Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Stranger in a Familiar Land

Been chewing on this for a few days - forgive the links not being fresh-out-of-the-oven.

The contemporary NeoPagan revival has happened almost completely in what might once have been called Christendom.  There are lots of reasons for this, one of the chief among them being, that outside of Christendom and its Islamic counterpart, the "old religions" never really went away.  Buddhism, the only Dharmic religion with a conversion imperative, was and is pretty good at existing alongside the forms and practices of indigenous religious practices.  Hinduism is an indigenous religion, as is Shinto.  Confucianism and Taoism also live alongside the various Chinese traditional practices (and each other, for that matter).  And while Judaism isn't exactly an indigenous practice, in many ways it has more in common with Hinduism than it does with its Abrahamic descendants.  In short, the only places where the local PaleoPagan practices were suppressed enough to create a need for NeoPaganism are the places where the Abrahamic religions with the conversion imperatives suppressed them, and Christianity has a head start on Islam.

Unfortunately, that means that we all come at the myriad gods with a head full of, at a minimum, Christian religious language, and in the majority of cases Christian theological ideas as well.  For those of us who were brought up not merely nominally Christian but active in our (or, more often, our parents') churches, there's a double whammy.  We cease being Christians when we realize that we no longer believe the right things; I personally spent many years identifying as a heretic, one whose beliefs are not orthodox [i.e., right-teaching], before I took the label of Pagan.  But we don't become Pagans because we have orthodox Pagan beliefs; there are none!  Being Pagan, even NeoPagan, is a matter of what we do and the experiences we have.  If there is ortho-anything in NeoPagan circles, it's orthopraxis - right-practice.  And each grove, coven, house, temple, and circle seems to develop its own orthopraxis; other than the two Wiccan standards of creating some sort of sacred space and raising energy by some method, even within Wicca every group does it differently - and non-Wiccan groups may do both of those, or only one, or neither.

At any rate, talking about "faith" in a Pagan context is slippery at best and actively harmful at worst.  On the one hand, when we're talking with Christians, especially ones who are somewhat sympathetic, it makes sense to use language that's familiar to them and easy to understand.  I'm guilty of referring to NeoPaganism as a "faith tradition" in the context of such conversations, myself, albeit with the caveat that it's actually a broad cluster of traditions.  I've also pointed out in conversations both with other Pagans and with Christians that I "have faith" in my gods in exactly the same way I "have faith" in my friends and lovers, not in the way that most Christians "have faith" in Jesus or Yahveh (although, being honest with myself, my relationship with Jesus as a late child bears more resemblance to my relationship to the Green Man now than it does to what the church of my upbringing expected it to be).

Finchuill, in "Faith or Fides,"suggests that the words we want as Pagans (especially as polytheists) are "confidence" or "fidelity" (which share the root) rather than "faith" in our gods.  I'm in general agreement with this, especially with his point that, especially in Protestantism, "faith" is about an inward process or struggle, and a polytheist Paganism is largely external - not that there isn't plenty of internal work, but we are fundamentally about ritual - again, what we do and who we are, rather than what we believe.  Still, it's a tricky bit of language to pull off in a religious climate that takes sola fides as a given - never mind that "salvation" is an even less-relevant concept to us than "faith" is.

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, in "Christianity Through a Polytheist Lens," goes deeper into the problem of accidentally ceding theological territory to Christianity through our use of language that isn't really meant for polytheist ideas and practices anymore.  (It was, once, of course - I have had several arguments with atheists and agnostics who complained that what I worshipped weren't "real gods," and I have had to explain that the word "god" means what Odin and Thor and Tyr and Frey and Loki are, and did long before the monotheos got labelled with the morpheme.)  There's a strong tendency by monotheists to assume that humans have generally evolved towards monotheism - this despite half of them not believing (there's that word again) in actual evolution!  And if by that they mean "adopt this or you won't live to reproduce," then there's some evidence for that, I suppose, but I don't think that particular memeplex is heritable in the way they seem to be assuming - if it were, I'd probably have fallen no farther than an eclectic and syncretic Catholicism instead of all the way into idol-worshipping, Ba'al-honoring, Asherah-pole-erecting Paganism.  I also like his post's defense of cataphatic mysticism - I failed a college course on ancient Jewish mysticism once because I couldn't wedge my head into the idea that the "beyond words" sorts of mystical experiences were somehow more true (or at least more worthy of study) than the more sensory and sensible sort.

