I saw Robert Eggers' The Witch for the second time last night. I left the theatre unable to stop smiling, which possibly creeped out the cashier at the IGA when I stopped to buy potatoes.
The following reviews contains SPOILERS. So very, very many spoilers. It's spoilertastic.
Showing posts with label gender political. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gender political. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Beautiful Harpies
Have you ever heard a woman say that she "just doesn't get along with other women"?
Not a wild statement at first glance, but if you truly consider it, what it's really saying is, "I'M not like other women, I'm special. I'm the Cool Girl who hangs out with the boys." This is generally considered to be a form of internalized misogyny - a poison belief that all (other) women are either too 'girly' in their interests, or are jealous, catty harpies. It's a load of shit, of course, but it is depressingly common and usually based on experiences we had in our teens and early 20s when we're still feeling out who we are and what we're interested in.
Compounding the problem is that there is social conditioning at work that sometimes dictates subject matter in conversation - there's an archaic idea that women in a group MUST talk about makeup, or babies, or cooking, or some other 'feminine' topic while the men play beer pong in the next room and talk sports and philosophy. If a woman is bored by babies and lipstick, she should not assume all the other women in the room are interested solely in these things - she should try bringing up a different topic and see what happens. Maybe one of those women who likes lipstick also likes serial killers.
I'm quite lucky in that I know many fantastic women, and I feel even luckier in that I have the pleasure of working with several. Last Friday, a group of us went out for drinks and spent a good few hours just talking. (I may have, after three glasses of sangria, suggested that women need to stop being racist and homophobic and just band together since if we have a united front we outnumber horrible old white men, buuuut... see three glasses of sangria.)
The following day I had my first Gracefully and Grandly class with Ruthe Ordare, and at the beginning of the class we made introductions. I was surprised by the fact that more than one woman was taking the class specifically to meet other women - one of our classmates is an engineer, and she said she was surrounded by men all day during the week and just needed to get away from testosterone sometimes. Obviously there wasn't much talking in a dance class since we were, you know, dancing but I was still struck at the time by how safe a space it was. Some of the exercises we did for free movement were, objectively, hilarious... but nobody was sitting there judging anybody else, and nobody was laughing or being bitchy. It was a supportive female environment.
Women - like men - can be wonderful people, or terrible. Both genders (and any and all in between or beyond) are simply people. Treating them as anything but is bound to cause problems and leave you missing out on some great experiences and opportunities for friendship.
And honestly, if you really think that every one of your own gender is a jealous, catty bitch? Well. YOU'RE probably being the cunty one and could stand to do a little self reflection. Come on, ladies. Let's not buy into this trap.
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| Perception. |
Compounding the problem is that there is social conditioning at work that sometimes dictates subject matter in conversation - there's an archaic idea that women in a group MUST talk about makeup, or babies, or cooking, or some other 'feminine' topic while the men play beer pong in the next room and talk sports and philosophy. If a woman is bored by babies and lipstick, she should not assume all the other women in the room are interested solely in these things - she should try bringing up a different topic and see what happens. Maybe one of those women who likes lipstick also likes serial killers.
I'm quite lucky in that I know many fantastic women, and I feel even luckier in that I have the pleasure of working with several. Last Friday, a group of us went out for drinks and spent a good few hours just talking. (I may have, after three glasses of sangria, suggested that women need to stop being racist and homophobic and just band together since if we have a united front we outnumber horrible old white men, buuuut... see three glasses of sangria.)
The following day I had my first Gracefully and Grandly class with Ruthe Ordare, and at the beginning of the class we made introductions. I was surprised by the fact that more than one woman was taking the class specifically to meet other women - one of our classmates is an engineer, and she said she was surrounded by men all day during the week and just needed to get away from testosterone sometimes. Obviously there wasn't much talking in a dance class since we were, you know, dancing but I was still struck at the time by how safe a space it was. Some of the exercises we did for free movement were, objectively, hilarious... but nobody was sitting there judging anybody else, and nobody was laughing or being bitchy. It was a supportive female environment.
