#WHICH ISN'T ABOUT THE RELIGION THING EITHER TO BE CLEAR I'M JUST TRANS

[vulpinesaint]

haha yeah i'm just like all the other men i think about the roman empire all the time... [ dreamily imagines saint sebastian tied to that tree ]

[traegorn]

hi! i want to be clear that i mean no disrespect in asking this. as someone who knows the history of wicca, how it was created in the 50s and has largely appropriated other pagan traditions etc, ive always wondered why people still find it compelling? in a more answerable format, why do you choose to be wiccan over a different pagan tradition that doesn't have that history as its baseline? i know theres no easy answer to this and the question likely sounds ruder than i mean it to. for context im part of two of the cultures wiccans have taken a huge chunk of practices from, as well as being trans (i know you are too which is why i mention it) and the extremely binary gendered "god and goddess", "divine feminine and masculine energy" stuff makes me uncomfortable. in researching, it seems like a lot of the cultural appropriation aspects of it were added by early practitioners in the 60s and 70s, but that still makes it deeply ingrained in the religion. i genuinely want to be more understanding and compassionate, and since you are pretty involved in the wiccan community specifically like answering questions and stuff i wanted your perspective. sorry if this is uncalled for in any way.

There's a lot here, and I don't necessarily agree with the way everything in the ask is framed (and I never like comments about "appropriation" without going into specifics because that can mean many things) -- but I can tell you're asking in good faith, so I'll do my best.

I'm not going to dig into my relationship with the god and goddess as a nonbinary Wiccan because I've answered it so many times before. I've done a whole podcast episode on it, so that's out there if you want to know what my feelings are on the topic. You're asking me how I found faith in a religion that's less than a century old though.

And the answer is... because it's what I believe in?

I mean, you're asking me to explain faith. My personal journey (which, uh, I've also gone into detail with in another podcast episode) was one where I started with what I believed in and found something that asked the question I already felt I'd answered? I don't know if that makes any sense.

It's never been about Wicca being ancient (though I certainly came up in an era where that was still a very common belief in the community), but what I found in it. We fetishize practices and traditions being ancient in a really unhealthy way. Something being older doesn't make it inherently more authentic or real, but time and time again people fall into this trap.

Early Wiccans fell face first into this one, and even though the truth eventually came to light about it, the rest of the neopagan community never really moved past it. Like how many "Celtic Shamans" are out there pretending they're doing something ancient still? To a lesser note, think about how many Norse Heathens don't admit a good chunk of what they practice is reconstruction.

You ask "Why do you choose to be wiccan over a different pagan tradition that doesn't have that history as its baseline?" And I ask, as a white Midwesterner with no cultural connection to those other traditions -- how would it be any better if I laid claim to those either? Not to mention that it's not what I believe. My conception of divinity isn't an outfit I can change. I can't just say "Okay, I believe in [X God]" the next day out of nowhere.

A person's faith isn't hot-swappable.

I don't know if I fully answered what you asked, but that's what I've got this random Monday morning.

[lasarcasticpanda]

something that i thought was very well done in Barbie (besides yanno all of it) is how Margot's Babrie doesn't think she's smart, because she has been labeled as "stereotypical Barbie".

like, multiple times in this movie, she has moments of very well articulated and intelligent comments, which have excellent comedic timing, but serve a wider purpose of showcasing how women tend to be given a Trait and that is your thing. she mentions how she wishes Smart Barbie was here or to wait for Leadership Barbie to swoop in because she's Stereotypical Barbie, she's not smart, she's not a Leader, she can't do this.

at some point after childhood, women get pigeonholed into a category, right (sometimes even in childhood if I'm honest)? weird, smart, hot, pretty, ugly, bitchy, innocent, prudish, slut, nice. at most, you get two of these traits for your peers and friends to label you.

and its hard to see that when it happens! it's only as we go on and start having complex relationships and experiences and interacting with people outside of our space that we start seeing that and start putting a name to the feeling of constriction that we've been having for, what feels like, forever.

