There are times when I read something that I disagree with (which actually happens quite frequently because I am, let’s face it, an opinionated bastard) and then there are times that I read something so far beyond my mindset and experiences that I actually have some difficulty comprehending what they’re trying to say. The person may as well be an alien that just slithered off a spaceship and is going blee blu blee blu blu blop at me. (Or is that the sound robots make? I always mix the two up.)
Anyway, this was the reaction I had after reading Star Foster’s latest piece, specifically these lines:
I am completely overwhelmed with what I need to do for tomorrow. Turkey is thawed in the fridge, I’m trying to figure out if I have enough serving dishes and figure out the whole chair situation. I’m sure many of you are doing the same thing. Do I have enough sage? Will there be traffic? Is someone in the family going to take issue with me this year? Do I need to de-Pagan myself, my house, my kids before having dinner with family?
I have something on my mind that’s kind of appropriate to the season. Do you “pass” as non-Pagan? Can you talk the church talk? When called upon can you make an appropriate grace that makes everyone else comfortable? Can you fall into the speech patterns and attitudes of mainstream religion and the overculture when needed?
I just … just … WHAT?!? Why would a person do that?
As an intellectual exercise I tried imagining myself in that kind of scenario and I just couldn’t. I’m not being facetious or judgmental here. I actually could not do it, even mentally. The idea of hiding the things associated with Dionysos and lying about him to people is so abhorrent to me on a core level that even typing this out is giving me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’d be like I was ashamed of him, like he’s not worthy enough of being shared with the people in my life. And heaven knows I’m far from a pious man but I just wouldn’t do that to him. How could I ever stand before his shrine again knowing that I had placed something else above him? Said that he was less important to me than these people that I couldn’t even be completely honest with?
Which is a whole other issue. Sure, I couldn’t conceive of doing that because of the kind of intense devotional path I’m on, basically a Western version of bhakti marga but even leaving that aside, I wouldn’t choose to spend time with someone or invite them into my home if they weren’t able to take me as I am. I’m not saying that they have to understand everything about me or agree with all of my decisions and actions. (And a good thing that is, too, since in all the years I’ve walked this earth I’ve so far only met one person who has approached anything like total understanding and acceptance and even she frequently disagrees with me!) But at the very least they should not require that I have to pretend to be something I’m not in order to be deserving of their time and affection. As the great Dionysian philosopher James Douglas Morrison once said:
A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself— and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to— letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending— performing. You get to love your pretense. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act— and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image— they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it— they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.
Life is too short for those kinds of games and the unnecessary angst and aggravation that they create in our lives. Besides which, the end result is that they’re just loving an image and not a person. You either take me as I am, with all my weirdness and faults or else move along and find someone who better fits your requirements.
And if that means that I end up completely alone – so be it. At least I’ll be myself, alone – instead of stuck wearing a mask around a bunch of judgmental fucks. And really, I think who I am is pretty neat. Sometimes I can even see that person as special and wonderful. And I think that the world deserves to have more unique things in it. So I choose to surround myself with people who enhance that specialness, that uniqueness instead of people who tear it down, crap on it, want to make it dull and boring and commonplace.
And I don’t really care if it’s family that’s doing this. Blood may be thicker than water, but so is shit (unless there’s something really wrong with you, in which case you should stop reading this and go see a doctor, man.) My point is: there comes a time when most people move out of their parents’ home and start a life of their own. Once you’ve got that physical distance and financial independence going on it should stop mattering what mommy and daddy think about you. Sure, in a vague sense we all crave the approval of others, especially those with whom we share familial bonds. And that’s not even a bad thing, necessarily. Much that I do I do to make those I love proud of me. But at what cost? When the desire for approval comes up against one’s core values does one stand firm or cast those values aside like a used hankey? From such choices is our character determined. And really, at the end of the day one’s family members are just people too. They have no more of a right to control your thoughts and vet your decisions than some random schmuck on the bus.
And if you’re hiding who you are for the sake of traditions and holidays and suchnot that aren’t even your own … that’s just pathetic. Make your own turkey dinner or go to 7-11 and get some malt liquor and Twizzlers which I guarantee will taste better if you eat them while remaining true to who you are than even that grand feast which Philotas the physician once described to Lamprias.