Women - like men - can be wonderful people, or terrible. Both genders (and any and all in between or beyond) are simply people. Treating them as anything but is bound to cause problems and leave you missing out on some great experiences and opportunities for friendship.
And honestly, if you really think that every one of your own gender is a jealous, catty bitch? Well. YOU'RE probably being the cunty one and could stand to do a little self reflection. Come on, ladies. Let's not buy into this trap.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Sisters of the Moon
There's an episode of the Faculty of Horror that discusses witches in film - it's one of my favourites, and I have listened to it more than once. I had not, however, seen two of the films discussed: Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem, and Lars von Trier's Antichrist. Earlier in the week my sister and I watched the former, while last night we finally got around to watching the latter.
(Antichrist. Holy hell.That movie probably deserves it's own post, but suffice to say that I don't believe it to be a misogynist film. I personally found it to be quite the opposite.)
There is an acquaintance of mine from work who has similar taste in films as I do, and so of course I told her I'd seen Lords and was planning on viewing Antichrist. She told me that she was curious to know what I thought of von Trier's film, and then went on to tell me that of all the sub-genres of horror she found witch movies to be the least accessible to her - she wasn't sure she 'got' them.
Now, my initial reaction was basically "what's not to get?" but that hardly seems a nuanced response, now does it? And so for the past few days I've been thinking about the figure of the witch in popular culture, and how varying contexts can inform how she is received.
The Witch as an archetypal figure has changed remarkably little over the years. Anton LaVey described the witch as female, and stated that she is "a wretched looking old crone... or an extremely sexy girl." This statement can be very easily traced back as far as the publishing of the Malleus Maleficarum in the late fifteenth century, and continues to be the dominant view even today 44 years after LaVey`s Satanic Witch was published. That's some staying power, alright.
Witches in horror cinema are, by and large, sexual creatures. In this way they are granddaughters of the Malleus, existing to tempt man to sin and revelling in carnal lust with the Devil himself. Their sexuality is a weapon, and is often depicted as perverse. There are films where the witches are not blatantly sexual, but in these too they are aberrant women - baby killers, Satan's disciples, vindictive harpies.
Witches, in the view passed on to us most clearly by Kramer and Sprenger, are every negative stereotype of a woman ramped up to the nth degree and given magic powers.
It's perhaps not shocking, that the figure of the witch shifted slightly whenever feminist movements began to influence the dominant culture. The 60s saw Bewitched on television, and while horror films kept up their love affair with the dark side of the occult it is interesting that Samantha and her crazy family popped up in the mainstream at the same time second-wave feminism was making an impact. (Now, Samantha was a housewife but at the same time it was undeniable that she had more power than her derpy husband.)
Third-wave feminism coincided with The Craft, Charmed, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All of these depicted witches less as concubines of the devil and more as young women trying to come to terms with their power. The past few years, we've seen American Horror Story: Coven and Salem appearing at a time when feminist issues are once again at the forefront of the cultural discussion.The witch serves as a handy shorthand for women's power, so this isn't terribly surprising.When the womenfolk start demanding their rights, it seems that the witch will once again appear, whether her depiction is positive or no.
Leaving archetypes for a moment, it's also interesting to consider the figure of the 'modern witch' in horror cinema. Coinciding with second-wave feminism again, we had the goddess movement and the rise of neo-pagan faiths. While not as common as the 'traditional' witch, we still saw this particular enchantress pop up in a few places - George Romero's Season of the Witch is a perfect example, where a bored housewife attempts to find meaning outside of her marriage by exploring witchcraft. This doesn't turn out well for her - a theme we see again in Antichrist, come to think of it. Both the character of Joan in Romero's film and She in von Trier's are drawn to female power and then find themselves terrified of (and terrorized by) it until everything explodes and goes to shit. Neither woman escapes the patriarchal trap laid for her - She winds up dead and burnt, while Joan becomes a widow still defined by her late husband.
Our 90s modern witches fared a bit better... unless they weren't 'nice,' of course.
