think that TH-cam not only blocked but even hidden your comment so I wonder why even that system thought you are actually the disgusting one basically. You know where i've seen this kind of accusation done? By zionists against jewish people who speak up against the israel apartheid and geno cide in palestine. I am very happy to have decent sisters and siblings with me. fun fact: i've studied "pick me" culture scholarly, and ironically you know what that tries to latch upon? instrinsic privilege like the ones given by... organs. So truly a master example of projection this comment, thank you for proving my points for me.
@@Womenmatter2009 Sex is a word, and words can be changed. What we describe as sex varies from person to person and culture to culture. If you want to know more about the myths around sex and gender I'd recommend Judith Butler's newest book. Until then please remember: Gatekeeping harms everyone. Whatever fantasy world of perfect sex segregation you envision, and the invasiveness of enforcing it, would be more harmful to women than any trans woman ever could (or would) be. We're out there fighting alongside our sisters for the freedom to control our own bodies.
@@Womenmatter2009 What's wrong with that is when people call women "men" it's a precursor and a validation of violence, because to them a woman's value is how attractive she is or how many children she can produce. Not her mind, not her works, not her presence, not her flaws. I am legally female, a necessary recognition for my safety. At the same time there are laws governing my behavior such that I will always respect whatever space I'm in, as should anyone else.
As a trans guy witch, it means SO much to me to see other witches talking about this. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart. Great video! 🌙🖤🏳️⚧️
I never noticed how the maiden-mother-crone trinity focused specifically on a woman’s reproductive role, especially when you compare it to masculine trinities which are typically divided based on occupation or dominion. Anyway, amazing video! Trans solidarity forever! 🏳️⚧️
the irony is that I realised i last year after talking to a man while at the goddess conference. there's a video i have specifically and the maiden mother crone that explaind that story here th-cam.com/video/FAUZngFlYeY/w-d-xo.html
Me neither. Gives me a lot to think about and I’ll definitely go an watch her video on the archetype as well as the other video she mentioned towards the end of this one!
I've just discovered your videos and really loving them. Something you said near the end of the video has prompted me to share a particular experience of mine. There are a lot of women, especially in the pagan community, who have joined this "love your menstruation" movement. I understand the idea and I respect it, but it's a breeding ground (no pun intended) for toxicity. Without going into a lot of detail my period has been the source of misery for me almost since it started. And to anyone who tries to say that it's like that for every woman and we just have to see the beauty and the positivity, I say...until you have had your uterus fused to your bowel and your kidney strangled by endometrial scar tissue for years with no help from doctors, you are not allowed to compare your period pain to mine. This "love your menstruation" movement f'd me up in 2 ways. First when I was young and didn't know that you are not supposed to squeeze out a gallon of clots when you sneeze, I tried so hard to love my menstruation. As I laid debilitated in my bed there was this war going on inside me, wanting it to end, hating my body for the 1-2 weeks that this would go on, but at the same time trying to stuff those feelings down and deny them their right to exist. And then hating myself because I knew I was failing at loving my menstruation. And the second way is now, about 6 years after I relinquished my uterus, during my second surgery for endometrioma in less than 10 years, there are people who look down their nose at me for being happy to be uterus free. After I that surgery, I felt so amazing, so free. I felt released from a ball and chain I had been forced to drag around every month. Something that had taken away my ability to live and function on a monthly basis for so many decades. I wanted everyone to be able to experience the joy I felt. I was like Oprah giving out free cars...you get a hysterectomy and you get a hysterectomy. I wanted to shout about it from the mountain tops. I don't think I have experienced that level of joy since I first discovered Witchcraft actually. And yet, if I share this among strangers who are female and pagan they will almost always shun me because I did not love my menstruation like a proper witch. So I beat myself up for not being able to push through the pain and misery to love the "gift of my gender" and now I am shunned for talking about it in anything but a positive light. The pain of this is also magnified because I was never able to have children because of these issues. Once your uterus turns heart shaped apparently you just aren't going to have a kid. How ironic. And I really wanted to have kids. I wanted it so badly. And please nobody in the comments tell me how many different ways I could have had kids. Trust me. I have looked down every avenue. Ultimately, no fertility doc can help me, I'm too poor, old and sick to adopt, and I'm not getting any younger. So as much joy as I feel at being free, I feel an equal amount of pain and loss. It's just really awful how people treat you when you have these kinds of issues. I can't even imagine how awful it must be to be trans and people do this same kind of shunning and shaming of reproductive status.
I’m a cishet white American pagan, which doesn’t really mean much, but I just wanted to add my perspective as I watch this video. I don’t see how transwomen are erasing my personhood as a woman, I ask but can never get a coherent answer, if I get one. The people who are trying to erase me as a woman are holding up the patriarchy. And the erasure of the personhood of transwomen is frightening. They’re just as human as me, just as deserving as rights, and are women too. Transmen are not betraying women, they’re men. And they are just as human and as deserving rights. Trans people are not the people going out of their way to harm me, that aren’t going to harass someone just trying to pee because they don’t look exactly the way some weirdo thinks they should look. I don’t get the fear and hate at all. TERFS work very hard for the patriarchy and they are not on the side of any person especially women, cis or trans. Please pardon the rant.
Not a rant at all, thank you for sharing your very level headed take. Towards the second half of the video your question about fear and hate gets an answer: bioessentialism towards serving patriarchy in exchange for protection.
