Heterosexism in Contemporary Neo-Paganism?
I'm curious if anyone out there sees a dash of heterosexism in contemporary Neo-Paganism? I know that Pagans today pride themselves on their inclusiveness of people of every sexual orientation and gender identity, but I've been wondering about this. One person in the radical faerie section of my dated copy of "Drawing Down the Moon" insinuates that there is a bit of this, and I'm curious if you perceive it to be true.
Even though there are few or no Pagans (at least mainstream) who disavow queerness, Wicca is the dominant voice in Paganism, and it espouses a strong male/female symbolism and depiction of divinity, and some Pagan groups go as far as to offer totally different roles for men and women. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with this, and it shouldn't be criticized in and of itself, but I've always been a bit curious--if you're not straight or not cis-gendered, wouldn't that be a touch alienating?
I'm honestly just wondering how individuals may have seen this dynamic play out, and I mean know offense by it. I respect everyone's path.
Comments
I think you'd really have to reach for and look for this kind of hetero-bias in neo-paganism when you compare it to the mainstream. Even the forms of hetero-centered thinking are far more open in Wicca than they are in the rest of society.
In Wicca, they say that there needs to be balance between the male and female, but then they further go on to explain that everyone has male and female within themselves, so it's not actually about what gender you are, it becomes about what qualities you are expressing. This may sound vaguely hetero-centric.
In mainstream society, there's definately an emphasis on heterosexuality... which is not the least bit vague.
But yes, as a bisexual woman, I do feel a bit out of touch with the hetero-centric ideas that seem to be a part of Wicca. That's not to say that I think they're wrong, it's just that I don't really embrace them. Most of the time, when I cannot embrace some religious concept, I assume it's because I don't fully understand it and that if I fully understood it, it would make more sense.
-Scarlet
As for "heterosexism"-- I con't understand if you mean sexist attitudes towards heteros, or sexist attitudes from heteros?
There are other Wiccan groups in which any such gender roles have not only been practically eliminated, but seen as politically incorrect. They are more likely to allow people to choose roles by what they psychologically identify with, rather than what they were biologically born as.
There are Wiccan covens that still assign male/female gender roles. The male & female are seen like the positive and negative charges in a battery-- you need to have them both working off each other. The union of opposites is an important theme in Wicca, and the ultimate opposites that come together to create a new and unified whole is male & female. This is not meant to dictate how one should live one's live; it's simply seen as a basic fact of biology.
Asking a male-born person to take a male role is not seen as discrimination anymore than a doctor telling a male-born person who wants to have a child that he cannot ovulate and needs a surrogate.
I would say if someone transgendered, or homosexual, or bi or pansexual-- whatever-- finds celebrating gender polarity alienating or discriminating, they may not like Wicca. Wicca is, after all, a fertility religion.
I don't really see any bias against non-straight people or transgender people. I'm pretty sure that when Wicca was founded, there was strong prejudice against homosexuals, but today it's really not like that at all. The Wiccans I know pride themselves on being accepting of other people, although I'm sure that there are Wiccans who are homophobic. There is a lot of male/female symbolism in Wicca, but I don't really see how that is biased against homosexuals or transgenders. The Wiccans that I know (and again, this might not apply to all Wiccans or Pagans) believe that everything has both masculine and feminine qualities.
Wicca is, at its heart, a fertility religion. Male/female unions are a common and obvious symbol of such a concept.
Fertility has nothing to do with love or attraction. To say that male/female fertility symbols somehow equates to heterosexual bias is comparing apples to oranges. Two men can love each other, and more power to them. But if they want a baby, a woman has to enter the equation.
Moreover, male and female is not always about your genitals. Transgenders may be seen as representing the energy of their chosen gender rather than their physical gender, for example. There are masculine women and feminine men, and some groups are very aware of that complexity.
No man is all male and no woman all female, and that's also part of the point. All of us need some of both, completely regardless of who we are having sex with. And I fail to see how saying divinity is both male and female somehow implies males can only have sex with females.
There are some homosexual groups which use different imagery. That's certainly their choice. I personally find it unnecessary and even symbolically confusing.
I think I get your question, and yes, I've found it too. There's a very, very strong male/female influence in Wicca. The Great Rite (i.e. sex) being a very good example of this. In a similar way there's a strong Feminine superiority vibe.
However....
There's also a strong feeling of the inner processes of each person. It's not a man and a woman i.e. a pen!s and a v@gina, it's masculinity and femininity. It's it's most obvious and natural forms, these are men and women. However, we all have masculine and feminine aspects within ourselves. I know a lesbian couple for instance who take it in turns being the man in the great rite, and a pair of gay men who just naturally fall into the masculine and feminine roles; though neither are effeminate, one is simply more feminine minded. As a bisexual woman, I've found myself in similar positions, especially in the past when I lived with an effeminate, transgendered man. I'm also a balanced brain, meaning I have equal parts masculine and feminine thought processes (most men having masculine minds, most women, feminine) putting me in an easy position to play either role, or both roles, from a symbolic point of view.
I think it's important to understand this distinction; paganism and especially Wicca aren't about Man+Woman, but about Masculine+Feminine; these aren't mutually inclusive!
There's some...but I'd say that, overall, the Pagan community tends to be more permissive in terms of sexuality than society in general, and while there's still a reasonable amount of hetero-normative views, it has decreased since the printing of that book (in the same way that it has decreased in society in general, though I can't say definitively if the rate of change is different.)
Wicca has become something of the most vocal voice in Paganism, and there's some elements that focus on hetero-normative pairings as a default - but I think that default stance might just be the biases of the people involved. I've seen a lot more people open to genderqueer inclusiveness, especially in recent years.