So. What's to 'get' about the popular image of the witch? LaVey still isn't off the mark, but looking a bit deeper over both the history of cinema and further back into real events, we can see that it's a bit more complex than that - the witch seems very much to be the fear of woman personified. This fear permeates so much of our culture that is is simultaneously suffocating and barely noticeable, and so the witch remains both a scapegoat and something that more and more we seem to want to reclaim as our own. This reclamation, I feel, is important, and one that I hope to see become wider - I sincerely hope that our next wave of pop culture witches features more women of colour, trans women, queer women.
If we must be feared, let us be because we are powerful. If that makes us evil, then so be it - a world in which subjugation is good is hardly one worth living in.
(Antichrist. Holy hell.That movie probably deserves it's own post, but suffice to say that I don't believe it to be a misogynist film. I personally found it to be quite the opposite.)
 |
| Luis Ricardo Falero |
Now, my initial reaction was basically "what's not to get?" but that hardly seems a nuanced response, now does it? And so for the past few days I've been thinking about the figure of the witch in popular culture, and how varying contexts can inform how she is received.
The Witch as an archetypal figure has changed remarkably little over the years. Anton LaVey described the witch as female, and stated that she is "a wretched looking old crone... or an extremely sexy girl." This statement can be very easily traced back as far as the publishing of the Malleus Maleficarum in the late fifteenth century, and continues to be the dominant view even today 44 years after LaVey`s Satanic Witch was published. That's some staying power, alright.
Witches in horror cinema are, by and large, sexual creatures. In this way they are granddaughters of the Malleus, existing to tempt man to sin and revelling in carnal lust with the Devil himself. Their sexuality is a weapon, and is often depicted as perverse. There are films where the witches are not blatantly sexual, but in these too they are aberrant women - baby killers, Satan's disciples, vindictive harpies.
Witches, in the view passed on to us most clearly by Kramer and Sprenger, are every negative stereotype of a woman ramped up to the nth degree and given magic powers.
It's perhaps not shocking, that the figure of the witch shifted slightly whenever feminist movements began to influence the dominant culture. The 60s saw Bewitched on television, and while horror films kept up their love affair with the dark side of the occult it is interesting that Samantha and her crazy family popped up in the mainstream at the same time second-wave feminism was making an impact. (Now, Samantha was a housewife but at the same time it was undeniable that she had more power than her derpy husband.)
Third-wave feminism coincided with The Craft, Charmed, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All of these depicted witches less as concubines of the devil and more as young women trying to come to terms with their power. The past few years, we've seen American Horror Story: Coven and Salem appearing at a time when feminist issues are once again at the forefront of the cultural discussion.The witch serves as a handy shorthand for women's power, so this isn't terribly surprising.When the womenfolk start demanding their rights, it seems that the witch will once again appear, whether her depiction is positive or no.
Leaving archetypes for a moment, it's also interesting to consider the figure of the 'modern witch' in horror cinema. Coinciding with second-wave feminism again, we had the goddess movement and the rise of neo-pagan faiths. While not as common as the 'traditional' witch, we still saw this particular enchantress pop up in a few places - George Romero's Season of the Witch is a perfect example, where a bored housewife attempts to find meaning outside of her marriage by exploring witchcraft. This doesn't turn out well for her - a theme we see again in Antichrist, come to think of it. Both the character of Joan in Romero's film and She in von Trier's are drawn to female power and then find themselves terrified of (and terrorized by) it until everything explodes and goes to shit. Neither woman escapes the patriarchal trap laid for her - She winds up dead and burnt, while Joan becomes a widow still defined by her late husband.
Our 90s modern witches fared a bit better... unless they weren't 'nice,' of course.
So. What's to 'get' about the popular image of the witch? LaVey still isn't off the mark, but looking a bit deeper over both the history of cinema and further back into real events, we can see that it's a bit more complex than that - the witch seems very much to be the fear of woman personified. This fear permeates so much of our culture that is is simultaneously suffocating and barely noticeable, and so the witch remains both a scapegoat and something that more and more we seem to want to reclaim as our own. This reclamation, I feel, is important, and one that I hope to see become wider - I sincerely hope that our next wave of pop culture witches features more women of colour, trans women, queer women.