Getting back to religion, though, I guess I’m just not sure how a person could so easily “de-Pagan” themselves and their surroundings. My apartment is covered in shrines and art and books and other things that reflect my religious orientation. If I hid all of that stuff my guest would find just bare walls and empty furniture. Even my dishes have Classical motifs, funny sayings and logos from groups I once belonged to on them. I understand that other people aren’t like that. They may have a single room devoted to religious stuff or just a couple inconspicuous shrines here and there, and that’s fine for them though I’ve never really gotten it, myself. How can people not have religion as the overwhelming interest in their life? Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
I’d have a much harder time concealing the signs of my religion that are on my body, however, since I’ve got several very prominent devotional tattoos and intend to get many more as soon as my finances permit. Granted, when people see them they may not automatically assume that there’s any religious meaning behind them and I just happen to like spiders and vegetation and weird squiggly designs but if people ask I never hesitate to explain, even at work. Now I don’t always go into all of the many layers of meaning that they have, especially since some of them are quite personal and a lot of the folks I encounter at work aren’t the sort of people who should have mysteries shared with them … but on the other hand, I won’t lie about them, won’t pretend they’re meaningless, because words have power. We create our realities through them. Say something is nothing long enough and that’s what it’ll become to you.
I’m not saying that one has to be out all the time in a very conspicuous fashion. It’s always a personal choice what, when, where, how and the amount to share. It’s just, I’m not very comfortable with outright denial, with intentional deception.
But that’s me, and there is much in this world that I do not understand. Perhaps you good readers can help enlighten me. Do any of you pass, and if so why? What does a person get out of it that makes all the effort and anxiety worth it? What’s it like having such a superficial religion that that’s even a possibility?
I find it incomprehensible and misguided impiety. One is either respectful of and devoted to the Gods with all that entails (including not being ashamed of one’s faith or willing to compromise that devotion) or one isn’t. And if one isn’t, then really, why are you here?
I’ve found a dismaying tendency in some Pagan and Wiccan circles to attempt to edit, censor, and alter (or even hide) one’s beliefs to make them more acceptable to mainstream monotheisms and I have to ask why? Why pander to the very traditions that led to the destruction of our indigenous and ancestral ways *in the first place*? It’s just misguided, in the extreme.
I”m very much with you on this, Sannion. If someone comes into my house and they cannot tolerate my 35+ shrines, they can leave. If they come in my house and attempt to convert me, or behave disrespectfully, relative or not, they *will* leave.
because really, it comes down to whether or not the Gods are really a priority in one’s life, or not.
3
Agreed. And the thing is, that anyone, family included, who *truly* loves you will not require you to be something else. My Catholic grandmother went to my Wiccan wedding, many years ago – she didn’t understand it, I could tell she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but she went because she loves and supports me. That comes first for her.
If someone in my family couldn’t deal with my paganism due to their own religion and said as much plainly, I guess I’d grudgingly respect that honesty and part ways. I *wouldn’t* fake being otherwise for their comfort – nor would I think that they’d want me to, if religion (and not bigotry) was really the cause. I certainly wouldn’t remove traces of my religious devotion from my own house or person so they could eat my food in peace. I don’t understand how familial relationships can feel meaningful if they are based on lies.
In my previous home I had a household altar set up in the transition room between my front door and the rest of my house. A visitor remarked that she would never put such obviously Pagan things where anyone who came might see them and be uncomfortable. My response was: “This is my house. These are my gods. If people aren’t comfortable with that, that’s their problem.”
As an intellectual exercise I tried imagining myself in that kind of scenario and I just couldn’t. I’m not being facetious or judgmental here. I actually could not do it, even mentally. The idea of hiding the things associated with Dionysos and lying about him to people is so abhorrent to me on a core level that even typing this out is giving me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’d be like I was ashamed of him, like he’s not worthy enough of being shared with the people in my life. And heaven knows I’m far from a pious man but I just wouldn’t do that to him. How could I ever stand before his shrine again knowing that I had placed something else above him? Said that he was less important to me than these people that I couldn’t even be completely honest with?
I run into that same sort of thing. Maybe it’s cos I’ve always been “that weird kid”, even within my own family, for one reason or another, and so it’s years of conditioning from the very earliest years, but I just find it almost impossible to imagine myself attempting to “pass” as a member of mainstream culture, in any way. Hell, even when I spent a couple years going out of my way to at least look “normal”, something about me always came off as “that weird, queer, possibly pagan, goth kid”, and I didn’t even have to be doing anything.
I’m not saying this as some sort of “hipster bragging rights”, either; just as an acknowledgement of fact that some people can try and try, but will never fit in with the “mainstream” of any culture — and I have reason to believe I’m one of them. This isn’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, there are pros and cons to both fitting in and standing out, but it’s a very real thing that people who stand out for one reason or another have to deal with more directly and so are likely more conscious of.