@@activistwitchso far it’s a great video and explains a lot. My first known encounter with a trans person was when I was in a homeless shelter. She was an absolute sweetheart and tough as nails. The things she had been through were horrible. I really hope she’s still around and thriving. There’s also a trans man who’s a close family friend, more like a member of the family actually. He’s in a gay relationship and I worry about their safety. I’m really grateful to the algorithm for showing me your channel.
@@activistwitchI’ll also add my adult kid is nonbinary and they aren’t trying to do anything other than live their life. And they’re contributing to society better than me!
Fun fact: Shortly after I joined Twitter my account was copied, they immediately blocked me, and apparently started sending out disgusting tweets and violent dms in my name. I'm a trans woman and this person I discovered later was a Scottish based Terf. I used to give much more credit to the issue of violence on the "TRA" side, and I will still call it out if I see it, but the full story is that at least some of this violence on TERFs is self inflicted and it serves them to further radicalize others even as they claim to be on their side.
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this! Sock puppet accounts are nothing new but of course they would do 💩 like that to literally forge any proof they can make according to their wildest fantasies!
@@activistwitch It's so crazy because I don't speak like that. I'm not a very crazy person, I tend to be upbeat and positive. The few screenshots I got sent from my moots were full of vulgarity and violence. And people make money off this engagement, which is even more sad.
Something that isn't discussed as much as I was expecting is just how bio-essentialist the early witchcraft movement could me. Gardnerian Wicca, aka the beta-test of Wicca, was problematic. It centred cishet sex acts as a central and important ritual, and put emphasis on bio-essentialist roles of men and women in human reproduction. Later there were figures like Zsuzsanna Budapest, who founded the women-only school of Dianic Wicca that again uses a bio-essentialist view of womanhood. It definitely wasn't only Wicca either. Louise Huebner, aka the "official witch of Los Angeles" as she liked to be called, was vocal about not being Wiccan and was another prominent figure arguing for a bio-essentialist view of witchcraft. This type of view isn't just susceptible to gender-critical ideas like the maiden-mother-crone archetype (which as any trans mother can tell you does not actually exclude trans women), it is *the* gender-critical idea. That's why I'm hesitant to view transphobia as being introduced to witchcraft from outside, because in many ways it is an organic result of early views of witchcraft. That said, this is cause for optimism because it means gender-criticals are actively losing ground. People think it's weird that there are transphobic witches, rather than a given. Most of the criticism of the people mentioned above came and is coming from witches who find their ideas hurtful. They are losing ground to everyone else, and they are screaming as a result.
This! I remember reading the Gardnerian stuff way back in high school and thinking that witchcraft was pretend feminism because it was just as sexist and arbitrary as Christianity. It took me another 20 years to discover chaos magic (Yes, I know. It's infested with morally dubious dudebros, but at least there's no obligation to share their beliefs.) and come around to any sort of workable spiritual system.
and that ties in really easily to reactionary radical forms of feminism, a clear "you think this is weak? (periods, emotionality, motherhood etc) well it makes me strong" reaction, which ultimately reify the whole structure. Continue forward and it's the same reason as they've turned into terfs and "gender critical", they just end up propping up anti-feminist views (like yelling about abortion as a women's issue and talking about trans men is a distraction, just supports the basic view of women as being FOR pregnancy), leading to heavier policing of "normal" appearances in public etc. (Hope this makes sense I'm condensing a bunch of stuff lol)
i mean, when you boil it down and when they play the victim we have to look to the logical conclusion of "victimhood". trans day of remembrance is always the worst day of the year for me. it's necessary to never forget and pay respect and project into eternity all our siblings lost, but it's something i quite literally don't wish on my worst enemy
@@activistwitch It's our memorial day. Quite literally. I have veteran family but no friends or family lost in war, memorial Day would be a lot more heartrending if I did. So trans day of remembrance is our reminder of what we have lost, and why we fight, until the day comes when it is not needed because there are no names to read.
thank you, i have always felt the maiden mother crown to be limiting to feminine power, feminine divine goes beyond the reproduction ability of human organs
I think a great way to deconstruct it is the approach Charlie Claire Burgess uses on radical tarot, considering the qualities in gendered, so curiosity or innocence for the maiden, care and nurture for the mother, wisdom and not-giving-f*vks for the crone ;) at least it's how I see it
@@activistwitch THANK-YOU for this wiser, more compassionate, and benevolently/spiritually expansive mention of the trinity. Greatly appreciated. This whole video is another AMAZING and POWERFULLY educational and healing share. So well done!
They’re also not very universal IMO. A lot of goddess trinities were not based on the life stages of women at all, but on dominion or occupation. The Hindu Tridevi for example of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati represent wisdom, prosperity and power, respectively. They also perfectly mirror the masculine Trimurti, which depict Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as the Gods of creation, preservation and dissolution, respectively. My own religion (Egyptian neopaganism) also doesn’t really have feminine trinities. We have mixed gender trinities, and feminine bimodalities. The best known is the Bastet (or Hathor) and Sekhmet coupling, with Bastet/Hathor representing the creative, protective, wise aspects of the divine feminine, and Sekhmet representing the retributive, violent and passionate side.
