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Tag: Gender
Assigned Faggot: Gender Roles, Sex, and the Division of Labor
February 26, 2018 February 27, 2018 by Sophia Burns, posted in Article, Capitalism, Community, Cultural Commentary, Feminism, Liberation, Philosophy, Politics, Privilege, Queer Theory, Radicalism, Radicals, Stories, Struggle, Theory, Uncategorized, Violence
A boy in eighth-grade math class walks over and says, "You sit like a woman. What are you, a woman?" We both know there's no right answer.
When I was born, the obstetrician said I was male. So, growing up, that was the role expected of me. People told me I'd become a heterosexually-married adult man. I shouldn't have long hair, wear dresses, or cry "like a sissy."
At some point, though, that comprehensive set of expectations (that gender role) changed. By the time I hit adolescence, no one thought I'd marry a woman. Boys were supposed to like football and act tough, but nobody looked at me and thought I could ever do that. My classmates started calling me gay before I even knew what the word meant. More and more, people expected that I would behave different from my male peers.
Of course, their expectations carried a weight of moral condemnation. When they called me a "faggot," they made it clear that it was a very bad thing to be. But, none of them seriously believed that someone who looked, moved, and sounded like me could be anything else. I was chastised and punished for filling it, but nevertheless "faggot" was the role I was pressured to fill.
Are gender and sexuality fundamentally personal identities, or are they imposed by a larger social system? How sharp is the line between them?
Walking down the hall in high school, it feels like every other word is "faggot." An especially churchy classmate tells me that if I was a real Christian, I wouldn't "want to be that way any more."
In gym class, the coach sends the boys to one side of the room and the girls to the other to do different activities. No one looks surprised when I go with the girls.
On paper, US conservatism believes in a strict gender binary. You are male or female, birth to death. Men are naturally one way and women another. No one really falls in between. Men, of course, are naturally strong and unemotive. They sleep with women but socialize with each other.
And yet, people who embraced that ideology wholesale would meet me and assume that my friends were girls, that I was emotional and "sensitive," that I'd defer to my male peers, and – perhaps most of all – that I was sexually available to men. But since they didn't read me as cis female, why weren't they bringing the usual male expectations?
When I had straight male friends, why did they expect me to be emotionally supportive and assume I had some special insight into "what women want?" They didn't seek that from each other, and they'd have either laughed or gotten angry at anyone who asked it of them.
If their idea of gender was as binary as they believed it to be, why didn't they place me into a male role?
Unfortunately, many women-particularly single women-are afraid of the perspective of wages for housework because they are afraid of identifying even for a second with the housewife. They know that this is the most powerless position in society and so they do not want to realise that they are housewives too…
We are all housewives because no matter where we are they can always count on more work from us, more fear on our side to put forward our demands, and less pressure on them for money, since hopefully our minds are directed elsewhere, to that man in our present or our future who will "take care of us".
Did those people believe in genders besides female and male?
With their ideas, they didn't. With their actions, though, they did. After all, they created at least one gender role besides "man" and "woman" – I know because they assigned me to it! My social position was not authentically male. I was failed-male. In practice, my gender was "faggot."
When they said "faggots aren't real men," that was an is, not an ought. "Faggot" is a socially-real gender category distinct from "male." It is imposed (like all genders) by a social system beyond the control of any given individual. Gender, after all, is more than either individual identity or cultural beliefs. Each gender role corresponds to a particular place in the overall social division of labor.
To be given a feminized gender (like "woman" or "faggot") means to be given feminized work: emotional, interpersonal, domestic, caregiving, and sexual. When you meet someone, they read a gender onto you. Practically speaking, that means they either expect you to take on those tasks or they expect others to take them on instead of you. There are, of course, plenty of signifiers that help people make that gender assignment (speech inflections, clothes, names, communication styles, inferred secondary sex characteristics, etc). But all that only makes up half of what a gender is – the rest is being expected to do specific kinds of work, and you can't cleanly untangle the two halves. Being conventionally feminine means being expected to wear makeup, long hair, etc – but also to have a less aggressive conversation style, to step aside for men on the sidewalk, to be "nurturing," and to sleep with men. On the ground, the division of labor and cultural norms are united. Each upholds the other.
I sit in a therapist's office and talk about how since transitioning, I've felt less and less connection with any sort of sexuality and I don't understand why. He tells me I just need to accept that I'm attracted to men – once I do that, he says, things will fall into place.
Radical feminism talks about "compulsory heterosexuality" – the idea that heterosexuality is more than a sexual preference some people happen to have. It's a political institution built into the gender system itself, through which all women (including lesbians) are pressured to treat sex with men as inherent to womanhood. This approach to sexuality cares about the pleasure of men, but leaves non-male desires as (at best) an afterthought. Without it, feminized gender roles (woman and faggot alike) would bear little resemblance to their current forms.
I faced that imperative, just like my cis female peers. To be sure, people delivered it to me on different terms. Attraction to men was expected of me, but never treated as though it were positive. However, it was still part of the role I was assigned. Accepting my lesbianism still entailed a process of soul-searching to break through some deeply internalized messages; it tracked closely with the experiences of the cis lesbians I know.
Sexuality doesn't neatly come apart from gender. Gender is an overarching system, a way of organizing certain types of work within class society's overall division of labor. My socialization into a feminized role brought with it certain sexual expectations, just as it carried emotional and interpersonal ones.
Neither sexuality nor gender floats free, separate from each other or from the overall organization of society. They aren't (just) individual identities, and they aren't (just) cultural ideas. These roles exist physically: the interactions humans have with each other and with the world re-create them every day. If you ignore that context, you'll misunderstand the relationship between them.
Cultural norms about gender receive institutional support from the government, businesses, religious congregations, etc. After all, gender is an efficient and elegant way to get some people to do certain kinds of work for free. Sure, some aspects of contemporary gender predate capitalism. However, this gender system is still capitalist to its essence. Why? Capitalism digested those older components and turned them into something qualitatively different (as the historical research of Silvia Federici and other Marxist feminists shows).
Beliefs and practices aren't merely ephemera. They aren't fluff on top of an underlying economic reality. They're part of economic reality because they're part of how people carry out the daily work of existence. Their function within it is vital. Without them, it wouldn't be easy to get anyone to do feminized work for free, but with them? People "spontaneously" enforce those roles on each other via social pressure, "common sense," and violence. Why else do so many women punish each other for deviating from fundamentally-sexist norms?
Again, though, the ideas in people's heads are only half the picture. The conservative Christians I grew up around believed wholeheartedly that only two genders existed. But when they couldn't find a place in the male role for people like me, what did they do? They created another one for us (faggot). Did they call it a gender? Of course not, but ideology isn't what you believe. It's what you've internalized through what you do. And isn't it telling that if you asked them about trans and nonbinary people, they'd say none of it was valid because "those people are just confused faggots?"
Nearly all liberals (and more than a few leftists) arrive at their politics by first noticing an instance of oppression, then deciding to oppose it. They hear conservatives condemn gays, for instance, and think, "We've got to stop that prejudice. Gay people deserve respect!" That's an understandable approach – disrespect, bigotry, and microaggressions are right there for all to see. Shouldn't they be gotten rid of?
But when you remember that ideas and beliefs are only half of what's going on, doesn't something almost sinister emerge? We can remove the outward signs of oppression. But does that mean it's gone, or just that it's harder to see?
When you look at someone's face, it doesn't take its shape from the skin on the surface. It takes it from the bone underneath. If outright bigotry is the visible skin, the division of labor and the need to enforce it are the bone. Had I grown up in a liberal area rather than a conservative one, the people around me would have believed that women should be considered equal to men and that LGBT people deserved acceptance and respect. Those categories would have been enforced more gently – but they still would have been enforced. Since capitalism's division of labor would have remained, feminized work would still have gotten assigned to feminized roles.
They wouldn't have called me "faggot," but they would have called me "fabulous" – and at the end of the day, the role expectations are the same either way. Respect and inclusion would have been nicer makeup, but the face beneath would have been no different.
Radical politics should begin with the physical reality of class society and its division of labor.
The cultural half of the mechanism matters. It isn't a question of "divisive social issues." Norms and ideas are part of how the system works, and separating them from "economic class" just shows you've misunderstood both.