…and really, while my home isn’t completely covered in Eros stuff (if only due to lacking the money), I find it impious to go out of my way to hide my gods. Maybe some of what I do have isn’t obviously religious, but some of it is, and some is easily discerned as such, if one thinks about it. If the people I invite to my home for whatever reasons can’t accept all of that, then I don’t need them in my house — as far as I’m concerned, their very presence would be a pollutant.
[...] be no point to it. Besides which, I’ve got to live with myself after the fact. I said in the previous post: And heaven knows I’m far from a pious man but I just wouldn’t do that to him. How could I ever [...]
While I am ‘out’ as a Pagan in my daily life, I come from a family which has some deep issues with non-Christians. While my father was alive, I took some pains to steer clear of religious topics, and I slipped my pentacle under my shirt and let him assume that I was still Christian – because making him have a stroke (he had several and was a very angry man in general) would not have been very nice. In fact, when I told my mother, her first words were “Don’t you dare tell your father.”
It was a couple of times a year, I’m sure my Gods understood. (I also never discussed politics with him.) It was simply none of his business.
I’m also married to a Christian – who was the son of a preacher. In the early years of our marriage, while his dad was alive (25 years ago), I was fairly closeted outside of the immediate Pagan community, because it could have damaged his father’s job and would have damaged their relationship with me and possibly their son (unfair, yes, but the truth.)
Was it a pain in the ass? Sometimes. But you know what? My father was what he was, and giving him a heart attack would not have changed him one bit. Since my father and in-laws have died, it’s different, of course. But then, the world has changed, too.
Why would we do this? To maintain family harmony (causing strokes, heart attacks, and fights at holidays are not the way to honor ones ancestors), to protect ourselves and our children (several of my friends were shot at because they were Pagan, and I originally came from a small town where there were NO JEWS, let alone Pagans), because we’re private people and don’t need everybody to know our religious business – the reasons are endless…and personal.
I would rather chew off my left hand than pretend that I am something I’m not. I would never lie and try to pretend that I am Christian – I was never even Christian to begin with. (My dad didn’t convert until I was 9 or 10, and it was too late to bring me onto the bandwagon by then.) I’d be far more uncomfortable and ill-feeling pretending to be, than I ever would if I didn’t hide a thing. (Especially since I wouldn’t know where to begin: what on earth does “acting Christian” even look like…?) If you come into my house as a guest and cannot deal with integral parts of me, and try to fight with me about those parts, then you are being a bad guest and you will leave.
(Actually, I was kind of sad that my father has stopped making us say grace before Thanksgiving dinner – I had spent a lot of the afternoon thinking about which gods and spirits I would personally thank if he called upon me to say the blessing… >D )
I can’t fathom it either. I don’t go advertizing my faith among my Christian family (some are fundies who are not ok with non Christian religions) but I’d never go and de-Pagan my house for them. What kind of example would that set for my son? That our gods and traditions are something to be ashamed of? If my family knew I was polytheist, they sure wouldn’t take down the Bible plaques and angel stuff if we came over, and I wouldn’t want them to; they find comfort in those things and that religion. We need to stop presenting our religions as thing inferior to Monotheist religions, like a slave stepping aside to let the Master through.
That’s a really good point – you don’t see any Christians agonizing over whether or not to hide their crosses when their non-Christian relatives come over. We should at least be as confident and comfortable in our own religions.
Rebecca,
“we need to stop presenting our religions as things inferior to monotheist religions, like a slave stepping aside to let the Master through.”
Bingo. Very well put. This is exactly the attitude that I’ve seen in the Pagan community and the Heathen community too, for that matter over and over again.
In the grand scheme of religious history, monotheism is an unfortunate aberration. it’s time we and our communities realized that and stopped trying to curry favor at the expense of our own devotional life.
I pretend because I don’t have financial independence at the moment. I don’t like it at all, it makes me feel sick because I love my gods and want to honor them properly.
Once I get my own place though, I will never hide it again. Living in so many closets — being queer, trans, and a polytheist — is very draining, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth having a roof over my head.
I do not conceal, hide or mislead about my religion. Anyone who comes into my home must accept my faith, or leave. The only person whose feelings on the matter I will ever take into consideration are my grandmother’s, because well, who wants to argue with their grandmother? She in her seventies and is once again, fighting cancer. Worrying about my salvation is the last thing she needs to be doing near the end of her life, so I won’t wear any obviously pagan symbols (over clothing) while in her presence. She is also the only person who can get me to step foot in a church. Everybody knows what I am, and everybody else can shove it, if they have a problem. Besides, I’ve been openly pagan since I was thirteen. Why would I start hiding it now?
