Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 70
March 8, 2017
Inclusive Wicca survey results
I finally got around to doing an analysis of the survey on inclusive Wicca that I ran over Yuletide.
You can download the results and commentary from my academia.edu page, or from Google Drive.
The most interesting set of responses were those on same-sex initiation. 49.4% agreed or strongly agreed that it is a valid Wiccan practice, and 17.3% were not sure, with 33.3% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. For this set of responses, I did a breakdown by country and tradition (see page 6 of th...
March 3, 2017
Appropriating other people’s pain is not a good look
Rachel Dolezal is not Black, and she is not “transracial”.
Nine million women did not die in the Burning Times.
What is the connection between these two statements? They are both a refutation of people trying to appropriate other people’s pain.
Rachel Dolezal is stealing the identity of Blackness by pretending to be Black. By claiming to be “transracial”, she is misappropriating transgender people’s experience.
Black people are Black because they are descended from other Black people, and b...
February 27, 2017
Get angry, stay angry, take action
I am angry, and I am angry for a very good reason, so I am sick of people telling me to “calm down”.
Brexit is already hurting the UK, and the sickening anti-immigration policies of this government will hurt the economy, and are hurting real people.
If the referendum was held now it would probably go the other way, so the “will of the people” argument is null and void. It’s also a classic symptom of fascism. Furthermore, the referendum question was too simple. We are members of the EEA, the...
February 18, 2017
Nostalgie de la boue
Do Paganism and fascism share any DNA? There are far-right people, alt-right people, racists, and fascists to be found among Pagans, Heathens, and occultists, but is there anything in Pagan thought that predisposes Pagans to fascism?
In a previous article, With our thoughts we make the world, I looked at the metapolitical goals of Paganisms, and some of the features of some Pagan groups that might be construed as leading to fascism (sacred kingship, claiming that you have a mandate from a d...
February 17, 2017
Petition: Let Our Content Go
John Halstead has started a Change.org petition to Patheos to get our content removed from their site:
Help Pagan writers get back control of their intellectual property from Patheos.com
Whilst I think it is a pity to move large swathes of Pagan articles from their original web addresses, thereby disrupting the blogging ecosystem, I also feel sick at heart that any of my writing could possibly be perceived as endorsing the right-wing organisations to which BeliefNet is connected in any way....
February 13, 2017
Snowflakes (Poem by Linda)
Snowflakes – a bedtime rhyme
(for Yvonne, especially)
by Linda Haggerstone, 2017
One little snowflake
Dancing down to earth
Delicately melting
Quenching its thirst
Two little snowflakes
Crystalline and fair
Hold out their fragile arms
See how they dare!
Three little snowflakes
Linked all in a row
Tiny edges sharpened
Against hatred’s blow
Four little snowflakes
Whisper in the dark
Each story is diff’rent
But comes from one heart…
Twenty little snowflakes
Falling from the sky
Swirling ’round...
February 12, 2017
Rethinking Sacred Prostitution
Sex workers, like all other workers, ought to be able to work regular hours, have a pension, get time off when they are ill, be safe and healthy at work, and not be exploited. When they want to change careers and do something else, the fact that they have been a sex worker should not be stigmatised, as this will prevent them from choosing a different career.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a sex worker. Sex work is work. Sex is sacred, as long as it is fully consensual. Therefore...
February 11, 2017
14 characteristics of fascism
There has been a lot of talk of fascism, the alt-right, the New Right, the same old right, the far right, recently. This is because of thirty years of austerity imposed by neoliberal economics, a surge of populism (Trumpism, Brexiteers, isolationism, Holocaust denial, and related movements), the economic slump which has been going on since 2008, and the perennial human urge to blame the Other for your problems.
Recently, I saw two excellent articles which analysed the causes and symptoms of...
February 10, 2017
Recommended Reading For The Resistance
Many people are expressing shock and dismay that a fascist government has taken over the USA, and at the rising tide of xenophobia in Broken Brexit Britain. However, if you are at all familiar with the rise of the Third Reich and the operation of oppressive systems such as the British Empire, the signs have been writ large for some time. If you need a crash course in recognising the oppressive atmosphere for what it is, then here’s a crash course. Why have I chosen mostly novels? Because nove...
February 9, 2017
Reclaiming the Snowflake
There’s been a lot of talk about snowflakes recently. When the term was first coined, a “special snowflake” meant someone who claimed that everything was triggering them, even though they did not have post-traumatic stress disorder, were not a rape survivor, nor a survivor of some other significant trauma.
Recently, however, the term “snowflake” has been picked up by right-wingers and applied to anyone with a heart, a social conscience, or who supports a welfare state and public healthcare.
L...