THEN you have to contend with the reality that you are so much more than even all of those things and that's scary! you cannot fit into these small boxes, humans were never made to fit into boxes, you have to throw it out even as others play tug-of-war with you in the rain and insist the soggy, tearing box is so important and where would we be without it? you have to constantly face that and insist that no, it's not, and we'd be right where we are now, arguing over a wet box in the rain when the only thing either of us wants is to be warm inside.

and you have to learn when to pick and choose to just let go and leave the box and the person in the rain and when to keep fighting, even if you're so tired and cold.

and this just! HAPPENS! like there isn't a manual, there isn't a magical age you turn where this becomes clear to you! it's different for everyone and some don't ever have that and some have it so young and others not until they're old! it's such a lonely thing sometimes!

but then you meet other women, different women, so many women with so many unique experiences to add. trans women, women of color, nonbinary women, disabled women, women of every differing religion, ALL have these unique experiences with this phenomon, some have more boxes to throw out in the rain, some have to try and throw out wooden or stone boxes in a hurricane, the danger they face in doing so is sometimes so much more than what others experience.

but that moment of realizing women all have this undertone of understanding and dealing with this gives us the courage to join and hopefully make the tug-of-war easier, to make sure we all get inside to be warm. it's hard to pull that stone box by yourself, but if we join behind you, maybe we can win.

this movie encapsulates that so incredibly well? that speech from Gloria about how tiring it is to see herself and other women feel this way and be made to feel this way and to buy into ourselves is just! that moment of looking every woman in the eyes and telling them they're seen and their struggles are seen and it is so unfair!

and then Barbie says something else smart and, for the first time, acknowledges she did. "Oh I can't believe that just came from me" it has the whole time, can't wait for you to realize that you were always human, and look forward to seeing you in the rain and for hot cocoa afterwards.

[wolf-claw]

"White friendly" and "Terf friendly","TRAs stay away" how interesting. But are you a Terf yourself? Do you take no issue with a trans person interacting, so long as they don't consider themselves an activist? I have to give you credit, at least you're honest in that others who have a problem with your points of view can see that and can block you accordingly. I'm not here to debate or anything like that, while I disagree completely with some of the things you've said concerning cultural appropriation. I just have a few questions to try to understand your point of view if that's alright. A lot of white pagan practices are inauthentic, written in the mid-to-late 1900s and much more revivalist rather than based on historic tradition, borrowed from closed practices and some of those practices are also, white. Do you genuinely not understand the difference between a closed practice and an open practice? A lot of religions that come from PoC are open to practice, not all of them are closed or would-be considered cultural appropriation to practice. Or is it that you'd advocate for more European or otherwise white practices, to become more exclusive, and closed? What about biracial people with roots in both PoC practices and white practices, where do we draw that line?

Honestly I don't even have an issue with people practicing a faith to which they have no ancestral connection, I just have an issue when they twist the image of the deities to make them look "inclusive". Meanwhile many ancient cultures left clear depictions of deities, if not in image (like Ancient Greek pottery) then in the lore. Secondly, here's a thing I always find odd - paganism is ancestral. I know many pagan cultures influenced each other in the past and that's one thing, but if you go for a path that is foreign to most if not all of your ancestors, how can you not ask yourself why? And in many cases, I have an impression that militantly anti-racist white pagans see non-white pagans as props with which to annoy racist white pagans. Like they'd rather have a black person worshipping Odin to annoy a racist, than have them reconnecting with the gods of their own ancestors. But that being said, the issue itself, in my opinion, isn't really in a person of one race worshipping gods of another, but in saying that those gods of another race were actually "race mixed" or something like that (always incorrect in terms of depictions). But now I am just repeating myself, anyway I hope you got my point. Outside of that, I personally don't get the impression that gods care about either racism or anti-racism. To take myself out of it on order to be as objective as possible - I have met Hekate worshipping witches of both persuasions with equally effective magick. Whenever someone tries to convince me that a deity is (anti)racist I get the impression they're a charlatan.