I have grandparents in their 90′s, and my feelings pretty much echo yours when it comes to not wanting to worry them or hurt their feelings. Sometimes you just have to keep the peace. Back when I was Wiccan, I wore a “stealthy” knotwork pentegram to Church multiple times when my brothers died, and no one said a thing. I bit my tongue a lot during that visit, but choosing that time and place as a battleground over religion would have been the height of narcissism and disrespect. That said, I didn’t pretend to be Christian, either.
Q.: Why?
A.: Love.
One does things for those one loves that one wouldn’t do for others. (If one doesn’t, I really don’t know what one would mean by love.)
Each person should be given the space to decide for oneself what one will do. This is true for queer folk, and just as true for pagans. It is not the place of anyone else to decide who one should be out to, or how.
How can people not have religion as the overwhelming interest in their life? Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
As someone who has religion as the overwhelming interest in my life,l once commented to a friend that if everyone was as into religion as we were, it would be a very unbalanced world. Diversity is good.
But, why is it that we must hide ourselves in the name of love, but not expect that they accept us in the name of love? How can you feel comfortable and safe in those supposedly loving relationships when you can’t even divulge something so important about yourself?
I get the concept of doing things, even extraordinary things, as a gift for those we love, but I don’t see how one can feel that a true love (platonic, familial, or romantic) exists in the first place, if it requires one party to lie about their very core being.
Everyone can absolutely make their own choices about being “out” but honestly this has always confused me. I guess I am just incapable of compromising so much just for the illusion of a loving family. I’d rather be alone, and true to myself. (And after all, I wouldn’t be alone, I’d have the gods and spirits, who I wouldn’t have had to shove into a closet.)
First off, I’m not arguing that anyone should be closeted. I’m certainly not closeted in any significant way in my life. Everyone who knows me well knows that I’m queer and pagan.
I’m arguing that each individual has to make hir own decisions and that we shouldn’t be making any judgments about others’ decisions unless we are very close to an individual and have discerned that the consequences of their current decisions are clearly more detrimental than the possible consequences of different decisions. For example, if someone was suicidal because they were closeted, it would be better to come out than to kill oneself.
*And* I’m arguing that we should recognize that one motive for some of those decisions is love. Sannion asked “why?” because he couldn’t think of any reason to be closeted. So I pulled out the single most powerful reason I can think of. *All* healthy relationships involve compromise. Have you really never made adjustments about anything in your life as concessions to those you love? I doubt it. I’ll bet that you and Sannion regularly make small compromises for each other. The key is what compromises can you make without compromising yourself. And the answer will be different for each person. For some, it would be a greater compromise of the self to intentionally damage their relationships with their family than it would be to remain closeted.
My personal position relative to my family is intermediate. I came out to all of my immediate family as bi when I was 17. I came out to them as pagan gradually over my twenties. I’ve never mentioned being third gender, but I don’t hide my gender expression. Having come out to them, I tend not to bring up either my sexuality or my religions, but will respond anytime any of them bring it up. I’ve never said anything to any of the extended family, but I noticed that my cousin asked me if I had “a partner” when I saw her last summer. If I did have a partner, I would insist that my family deal with him or her, but that’s never been an issue. (*sigh*)
Q.: Why?
A.: Love.
I don’t understand this conditional love that you triumph –any love that requires hiding and lies IS conditional, and will be taken away until such demands are met.
I mean, it goes both way; if one does things for loved ones that one wouldn’t do for others, then why not expect one’s Christian family to accept one’s pagan home as-is? I don’t fault people who live in circumstances where the favour given to Christianity would put their own or their family’s circumstances in dire straits, but I do fault those who wouldn’t be at risk of losing their job, home, children, or life, yet say they closet themselves “for love”. That’s a rather pathetic and wholly conditional love that I’d think any person with a modicum of self-respect and integrity doesn’t need.
*All* love is conditional.
You wrote:
If the people I invite to my home for whatever reasons can’t accept all of that, then I don’t need them in my house — as far as I’m concerned, their very presence would be a pollutant.
That’s conditional. And you have as much right to that decision as another has to remain closeted.
As you’ve said multiple times in this thread, you’ve never had the possibility of passing. I resemble that remark. Those of us who can’t pass have no more right to judge those who do than they do to judge us for being “blatant”.
I’m not speaking of love in that bit you quoted.
And no, not all love is conditional. I’m sorry your experience has made you feel that way, but it’s just not true.