If we must be feared, let us be because we are powerful. If that makes us evil, then so be it - a world in which subjugation is good is hardly one worth living in.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
"All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman."
Sometimes I think I incarnated as a woman just to make shit more challening.
I am fortunate - I may have grown up poor, but I currently am employed and have a home and food. I'm Caucasian, able-bodied, and heterosexual, and there is privilege in all of those things. But for all of those advantages I'm still stuck in a meatsack that is subject to a terrifying level of hatred for no good reason.
We live in a society that is deeply ill. I was reading an article about the genre of revenge porn, and the author discussed women whose ex boyfriends had posted not only sex tapes or nude photos, but also their real names and addresses to the internet. These women got a ton of creepy shit, obviously, but they also had a startling amount of anger directed at them. From strangers. Their sex life made strangers who had jerked off to it upset enough to hunt them down and tell them. What?
While a modern pagan tearfully encouraging us to "remember the burning times!" makes me throw up in my mouth a little, it is impossible for me to look at something like the Malleus Maleficarum and not want to go, "yeah, not a whole fuck of a lot has changed..." when it comes to gender issues. It's depressing, and more than that it's baffling.
I do not understand how so many men can hate women that much. It does not compute.
Women are objects. Women are weak. Women are dangerous. Evil succubi and hysterical fools. It's almost like a long time ago some old dudes with erectile issues decided that one gender was responsible for their lack of boners, and so decreed that anything female should be reduced to a series of parts that only have value if a man says so. And for some stupid reason we let that sickness rot in our society for, oh, a good several hundred years. It's 2014, and just saying "hey this is bullshit" is enough to get a terrifyingly large percentage of half the species angry. And when they throw their tantrum, they unfortunately use the same tactics that have worked for years and years: intimidation, ridicule, and in extreme cases physical violence.
So. When I realise I can't go jogging because I stayed too late at work and now it's too dark and potentially rapey, when I read magical theory that relegates the 'female' energies to passive roles, and when I see a group of men dismiss a woman by labelling her as crazy or oversensitive... I try to remind myself that these are symptoms of a cultural sickness. As unfair as it is, simply bitching won't help. I need to remember to DO shit, and in a way isn't it good to have the tougher road? Makes you learn more! I mean, I could have been born as Justin Bieber or one of those Rich Kids of Instagram, but then what fucking spiritual lessons would I learn then, huh?
On the other hand, maybe the Men's Rights guys and those German monks who wrote the Malleus are right and I really AM a weak willed, sinful creature who wants to steal penises and fuck the devil and eat babies. In which case...
I am fortunate - I may have grown up poor, but I currently am employed and have a home and food. I'm Caucasian, able-bodied, and heterosexual, and there is privilege in all of those things. But for all of those advantages I'm still stuck in a meatsack that is subject to a terrifying level of hatred for no good reason.
We live in a society that is deeply ill. I was reading an article about the genre of revenge porn, and the author discussed women whose ex boyfriends had posted not only sex tapes or nude photos, but also their real names and addresses to the internet. These women got a ton of creepy shit, obviously, but they also had a startling amount of anger directed at them. From strangers. Their sex life made strangers who had jerked off to it upset enough to hunt them down and tell them. What?
 |
| About your confused dick, I mean. |
I do not understand how so many men can hate women that much. It does not compute.
Women are objects. Women are weak. Women are dangerous. Evil succubi and hysterical fools. It's almost like a long time ago some old dudes with erectile issues decided that one gender was responsible for their lack of boners, and so decreed that anything female should be reduced to a series of parts that only have value if a man says so. And for some stupid reason we let that sickness rot in our society for, oh, a good several hundred years. It's 2014, and just saying "hey this is bullshit" is enough to get a terrifyingly large percentage of half the species angry. And when they throw their tantrum, they unfortunately use the same tactics that have worked for years and years: intimidation, ridicule, and in extreme cases physical violence.