But because these roles are unified with the class system, the goal can't simply be greater respect. Imposing them politely is still imposing them. The surface manifestations are an important part of the phenomenon, but they aren't all of it. And ultimately, radical politics must seek to abolish the entire thing.
And if radicals forget that, then sure, they might find ways to make society look less oppressive.
But will anyone have actually gotten free?
Sophia Burns is a communist and polytheist in the US Pacific Northwest. Support her on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/marxism_lesbianism
Tagged Feminism, Gender, LGBT, Patriarchy, Trans3 Comments
On The No-Gender Drag
January 15, 2018 January 17, 2018 by Gods and Radicals, posted in Feminism, Queer Theory, Reclaiming, Uncategorized
"Reading this may cause you to think "Oh, I see where they're trying to get. They're a trans person. It's all over the media now. I'm well informed" and although you're not mistaken (I am talking about misplaced gender roles and you could easily be right) this one specifically is not about trans identity. It's about something that's even less talked about and understood."
From Nathan There
Photo by Ahmed Carter
"As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." – Patti Smit
Ever since I was a young child I felt something's inherently different about me. I never felt I could fit this invisible but already established role I was supposed to fulfill. Humanity chose to shove people in these tight boxes so they can feel comfortable and experience the sensation of something recognizable (consequently safe). This can stretch to several categories of human conditions but here I'm talking about one in particular: the chart which people are obligated to follow when it comes to identity and gender. Reading this may cause you to think "Oh, I see where they're trying to get. They're a trans person. It's all over the media now. I'm well informed" and although you're not mistaken (I am talking about misplaced gender roles and you could easily be right) this one specifically is not about trans identity. It's about something that's even less talked about and understood. I'm talking about non-binary gender. Now, while you may think I will try and give you a crash course on the matter, even if I educate a bit here and there, this time I'll tell you about something palpable.
When I was about seven, I had my first kiss. It wasn't very glamorous, it wasn't particularly memorable. It was a regular kiss between a seven year old child and a girl about the same age. It didn't feel right or wrong, so I jumped to the next girl, then the next one until I was seventeen, never quite filling a void I could feel existed within me. At first, as taught by Brazilian culture, I assumed it was something to do with my sexual tastes. This is tricky, so I'll elaborate: society burdens us with the assumptions and choices of our ancestors. If your society is structured to believe that blue is for boys and pink is for girls, you're undoubtedly expected to abide by these rules. In this case, binary rules. So, if you're a "boy" (Which specifically here means having a penis – assigned male at birth), and you like pink, then you're a sissy at first. If you happen to identify as a female, the burden is not lifted, so you are still a sissy boy, with just further need of attention. If you're a girl you're not even entitled to have an opinion so let's not get into male privileges just yet. So, back to my past – this void lead me to believe I was gay. And being a gay boy in the 90s was the most dreaded thing in Brazil. You're not a capital letters MAN (Male) and you are not just unlucky to be born under the fragile gender (Female) – you're choosing to misbehave, you're choosing to go by the pink book. That's just despicable, so you can imagine I was terrified.
At the age of seventeen, I kissed my first boys (Yes, two. That's a story for another time), this way I could follow the role I understood I was obligated to follow: the gay one. That didn't quite feel right either because it was crystal clear to me I was into girls too. I assumed I was bisexual and felt content with that even though I could feel there was something still uncanny about myself and I couldn't quite grasp it. By that, I don't mean bisexuality is something out of fairy tales. I just understood, later on, it does not apply to me.
Photo by Douglas Barros
Now fast forward to a few years later (Yes. I quoted Alanis Morissette. I'm entitled to have musical preferences). I started reading, debating, and I became an activist on the matter of human and animal rights, understanding that I should raise awareness to the issues I fought for. Then I came across a concept that literally changed my whole perspective on life and shaped the way I would understand myself from that point on. In an article about Judith Butler, I read the terms queer and gender performativity. At first, I couldn't quite grasp it, but that is expected. My body and mind were always colonized, so I had to strip myself from the prefabs of past generations to actually understand what I was reading, and when I did… everything changed. It was a mirror. Not the hazy one I always saw my shapes and colours reflected on but a true mirror. I existed. It was the most freeing experience I have ever felt so far and I would understand more and more about myself and the restraints I put myself under all the years prior to that moment. I wasn't bisexual because I had no gender to identify with nor needed to. That is an amazing feeling if you ask me.
After a few years of tweaking this and that on my understanding of my life and my relations with others, I understood that my sexual tastes are entitled to be fluid and that does not constrain me inside any "sexual orientation" category. So, if I decide to exclusively have sex with women from now on that can't make me straight because I'm not a man, or lesbian because I'm not a woman. Consequently, if I choose otherwise, same idea applies but in reverse. OK? Ok. The thing is, there is such a thing as gender performativity. People still perceive me as a male, no matter what I say or do so I have implications on that matter. The fact that I am conformed under certain male performativities (eventual beard, no makeup, pants and tank tops, some normative male mannerisms and the fact that I view myself as a cisgender person) makes people question my gender. While this is reinforced by the media, the problem is further structural rather than individual. If the media allowed people like me to exist through narrative and storytelling, if the fact that we are non-binary was not treated as exotic or eccentric (in other words, sensationalist material), if through narrative we were given stories outside our identities or if non-binary people were cast to play non-binary characters, society would be acknowledging me. Making normative people's inability to fit a person in a gender into jokes or belittling non-binary people's experiences contributes to this invisibility, and therefore to a confusing and negative journey throughout life.
My experience led me into some conclusions – First, I understand that no theory or self-perception must ignore my "male" privileges. For this reason, I can't pull the "non-binary card" to bend situations in which others can't grasp non-binary concepts. Example: I'm not either man or woman, but I can't go into the "lady's room" under this premise. They're not obligated to understand me as anything else other than a male performative person and a potential rapist. Male oppression. Not difficult to understand at all. Second, it's my understanding that non-binary people are not oppressed. The LGBTQI+ community is oppressed. I'm not killed for being non-binary. I don't lose my job for being non-binary. I don't get raped, molested and abused for being non-binary. I don't get beaten up or excluded or shunned or threatened in any way for being non-binary. I suffer all of the above because I fall under the category of LGBTQI+. This oppression is towards our community and engulfs all of us. That's why I'm oppressed, not because I'm non-binary. And that's actually a blessing. Although invisibility is a form of oppression, when people start talking about us, we'll probably get there. Third, there is such a thing as non-binary invisibility. That is the reason why people don't understand my gender (and why I must understand I enjoy male privileges) and it is also the reason why my gender is oppression free (To an extent. I only mean by that what I discussed in the second topic). Fourth, being non-binary is an innate sense within a person. It's not a lifestyle choice, a trend or a phase. It's something that resonates inside you and makes sense when you put the pieces together. In my case, I understand how gender roles are burdened upon people, I understand some people are gladly abiding by and fitting into those categories and I understand that they're not inherently bad per se (its praxis is). I just can't relate to the category. In most cases, other people's perception of my
gender won't be something that bothers me in any sense (sometimes even the opposite). Sometimes it will but not because I can relate to it, but because I understand their concept and/or can apply the experience of the concept negatively in my life. For instance, you can call me a sissy and I'll enjoy it, but I can understand how belittling being called a "good girl" can be while being a bottom during sex, because of the way women are belittled (even in oppressed niches such as the LGBTQI+ community).
All in all, the subtleties between gender, gender identity and gender performativity must be understood and stressed enough before people can understand non-binary existences, maybe even fitting into one of the multiple categories this gender understanding comprehends. But that's for another time.
Nathan There
Nathan is a musician from Brazil, a queer non-binary vegetarian person with interest in game design, tattooing, and combating social disparity issues.
The Pre-Sale for Anthony Rella's Circling The Star is here.
Tagged Feminism, Gender, gender essentialism, Identity, life, non-binary, Queer, sexuality, Transgender5 Comments
The Landscape of Desire: Unweaving Threads
December 28, 2017 December 29, 2017 by Gods and Radicals, posted in Cultural Commentary, Feminism, Queer Theory
Shay Woodall: "I'd like to take a moment to discuss sexuality and gender, particularly discourse from the cis gay and lesbian community."
