D is for Duality. Or: Fuck you, Aristotle.

This is a response to the Pagan Blog Project.


Probably one of the biggest topics buzzing around the pagan blogopshere right now is the clusterfuck that was and is Pantheacon and its discrimination against transgender individuals. Because yes, it's discrimination.

I wasn't at Pantheacon, nor will I probably EVER be. I'm antisocial for one thing, and for another all my travel cash goes towards the BHOF Weekend. So I'm hardly qualified to discuss at length the events that transpired last year, nor do I much care to discuss the future of the convention - I don't give a shit, and other people have made points much more eloquently than I could.

The events at Pantheacon, however, serve as a reminder to me about the concept of duality in paganism and magic... and how much it burns my ass.

It seems to be an accepted fact among many in both communities that the universe in all its glory can be broken neatly into gendered parts. There is a god, and a goddess. There are four elements, two male and two female in nature. We speak of 'masculine' and 'feminine' energy. These forces are seen as complementary, but definitely mutually exclusive, and we as human beings are generally assumed to reflect the qualities associated with our biological sex.

This latter assumption is being rightly challenged. But we should take it a step further and examine why we gender energy at all. It's pretty fucking backwards, especially when you consider that the 'female' energies are very often viewed negatively.

Water and Earth are, traditionally, considered 'feminine' elements. They are associated with 'the goddess' and all of these in turn are considered to be passive, receptive, nurturing, dark, and intuitive. These are ideas that go back to Aristotle... that asshole who claimed "women cannot practice the necessary prerequisites for philosophy" because we cannot reason. Reason (associated with Air, oh look at that!) is for men.

In her excellent book The Woman Magician, Brandy Williams discusses how Aristotle's philosophy has shaped much of the Western world, and has certainly had an influence on Western Magic. We have to remember that our traditions are not that old - as I understand it, they are cobbled together from mostly Hellenistic sources that were studied overwhelmingly by white men. During the Enlightenment, women did indeed work in magical lodges, but both the framework of the rituals and the social climate contributed to the continual acceptance of the gender binary system.

Women were mediums and muses - passive receptacles. Men were the magicians.

Well. Fuck that.

Duality is a crock of shit. Yes, there's a sun and a moon. Yes, they are different. Does that mean they're total opposites? They're both big glowing things in the sky! Black and white exist on opposite ends of a spectrum, sure... but it IS a spectrum. There are many, many shades of grey as white blends into black and back again.

When I was new to the Craft, I studied my Big Blue Book and was relieved and inspired by the idea of female deity. But Uncle Bucky said there was a god, too. Okay, seemed fair... so of course you pick a god at random to match your goddess. In retrospect I can't think of anything less respectful and less divine - it's treating deities like fucking matching table lamps. "Shit, we have one on the left side, better get one for the right!"

Wicca, for all its acceptance of (and in some cases, elevation of) women still operates largely in the same terms as other magical traditions. The elements are still gendered. The Goddess is still seen in terms of human fertility - the Maiden, Mother and Crone aspects all refer to what 'stage' you are at in a woman's life, tied very much to your menstrual cycle. The typical image of the Triple Goddess doesn't have a picture of a childless woman beating the shit out of someone, does it? That's active - the God's job.

The concept of duality is not evil. It is, however, limiting by its very nature. Subscribing to a binary system means that you classify everything as either-or. 10101010101. Not 101013010101. You're good or you're bad. You go to heaven or hell. Not a lot of wiggle room, is there?

I find life is all about wiggle room. Possibly death, too.

I am a cis-female. And I'm a 'girly' woman - I wear high heels, I love makeup. I worship a female deity who has, let's face it, nothing to do with birth or nurturing and everything to do with fucking and fighting. I enjoy arguing (fuck you, Aristotle) and magic. I could sit here and make a list of how every single one of my personal traits is either 'masculine' or 'feminine' or we could simply agree that that's bull, that energy is energy, and while it may behave or feel different from other types it's not necessarily one-or-the-other. The sun is not a man, the moon is not a woman, and we as human beings are complicated creatures powered by forces that at times may seem contradictory.

We do not have to label everything in our selves and our world as opposites. We have the choice, as reasoning beings, to expand our view just a bit to allow for a lack of strict categorization.

After all, we're the ones who constructed those categories in the first place.