So. When I realise I can't go jogging because I stayed too late at work and now it's too dark and potentially rapey, when I read magical theory that relegates the 'female' energies to passive roles, and when I see a group of men dismiss a woman by labelling her as crazy or oversensitive... I try to remind myself that these are symptoms of a cultural sickness. As unfair as it is, simply bitching won't help. I need to remember to DO shit, and in a way isn't it good to have the tougher road? Makes you learn more! I mean, I could have been born as Justin Bieber or one of those Rich Kids of Instagram, but then what fucking spiritual lessons would I learn then, huh?
On the other hand, maybe the Men's Rights guys and those German monks who wrote the Malleus are right and I really AM a weak willed, sinful creature who wants to steal penises and fuck the devil and eat babies. In which case...
 |
| ROCK AND ROOOOOOOOOLL! |
Monday, September 10, 2012
Woman-Child?
So, I'm sitting here reading this article on Jezebel, about the 'woman-child' and it's leaving me feeling sort of torn.
The author probably isn't that much older than myself - I graduated high school the year she did college. So I don't think it's some massive generational thing. I'm an adult woman - my thirty-first birthday is this month. I have no desire to be the candy-coated sort of female she's discussing...
But she loses me a few times.
The author says, "I consider brushing my hair making a major effort on the appearance front."That blows my mind, not gonna lie. I can understand being baffled by "enormous fluffy slippers from Japan with cat faces on the front" but for Christ's sake, woman, you don't brush your hair? How is that any different form Sarah Silverman's 'adolescent' look you were just bitching about?You can't go on about being sophisticated and then not brush your damn hair.
More seriously, the author's observations on marriage and even on the reasons behind this apparent embracing of childish culture are sort of... sketchy at best. The point behind the whole thing seems a bit vague too - is she criticizing other women based on their taste, or merely observing a cultural fad? Her language leaves it open to interpretation and the result is that you're not sure what her point is beyond, "WTF you guys?" She also unfairly seems to equate all 'feminine' interests as infantile, and holds motherhood as this benchmark for being an adult female.
Still, I find parts of the article interesting, as some of it dovetails with things I myself have noticed. Not so much the whole "holy shit, nail art is for little girls" thing (although I'm biased - I spent way too much time last night doing this to my nails) but in that some women do seem to prefer being, well... really young.
I work in an industry saturated with nerds of both genders. Nerds are, to be perfectly blunt, prone to arrested development. Toys and comics are expected in every home, and when you meet a guy who owns a suit he's either gay or a hipster. The uniform is a Threadless t-shirt and jeans or shorts. These are superficial things, to be sure, and it has no bearing on whether or not someone is adult enough to pay their bills or whatever.
Female nerds, by and large, also own a fuckton of Threadless t-shirts, and for whatever reason... knee-socks. So, SO many knee-socks. This is something I have seen countless times, and it never gets less weird to me. I'd blame it on me being an old fuck, but here's the thing - the women wearing these are not in their early twenties. They're my age. That means they were alive when Clueless came out, dammit. Knee-socks in the 90s were a vaguely sexualised teenager thing. (Don't remember that shit? Here.) And rainbow knee-socks? Yeah, I dunno. If you're not at Burning Man or something it seems an odd stylistic choice.
But again, fine, wear what you want! You paid for it! You probably hate my shoes!
Everyone has their hobbies and interests. I guess what throws me off is the fact that some people - male AND female - seem to have deliberately veered away from 'adulthood' and act like it's some awesome thing to be celebrated. It's not just doing your own thing, it's more of a weird "you losers are stuck with your mortgages and shit, while I can play Final Fantasy every day and live on Skittles" form of bragging. Some of the nerds I know and love are clearly nerds and always WILL be... but when I walk into their homes I don't feel like I'm on an episode of My Strange Addiction about My Little Ponies or Transformers. It's an adult home, albeit with quirky shit like a wall of vintage game consoles.
I guess what I find off-putting about the 'woman-child' is not her girliness or enthusiasm. It's the fact that she seems actively afraid of aging. It's not just, "fuck off, I like this," it's the sort of balls-to-the-wall obsession you exhibit, well, when you're a teenager. And it creeps me out, because I wind up sitting there feeling like I'm twice their age even when we were born the same year.
(Although I enjoy cupcakes and board games. ...just fix me a nice cocktail at the same time, okay?)