As a cis, het, white, American, male, monotheistic wizard I know my word doesn't carry much weight in some circles, but I wanted to thank you for your videos on this topic. Everybody in the magickal community needs to see these and have a good long think about the way that the systems we work with have been influenced by the Greater System in which they were born, and to consider the ways in which othering, marginalizing, and subjugating one another are anathema to magickal/mystical practice. Amazing work, you've earned a new subscriber. PS- Love the Hades/Calcifer shirt.
I am so glad to hear and see that there are allies everywhere no matter their privilege. I always say that privilege is kept a bad word or thing and no one is playing the oppression Olympics, if anything kudos to those allies who put their privileges to the service of those who don't have them!
This is an amazing video, thank you. As a nonbinary trans person, it is painful to hear transphobic words repeated, but this is an extremely important topic to talk about and shine a light on instead of simply ignore and let fester.
i am sorry for that, i did wonder if a content warning shold have been issues but at the same time i thought "terfs is in the title, alas we have to talk about their insanity"
I'm trans and live in the SF Bay area. Starhawk absolutely knows trans witches. She has for decades and decades. I know some of the trans people she knows.
I'm glad you did a follow up. I tried paganism and wicca in the 00s, and found at that time (at least in my area) there was a HUGE obsession with the moon cycles, perdiod cycles, motherhood, wombs, and womanhoods link to it all. For me it isn't a huge surprise that the next step in this sort of focus would be a transphobic bioessentialism. I actually gave up on persuing the craft further because at that time I felt like I didn't fit in as I didn't feel "feminine" enough. I didn't feel maternal in any way, despised my periods as they were hugely uncomfortable to me (I later found out I have PMDD which was another reason for my severe dislike of my own cycle. I am blessedly period free now thanks to pills), and I just felt no strong connection to that portrayal of womanhood over all as I had no strong pride in my body, my womb or my breasts. I was in my teens and then early 20s, and was trying to find something to connect to, and for a masc butch who'd been bullied out of womanhood, that version of witchcraft absolutely wasn't it for me.
@Spamhard books - wise definitely Ari the Oak witch boom for beginners, it's just above 100 pages but does feature everything needed to get the basics, and has an intersectional lens when needed. I made a video review of it. th-cam.com/video/U_T0aNQzbrg/w-d-xo.html If you're already familiar with energy / spells and such, Psychic witch by Mat auryn is also an evergreen I still go back to this day
This is going to sound so stupid but when I was researching for a series of videos I'm doing about pornography I learned that the three most searched for porn categories are Teen, MILF, and Lesbian. I was discussing this with a witch friend of mine and we laughed and said "it's the new Maiden Mother Crone." We imagined the Lesbian as the "crone" - an elder lesbian with a fanny pack full of anything you might need because she's been through it and seen it all. Ever since then that's how I've pictured the Maiden-Mother-Crone thing every time I hear it brought up. Teen-MILF-Lesbian To me those are just archetypes and not related to how I view witchcraft at all though, so that may be an incredibly offensive thing to say if someone utilizes those concepts in their practice idk. I do see it as how men view women, primarily, rather than helpful concepts for women. Terfs are so patronizing and spread so many silly lies about trans men. Two I've heard lately that infuriated me were that trans men lose their ability to scream forever, which isn't true. While your voice is changing and cracking screaming may become difficult, but the ability doesn't go away forever. Men can scream too. And that you won't be able to orgasm anymore and it'll hurt forever down there. This came from detransitioners who transitioned for like five months and never got past the bottom growth phase. There is a phase in bottom growth where there can be pain and difficulty orgasming due to the growth, but that too goes away as growth levels off. They spread so many lies about transition to push the idea that "they're mutilating women's bodies." It drives me nuts.
i keep meaning to come back to this comment to give it the attention it deserves but I always have performance anxiety because the stuff you make is so cool and you're a real video essayist so i just fangril all the time, but then i realised that if i kept saying nothing since i reply to most comments it would have been weird so here's the truth. thank you so so much for even watching my videos 😍
I grew up in a Fundimentalist Christian and very Patriarchal home. Now as a Non-Binary Queer Witch I see the poison that the patriarchy does. As someone who grew up hearing the things that openly patriarchal white men would say I agree with everything you said in your video. I have also seen how white women (specifically in my family) boulster the Patriarchy by only wanting equality for them and the other white women. The moment I came out as queer they turned their back on me. It's funny how those white feminists who scream about equality suddenly don't want equality once it includes people who aren't them.
This video is amazing. ❤ We should stop calling them TERFS, not because they are trying to claim it as a slur, but because there is nothing radical or feminist about them. It gives them too much credit.
A lot of people who inhabit both privileged and marginalized identities can't seem to get that privilege is simultaneously systemic and SITUATIONAL. You can suffer as a woman without ever having to fear that you're going to be made to suffer for being white, and the specific situation is going to determine whether gender or skin color is the most significant factor in an interaction. But it can really freak them out when interacting with people with different sets of privileged/marginalized identities. A lot of white cis women don't get that there are situations in which they DO have and exert undue power over other people. (There is a heck of a lot of crossover between FARTs and those who believe children are not full human beings and should have no autonomy even beyond issues of gender.) There's just so much to unpack. The conflation of victimization with morality, the idea that disadvantage means you can't be a crappy person. Which goes along with the misconception of privilege as an individual ACTION, something one person DOES, which automatically makes privilege morally bad, which makes those who have it morally bad, which means systemic discrimination cannot be fought from a position of privilege... Which means a cis FART woman can never admit to having privilege over anyone else. (There are also a lot of them who deny that men can be feminists.) It's such a a stark and reductive worldview. (I hope I made that point well; it's really hard for me to keep track of thoughts in the tiny reply box on mobile when I can't see my whole post. XP) And I like your clickbaity title. You gotta do what you gotta do. Though perhaps it has a bit of a No True Scotsman vibe. Personally, I believe that their rigidity massively nerfs their personal magic, but they're still in the community, as you've said, and have to be addressed as a problem of the community.
