after performing multiple feats, till they died and spent the rest of their immortal life still very much in love with their lover.