So, yeah. Problematic article, but it made me think. ...mostly about knee-socks.
The author probably isn't that much older than myself - I graduated high school the year she did college. So I don't think it's some massive generational thing. I'm an adult woman - my thirty-first birthday is this month. I have no desire to be the candy-coated sort of female she's discussing...
But she loses me a few times.
The author says, "I consider brushing my hair making a major effort on the appearance front."That blows my mind, not gonna lie. I can understand being baffled by "enormous fluffy slippers from Japan with cat faces on the front" but for Christ's sake, woman, you don't brush your hair? How is that any different form Sarah Silverman's 'adolescent' look you were just bitching about?You can't go on about being sophisticated and then not brush your damn hair.
More seriously, the author's observations on marriage and even on the reasons behind this apparent embracing of childish culture are sort of... sketchy at best. The point behind the whole thing seems a bit vague too - is she criticizing other women based on their taste, or merely observing a cultural fad? Her language leaves it open to interpretation and the result is that you're not sure what her point is beyond, "WTF you guys?" She also unfairly seems to equate all 'feminine' interests as infantile, and holds motherhood as this benchmark for being an adult female.
Still, I find parts of the article interesting, as some of it dovetails with things I myself have noticed. Not so much the whole "holy shit, nail art is for little girls" thing (although I'm biased - I spent way too much time last night doing this to my nails) but in that some women do seem to prefer being, well... really young.
I work in an industry saturated with nerds of both genders. Nerds are, to be perfectly blunt, prone to arrested development. Toys and comics are expected in every home, and when you meet a guy who owns a suit he's either gay or a hipster. The uniform is a Threadless t-shirt and jeans or shorts. These are superficial things, to be sure, and it has no bearing on whether or not someone is adult enough to pay their bills or whatever.
Female nerds, by and large, also own a fuckton of Threadless t-shirts, and for whatever reason... knee-socks. So, SO many knee-socks. This is something I have seen countless times, and it never gets less weird to me. I'd blame it on me being an old fuck, but here's the thing - the women wearing these are not in their early twenties. They're my age. That means they were alive when Clueless came out, dammit. Knee-socks in the 90s were a vaguely sexualised teenager thing. (Don't remember that shit? Here.) And rainbow knee-socks? Yeah, I dunno. If you're not at Burning Man or something it seems an odd stylistic choice.
But again, fine, wear what you want! You paid for it! You probably hate my shoes!
Everyone has their hobbies and interests. I guess what throws me off is the fact that some people - male AND female - seem to have deliberately veered away from 'adulthood' and act like it's some awesome thing to be celebrated. It's not just doing your own thing, it's more of a weird "you losers are stuck with your mortgages and shit, while I can play Final Fantasy every day and live on Skittles" form of bragging. Some of the nerds I know and love are clearly nerds and always WILL be... but when I walk into their homes I don't feel like I'm on an episode of My Strange Addiction about My Little Ponies or Transformers. It's an adult home, albeit with quirky shit like a wall of vintage game consoles.
I guess what I find off-putting about the 'woman-child' is not her girliness or enthusiasm. It's the fact that she seems actively afraid of aging. It's not just, "fuck off, I like this," it's the sort of balls-to-the-wall obsession you exhibit, well, when you're a teenager. And it creeps me out, because I wind up sitting there feeling like I'm twice their age even when we were born the same year.
(Although I enjoy cupcakes and board games. ...just fix me a nice cocktail at the same time, okay?)
So, yeah. Problematic article, but it made me think. ...mostly about knee-socks.
Friday, February 24, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Blue.
Ooh! Now this is awesome! My friend Blue Morris was published in 21st Century Burlesque magazine! And he quotes MY dumb ass, so this makes it even more exciting on a personal level. XD
Seriously though, this is a good article on gender in burlesque, written by a thoughtful man who isn't there to stroke his ego or play the nice-guy entitlement card. Go have a read.
Seriously though, this is a good article on gender in burlesque, written by a thoughtful man who isn't there to stroke his ego or play the nice-guy entitlement card. Go have a read.
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