Fair points, I think I will adjust the title on your suggestion. Thank you so much for such insightful take. In the previous video I had to explain to a white man both claiming that racism doesn't exist institutionally but that I was racist to white people (and white privilege and critical race theory are tools of white racism 🤦🏽♀️) that privilege is seen as something people have or are given when in reality most of the times it's justz not having extra trouble, so for instance not risking getting shot when pulled for a ticket (or even on their own bed) because their skin is white
@@activistwitch O_o He what now? Like, I can at least UNDERSTAND the misconceptions about intersectionality - it's complicated. But the "marginalized people are the ones who ACTUALLY have all the power" crowd just... make me squint. A lot. I almost have more respect for outright supremacists - at least they're honest with themselves.
Yeah the victimhood seems weird when it goes "I want you in a camp" along with "actually white supremacy cannot exist because whites are not the majority" 🤦🏽♀️ it's my pinned post on the last video if you want to check how unwell these people are
@@activistwitch Sounds like a quantum opinion, they exist in a state of superposition between the two most convenient lines of mutually exclusive reasoning. Absolutely brain-breaking :/
Fantastic video. I’m so glad I recently stumbled across your channel. This is such an important topic. I appreciate you approaching it from a witchy perspective as well. Thanks for posting! 😊
I'm not pagan but I've been interested in this culture for years now and I had noticed, as more time went by, that a lot of people seemed to simply repackage misogynistic and transphobic points of view as being quintessential to Paganism and it had alarmed me. It's so nice to see a witch actively talking about the issue and deconstructing it as well as you do! Genuinely love this channel, keep it up! :D
Just because they are loud doesn't mean they get to speak for the community and I'll do my best to make it clear: the cornerstone of witchcraft as rebellion to the system is INCLUSIVITY!!!
I just came across your channel and it's wonderful! I never knew that Starhawk had been attacked... I love her deeply and especially her amazing novels Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge. I'm a cis woman, a pagan, and consider myself a trans ally. I find the arguments of TERFs so utterly nonsensical (and online they are always scarily aggressive) - how can someone identifying as a woman be done in order to 'erase' women? Cis women and trans women have certainly had some different challenges in our lifetimes, but that's also true of individuals within these groups. And the idea that we should treat all trans women as though they are potential rapists (they never mention trans men, do they?) because a tiny proportion have been, suggests that we should treat all cis men as rapists too. What a depressing way to interact in the world. The maiden-mother-crone can be part of our spirituality, but if we make that the entirety of how women can be depicted, it sounds a bit like a trad wife/ Trump project 2025agenda! And it disempowers so many women...those who can't become pregnant, menopausal women . Let's focus on the warrior/scholar/priestess/gardener archetypes!
just to put it into perspective because otherwise terfs love to make the talking point of the rare examples of trans women r*pists and conflate it with "see? men are just pretending to get into our spaces", statistically there's r*pists in every demographic, arguably the women r*pists are under reported and under recognised because of the patriarchal benevolent sexism of "women are wonderful" archetype. clearly, what is currently actually dangerous in a bathroom is a TERF coming to look under your door if you don't look stereotypically feminine, than anyone else.
@@cleonawallace376 OMG Thank you for saying that. How on earth does me being a woman erase women? And why would I want to? All my friends are women. I'd be pretty lonely if that were the case.
@@activistwitch I think the really scary part of British TERFism is the notion that women can't r*pe others, a notion reinforced by British law. It's a massive red flag. I wish we could address the systemic problems that lead to SA rather than waste our energy fighting each other over phantasms.
I am a huge advocate for the understanding and education on how our societal (patriarcal) idea of "women are wonderful" is actually protecting a lot of abusers and sex offenders who happen to be women. Fun fact: the one and only time I ever called into a radio show (James O'Brian's) was exactly to point out how in British law, as a woman one can't r*pe only sex assault which goes to show our wrong bias and ironically leaves so many more people at risk than the "big bad wolf" Terfs try to create, while their own obsession with checking and policing other people's bodies ironically makes them much more likely to be perpetrators
@@SaplingTarot I won't lie, I spent the last week crawling from how tired I am, but glowing at the idea that I can talk about these articles finally to a larger audience. The xtra magazine piece on the Terfs to nazi pipeline I've had in my chrome tabs for, no joke, two years!
I love how you explain things in such an empathetic manner. I wasn't fully understanding where all the Trans hate was coming from on the female side of things, but this really helped put it in perspective!
Oh goodness me in so glad to hear! This is truly one of the best compliments I can be given because for a LONG time living as an autistic person in an allistic world I always felt like I couldn't understand, let alone explain things to others. So truly this means the world to hear thank you!