I’m also really bothered by your anti-radical implications that the only compromises to be made in a “healthy” relationship are to come from the one everybody else is presumed to have such a problem with — they’ve compromised enough already, so it’s really not going to mean anything for them to further compromise their own integrity just so no-one else has to question their own privilege for an evening.
I mean, really, the message you’re sending is that the disenfranchised are the ones expected to compromise “for love” and nobody else should challenge themselves. The message you’re sending is that it’s OK for the privileged to expect the disenfranchised to bend over backwards to CONFORM, CONFORM, CONFORM, even if it’s only surface conformity, because conditional acceptance is worth more than true love. It’s really a message of learned helplessness you project, and it’s actually kind of sick, if you think about it. When a dog has learned to just lie on the ground and take its beatings, a healthy and strong person has empathy and does what they can to get that dog away and teach it to have a healthy psychology again — your message is to become like that dog and learn to take our beatings “for love” because of this very saddening and unhealthy notion that “all love is conditional” upon taking that beating.
You really have no business in speaking to activist issues with an attitude like that, and I am not afraid to tell you so.
No, I’m not sending that message. You are reading that message–falsely–into my comments. I have never said that anyone should remain closeted. I dare you to find a specific quote in my comments in this thread that says that!
I strongly hold that compromise should go both ways. In fact, I would argue that any relationship in which compromise is only one way is abusive. But I am just as strongly convinced that outsiders should not be telling others how to live their lives and their relationships.
Encouraging people to consider coming out is a good thing. Telling people that if they don’t they are impious or lacking integrity or suchlike strikes me as manipulative and abusive.
And you have no business telling me how to be an activist unless you’ve known me for the 25+ years that I’ve been a queer activist and the 20+ years that I’ve been a pagan activist.
There’s a big difference between what I said and what you think I said, hon.
And seriously, sweetie, the whole topic completely started with talking of the sort of “compromises” you agree are abusive — but your first response was to defend it as “love”. No-where in Star Foster’s post that sparked this whole thing did she ever consider that one’s family would be putting aside their differences for love — no, the assumption would be that all compromise is on the pagans, because it almost invariably is. She never once considered it would be Baptists “passing” as Wiccan, for example, but a Wiccan “passing” as a Baptist, or at least non-Wiccan, for the sake of keeping peace in a family that would be hostile.
Did you even read anything before opening your e-mouth, or are you just reacting to a skimmed “read”? And yes, I think I have every right to tell you what you are and are not acting like when I can see that, at best, you’re barely cognisant of the argument you’ve decided to take part in! Years of experience doesn’t matter when you’re still clearly in the wrong, and people with the same years of experience you claim here still frequently say busted shit. You’re experience does not impress me when your words are so detrimental. You clearly mistake me for some naïve person who thinks age and experience automatically cancels out apparent knowledge in an argument.
You appear to have difficulty with the English language.
My first response was to answer a question. Sannion asked “Why?”. I gave him one positive reason why some people might make those choices. That is NOT the same as arguing that that is the preferred behavior. Nor did I ever say that the Christians should not also compromise for the sake of love. You chose to read that into my comments.
My core position is that we should give others the basic respect to make their own decisions about how they should conduct their familial relationships. That’s my argument…which you have never addressed directly. Which leaves me wondering if you believe that anyone who makes difference choices about their relationships than you do is inferior to you. Is that what you intend?
Hrmm… And yet I’ve always excelled in English above and beyond professorial satisfaction….? You have an odd idea of what “difficulty” entails, in my book.
Nothing said has value without context, sugar, and the question only happened in response to a post that took for granted that an overwhelming majority of pagans may be at least attempting “passing” as non-pagan for the sake of families. Ms Foster only passively considered that there would be completely different situations toward the end, in how she phrased her questions, but her entire line of questioning was designed to be most relevant to those in an assumed position. And so, in effect, you call this “love”. By failure to even acknowledge what Christians should do in your initial response, you complicitly defend the status quo of Christians doing nothing but expect pagan family members they might have a bigoted attitude toward to closet themselves up and attempt to “pass” as Christian. I cannot be faulted when I infer the implications you make (whether you later claim it was unintentional or not) through sheer laziness, because you’ve made through context alone.
My problem with some of the comments here is that some people don’t seem to acknowledge how privilege can play a role in how open some people can be. For those people who can safely be completely open and take a ‘take me or leave me’ attitude, that’s great for you, but don’t think that the circumstances of your life apply to everyone else.
“because really, it comes down to whether or not the Gods are really a priority in one’s life, or not.”