Photos by Laura Cantal
"I won't date you if you're trans, or a POC, or fat, or disabled, or neurodivergent. Sorry it's just a preference". How many of you have heard or seen this in your lives or on dating/hookup apps and sites?
In this first of three essays I'd like to take a moment to explore the landscape of power and desire by examining various strands of the kyriarchal matrix. This topic is very close to many trans people's hearts because we, like so many of those on the margins of the acceptable, are often told that we are unlovable, that our bodies are perverse, and that our gender is merely a trick to ensnare cis folks and violate their consent. I hope this inspires some real self-reflection and brings all of us into deeper relationship with ourselves and others.
As always, the writing here reflects my own intersections and my best understanding of these topics at the moment. Thank you, as well as to all the comrades who gave feedback on earlier drafts of this essay.
I. Theorizing Sexuality and Gender
Before we can really delve into how we theorize sexuality we first need to define what it is. That might seem an easy thing to do, after all human sexuality is "simply" how people experience and express themselves as sexual beings. Yet underneath this seeming truism lurks a complicated mess. Is sexuality something that we are (the identity model)? Is it something that we do (the behavior model)? Are we born with our sexuality as-is or is sexuality linked to social structures and culture (nature vs nurture)?
The overarching view of sexuality and gender in society is that there are only men and women and people can be attracted to only one or the other, possibly both, but always heterosexuality is normative[i]. This dominant paradigm of sexuality and gender is underpinned by the kyriarchal matrix. Patriarchy (particularly cissexism and heterosexism), white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, ableism and more all weave together to weigh in on how we view ourselves and especially our capacity for relationships, sexual or otherwise. It informs who and what we find attractive, how we create and maintain relationships, and so much more. Let's look at some, though hardly all, of these kyriarchal strands:
1. Patriarchy. Women are often granted sexuality only insofar as it lends itself to the "male gaze"[ii] and the desire of men. Women don't have sexuality in our own right, instead our sexuality exists only for the consumption and commodification of men in heterosexual matrimony. Our sexuality is, in short, viewed and treated as property.
As a case study let's look at the phenomenon of "frigid women" which came to prominence at the turn of the 20th century (though the idea is much older). Sigmund Freud came up with the idea that cis women first associate sexual pleasure with clitoral stimulation and later in life must transfer that to vaginal stimulation and if they don't they suffer from "penis envy" (and thus masculinization). This idea would be developed by psychoanalysts and sexologists who would go on to depict a woman's inability to sufficiently enjoy sex with their husbands as a sexual disorder that should be pathologized and treated. It's also part of what motivates oppression against aspec folks now, given that their very existence disrupts the idea of sexuality as consumption.
2. Heterosexism. A couple of years ago there was a push from the cis gay and lesbian community to exclude the T (trans) from LGBT. Which is strange given that heterosexism, cissexism, and biological essentialism are all inextricably bound. The dominant model of gender and sex is binary, grouping people into two distinct largely opposite categories of "male/men/masculine" and "female/women/feminine". Considering this view of gender and sex is binary only three possibilities for sexuality emerge: heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual. When the scope of gender and sex is widened however to include the full range of human diversity such a model becomes obsolete.
Another interesting point emerges from this as well because gender becomes framed through a heterosexist gaze. Take for example that gay men aren't just oppressed for being attracted to other men, society treats gay men as *emasculated* (and thus not performing "masculinity" correctly). Lesbians are often treated and seen as "masculine" with corrective r*pe being used to "feminize" lesbians (thus lesbians aren't performing "femininity" correctly). Sexuality through this lens becomes a performance of the "proper" gendered order and violence, often sexual in nature, becomes a tool for enforcing that order. Going further, sexuality as a performance of proper "gender" seeps its way into otherwise queer relationships by seeking to reproduce in part heterosexist logic (the butch/femme and top/bottom dichotomy in lesbian and gay communities).
The existence of trans and non-binary genders complicates the discourse arising from cis lesbian and gay communities. Those who police the boundaries of what is and isn't "queer" (aka: gatekeepers) appropriate queerness to mean only certain ways of being against the normative order and not others. As Susan Stryker notes in the Transgender Studies Reader vol 1:
"Like recent feminism and feminist scholarship, queer politics and queer studies also remain invested, to a significant extent, in an underlying conceptual framework that is problematized by transgender phenomena. "Sexual object choice," the very concept used to distinguish "hetero" from "homo" sexuality, loses coherence to the precise extent that the "sex" of the "object" is called into question, particularly in relation to the object's "gender." Queer studies, though putatively antiheteronormative, sometimes fails to acknowledge that same-sex object choice is not the only way to differ from heterosexist cultural norms, that transgender phenomena can also be antiheteronormative, or that transgender phenomena constitute an axis of difference that cannot be subsumed to an object-choice model of antiheteronormativity. As a result, queer studies sometimes perpetuates what might be called "homonormativity," that is, a privileging of homosexual ways of differing from heterosocial norms, and an antipathy (or at least an unthinking blindness) toward other modes of queer difference."
3. Capitalism. In Caliban and the Witch Silvia Federici argues that capitalism developed in response to peasant revolts in medieval Europe to curtail the growing popularity of communalism. Federici writes: "capitalism was the counter-revolution that destroyed the possibilities that had emerged from the anti-feudal struggle—possibilities which, if realized, might have spared us immense destruction of lives and the natural environment that has marked the advance of capitalist relations worldwide".
As part of this process gender became a "specification of class relations". That is to say class is stratified by various hierarchies and gender was animated by capitalist logic to divide labor and wealth within the working class itself. Or as Federici summarizes:
"The expropriation of European workers from their means of subsistence, and the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans to the mines and plantations of the New World, were not the only means by which a world proletariat was formed and 'accumulated.' This process required the transformation of the body into a work-machine, and the subjugation of women to the reproduction of the work-force. Most of all, it required the destruction of the power of women which, in Europe as in America, was achieved through the extermination of witches. Primitive accumulation, then, was not simply the accumulation and concentration of exploitable workers and capital. It was also an accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class, whereby hierarchies built upon gender, as well as "race" and age became constitutive of class rule and the formation of the modern proletariat."
Sexuality in light of this view and anti-capitalist critique can be seen as a further "specification of class relations", one in which the reproductive capacity of those in relationship (and individually) are seen as paramount for the continued production of an exploited underclass. The capitalist logic here goes so far as to create laws regulating sexuality, from laws governing marriage to abortion to sex work and more.
4. White Supremacy. As we've seen from previous sections sexuality and sexual violence are animated in support of a system (or systems) of exploitation and oppression. When white supremacy and colonialism enters the conversation the violence of the system is compounded in soul crushing ways. Gender and sexuality are racialized and exist as much within the matrix of white supremacy as within patriarchy and capitalism.
With the advent of modern racism, race became enshrined as an essential characteristic and hierarchies of "humanness" thus justified the exploitation of racialized bodies, lands, and resources. The sexuality of people of color is often seen as inherently violent and/or uniquely promiscuous because of how race is produced in a modern context. Sexuality becomes a way to create and reinforce racial stratifications and hierarchies.
The sexuality of people of color is often reduced under a white gaze to one of hypersexualization or desexualition for white consumption. The jezebel stereotype for example relies on the idea that black women are inherently hypersexual and that Asian men are often seen as emasculated and unsexual. Or consider that Jewish women in the Shoah[iii] were forcibly sterilized and subjected to regular sexual violence. Sexuality for people of color is inherently racialized and through the logics of white supremacy considered inherently deviant and thus subject to surveillance and policing (whether through codified laws or through normative cultural values).
5. Animacy Hierarchies. In Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, author Mel Y. Chen offers a poignant discussion of the concept of animacy. In a nutshell, animacy is a concept from linguistics that describes how "sentient" or "alive" a noun is. This concept however can be broadened past the realm of linguistics to the ways in which a given body is "invested" with humanness or animateness. Cognitive linguist Mutsumi Yamamato describes animacy as:
"The concept of "animacy" can be regarded as some kind of assumed cognitive scale extending from human through animal to inanimate. In addition to the life concept itself, concepts related to the life concept—such as locomotion, sentiency, etc.—can also be incorporated into the cognitive domain of "animacy." …A common reflection of "animacy" in a language is a distinction between animate and inanimate, and analogically between human and non-human in some measure. However, animacy is not simply a matter of the semantic feature [+-alive], and its linguistic manifestation is somewhat complicated. Our cognition of animacy and the extent to which we invest a certain body (or body of entities) with humanness or animateness influence various levels of human language a great deal."