I'm just a few minutes into the video, and I just had to stop and call out the blatant irony of that person admitting gender can't be put into a rigid box, but then immediately following it with "only natural born women are women". As well as the post saying trans women are trying to "erase women", while actively erasing trans women by calling them men in dresses (and by the same logic are also erasing trans men, nonbinary, gender fluid, and any other gender expression beyond the binary). Do they not hear themselves and the hypocrisy, misogyny, and queerphobia in their own voices? Is their concept of womanhood, femininity, gender expression, and the "female experience" so flimsy that they can't acknowledge the diversity it encompasses? Do they not understand that trans women are also victims of patriarchal violence, discrimination, and oppression? Have they bothered looking at the statistics of violence perpetrated by trans women against other women (in comparison to women-on-women violence rates) before calling them rapists and batterers simply for existing in the same spaces? Conversely, have they bothered to look at the statistics of violence perpetrated against trans women (or the mental illness, suicide rates, and homeless among them) before screaming that they should be turned away from shelters for not passing? They're pointing fingers in the wrong direction, which does nothing to address the REAL issues, inequalities, and dangers that women face, while simultaneously spreading misinformation, fear, and discrimination toward their allies. How is this feminism in any way??? Just some initial thoughts. Back to the video...
@@earthaforester3141 please I look forward to your next thoughts bit by bit! This is the kind of attention that makes me feel valued in my work of putting this together 🥲
That "rigid boxes" part also caught my ear. Putting people in rigid boxes, that's what they do, and it harms trans and cis women! It is transphobes who are making the world less safe for women
Like the rest of the radically fascist agenda, the inversions of reality you cite are intentional. Cognitive dissonance is one of the fascist movement's most formidable weapons.
Yes this was such a educational and informative video, and I really appreciate this video and your work in general thank you and definitely going to be supporting ❤❤❤Activist Witch❤❤❤
This video is such an important topic. Those hateful people also try to pull the "being 'phobic' means I'm scared and I'm not scared" when they say they're not transphobic. Terfs are 🗑 and always will be. YOU'RE ALWAYS WELCOME IN MY SPACE. YOU ARE LOVED. YOU ARE IMPORTANT. YOU DO MATTER. ❤ I will always stand up for your rights to just exist and it's so fucking sad that this even has to be a battle constantly fought. 💔 🏳️⚧️
Thank you For this I'm a trans woman that's struggled to really find spaces that I can just exist in. I don't really belong in men's spaces, and I'm scared to enter women's space. The only place I've ever felt like I belonged that wasn't exclusively t4t was in witchcraft. Just, hearing this helps clear up some doubts and fears I've been struggling with, thank you.
i have nothing to add 💜 so this comment is mostly for the algorithm also thank you for bringing this stuff up. having a radical, anti-authoritarian and inclusive magical community is more important than most people really understand i think, including me
When I think of ladder climbers and girl boss feminism. Really when I think of any position that argues for the climbing up hierarchies instead of smashing them, I think of the the lord of the rings. "The ring answers to Sauron alone, it has no other master" or "I would use the ring with good intent but through me it would work great evil", that's why, despite generally agreeing with marxists and other socialists who are pro-seizing state power, I remain highly sympathetic to the anarchist position that states cannot be used for good. They are indeed a hierarchy, yes even anarchist revolutionaries have used violence to suppress the opposition, but institutions, especially states always seem to prioritize their own propagation and stability over the principles they claim to defend. It's something in the structure of them, I think. Once you climb to a given position in a hierarchy the pressures of that position will push you into behaving in the way that position was originally designed to act. Hence, women who climb to the top of patriarchal systems will act in ways that demean and devalue women.
this is what i'd like people to understand when they claim russia was the example of communism failing: no russia never had communism past the military overtake. the fact they called each other "comrade" never actually meant they were all on the same level.
Hi Ysha! Thanks so much to you and Raven, for all your hard work at unraveling some of these belief systems. I think your content is wonderful. You clearly act from a place of deep empathy, and your intellect, and intelligence shines. Trans rights are human rights, and all those that don't believe this...well...just don't believe in human rights in my opinion.
Thank you for this very much needed video! I didn't know that fascists also see their similarities/collaboration potentional with terfs so thank you for sharing that information! It totally makes sense that they make a great fit but it's also super scary that those links between fascism, conspirituality, and terfism become clearer every day. I also didn't know this about Starhawk, so sad.
On Starhawk I have been told that in the last 6 years her position must have changed again because her reclamation camps are supposedly very inclusive and queer led
@@activistwitch Ok, thank you, that's good to know. But I wish she would also be critical towards that second essay she put out and maybe write a new one or repeat the first one.
Same honestly. This left me a bit meh to be honest. To be fair I couldn't go through the rest of her blog for all six years since..I'd like to think she wrote something if nothing else more recently, but I couldn't find it in the dates around the original happening
The maiden mother crone idea has always seemed very prescriptive to me. I also don’t like the idea of divine feminine and divine masculine. I’m NB and it just doesn’t make sense for me
I attended a class at a progressive church and it was amazing to hear these cisgender people talking about God with a variety of pronouns, their logic is that if God is a reflection of all of us then He/She/They must possess all aspects of gender simultaneously.