For me, at least, the tension between speaking enough of the same language to make sense to monotheists and not being drawn into reinforcing their terms and worldview is pretty severe.  To a certain extent, it's the usual "the master's language" problem all over again, although at least in this case we can make a much clearer case for reclamation - English was a polytheist's language once, and can be again.  It's a matter of us being clear about what we mean, and that means talking about what we do and experience, not just what we believe is true.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

If This Is Purity, Adulterate Me, Baby!

Cutting Edge's The Virgin Daughters:


A few thoughts:

A lot of the language and set-up of this is indistinguishable from the language and set-up of the husband-chasing reality TV shows; it's obvious that they share a lot of assumptions - that what a woman wants isn't sex per se, but the trappings of romance combined with physical opulence.  (I'm reminded of a friend of mine's recent discovery that an on-again off-again girlfriend of his was flirting heavily with him at a party at a ritzy hotel, despite him not having anything to do with the surroundings; it was the ritziness itself that was the turn-on for her.)  I find this disturbing, honestly, especially when connected with the idea that young men have to bribe a woman into a sexual relationship (whether marriage or otherwise).  There are other linguistic similarities, too - the constant references to "princesses"(which rhetorically makes the dads all kings here) and "fairy tales" (which at least acknowledge the unreality of it all, and do hardcore Christians really want fairie lore, with its fae godmothers and witches and other powerful independent magickal women, creeping around their daughters?).  The refrain of "you're beautiful" - it's almost as if they can't imagine a woman with any worth other than her beauty, although I imagine they'd argue that they're really talking about spiritual beauty.

When the dad asks, "How cool is that?" regarding a woman having only ever kissed one man, I legitimately wanted to throw up (even ignoring how much he coaches his daughter through the other interviews).  There's nothing cool about that at all.  Even if I were completely monogamously inclined, I can't imagine never sharing affection with other people.  These are, by and large, people who tend towards larger families, even if they're not technically Quiverfullers.  How can they imagine that love for your children can only get larger, but love for your, you know, lovers is finite and gets divided up?  Should a youngest child be hurt that zir parents have already given away their hearts to two, three, or more other children before them?  If hearts are large (and I agree that they are), they are large in all directions, not just in storge.  The mom agreeing with that kind of language is creepy, too - I understand having regrets over relationships that didn't work out, but that somehow translating into not having "a whole heart" for the man she married is nonsensical.

The whole "Daddy is everything for a little girl" motif reeks of emotional incest, as does the faux-marriage and the partnered dancing with the fathers.  The ownership paradigm is also out in full force - the girl passes from her father's "protection" into that of a young man whom the father has thoroughly vetted, his duly appointed substitute.  The pledge they read at the ball itself is pretty terrifying, as is the line "let me tell you who you are."  It's already a scary thing for a teen girl to be discovering her identity; confusing a father's paternal love with his desire to define you for yourself - that's pretty horrific.

I am a bad person; I laughed out loud at the line about the '70s being "milder" than now.  The Long Hangover was easily one of the most tumultuous times in US history; it's when the Silent Generation finally woke up.  The current mess is a mess, sure, but it's moderate by comparison.  Then again, several of the parents express deep regret for their histories - which would have happened in the '70s to the '90s.

"But what if you don't like the way he kisses?"  Ah, there's the rub.  This is all about a lack of female desire, an attempt to explain it away, to pretend it isn't there.  Girls don't care how a boy kisses; they care about the size of the diamond he puts on her finger.  Girls don't care if their husbands can't get them off, as long as they're good providers and put them up on a motherly pedestal.  What rubbish.  These men are afraid that if a girl has an orgasm, if she has preferences, if (God forbid) she has kinks or is queer, then their good Christian boys won't be able to satisfy her.  The womb belongs to their God, but a clitoris is the Devil's plaything (and the G-spot is Ashtoreth's terrain; also, perhaps, the mouth, considering that they put such deep emphasis on kissing).

There is one success story, in the girl who escaped - by the same deep magick of the uterus.  I only hope the other girls find their way out by less traumatic means, and that their parents manage to love them anyway.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

So Many Relationships

Has anyone noticed that there's an awful lot of All-But-One-Privilege going around?