Sexuality (along with gender, race, ability, etc.) reveals underlying schema about what is considered more "alive" more "human" and the agency thus granted to varying body's sexuality. Consider that plants, in being lower in animacy hierarchies compared to animals and humans, have their sexuality discussed in largely mechanical terms devoid of the passion, the animateness, that we might discuss the sexuality of other beings. Likewise, human sexuality outside of the normative follows much the same pattern, with intersections and social positioning interacting to affect the animacy of a given body's sexuality.
In many of the examples discussing sexuality so far, we've seen a hiearchialization set up between "normative" sexuality and "deviant" sexuality albeit through differing but intertwined system logics. Sexuality of the deviant is more attuned to a state of being "animal" than human, more "dead" than "alive", and through the essentializing of identity these logics combine to frame deviant sexuality as static, and justifies exploitation and oppression on those grounds. The process of queering, breaking down binary and normative structures, can be seen as a returning of animacy to the body and the phenomenon of sexuality that body is engaged in.
II. Re-imagining Sexuality
In the previous section I teased out various threads that weave together to underpin our understanding of sexuality, yet these threads aren't truly separate from each other. They weave in and out diverging at points only to link up later. The importance of intersectional critique is its ability to disrupt "ontological priorities". That is intersectionality allows us to examine the complicated weaving of oppression and systems without positing any as a "first cause", instead choosing to see these strands as reflexively[iv] informing each other.
Unfortunately, I've given a lot of critique but not so much in the way of solutions and that will hold true for the rest of this article. Given the complexity of sexuality and its centrality to the human condition there aren't "one size fits all" solutions. But I do have some suggestions for directions we might travel to heal this:
1. Self Examination. Sexuality isn't static because we aren't static. We are constantly changing and growing and our sexuality does the same. Unfortunately, we and our sexualities didn't develop in a vacuum devoid of wider social power systems. By critically examining our sexuality and "preferences", we can weed out the bits of the oppressor buried deep inside and allow ourselves to really bloom.
2. Revolution. All solutions run up against a limit: the system we live under can't be merely reformed. You can't take oppression out of an inherently exploitative system. The system *must* be destroyed and we must dream new ways of living into existence.
3. Relationship Anarchy. Its common for our relationships to mirror in microcosm the macrocosm of oppressive structures that permeate our lives. Anarchism at its core is a rejection of hierarchical power structures and this applies in our personal relationships as much as it does to wider society. While a full and detailed account of relationship anarchy is beyond the scope of this article I'd like to point readers to a series of excellent essays addressing this topic: Focus on Relationships, Time, Touch, and Talk, Using the 3-Ts, and The Big Picture.
4. Radical Self Love. We often internalize the hierarchies of desire and the structures animating them. Whether we are trans, non-binary, intersex, cis, people of color, disabled, neurodivergent, fat, or anything else, we are lovable. Our bodies do not have to meet arbitrary standards to be worthy. When we fight body terrorism we engage in radical self love and, at the threat of being cliché, love can change the world.
In the end our liberation occurs in the liminal places, at the edges of the "acceptable", in the cracks of the "whole". Let's dream a new world into being.
[i] Normativity is the process by which society raises some phenomenon as the "default" and assigns it a privileged status of "good". By virtue of this process it creates a counter of deviance from the normative, labeling it "bad", and punishing deviation from the norm.
[ii] The "male gaze", "heteronormative gaze", and others are subsets of "gaze theory" and here articulated in conversation with ideas first developed by Michael Foucault. The "gaze" is a relationship into which someone enters that limits perception of a given topic or person and thus what knowledge can be formed. Gazes are created by systems of power and surveillance and can be likened to a set of glasses that block out certain perspectives.
[iii] While Jewish identity in relation to white supremacy is much more complicated in a modern context, Jewish people were unequivocally racialized during the Shoah as non-white.
[iv] Reflexivity is the idea that cause and effect share a circular type relationship, that there is no "first cause". In the opening to part I of this essay I raised the nature vs nurture debate around sexuality. The answer is that these are reflexive and its that idea which underpins this entire essay and its analysis.
Shay Woodall
Shay Woodall is a Jewish Priestess and Pagan working to weave a queer and decolonized magic with radical politics. You can find her work here.
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Tagged Capitalism, Gender, non-binary, self-love, sexism, sexuality, Shay Woodall, White SupremacyLeave a comment
It's All About Sex: Feminism, Paganism, and Trans Exclusion
February 10, 2016 February 10, 2016 by Sophia Burns, posted in Article, Community, Cultural Commentary, Feminism, Liberation, Paganism, Politics, Theory
When I found a first hint of my Goddess, I was twenty and alone.
No one else at my small-town-South, church-affiliated college was openly trans. I wasn't just socially stigmatized – I lacked spiritual tools with which to understand my alienation. Then one professor, a lesbian feminist with a goddess-symbol pendant, gave me a book: Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly. Daly's post-Catholic thealogy taught me that a male authority figure wasn't the only sort of God. Soon, I found a sacred place under an oleander tree and prayed to "the goddess;" within a few years, I'd gone through the Goddess Movement to the Meter Theon's devotional service and the vows I'm under today.
In large part, Mary Daly set me free.
However, had I actually met her, she would've wanted nothing to do with me. Daly helped found what today we call the TERF movement: Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, a strain of feminism for cisgender (that is, non-transgender) women who believe trans women shouldn't exist. Some of them follow through with harassment or even physical violence.
I thought of this paradox — that a TERF's book could set in motion a trans woman's religious feminism — when the cis Pagans in my social media sphere recently discovered that certain Pagan leaders have TERF ideas. A professor at Cherry Hill Seminary, Ruth Barrett, signed a petition denouncing trans people's involvement in gay rights; Cherry Hill stood beside her in a subsequent press release.
Of course, this is no one's first rodeo. In 2012, similar criticisms emerged when the founder of Dianic Witchcraft, Z. Budapest, excluded trans women from a ritual at PantheaCon that had been advertised as a rite for women. Trans exclusion has been a fact for decades in many Pagan communities.
But where does this sentiment come from? Trans women exist and many of us are polytheists and/or Pagans; why should anybody mind?
"All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves…Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive."
– Janice Raymond, author of The Transsexual Empire
When TERFs and right-wing Christians talk about trans women, they agree that everything comes down to sex. Take a few examples:
Last November, Houston, TX (my hometown) voted to repeal an antidiscrimination ordinance that included protections for trans people. After months of TV ads slandering trans women as rapist men lurking in the bathroom, the final count was 2 to 1 against the ordinance.
Right now, in Washington State (my adopted home), lawmakers have written six different bills, all intended to deny trans people the right to use the bathroom that best matches their gender. All of these politicians (and their supporters) have endorsed that same bathroom-rapist lie.
The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which ran annually until last year, maintained a blanket no-trans-women-allowed policy. One year, a Lesbian Avengers chapter with a trans woman member did attend, and the trans teenager found herself surrounded by a hostile crowd of adults, some of whom threatened her with knives. The festival claimed that trans attendees would somehow pose a special danger to rape survivors.
Janice Raymond, who wrote the anti-trans manifesto The Transsexual Empire, explicitly equated the existence of trans women with rape, and claimed that trans lesbians who had consensual sex were actually, somehow, committing rape. When she developed these ideas as a grad student, her thesis adviser was Mary Daly.
No trans woman has ever been found sexually harassing people in public restrooms. The figure of the bathroom-rapist trans woman is like Hookman or Bloody Mary: an urban legend, not an actual person. But politicians don't write bills cracking down on the cursed monkey paw market. So, whence this particular urban myth's political credibility?
On Catcalling, Good Sex, and Nonconsensual Work
As I discussed in my last article, capitalist patriarchy runs on women's unreciprocated social labor. I didn't, however, much talk about the way that sex, sexuality, and sexual desire fit into this system.