about 20 years ago I heard from attendees about a workshop Starhawk ran in Palestine for Palestinian activists where she advised them to walk towards IOF soldiers saying "my heart is filled with love for you" so to be perfectly honest I'm not in the least surprised she is now advising trans people to just be nice to our oppressors, it's completely on brand for her
@@activistwitch I mean it's not exactly a matter of public record so absolutely not a failure of research on your part, just thought you should know you were right about that whiff of white saviourism
@@fallingdream see I always tread very carefully on saying these things without sources and then, what do you know, autistic recognise patterns even when I don't realise I do 😅
@@activistwitch to be fair, from where you stand this is hearsay, I'm telling you something I was told 20 years ago by someone who was there and you have no way of verifying any part of that, including whether I was told this, whether I'm remembering it correctly, or whether that person was there, much less whether it happened as described, so definitely stay critical and be particular about your sources for anything you publish, just be alert for any more examples that emerge (did you know "recognising patterns" is a fash dogwhistle? makes it difficult to talk about actual autistic pattern recognition sometimes)
As a life long animal rights activist, Im shocked at racist, ultra right wing fascist vegans, as veganism itself is anti oppression. One of the most common comments I get is about how it's a white privileged movement, and yet research has found that about 8% of Black Americans are vegan or vegetarian, which is much higher than the 3% rate among Americans of other ethnic groups. Sisters Syl Ko and Aph Ko first proposed the intersectional framework for and coined the term Black veganism. The Institute for Critical Animal Studies called Black veganism an "emerging discipline". There are many more theories that present veganism from a far-right perspective. There are interpretations on the vegan Cain and non-vegan Abel, on the farming ancestry of White people, the classic “blood and soil”, the physical purity of a White warrior and so on. You have inspired me to talk about this taboo subject more... gratitude ❤
@@sarahjaneross2918 I do really look forward to hearing some of these theories because my only knowledge of veganism comes from global emissions data research I did years ago
@@activistwitch Veganism is absolutely an anti oppression and social justice movement. A benefit to health and the environment is just a bonus 😊 Maybe start with Dr Angela Davis and see where she takes you 🙂
To her credit I've heard that her reclamation camps are now very inclusive and queer led, so maybe without as loud a statement, she took back her own moral compass after that bullying
Thank you for your hard work in sharing this essential message and in educating so thoroughly. I find incredible inspiration in your content, and it guides my own path as I’m sure it does so many others. Break the damn ladder!
I live to hear that what I put together means so much to someone else that's not in my brain, thank you so much for taking the time to watch and leave us this comment 🫂❤️
@@Jiihariial well they realised the usual: if they kick and scream some people (Starhawk included at the time) will do anything to make their screeching stop whether they are right or not.
I think the idea of the Matriarchal Bacchanalia vs the patriarchal "later" greek religion might actually be another Robert Graves/Jonathon Frazer gendered stereotype. The Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy dynamic in historiography has a lot of the same problems that the maiden mother and crone idea has.
The Bacchic cult was contemporaneous with greek patriarchy, the idea that it's older is based on progressivist ideas about culture evolving from a more primal animistic feminine dark way of being into a more masculine disciplined way of being and we gotta be careful about reproducing it. Really culture has always been complex and contradictory. maybe there were matriarchal utopias in the past (as Robert Graves believed) but Bacchic Religion doesn't tell us anything about that one way or another.
"like" tha bacchanalia. I don't think by the time of the bacchanalia it was much matriarchal anymore but a lot of the legends of pre Christian virgins that have children "by the god" usually stem from that kind of culture. There's a book about it, I'll remember and find it!
@@activistwitch The problem is with using colonised societies contemporary with modern European Imperialism as evidence for the past of European cultures. This is a deliberately colonialist viewpoint designed to put colonised peoples into 'the past', justify colonialism as 'progress' and cover up genocide. I get that most people making this argument aren't intending to refer to a universalised Christian/Patriarchal/Modern/Center vs Pre-Christian/Matriarchal/Ancient/Periphery but the language used tends to be pretty indistinguishable from those who did so in the 1800s. Bachanalias were specific festivals associated with specific places in time and there's very little evidence for them being sexual outside of Christian propaganda. Greek Bacchanals were often women only affairs so using the term without qualification as a time when women would get pregnant really makes no sense. We have one Roman source in Livy about heterosexual sex supposedly happening at Bacchanals in Italy but this text is a classic example of what today we'd call a 'conspiracy theory' that led to what has been called 'history's most bloody witch hunt'. Its pretty dubious as a source for actual Italian cult practices but he does see the mixed gender bacchanals as an Italian corrupted of the single gender Greek cult. Then we have an even later Christian source who mocks the sexuality of the cult of Dionysus but in context he's talking about a model phallus kept concealed in a basket carried in sacred processions and it was only later theologians who misquoted him as talking about unrestrained sexuality. The idea of the sexual Bacchanal is very heavily connected to the same orientalism that saw non-European cultures as hypersexual and feminine and reinforced the idea that Imperialist cultures needed to be hyper-masculine and heteronormative in order to protect themselves from foreign powers. These same orientalist tropes were projected onto the 'declining' late Roman Empire and early Christian propaganda was misread and interpreted overly literally, sometimes with entire fake meanings being invented for Latin words ('orgy' being the most notable which was a non-sexual term in pagan latin). Of course its more implausible that parties + alchohol never led to pregancy in Greece and Rome but outside of motivated reading of very dodgy sources there's no good reason to assume Bacchanals were exceptional on that front over other parties from various ancient or modern cultures.
Oh the MMC Its such a frustrating bugbear There is a greco-mediterranean goddess somewhat close to Leland's thing; but Hera is venerated as Girl, Wife & Widow Which albeit relates to relationships to male power but is less about procreation?