Not necessarily. Not everyone’s form of being Pagan is as ‘deity centered’ as others. Like my ancestors, my regular spiritual practice has far more to do with ancestors and local land spirits (haltijat) than it has to do with Gods (who don’t figure much in my practice aside from on certain festivals throughout the year). This doesn’t make me impious or any less devoted to my form of Paganism than someone who has a daily personal devotion to specific deity/ deities.
Buddy, you have no fucking clue what my life was like. My mom scrubbed toilets to put herself through college after my dad disappeared on us. There were times we were so broke and hungry all we had to eat was what she could steal from work. I went to school in ill-fitting hand-me-downs she got from neighbors and I took my first job at 14 to help pay the bills. My mom was a devout fundamentalist Christian at the time I came out to her as both a Pagan and a bisexual. I had every expectation that she’d flip out on me and no safety net or support system to turn to if she did. And yet I refused to hide who I was, even back then. So no, “privilege” has got nothing to do with it. It was a choice to live with courage and integrity, and it’s one that I have continually made since then, despite all the sacrifices it has required. I could go on and list those, but that’s incidental. At the end of the day we all make choices. I don’t fault people for making different choices than I have. But don’t you assume that those of us who have made the choice to be out do so because it’s easy and consequence-free or that we’re just frolicking in all of our privilege.
I think you’re taking my comment as some sort of personal attack directed at you, when it was directed more toward some specific comments by other people I read up thread. As for privilege, it takes many forms and I’m not talking about some easy concept of racial or class privilege. There are people out there who would face violence, loss of job or loss of custody of their children etc for being too open about their religion. People like myself, and I assume you, are indeed privileged to not have to exist in such a situation. It in no way belittles the experiences, struggles and sacrifices you’ve made to get to the point of openness that you are in to acknowledge that other people exist in other places and for other people having to hide that part of their lives to some people might be a necessity.
And if you want to exchange sob stories, my father also left me, my brothers and mother at a young age and my mother also struggled to take care of us. We often had to make due with very little food and I remember my mother bringing home a whole bunch of board games that she had found that someone had thrown out, which were missing a lot of pieces, so that we would have something to play with. Then when I was 7 my mother went to work one day and while taking an escalator the step she was on broke and she fell into it and was crushed to death (and no, I’m not kidding, that really happened). This of course left my brothers and I to be taken care of by our conservative, Christian, not-gay friendly father who had left us and didn’t want anything to do with us and lived in a one bedroom apartment. And all this is before my teenage years when I discovered I was gay and began to struggle with leaving behind the religion I was raised in and the years of depression and suicidal thoughts I dealt with coming to terms with all that crap.
My heart goes out to you for all that. Incidentally I had a strong phobia about escalators as a child. It’s kind of disturbing to find that justified.
And as for people who face violence and other forms of oppression, whenever I’ve talked about Pagan visibility I’ve always made exceptions for them. We don’t need martyrs in our religion. But I do think the number of people in that situation, at least here in the U.S., is comparatively small, and others let wildly unrealistic fears hold them back.
Of course, there are other reasons not to come out beyond just threat to life and livelihood. It’s always a personal choice. But I’m not going to stop advocating coming out just because there are a tiny few who can’t and it makes others feel uncomfortable and inadequate.
I’ve had people who don’t believe me when I tell them about my mother, I guess it’s such an unheard of way to die (I’ve even found the news article about her death on websites dedicated to strange and unusual ways to die). Most of my family goes out of our ways to avoid escalators. For me it’s not so much a fear of them, it’s more that the sight of them never fails to make me think of her and out of respect and memory of her I don’t use them unless there isn’t any other option.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that the more people that can be open the better for us as a community. I also just happen to have sympathy for people who find themselves in situations that make it hard or impossible to be 100% out there. I know all to well that for some people coming out can take years. And like with your mother, a lot of times the fears that hold us back weren’t justified. When I first came out to some friends as gay when I was in High School, I was terrified that any of my family would find out. After a few years of that, my step-mother found out by accident and was immediately supportive and told me so. What I was mostly uncomfortable with was a comment I read above somewhere that was really coming down hard on people who were ‘closeted’ and suggesting that the Pagan/ Heathen etc community had no use for any of those people which felt overly harsh to me.
Incidentally I had a strong phobia about escalators as a child. It’s kind of disturbing to find that justified.
I still have a strong phobia of escalators — a friend in Chicago once decided to try some amateur “stress flooding” (in part out of assumed convenience for him –he was helping me with my luggage at the train station, and didn’t want to wait for the elevator) and that actually made it worse. Can’t go near the things without hyperventanating now.