In heterosexual settings, women generally put much more effort into sexually satisfying their partners than their men reciprocate. We see this in everything from the deeply-gendered nature of sexy underwear (lingerie for women is an industry, lingerie for men is comedy fodder) to the juxtaposition of normalized fellatio and stigmatized cunnilingus. Rape is simply the extension of this one-sided approach to sexual pleasure past the line of consent. Obviously, male-centric but consensual straight sex qualitatively and morally differs from rape. Nevertheless, both exist within a gender system that makes the work of good sex something that women generally perform both for ourselves and for men, but that men usually perform quite a bit less.
This happens outside of straight encounters, too. "Straight guys think lesbians are hot" is practically a proverb. Plus, the ubiquity of catcalling shows that no public space excludes what feminist theory calls the male gaze. When a woman goes down the sidewalk, puts on clothes in the morning, or wears makeup, her goal is rarely to give male strangers a moment of sexualized entertainment. However, when they catcall her, those men have just gotten their entertainment from the work she's performed (even if existing in public is the only work she's done).
She didn't put together a public presentation in order to give men a show, but they got a show anyway by ogling and heckling. They've extracted benefit (entertainment) from her labor (wearing clothes and walking down the street) without her consent, and without reciprocation; they certainly aren't likely to try to amuse her in return! In short, they've just exploited her work.
Every bit of this applies both to cis women and to trans women. All women, trans and cis, run the risk of rape and sexual harassment; all women who date men, trans and cis, deal with partners who demand that their own pleasure must always come first.
However, the exploited sexual labor of trans women goes past that of cis women. Patriarchy tries to reduce trans women's entire existence to sex. Supposedly, we only transition to satisfy a sexual fetish; supposedly, the only people who sleep with us have a fetish of their own. We go into sex work much more frequently than cis women because hiring discrimination is so rampant. Mainstream cultural depictions of trans women at work rarely include jobs other than sex work and hairdressing. (And remember, patriarchy believes that women groom and get haircuts solely to attract straight men.) Without letters of approval from self-appointed psychiatric "experts," it's extremely difficult to access trans-specific medical care (mostly hormone therapy and various surgeries). Those gatekeepers have traditionally denied that healthcare to trans women they deemed insufficiently feminine, attractive, or heterosexual.
This extra layer of sexualization brings an extra layer of gendered violence. A majority of trans women have been raped and/or sexually abused, and anti-trans violence gets overwhelmingly committed by men who sleep with us. (Throw in race and occupation to the mix, and you'll find that not only are most anti-LGBT hate murder victims trans women, but a large majority of those women are Black and/or Latina, with a substantial number of sex workers in the mix. When bigotry kills LGBT people, that bigotry is usually racism plus sexism plus transphobia.)
So patriarchy disproportionately sexualizes trans women, while disproportionately punishing us for it. Why? When that happens, what's in it for patriarchy? It gets a class of women who perform extra sexual labor, while facing too much brutalization to easily challenge that. More exploitation, less resistance.
Anti-trans ideas only make sense in terms of that social situation.
Prejudice and stigma occur so that trans women stay in that extra-exploited situation. People who say that trans women are really men don't mean that literally; after all, when most people say "you really are a man!" to an actual man, it's a compliment. Those same words to a trans woman are an insult and a threat (and often precede physical violence). However, the combination of stigma, discrimination, harassment, and violence that gets thrown at trans women keeps us easier to exploit. In sociological lingo, that's transphobia's social function.
And plenty of trans women have stories about getting hit on by TERFs and conservative transphobes. As often as not, the people who rail the loudest in public about how we're sexually disgusting are the ones who sleep with us in private. No surprise that those who most directly benefit from our sexual labor also most want us kept in line!
However, anti-trans politics does more than that. By campaigning against a hated and nearly defenseless minority, both right-wingers and TERFs gain visibility, prestige, and clout within their communities: conservative Christianity and majority-cis feminism, respectively. Pagan TERFs like Ruth Barrett bolster their position within feminist witchcraft and the broader Pagan scene. If the benefits transphobic actions accrued were to stop, so would those actions.
If TERFism hurt rather than enhanced someone's position within Pagandom, then anti-trans practices would wither.
"An injury to one is an injury to all!"
– The Industrial Workers of the World
I don't write this article for other trans people.
Trans Pagans and polytheists have already spent decades attempting to undo the power of anti-trans leaders within our communities. We already know just how dangerous and spiritually deadly transphobia gets.
Cisgender fellow Pagans, I'm writing for you. I don't want to make yet another moral appeal to support us because it's just and virtuous to do so (although it surely is); instead, I want us to consider, together, what anti-trans Paganism means for us all. If you're a cis woman, I have as much a stake in ending patriarchy as you – and transphobia only exists because it's part of patriarchy. If you support full inclusion for trans women as women, you're helping to reject one of patriarchy's more violent ongoing projects! And if you're a cis man, I have the same message. Transphobia is patriarchy, and patriarchy is capitalism, is homophobia, is racism, and is every other structure of exploitation that keeps the ruling classes on top. "An injury to one is an injury to all" is a statement not of moral solidarity, but of sociological fact. Propping up discrimination against someone else just strengthens the powers that oppress you.
So, together, let's make the Pagan subculture a place where hating trans women destroys reputations instead of growing them. Let's make our traditions islands of pro-trans feminism; let's say "you're being divisive" to transphobes, not to their critics.
After all, I know firsthand the power and intoxication of feminist self-embrace that people like Mary Daly offer at their best. If some of them fell short in their attempts to wash away patriarchy's values, the strength of the Pagan feminist lifestance is surely enough to survive if we acknowledge that transphobia is patriarchy, and choose to do better than our precursors. Affirming trans women as women makes that feminism more powerful, not less.
And besides – if we can't even reject patriarchy's marching orders within feminist Paganism, how can we expect to do so anywhere else?
Sophia Burns
Sophia Burns is a galla, vowed to serve Attis and Kybele, and a Greco-Phrygian polytheist. After coming out in the small-town South, she moved to Seattle, where she is active in the trans lesbian community. Other than writing for Gods&Radicals, Sophia's activities include political organizing, attending nursing school, and spending time with her partners, friends, and chosen family.
Tagged exploitation of labor, Gender, Patriarchy, sexuality, TERFs, Trans, transphobia30 Comments
The Multitude and the Myriad
April 1, 2015 March 12, 2018 by Rhyd Wildermuth, posted in Capitalism, History, Theory
The sun is not the brightest star, but it is the closest, the loudest.
The sun is so close that it blinds from our eyes all those others who, by mere virtue of distance, must wait for the darkest of hours to remind us of their light. Without that garish ferocity, we cannot live, but it is at the cost of the myriad that this one Truth shines upon us.
If these words were in German, her warmth could bronze and perhaps sear your skin with rays of feminine brilliance. Were you reading this in French, his beckoning light might bring you instead to think on his mannish illumination gently coaxing out the life of plant from soil. The sun is feminine in many Germanic languages, while masculine in many Latin-derived tongues, and the moon is likewise gendered. It is female in French and male in German.
Is the sun male or female, though? It certainly cannot be said to have identifiable genitalia, so we are unable to resort to a particularly base methodology to discover our answer. One might even suggest that it has no gender at all, in accordance to our manner of ordering nouns in English. If this is the case, though, we must immediately judge all speakers of languages, which gender the sun, to be fools or, charitably, inheritors of a hopelessly primitive linguistic system.
Another interesting possibility exists. Perhaps the sun is both female and male, according to how and where one views it. We know, certainly, that the sun can both give life and take life away. It can both warm and burn; it might illuminate or blind depending upon where you happen to be standing or looking. That is, the sun is many things simultaneously; many things to many people. In the far northern hemisphere, I experience it in subtle degrees as the year grows cold. My friends in that other hemisphere now feel its coming strength as their winter thaws and spring flowers bloom. Those betwixt our homes at this moment shield their eyes from it, sweating fiercely under its burdensome weight.
The sun is both warm and cold, distant and close, searing and life-giving. Within Her and His and Its intensity is all the contradictions and opposites which compose a wholeness, a unity only understood in its fragmented difference.
One, Two, None, All
For more than a millennium there was one God. Before, there were many, but then there was but one, and he was male – a fierce, strong, creator-lord full of justice and power, might and judgment, as well as love, mercy, and some degree of kindness to those deserving of his favors or loyal to his causes.