@@activistwitch something that strikes me of those aspects (perhaps because my mother has a saying from my paternal grandmother "no woman is so wicked she does not deserve at least seven years of widowhood" *) is how they are fundamentally different social roles (versus say, one does not cease to be a mother when one ages, yet mmc presuposes it) & they have very different powers (with widows historically often having much (relative) autonomy at least in rome) (there is some interesting... parallel? with the trade of becoming a subject to power for the bestowing of inherent social place/protection being replicated fractalwise within the kyriarchy. * or perhaps due to my own fascination with Hera due to my Heracles mysticism (i for example disagree with the wholly antagonistic relationship between them; and see her as a hypernym of the goddess who he elected at the crossroads)
I agree with a lot of what you ate saying but I have to disagree with the idea that the -Maiden Mother Crone- archetype only serves patriachal ideals. Matriarchy preceeds patriarchy. These are the pre-Abrahamic origins of Goddess worship and illustrate the stages of life for the majority of women historically. As an Indigenous person who has cultural heritage that pre-dates Christianity, this is not an idea that serves patriarchy. In my tribe menstruation demonstrates the power of women as life givers and the stages of her life as far as women participate in ceremony. We also had trans people although they were not medical trans people like today because it wasn't available. They were more similar to cross dressers who lived as a man or woman because no one had the right to decide the identity of another individual. Intersex people were also accepted in my tribe because there were no class systems or forced roles. Eurocentric traditions and religious beliefs often remain in the subconscious because they've been indoctrinated for so long and many people retain and cherry-pick the parts of those cultures that they agree with. Someone like Richard Dawkins for example, claims to be an atheist however, he has merely stopped attending church but still believes in patriarchy, misogyny and elitism that organized Abrahamic religions do. I feel like a lot of people who started out in Christianity, etc still approach life within that mindset while claiming to be pagan. All European folklore is tinged with religious undertones to make pre-Christian culture seem evil and the Church controlled who was allowed to write things down. Imo, it's really difficult for white people who are separating themselves from this aspect of their religous culture and reclaim their roots that existed 1,500 years ago. My people were only introduced to these bizarre, Eurocentric, colonial, societal ideas around 1880. So my great-grandparents remembered their grandparents who lived pre-colonization and pre-Christian life. I have given birth to three children but I don't see myself as overly special because I have a uterus. I believe most adoptions are unethical because of the trauma to the child. The U.S. spent decades removing Native kids from their homes and adopting them out to white people to force assimilation. Indigenous people in North and South America are better at stewarding the environment because we've been living on our lands for thousands of years. White, Eurocetric settlers often imitate Indigenous environmental practices without regard that the topography and environment is very different and they will do more damage to the environment and then say "Native Indigenous People were wrong!" Europe is just the western side of the Asian continent but Europeans have assigned themselves the role of policing the world despite being a hot mess throughout the last 2,000 years of constant wars and religious oppression that began with the Roman Empire, imo.
Matriarchy predated Patriarchy yes, I even mention it in this video. So you see how bizzare it is that the 3 aspect of the goddess consider womanhood just in function of the role of woman in patriarcal society. But I appreciate your take on your own experience of motherhood and therefore I appreciate you see much past the otherwise limited way that unfortunately, the maiden mother crone is seen in witchcraft circles under benevolent sexism
This is an interesting conversation. The points comes from fear. Men can and do rape women (and vice versa). That fear is real. But trans people also face dangers for being who they are. Women have suffered since birth for being women. But that doesn't take away the suffereing that trans go through. I'm struggling with this one. Neither side should dismiss the fear of the other side. Thank you for making me think.
Women also r*pe. We don't talk about it because patriarchy has promised women benevolent sexism "oh but you're so good and kind, how could someone who can be a mother assault others."
their use of the triple goddess, the MMC archetype.. it astounds me. It lacks any of the depth and consideration you'd usually expect with any imagery from religion. Rather than consider it a reflection of life in general - as maiden you grow, you take in, you gather, you become. As mother, you take what you have gathered and become, and bring it out to the world.This is the stage of life where you feed and nurture the world around you, you give to it, you help others, you bring life *to* the world, generally. And crone, you wither, you retreat, you relax, all you have left to give to the world is yourself, the breath from your lungs. There is vast insightful metaphor and imagery available within the archetype and yet.. these people focus on the first assumption, the basic glance. A group, that in any other belief system would be quickly reminded of their naivity, of their need to spend more time thinking on such concepts. Religion, as a fundamental personal concept.. is all about peeling back the layers of the world, and searching for the deeper meanings, and these folks.. declare their journey complete without ever having taken a single step into the depths, seeing MMC and going "yup, we are the circle of life, therefore we deserve superiority", never having considered deeper meanings, that apply to *all*, that can enrich *all*. No consideration of how even men can fit into the archetype. No consideration of why the archetype treats all three as equally important. I honestly see a reading of Maiden, Mother, Crone such as theirs a failure to scratch the surface. Rather than see the value in three equal parts of this whole, they inject a heirarchy, The crone ruling over the mother, the mother ruling over the maiden. A stale approach that does not consider how the crone is also a mother, the mother once a maiden. That whilst experience and advice are invaluable, so to is the freedom of the maiden and mother to break from the path the crone took, to carve a new path, to find their own fonts of experience. The maiden, mother, and crone each have their own, sometimes conflicting wisdom. They are equals in part because the wisdom of each is equally valuable. Because sometimes in life you have the choice of who's advice to follow. The final result is the same, but the artistry, the flair, the journey is different.