I can’t look at safety information for escalators. One city I was in for months — I forget if it was London or DC — had cases or pictures of all of the mutilated shoes maintenance had taken out of them. I kept imagining what had happened to the feet, but I still use escalators. There really isn’t another way out of metropolitan trains, and I don’t want to take elevator space from someone who actually needs it. Also, elevators scare me more.
While I understand that sinking-gut feeling when the elevator has just closed and started on its ways up just as a person in a wheelchair is sliding into where I was just standing, cos of the whole “in theory, I can take the stairs” thing (though with the luggage I usually take to Chicago, I *shouldn’t* take the stairs with my back or carpal tunnel syndrome), I mean, who is a wheelchair-bound person to tell me that I should give myself a full-blown panic-attack by taking the escalator? That’s where I’m at now. Flooding/”immersion therapy” only works on 7/10 people who attempt it to “cure” their phobias, and it’s never worked for me with this. I can’t do it, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out where this phobia came from, as I have clear memories of being a little kid and riding the escalator, and somewhere in there, I just stopped and insisted on the stairs or elevators only. I wish I could do it, but I’ve already been arrested once over what was basically a panic attack in a public space, and I’m not putting myself through that again. There are more people than those with obvious physical impairments, who might “really need” the elevator instead, and I’m not going to judge or begrudge another person who may also have an invisible disability.
You were ARRESTED for having a fucking panic attack?! That’s horrible, and I would think illegal! As a person who has anxiety issues myself, that actually scares me. WTF could the cops have possibly said to justify that?!
It was at my doctor’s office, too — and if my regular doctor was in, rather than the substitute I got saddled with at the last minute, the cops would NOT have been called — but basically the cops insisted on justification because 1) “risk to self or others”, when that was not the case, but whatever, and 2) they took me to the psychiatric ward for evaluation rather than jail — and since the on-call psychiatrist was familiar with high generalised anxiety disorder, she pretty much discharged me after I stopped crying and could explain what happened — which still took about three hours to get to that point, but at least I didn’t have to spend the night there. Still, the cops decided to press charges on “assault of an officer”, which was a complete crock and which the judge really wanted to throw out, but her hands were tied for some reason I forget, and I got stuck with 15hrs of community service (and in Michigan, you get to choose where you take it, and I took it at the historical society, filing things in the archives and printing fliers for two hours a day for two and a half weeks).
It could have been worse, all in all, but yeah, definitely *not* something I want to put myself through again, especially when I can easily avoid it in certain cases — like taking an elevator because of my extreme and inexplicable phobia of escalators.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that my “someone who actually needs it” thing is really just a convenient excuse for my mild aversion to elevators. Obviously, someone with an escalator phobia has just as much of a right to use an elevator as someone with a more visible problem. I also hate how people assume there is nothing wrong with someone who doesn’t “look” disabled … it’s like my mild/moderate driving phobia that has prevented me from getting my license. I’m working on it, but there isn’t a switch I can turn to make the anxiety reaction stop, and it’s really embarrassing to admit that I couldn’t drive somewhere if I had an emergency.
There are people out there who would face violence, loss of job or loss of custody of their children etc for being too open about their religion. People like myself, and I assume you, are indeed privileged to not have to exist in such a situation.
Given that simply having a job and/or children socially “privileges” people more than not, how do you figure weighting this? This is where any discussion of socio-political “privilege” is essentially little more than thought-experiments and of no genuine use outside of that.
…and the fact remains that you don’t know the lives of everybody commenting, what struggles they might have had along with coming out as pagan, what opportunities they had or had not. Gods above, discussions like this almost make me ashamed to be a Socialist, simply because even people “on my side” of that, be they Socialist or not, are so fupping quick to forget that the “privilege” they speak of is far more intricate and nuanced than simply “haves and have-nots”, and when one is destitute, queer and disabled; or non-white, uneducated, and working-class; or any other combination, then the alleged “privilege” to be “out” about being of a non-Judeo-Christian religion isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans, and is going to come off as incredibly patronising on a good day.
My problem with some of the comments here is that some people don’t seem to acknowledge how privilege can play a role in how open some people can be.
And here’s where, for as much as I acknowledge that “privilege” is often a driving force for many people’s attitudes, I also think it’s highly problematic to just throw that word around with accusatory tones at anything one may disagree with. I’m on disability allowance; I live in a tiny one-bedroom rented house in a run-down neighbourhood, living in the attic with a housemate in the bedroom. If I could work, I’m a very obviously effete gay man of TS history (less potentially obvious, but I was born in Ohio, so it’s obvious to anybody doing HR paperwork), and I’m five feet tall and fat. I have no family –not by my choice, and honestly, if I tried to contact them, I would just as much be putting my life in danger.