We need not be so simple about it, though. There were certainly others gods; otherwise our Paganism is mere aesthetic, and vast civilizations utterly misguided, as the fundamentalist believers in Progress would have us think. The "progression" of religion from Animistic Shamanism to Polytheism, then to Henotheism, then to Monotheism and finally, at the top of glorious and final present, Atheism relies upon the hope that our present existence is somehow "better" than yesteryear, and that we should consider the succession of this forced march closely.
It proposes first a "simplistic" relationality between nature and humanity, followed by an unfortunate anthropomorphization of natural forces into human-gods. Then the desert cults, laboring under the searing, garish and very-loud sun, chose just one of the many and, when a prophet is hanged upon wood, they decide their one is an only. Nearly two millennia later, some French and English writers decide there's no god at all, and we are finally now enlightened–from all, to many, to one, to none – and too bad the billions in Africa and Asia just can't catch up.
Beyond the extreme arrogance of asserting that a mere 2% of the world has accurately answered the question of the existence of gods, we should specifically complicate the "evolutionary" narrative of progressive ascension. Since so many ancient and indigenous cultures think in circles and wheels rather than vertical lines, it's surprising that such a theory of religious succession could still maintain a grip upon Pagan thought – a theory which can be seen particularly in an unfortunate misstep of Wicca regarding the gender of the gods.
A popular reading of the re-introduction of "The Goddess" into modern religious thought (not just Pagan, but also some strands of Christian 'Theology') is that it's a necessary correction of two millennia of male-centered, Monotheistic thought. This is a fair reading, and one can certainly point to all sorts of social and religious tendencies which, through a belief in an a male-gendered Only-god, contributed to the systematic degradation of a full half of humanity. That there was only one god, and that this only-god was male, is certainly peculiar and suspicious, particularly considering the patriarchal succession of priesthoods of this only-(male)-god.
As a political act, the insistence on an equally-important Goddess was quite radical, but also incredibly problematic. Besides the failed attempts of some writers to re-narrate a matriarchal past into pre-Monotheistic Europe (and history is only narration, so we should applaud their attempts as much as we cringe at their failure), the question of the only-(male)-god is hardly answered by giving him a mate, as if the Hebrew god's act in Eden were a model to emulate.
Worse, this Goddess is a no-one; just as the monotheistic God was also a no-one.
They are not just no-ones, but also All-Ones, or Half-Ones. The Pagan (particularly Wiccan) Goddess is a conglomerate principle, a pastiche, a compound being encompassing half of a split divinity gendered female, or a corporate entity sometimes named the Divine Feminine. What then is left which is not of the one-Half-(female)-Goddess is then re-pasted upon a feral-yet-civil hunter dressed up in sacred loin-cloth and antlers. And, we are thus supposed to sigh, relieved that the One-God's rib forms his eternal companion.
I do not say here that there is no Goddess, rather that there are many of them, a multitude, a myriad. Nor would it do much good for us to debate precisely the theological import of such statements like, "I acknowledge the Goddess in all Her forms" (a sort of universalist-monism) or "I worship the Goddess by her many names" (a less corporatist approach). Rather, we should ask precisely why, as inheritors and escapees of monotheistic power, we'd settle for two gods as a solution to the tyranny of the (male) one.
Being a believer in the existence of gods (by which I also mean goddessess–let none say English does not possess gender!) requires me to be a bit extra polite when another Pagan, in ritual or in conversation, speaks of Pagans collectively worshiping "The Goddess." I must do a bit of translation of their statement in order to not be offended. It's an allowance for their shorthand, regardless of how much I really wish to ask, "wait–which goddess? I've met five of them, and have heard of another eighty, at least."
To say they are all-one, that all the goddesses enfold into one great Goddess is a bit colonialist. It's also understandable, since we do the same thing with gender. We speak of "female" and "male" as if all humanity is easily divided into two sorts of people, each composing a half of a corporate whole called "humanity."
It's a short-hand, a quick-sorting category, which is certainly useful in some circumstances, but it is also only that. And, like all categories and labels, often times they don't fit, no matter how hard we try to peg certain beings into the spaces we've created for them.
Which Man? Which Woman?
Like race, we often approach the idea of gender as if it is a naturally-derived or divinely-revealed thing, though we forget we must actually be taught these categories. I had many black friends and female friends and even a few (but very few) wealthy friends when I was a child. But it was not until our differences were explained (and re-iterated, and enforced) that I understood that there was a difference between them and I. The skin-color of my friends was a mere characteristic, not a difference until I was told that being "white" meant something and being "black" meant something else. Similarly with female: a girl was a sort of a friend, not an opposition to boy. Different genitals was like different hair-length–utterly inconsequential.
But male and female, like white and black, mean something, or mean something to lots of people. Being one means you get paid less, being the other means you get paid more. It's better to be white and male than all the other things, depending on where you live, but only because people have decided that white and male are better things than black or female.
Even our divine was male for awhile (and maybe even white, judging from most popular depictions of Jesus). Having a female divine as well is certainly nice and having her be equal (and in some traditions superior) to him corrects some imbalances certainly.
But there are many sorts of men, and many sorts of women. There are very old, withered-but-wise men, and very young, mewling, just-out-of-the-womb men. There are the strong and muscled ones, the furry ones (my favorite), but also the lithe or round ones. And the same for women–the maidens, the mothers, the crones, the really strong ones and the really graceful ones, the large and fecund or the diminutive and fierce. To say they are all women or are all men is a strange thing to say.
There are several ways people have gone about re-imagining gender, or re-enforcing gender, and these attempts are worth staring at.
One of perhaps the more common treatments has been to re-inforce the divisions between them, cutting deeper "no-man's lands" betwixt her and him. One strand of thought focuses primarily on the genitals of the person, and to some degree the genetics. On the side of "her" has been Z Budapest and other Second-Wave feminists, insisting that women are only those who've been born into such things as "the uterine mysteries."
On the side of "him" have been writers characteristic of the New Right gaining increasing popularity within Paganism, such as Jack Donovan. "Men" for them are those who possess not just testicles, but also certain physical characteristics defined precisely by their opposition to an imagined Feminine.
In both cases, it is the fault of the other which has brought them to such matters. Second-Wave feminists cite patriarchy as the cause of their need for exclusion, and writers like Donovan cite Feminism as the reason men are bound to desk-work and served "manly" drinks in thin stemware.
A second treatment of gender fails equally. The "Radical Feminism" (which is hardly radical at all) of people like Lierre Keith and Derrick Jenson of Deep Green Resistance, as well as certain positions leftover from late 60's American Paganism, attempts to resolve the matter of gender by abolishing it altogether. On its surface, such an idea is appealing, as must have been Atheism to Enlightenment writers, noting the problems of European Monotheism. Without gender, there is no division, and all humanity becomes one. Only in its particular violence against a certain group of people, however, does one begin to see the flaws in this.
In fact, what all these attempts have in common is a shared hatred of a specific class of people–trans-folk. Humans, who have chosen to physically embody a gender according to their will rather than circumstance of birth, attract such vitriol from all these groups that we should seriously consider why. Donovan, Budapest and Keith, all on apparently opposite sides of the gender question, stand united in their venom against trans-folk. Why?
The trans-person (and, equally perhaps, the queer) stands in a place more revolutionary and radical than any of their critics can hope to occupy. By choosing their gender, they do not abolish gender, they transform it into a human act, reminding the rest of us that gender, like race, is something we create and can choose to embody, rather than something we are born into. The all is split into many; each half of humanity split into a multitude of individual embodiments.
This transformation is revolutionary because it affects the rest of us. I am a cis-male, deep voiced, muscular, "man," but if I rely only on accident of birth to claim my specific maleness, I exist in a passive realm of non-choice. For the multitude of other sorts of men, is it not the same thing? As well, for women; if a female relies on her uterus for her identity, what sort of identity is that?
That is, we cannot merely say woman, we must also ask "which woman?" Just as we cannot merely say Goddess or God, but rather ask which goddess? Which god?
To lump a very large group of things, or people, or beings into one whole has not gone very well for us humans these past few millenia, particularly because we've had to, like Cinderella's step-sisters, take some bloody steps to force things to fit into the receptacle of our categories.