For those who aren't already familiar, All-But-One-Privilege (ABOP, for short) is the condition in which you are a member of all of your culture's privileged groups except for one.  An awful lot of groups fighting against a specific oppression, at least in the US, are founded by ABOPs, and there's probably a good reason for that: if you're only oppressed in one specific way, then you have enough avenues for expression and opportunities for networking provided by your other privileges to organize and get your message out.  In fact, it's probably necessary.  But it can become a problem when the privilege you lack is the only one you see.

The canonical example is the white, heterosexual, monogamous, middle-to-upper-middle-class women who were most of the second-wave feminists.  Their work was powerful and important and I (and all modern USian women) owe them an enormous debt - but their record on reacting to other ways the kyriarchy oppresses people was mixed at best and shamefully bad at worst.  They did, eventually, grow to accept white, monogamous, middle-to-upper-middle-class lesbians, but it took too long.  While they incorporated academic class critique easily, often this faltered in practice, with working-class and poverty-class women failing to hear their voices and choices represented in the movement.  And their near-total failure to incorporate black, Native American, or Latina perspectives is still one of the great failings of feminism, even here on the third wave.  We're getting better, but it's been fifty years and there are still some massive lessons not fully learned.

Another example, a more successful one in some ways, is the gay movement.  This was all about white, male, cis, middle-to-upper-middle-class white homosexuals when it first started, and largely stayed that way, with a few bones thrown to lesbians (if they were Kinsey 6es) and an acceptance of certain forms of genderqueerness (and outright hostility to others), until the '80s.  In the reaction to HIV and AIDS, several things changed, oddly quickly from my point of view: suddenly the lesbians were full members, possibly because they stepped up and volunteered at a time when a number of the previous volunteers were no longer able to, and the movement went positively schizophrenic about its nonstandard sexual minorities.  The public face of the movement split into those who were adamant about being as "normal" as possible - lily-white, cis, monogamous, vanilla - and those who were in-your-face about their queerness - more racially diverse, campily genderqueer, everything from polyfidelitous to promiscuous, more accepting of bisexuality and pansexuality, and proudly displaying all kinds of kink.  As better treatments for AIDS became available, these two groups drifted back together, and the "we're just like you only gay" types seemed to at least internalize the increased diversity message, even if they still seem embarrassed about the camp drag and the leathermen/leatherdykes.  It's still not perfect - especially if you're bi/pan or a transperson who is serious about transitioning and not interested in playing with gender - but it's better than it used to be.  In some ways, intersectionality is making more inroads in the QUILTBAG movement than the feminist one, and that's sad.

The USian atheist movement seems to be hitting this particular wall these days.  It's largely a movement of white, heterosexual, well-educated, middle-to-upper-middle-class men.  The only privilege they lack is religious privilege.  Now, this is serious - the culture is still very hostile to non-Christians in general and atheists in particular.  I don't mean to downplay it; in fact, as a member of a non-Christian religion, I get a lot of the same blowback, and it can be very painful.  But the combination of Elevatorgate and the reactions several nonwhite, queer, trans, and disabled bloggers have gotten from the 'establishment' among the American Atheists have also made it very, very clear that racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual privilege are alive and well - and probably cutting down on the number of people willing to be out-and-proud atheists.  The Occupy movement, similarly, is united by their lack of economic privilege - and showing deep signs of failure to recognize other types, although again, some individual Occupy groups are doing much better than others.

I don't have a solution.  The outspoken presence of multiply-oppressed people in a group clearly helps, and it helps the most if they are well-spoken and can point out unfair treatment concisely and immediately, but it's not a panacea (otherwise bell hooks would have been sufficient to solve the racism problem in feminism).  A general commitment by the group as a whole to not be dicks to each other also helps, but theoretically all minority religious groups have that already, and look how that's turned out so far.  I think movements need ABOPs to get mainstream traction - poor, trans lesbians of color in polyamorous D/s relationships are more likely to get published in the Enquirer than the New Yorker or an academic journal.  Can we call on Spider-Man to help us - "With great privilege comes great responsibility"?  I don't know, but maybe it's a start.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Shouldn't it be Wonder Moon?

Like everyone else, enjoying the Supermoon tonight.

Probably not like everyone else, enjoying it with a stick of incense in hand.  So many interesting memories associated with the Full Moon - Ave, Luna!