I don’t have the “privilege” to be “out n’ proud” as a pagan — I’m “out” as a pagan because I really can’t do or say much else to be any worse off than I am now. Maybe if I had family to impress, or a job to maintain appearances at, I might have the same attitude you do and romanticise the destitute as “free”, like the trust-fund brats littering affluent university cities like Ann Arbor and Charlottesville — but I’m not, so I can see it for what it is: In a place where religious freedom is written into the very essence of its founding, and the only instances of it not being upheld are instances of abuse of power against the powerless –against women, GBLT people, those of working-class or lower income, those lacking socio-political “whiteness”, the disabled, those lacking “able” body or mind. etc– then talking of such “religious openness” as a “privilege” is just another thing that well-off white heteros try and do to make themselves feel like that have actual commonality with the downtrodden. The ONLY times non-Judeo-Christian religion is ever used against a person politically in the United $tates is when they are or are suspected of being something else that’s been historically persecuted –even the Salem witch trials were more about socio-economic class than anything else!
Next time you want to accuse people of being “privileged” take a minute to think about what you’re actually saying and how much power that action really does wield, how much power you have to have to throw it against others in certain situations –cos sometimes, I agree, it makes sense to remind people of their privilege, but other times, it’s an act of privilege itself to accuse others of having it.
I will admit that the word ‘privilege’ was a definite bad word choice on my part given that it implied to a lot of people that I was saying that only people belonging to certain racial, ethnic, or social class etc groups of people can safely be openly Pagan. This was not my intent at all. I think I was awkwardly trying to articulate that the circumstances that lead people to be in varying states of openness about their religion are too complex to justify anyone being overly judgmental toward all people who are not 100% out in the open yet.
I also don’t really see how it’s necessarily “privileged” to become an out-n-proud-pagan at all! Even if one isn’t in a position at the time of “coming out” to lose one’s job and custody of children or family contacts, being pagan, as you present it, would severely reduce one’s chances at getting a job one might be in fear of losing, reduces one’s chances of partnering to start a family, etc!
You really have no clue what you’re talking about with “privilege” here. I mean, you might as well be saying Derek Jarman was “privileged” to be an out gay man in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, that Quentin Crisp was “privileged” to be out as a high-effete gay in the 1930s and 40s and briefly working as a prostitute, and so on. If people don’t want to risk everything to “out” themselves, then that’s their prerogative, but I’ll bet you ten dollars that a majority of people who opt out of that risk actually have considerable privilege to protect by remaining closeted. Outing oneself with pride is NOT a privilege, and is typically an act of defiance by people severely lacking privilege –when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.
So go ahead and romanticise my “privilege” to be so destitute that I can wear my downtroddenness with pride, cos it’s all I’ve got. Go ahead and call people “privileged” in a society that FAVOURS ABRAHAMIC RELIGION, and typically only Judeo-Christian religions, because we have little more than devotion to ancient gods to hold up as a badge of honour. Being an “out pagan” is as much a “privilege” as being a dark-skinned person in that you really can’t hide it at that point, and even without trying, certain levels of privilege are closed off unless you work two or three times as hard to get the same respect as a white Christian with half your skills — the only real difference is that, most pagans have choice in how “out” their are.
I really can’t fathom where you’re getting the idea that any “out” pagan is “privileged” by their outness in a society that implicitly favours Judeo-Christian religions, but the reality is that by outing oneself, one accepts endangering whatever privilege one may have, and one generally accepts that certain levels of privilege are going to be forever removed without a fight. As such, the overwhelming majority of “out” pagans are generally pretty disenfranchised to begin with.
Know you’re not replying to comments anymore, but this post touched something in me. I have a very difficult time being “out” in the sense that the few people I *have* told in all honesty that I was Luciferian. . . it didn’t go so well. You drop the name “Lucifer” into any conversation aaaand. . . it usually goes south in a pretty big hurry. For that reason, when it does come up, I usually prefer to stay rather vague, or use one of his many other names that people are less familiar with (Eosphoros, for example). As it is living in the bible belt, I usually get askance looks as it is, when I tell people I’m not Christian. Then a week later about 20 different pamphlets from about 20 different churches appear in my mailbox, which for me, is very unwelcome solicitation. I couldn’t imagine what would happen in the people here found out who I *really* worshiped. The Satanic-Ritual abuse scare comes to mind, and I have a child. I really don’t need it to go that south. I love my child and don’t know what I’d do without her in my life. The thought of her being taken away from me because of my spiritual practices usually is enough to scare me into keeping my mouth shut.
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