Monotheism required the annihilation of other gods except the One God; just as it required the destruction of cultural forms to make people fit into its categories. Communism and Fascism both require similar annihilation, crushing all humans within their realm into the worker or the volk. But likewise, Atheism is hardly an adequate answer, which abolishes all gods just as some would abolish all gender. More pernicious has been Capitalism's answer, which erases identity altogether, except what can be purchased or sold, leaving individuality to one's choice of smartphone or automobile. Any anyway, it hates forests.
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt introduced the idea of "the Multitude," the vast teeming flood of humans and their experiences which threaten always to overwhelm Empire. I suggest we Pagans embrace it and expand upon it. I like, particularly, the word Myriad, as in a "myriad of stars," an immeasurable number which likely has a limit but one we cannot quite reach.
In all our multitudes of experience, we define ourselves and our genders. Each man is a sort of man, each woman a sort of woman. Each goddess is a sort of goddess, each god a sort of god. They are themselves them selves, just as we are each neither cog nor component.
How many gods are there? I do not know, anymore than I could hope to innumerate the sorts of women I've met, or of trees. I know it's more than two and, definitely, more than none.
Likewise, how many ways of encountering the Other, or of making love, or of relating to each other are there? How many sorts of sunlight are there, how many kinds of illumination does the sun shine upon the earth?.
A multitude, certainly.
A Myriad.
Rhyd is a nomadic autonomous Marxist witch-bard, devotee of the Raven King, the Lady of the Flames, the Crown of the North, the Harrower, several sea witches and quite a few mountain giants. He's also the co-founder of Gods&Radicals. Find his work on Paganarch and support his forest-soaked revolution here.
Support us by buying our books & stickers here.
Tagged Essentialism, Gender, Trans, Wicca24 Comments


The high school football season kicking off last night, with Middle Twp defeating Steinart high school 32-31, but there is an off-the-field story that is making some news.
The Holy Spirit football stadium, Ed Byrnes Stadium, was vandalized early Friday morning at approximately 12:30am.
If anyone recognizes the individuals in the security photo, please contact the Absecon Police and Steve Normane at the school.


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text:
Ida left behind a water crisis in the Gulf
Hundreds of thousands of people remain without drinking water -- and there's no timeline for getting it back.
Community residents help with transporting water on September 1 in Jean Lafitte, Louisiana. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
María Paula Rubiano A. Environmental Justice Fellow
Climate + Equity
It has been a week and a half since Hurricane Ida hit the Gulf Coast and the devastating impacts of the Category 4 storm are still being felt throughout the region. Some 418,000 people in Louisiana remain without power, unable to run air conditioning units to deal with scorching late summer temperatures or keep food fresh in homes and grocery stores. The storm has also forced hundreds of municipal water systems offline, creating a drinking water crisis that officials warn could last weeks.
As of Tuesday, 51 water systems across Louisiana, each serving between 25 to 20,000 people, remained shut down due to Ida. Another 242 remained under boil water advisories. Around 642,000 people remain without access to clean water, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. In Mississippi, the state Department of Health has 10 active boiling water notices, affecting 7,142 people.
"There is no particular timeframe for all systems to come back up to 100 percent," Kevin Litter, a spokesperson for Louisiana Department of Health, said in an email. "This will be different for every system and also based on location."
The reasons for the immediate water crisis are two-fold: Across Louisiana and Mississippi, Hurricane Ida ripped down power lines, leaving water systems unable to get the electricity they needed to pump groundwater or to run treatment facilities. Even though Louisiana mandates that all water systems have backup, fuel-powered generators, many don't comply with the rule, Litter explained. Those who do have backup pumps are being affected by the extended blackout still crippling parts of the Gulf a week post-storm — a situation that has created fuel shortages that leave generators useless. Flooding on roads can also leave critical infrastructure, like water wells or pump stations, out of reach, making it impossible to fix storm damage. Lastly, the destruction of roads and bridges has literally ripped apart water pipelines, disrupting the whole system.
Intensified by climate change, Hurricane Ida is one of the strongest storms on record to hit the Gulf Coast. But the 150-mile-per-hour winds that took down electric lines, trees, and homes, as well as the powerful storm surge that briefly reversed the flow of the Mississippi River, can't fully explain the state's water systems failures.
People wade through water on August 31 in Barataria, Louisiana. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Underlying the immediate devastation is the fact that Louisiana has one of the worst water systems in the country, which has left it vulnerable to storms like Ida. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers, or ASCE, gave the state's drinking water system a D- in a recent infrastructure report card.
"We have an antiquated water supply and water pumping system," Craig Colten, professor emeritus of geography at Louisiana State University and an expert on resilience, told Grist. "Our sewage treatment system is aged, and our infrastructure has not been maintained."
Nearly 60 percent of Louisiana's water systems — 1,335 — are more than half a century old. Most of these systems are chronically underfunded, according to the ASCE, creating threats to water quality. Just last year, 831 water systems (serving 606 communities) had 4,582 violations of water quality standards, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. National analyses from the Natural Resources Defense Council have found that drinking water systems in constant violation of the law are 40 percent more likely to serve populations with higher percentages of residents who are people of color.
Many of these violations come from the fact that small towns can no longer fund the maintenance and repair of their water systems, explained Colten. Especially in northern and central Louisiana, people have been moving away from rural towns into bigger cities. As a result, many of those communities have found themselves unable to provide public services for those who stay, forcing some neighborhoods to take care of the systems themselves, according to reporting from The Advocate. The lack of resources has led to a situation in which about 20 percent of the state's water systems are constantly violating the law, The Louisiana Illuminator reported earlier this year.
The pre-existing fragility of Louisiana's water systems creates a situation in which, as demonstrated last week, it doesn't take much to tip the scales from dysfunctional to full-blown shut downs. "It might be somewhat unrealistic to expect that systems that are serving 500 people or even the smallest systems, 25 people, would be resilient to a [hurricane like] Ida," said civil and environmental engineer Christine Kirchhoff, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut.
But the problems go beyond power and pipelines. With rising sea levels, approximately 30 percent of the state parishes are at risk of saltwater entering the wells and aquifers where they source their water, according to ASCE's 2017 report card. The Investigative Reporting Workshop and WWNO/WRKF found that many aquifers in the state are shrinking fast, mainly because agriculture and oil and gas industries are over-pumping groundwater reserves.
Finding long-term solutions to the state's water woes will not be easy, but experts say funding is a must. Louisiana's drinking water infrastructure will need $7 billion in additional funding over the next 20 years, Karine Jean-Pierre, President Biden's deputy press secretary, said in May at a press briefing. The $111 billion infrastructure bill recently approved in Congress will surely breathe some air into the asphyxiated finances of local water systems.
However, money to modernize infrastructure or buy backup generators for emergencies is not enough, said Kirchhoff. Part of what needs to happen, she said, is to have "a pool of staff who are available to these smaller systems to help them apply for funding or understand the regulatory changes, and be able to bring their system up to compliance."
Conservation and creating a water resource and management plan can also help.
"We're a state that gets 60 inches of rainfall a year on the average, and we're expecting more rain, more moisture with climate change," Colten said. "There's plenty of water. Water availability isn't the issue." We need to invest in water systems that can handle this influx, he said.
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If you have had thoughts lately about pet adoption and possibly bringing a Greyhound into your family, then this post might help you to understand the breed a little more and help you decide if they would be the pet for you. The question often asked is "Do Greyhounds make good pets?" Hopefully you will find the answer to this question in our look at this marvelous animal. Greyhounds have many great qualities as a pet, they are very easygoing, intelligent, sensitive to other dogs and to humans, very loyal to their owners, brave and have an incredible lust and devotion to life in general. This dog learns quickly and has a lot of respect for its owner and other members of the household – being very loving towards children and not over-forceful with them.
