"Do you ever get the idea that there are people in our number who get this much ego gratification from talking about how "they" are all out to get us, and reminiscing (almost fondly) about the 'burning times?'"Her question touched on one of my pet peeves: the Self- Fulfilling Paranoid Persecution Fantasy Prophecy. It's not just a problem among Pagans. It's a taproot of our culture: the derivation of personal worth from illusions or suspicions of persecution.
Remember how the American Revolution was portrayed in our grammar school history classes? It was described as a rebellion of honest working people against a greedy monarch. WRONG! The American Revolution was instigated by the upper classes, who were sick of sharing their privilege over the working people with a government which they (rightly) suspected couldn't really control them long- distance. But that's BORING. Nobody cares about this or that ruling elite squabbling over who gets to use which population. It's the Poor Little Persecuted... Yankees, Christians, Pagans, you name it, that make for a gripping plot; because that's who you ARE if you count for anything in this culture's collective myth.
The "oppressed minority" is such an appealing self- identification tag that even modern feminist and Pagan authors often base their fiction on horrific scenarios of Us Folks being hideously tortured and enslaved; simply because this is what post-Judeo-Christian culture tells us is the mark of a Good Person. If you've a heart at all, you're destined to suffer; if your life is relatively joyous, you're a sell-out or worse. Only the Paschal Lamb (i.e. the sacrifice) is pure.
This is an insult to those who really are being persecuted; a cruel trivialization of their suffering. It's also the #1 stumbling block of feminist culture. The post-Christian assignment of intrinsic value to suffering, to being persecuted, is antithetical to the success of any movement that recognizes that the means ARE the ends. If, as feminists understand, life is a process rather than a state, then the state we are going to attain is the process by which we attain it. But when we individually base our self- worth on how much we're willing to suffer for the Greater Good (TM), we lock ourselves into a pattern of pointless victimization that, while it proves to us that we must be good because we're being mistreated, also ensures that we'll ALWAYS get to be Good Little Martyrs, competing for who's Been Through the most.
If we're going to bust out of that cycle, we're going to have to do more than Just Say No to the men/Christians/straights/you-name-its. We're going to have to say No to the ones on "our side" who lure us with familiar hierarchical structures, with opportunities to prove ourselves through suffering, with titillating "ghost stories" of how the Burning Times are alive and well. There's a big difference between moving with care and cringing in terror, and it's long past time for us to learn that difference.
What does this mean to us in our daily lives as feminists? It means looking at the bottom line of all of our cultural institutions, at what our treatment tells us about where we stand. It means fighting for better pay and working conditions for those jobs generally considered "women's work" and "charity work." It means not accepting ill- treatment or a sub-living wage in return for the "privilege" of working in a nurturing/helping occupation. It means doing a bit of research before making a charitable contribution - does the charity boast of how little of its income goes toward "process" (i.e. paying the bottom-rung workers), or about how small the difference is between its' president's and its' staffers' salaries?
Most of all, it means breaking out of the illusion of entitlement. "I've been through so much, I deserve a break" isn't good enough for a feminist. Rather than counting slights and hoarding injuries against a Heavenly Reward, we must shift the focus onto the more realistic correlation of cause and effect. "I've accomplished so much that I'm going to seek out recognition for my efforts." "I've amassed so much information that I'm going to use it to my best advantage." "I've made such a difference here in my workplace that I'm going to share my strategies and successes."
We can't totally remove suffering from our lives, and there's no need to resent it. Suffering can sometimes teach us how to avoid future mistakes. But it's not a currency; it has no intrinsic value, no matter how assiduously patriarchy asserts that it "builds character." Misery doesn't make one a better person or entitle one to anything. What counts, for us, is to live as we intend to live, to refuse to accept belittlement or injustice as tokens of personal worth, and to stand up for ourselves. This is the only strategy that's guaranteed to send the Burning Times up in smoke.
Reprinted with permission from:
Faces of the Goddess
c/o Siannan NiAoidh
12001 Ehrlich Rd.
Crows Landing, CA 95313
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