Re: virus: The Wiccan Viewpoint

Dan Plante (danp@CS347838-A.gvcl1.bc.wave.home.com)
Thu, 18 Jun 1998 01:00:47 -0700


At 11:30 PM 6/16/98 +0000, Joe E. Dees relayed?:
>
>Gender and Nature in Contemporary Neopaganism
>
> By Salamantis

(big snip)

It's interesting how this text starts out representing the 'ecofeminist'
ideology from the oh-so-very-proper-scientific-paper third-person
grammar (you can almost see the quotes around the sloganeering expressions
and patented vitriolic rhetoric). Add to this a vaguely interesting
(though incomplete and thoroughly myopic) presentation of a perceived
cultural pattern, and you almost miss how the pedantic becomes preachy,
smoothly shifting gears into a quasi first-person-assertive:

>Revolt against the
>predominance of this divine chain of being has followed, and the
>guerillas have not been exclusively female. Some men have come to
>feel cramped and pigeonholed in the role of overseer on the domination
>plantation and degraded and ashamed of what is expected of them there.
> They have therefore joined the rebellion against the JCIZ gender
>hierarchy, agreeing with Martin Luther King that you can't hold folks
>down in a ditch unless you climb down in there with them. As women
>and men come to the practical conclusion that only equality of rights,
>responsibilities and opportunities works, however, they also tend to
>come to the spiritual conclusion that this is true because the sexes
>equally approach divinity. This, however, would require deity to be
>comprised of masculinity and femininity in equal measure, which of
>course directly contradicts the JCIZ.

.....et cetera, et cetera, ad-fucking-nauseum. What makes me ill is
the number of people I can see falling for this tired old trick. I
wonder what motivates this "Salamantis" (one-word name; how "earthy").
If he were male, and gay........hmmmmmm.

Dan