Greyhounds are "sight hounds" and are able to see something as small as a squirrel from up to a half mile away. They are also, without question, the fastest dogs on earth, reaching top speeds of over 45 miles per hour in under four seconds. Don't let this impressive fact fool you though, Greyhounds are generally considered by their owners to be gentle, 45 mile per hour couch potatoes. They thoroughly enjoy being "slackers" and are never high strung or hyper, and they rarely allow any other animals to get their goat. Cool as the other side of the pillow, these sprinters are happy with as little as a 20 minute walk each day as the proper amount of exercise. You can also read through some of the previous posts made here and come to a decision if this wonderful breed is the one you want to share your life with. To me, it's a no brainer…they are very calm & collected, they are the super models of the dog world and get lots of attention wherever they go, they do not smell like other dogs, do not eat a lot for their size and rarely ever bark.
Greyhounds are bred for speed, health, intelligence, and sociability. This combination makes them excellent house pets. They are, as mentioned above, clean and odor free, indoor dogs that don't eat a lot nor require extensive exercise. They are very quiet dogs and will spend much of their time sleeping. They are very content to follow you around wherever you go and love to go for car rides.
Greyhounds live to be about 12-15 years old, barring any accidents or illness. Racing Greyhounds are bred for health and speed and as such are not predisposed to genetic disorders like blindness, deafness, hip dysplasia, etc.
While not all greyhounds suffer from separation anxiety, a greyhound has been raised in a busy kennel and racing environment that requires extensive handling and they crave human company. Some greyhounds may get nervous and afraid if left alone. A greyhound must learn by experience that you will return, and that being alone in the house is safe. Not every dog suffers when left alone for short periods of time, and your dog may never have any problems, but it does show up with some greyhounds and you should be aware of it so if it does arise you will be prepared.
If you have an interest in adopting a greyhound as a pet, you'll find that there are a great many devoted fans of the breed who have done an amazing amount of work to save, nurture, and re-acclimate these stunning dogs for the retired life in your home. They are not big chewers, and they will most likely doze peacefully on the sofa while you go about your day away, greeting you drowsily when you return. Your male will be tall, at about 28 to 30 inches at the withers, and usually weigh 70 to 85 pounds. Females, a bit smaller, will measure around 26 to 28 inches and are usually in the 55 to 70 pound range. These size ranges can vary somewhat as there are some instances of "large females and small males" that will occasionally fall outside their normal size range.
In my personal experience, looking into the eyes of a Greyhound is like looking into an "old soul", there is just something special there that is hard to explain. You need to experience it for yourself!
Greyhound owners and adoption groups generally consider greyhounds to be wonderful pets. They are pack-oriented dogs, which means that they will quickly adopt humans into their pack as alpha. They can get along well with children, dogs and other family pets. Rescued racing Greyhounds occasionally develop separation anxiety when re-housed or when their new owners have to leave them alone for a period of time (the addition of a second greyhound often solves this problem).
Greyhounds bark very little, which helps in suburban environments, and are usually as friendly to strangers as they are with their own family. The most common misconception concerning greyhounds is that they are hyperactive. In retired racing greyhounds it is usually the opposite. Young greyhounds that have never been taught how to utilize the energy they are bred with, can be hyperactive and destructive if not given an outlet, and require more experienced handlers.
Greyhound Adoption groups generally require owners to keep their greyhounds on-leash at all times, except in fully enclosed areas. This is due to their prey-drive, their speed, and the assertion that Greyhounds have no road sense. Due to their strength, adoption groups recommend that fences be at least 4 high, to prevent them being able to jump the fence and escape.
Greyhounds do shed but do not have undercoats and therefore are less likely to trigger people's dog allergies (Greyhounds are sometimes incorrectly referred to as "hypoallergenic"). The lack of an undercoat, coupled with a general lack of body fat, also makes Greyhounds more susceptible to extreme temperatures, and most sources recommend that Greyhounds be housed inside.
Greyhounds are very sensitive to insecticides. Many vets do not recommend the use of flea collars or flea spray on greyhounds unless it is a pyrethrin-based product. Products like Advantage, Frontline, Lufenuron, and Amitraz are safe for use on Greyhounds and are very effective in controlling fleas and ticks.
It is often believed that Greyhounds need a large living space, however, they can thrive in small spaces. Due to their temperament, Greyhounds can make better "apartment dogs" than many, if not most, of the smaller hyperactive breeds .
In the late 20th century several Greyhound adoption groups were formed. The early groups were formed in large part out of a sense of concern about the treatment of the dogs while living on the track. These groups began taking greyhounds from the racetracks when they could no longer compete and placing them in adoptive homes. Prior to the formation of these groups, in the United States over 20,000 retired greyhounds a year were euthanized due to track injuries or simply because they were no longer of use; recent estimates still number in the thousands, with about 90% (highly questionable) of National Greyhound Association-registered animals either being adopted, or returned for breeding purposes (according to the industry numbers upwards of 2000 dogs are still killed annually in the US while anti-racing groups and other advocates estimate the figure at closer to 12,000).
As usual, the dogs were a big hit and several people picked up applications and brochures.
Ok, on to the photos!!
Greyhounds – Did You Know?
A greyhound is the second fastest land mammal accelerator, it has a natural acceleration that is second only to the cheetah. It reaches speed of 45 miles per hour in about one and a half seconds. It can also shut down to zero just as fast as very happy couch potato on your couch. It is not a high-energy dog, but it can gallop very quickly due to its unique physical characteristics.
The greyhound has a larger heart and set of lungs than any other dog. This allows it to circulate more blood and oxygen through its system when running. The stride is often referred to as a double suspension gallop when running "full out". This is because the dog's paws hit the ground twice for every cycle of steps it takes. The spine is very flexible, allowing the dog to lurch and jump quite high too.
About 25,000 race dogs are retired every year. The dogs can live (on average) 12 to 14 years (one ex racer lived to 20) and are one of the most long-lived big dogs around. Their racing careers span approximately two to four years of before they are retired, so you can see there are many years of companionship left in this wonderful breed.
The dog is very aerodynamic due to the thin fur coat it has. It is a short haired dog with a very thin skin that can be easily ruptured. This is the reason the dog is often muzzled in races, and not due to any aggression as most people think. The dogs are actually one of the most non-aggressive breeds around and most prefer to avoid any confrontations.
The dog's thin skin means that it is highly susceptible to environmental poisons and medications. They can be toxic to the dog, even when the medication is a dog flea medication. The paws also can absorb lawn chemicals, which can kill it, so it should be kept off of any grass that has been treated.
The dog is more like a cat than a ferocious guard dog. Despite its size, it will sleep upside down on your couch (roaching) and likes to be close to its owners at all times. It can suffer from separation anxiety, particularly if it is a former race dog. They are not used to being without people or other greyhounds around. Some will also collect small items to keep for itself and these can include your children's toys, the remote control, or any food left out on the counter. The dog is so quiet and graceful, you may not even notice when it takes off with these things.
A retired greyhound can make an ideal house dog. The bark has been (for the most part) bred out of the dog, so it is usually very quiet. It loves to hang around the couch and be a part of a family. It easily adapts to its new life of leisure and needs no more than a couple of good walks a day and a nice place to run, full out, at least every couple of weeks or so…especially if they are still young.
Saturday 2/25/12 was our monthly rescued greyhound get together, also called a "Meet & Greet" at the Cape Girardeau, Mo. Petco location.
We use these Meet & Greets to familiarize people with what rescued greyhounds are like by making our own rescued and adopted dogs available for people to get acquainted with. The people, especially the kids, love it…and so do the greyhounds. The dogs are absolutely thrilled to see their "greyt" friends (other greyhounds) when they arrive and are also delighted and want to meet everyone else who comes in the door. They just cannot get enough of meeting new people!
We had a good turn out with 6 GPA members and 9 greys in attendance. There seemed to be a lot of serious interest in our program and many people picked up information in order to do their homework on what we're all about and what these wonderful dogs have to offer. Our next M & G will be at the Carbondale, Il. Petco from 1:00 to 4:00 pm on March 10th.
Below are some photos from the 2/25/12 event…enjoy!
This girl is an absolute doll who wants to be with you as much as possible. It's a joy to see her personality start to emerge as she starts learning about all of the new things in her life, like soft places to lie down, toys to play with and people to be with that love her for who she is, not what she can (or used to) do.
Keith, the young man who is going to adopt her, is going to have a wonderful companion and they will surely have a lot of "greyt" times together.
You can see more pics of Sunset in the links "Greyhound Pics" link above!