That said, there's a lot of room for interpretation and perception - I've known people who dismissed certain Pagan religions as being particularly gender-skewed when the reality of it wasn't that way... but perception can be a fickle beast. Some folks might still have gender-biased views (in one manner or another) that are a bit out-of-date, for a number of reasons.
Unfortunately 'heterosexism' isn't a word, so I've no idea what you really mean by that. However if you're talking about the male/female differentiation, you're right about the alienation - trans* people and non-heterosexual people obviously have a bit of trouble with this.
Gerald Gardner, who started Wicca, was known for being quite homophobic. Unfortunately some of that still exists in the teachings of Wicca, though not general attitudes to homosexual people - it's usually in the lack of recognition of homosexuality as an option in the divine.
BUT it's important to remember that despite the dichotomy, the God and the Goddess aren't necessarily meant to be separate. The Goddess is the Star Goddess, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a Star God as well. The God is the Sun God, but you can still pick Amaterasu, shinto Sun Goddess, as your patron. Though they're more inclined to particular roles and traits, they're not limited to them. I don't believe that the gender/sex of the God and Goddess defines them, I just think that masculine and feminine does have a difference and as it exists, there is a representation in the divine. It's blown out of proportion by the fact that our language is gendered. In nature there are sexless organisms, hermaphrodite organisms, and sequential hermaphrodite organisms. Though the gods do represent the two different sexes of sexually reproducing organisms, they're not exclusive to one or the other - they can both also represent hermaphrodites and sexless organisms (biologically speaking), so I don't really see why they can't represent trans* people and non straight people.
But I do understand how it can be hard to connect with, for non cis-gendered people and non straight people. I think it depends a lot on your personal view of the deities. I view the deities as primarily one gender, but capable of being both or the other, and so encompassing LGBT within them.
Being both cis-gendered and straight myself, I have never felt the negative effects of the male/female symbolism within Wicca. I can see how this belief can be alienating, but I also see how it can remain inclusive. There are people, even within Wicca, who do not take the LGBT community into consideration when they interpret what this symbolism means and they may use it to cling to a claim that homosexual and transgendered individuals are wrong and going against a natural balance of masculine and feminine energy. There was a story some months ago about a convention held by a large gathering of Pagan people. One of the workshops offered at the convention was a women's circle group held by a Dianic Wiccan priestess (I believe she was Dianic anyway). The flyer for the workshop advertised that the workshop was for women of all the divine embodiments of the goddess, but on the door, it specified "cis-gendered only" as though transwomen were somehow "less" of an appropriate embodiment of the Goddess than those of us born female. People were outraged.
However, there is a way to interpret the masculine/feminine duality without alienating the LGBT community. Each of us, whether we're born male or female, gay or straight, in the right body or not, have both masculine and feminine energies within us, and these energies should not be so tied up in the idea that male is masculine or female is feminine. These are energies, not sexes or genders. Masculine is positive, it is adventurous, it is rational, it is fast-moving, basically, it is Yang. Feminine is negative, it is more reserved, it is emotional, it is contemplative, and it is Yin. We all have these energies to varying degrees, and Wicca teaches to find a balance. Rationality is great and fine, but if we ignore our emotions, we are unbalanced. Being cautious and reserved can save you a lot of grief, but if you never take a chance, it's still unbalanced. A lack of balance is not healthy, it is not wise, and it is not conducive to a full life. This concept of the masculine/feminine duality should not alienate LGBT people. A transwoman should try to balance these aspects within herself as much as a cis-gendered woman should. Just because she sees herself as being born in the wrong type of body doesn't mean she should completely ignore masculine energies in favor of feminine ones, because she still has them, and it doesn't mean she's wrong about being transgendered.
Lesbians and gay men tend to have less of an issue with this except when people use it to say that marriage should be a balance of the two energies (confusing energies with sexes again). Lesbians and gay men don't claim to be born in the wrong bodies, they just love people within their own sex rather than in the opposite. However, if everyone has both energies, which I firmly believe, then, why does marriage have to be between both a male and a female to be balanced? If two men have balanced their inner energies, then a marriage between them would still have a balance of energies...Marriages and relationships between heterosexuals are often unbalanced too as most people aren't completely balanced within themselves (whether because they don't try or just because it can be difficult to do), so that argument is rather invalid.
Basically, if we accept that these energies are not tied to gender or sex, we can make room for the LGBT community within our religions...At least from a Wiccan point of view...Other Pagan religions may have other problems but as those are not my religion, I can only speak of what I know.
Venus and Hermes Bless
In my experience I don't think there is a conscious bias one way or the other but, I have seen accidental instances of alienation. For instance at one large pagan gathering recently there was to be a woman's rite. Normally these are open to anyone who self identifies as female but, this time they made it exclusive to those born biologically female. Their thinking was that since they were going to discuss and honor menses amongst other purely biological female processes that they'd be sparing people who self identify as female but who were born male from being uncomfortable/excluded. Unfortunately this was not explained up front and it was taken as a bias issue. Over time it was worked out and I think the community learned an important lesson to not simply draw conclusions without communicating with the ones you may end up affecting.
Wiccan clergy here. Yeah...you will find bias toward heterosexist attitudes in some Wiccan groups. But some Trads (such as mine, Blue Star) go out of their way to explore our attitudes about such things and invent non-heterosexist (that's a word because I said so. I am a word goddess. So Be It.) language. For instance, we have one very talented 3rd degree gay priest in our Trad who has specific wording for the Great Rite symbolism that he feels is less hetero-sexist than the standard that we use. Also, we do allow cross-gender draws and cross-gender jobs (if a male-bodied person of sufficient rank wants to be priestess and can hold Goddess energy, we're not gonna say no).
But yeah...you're not going to find such liberalism in all Wiccan groups, that's for darn sure.