I am conflicted about her now to be fair. It was the inspiration for me to consider activism and witchcraft as the same thing, though the way she quickly threw trans people under the bus depressed me a lot..though I've been told that her reclamation camps nowadays are very queer friendly and inclusive so hopefully time has helped her understand.
Okay, you gonna hate me for this, but I have to ask. I really like your videos, and enjoy listening to your profound opinions. And I tried to understand why it is so important for transpeople, that transwomen are women and transmen are men, but I don’t get it. So, first of all: We have this weird pictures of what it means to be a man/woman. And these pictures are so toxic. Many people suffer because of them. And instead of changing these pictures, we discuss if you belong to one or the other, based on those toxic stereotypes? I don‘t get it. And there is one more thing: You could get operations to make you look like a Kardeshian, you can live like a Kardeshian. You‘re a human being, that deserves all respect, but is it so wrong, unless you marry or get adopted by a Kardeshian, if people tell you, that you‘re not a Kardeshian? I even understand that it hurts to hear that, because it scatters dreams. And if you define yourself as a Kardeshian, are the Kardeshians allowed to disagree? This doesn‘t make your opinion less valid. But can’t we have different points of view and just agree to disagree? I‘m sorry, if these lines hurt somebody who reads this, but maybe there is someone out there, who can explain it to me.
@@UrsulalaFleur I think everyone would agree that the cultural representation of the extremes of the gender spectrum (total masc or total femme) indeed ruin it for everyone. But gender expression and gender identity and sexual identity and sexual expression are all different things. The idea that gender is based on toxic stereotypes is literally what Terfs are supporting: there's only a specific way to be a women and if you don't tick all the boxes you fault at womanhood and we will shun you. What I find in myself and most queer and trans people that I know is that having the power to understand and claim a label and definition for ourselves is the first step to find our world of reference. And humans are gregarious animals that cannot lived isolated, no matter how introverted. This is true for so.much more than gender and that's why we have subcultures and that's why subcultures were born out of being mistreated and bullied in those mainstream groups that represent at any point in time the "average accepted expression". You have an excellent poi y and actually trans people's existence is helping everyone breaking down those string expectations of gender expression. The reason why "passing" becomes so important is only when the abuse is such from the mainstream society that passing (and therefore passing I noticed as out gender) is needed for safety. Hope this helps.
Dear activistwitch, thanks for your answer. It does help. This may be a silly question, but wouldn‘t it be an easier way to fight for human rights, body automony and against violence in general to make things safe? Is „punch a terf“ not the same game that patriarchy plays? Isn’t it a nice secondary theatre of war that keeps us busy, instead of fighthing for what we all need: Our basic rights? I mean, its sad enough, that some people need to be re-educated in human decency, but when we must re-educate, we should imho live the future, we want to see., not grab the shit the others are throwing at us, to throw it back.
@user-wf3os8vg1m the fight for trans rights is literally the fight for human rights and bodily autonomy. Look at the case cited on this video and the attack on gillick's competency and how ultimately anything that claims to be "just" anti trans ends up being anti human rights. "The transgender issue" by shon Faye literally goes into all of this and looks specifically at how trans rights sounds like they are focused on trans people because Terfs single them out (and then expand and go ahaiocis women if they don't have uteruses, or look too "unfeminine" like imane khelif) but that is indeed already the case.
@@activistwitch I do disagree, because both sides do hurt for example the freedom of opinion and speech and sometimes it is beside the point. A simple example are pronouns. You deserve respect as a trans person. And as you deserve respect people should talk with you, not about you. So in the offline world there are rare occasions where it matters if you’re an he, she, ley or whatever, because most of the time, conversations are like our conversation. We use you and I. So, if people respect me, they use my name or they talk directly to me. Do I really have the right to stipule, how people talk about me, if I‘m not there? Again I have the right, that they talk respectfully about me, but a male or female pronoun is not derogatory, if I‘m not a misandrist or misogynist. And people who share your opinion about transwomen are woman will care about it and use the pronoun you wish. But some people don‘t share that point of view (see the Kardeshian-example). So it‘s their right to express their point of view, as long as it is respectful. Their point of view is as important and permitted as the transgender point of view. This is what freedom of opinion and speech means. We have to tolerate different opinions. I agree, this is not always easy. But this is what separates a democracy from a dictatorship. And what drives innovation.
@@UrsulalaFleur we can disagree over coffee, not human rights. And you've just given a great example of the paradox of tolerance. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance?wprov=sfla1
(Off topic; audible inhales from voice recordings can be edited out. It takes a bit more time in the editing, but it gives the quotation sections a professional polish. Ideally, the VA will know how to pace their breath so there are fewer or none of these. At worst, when left in, they can be extremely distracting.)
I feel flattered you think my videos are so professional that I should know how to do this 😅 they are not and most people doing my voice overs are my friends who find the time to do a voice note on their phone for me.
That (hopefully) explains the position jk Rowling occupies in the system and the reasons she might find it easier to oppress those more marginalised than her.
@@activistwitch To be fair, a lot of Gender Hypocritical activists are anti-Semitic. They usually point at people like George Soros and blame them for the rise of trans rights.
@@paulanaylor3548 Very true. Most right-wing conspiracy theories can be boiled down to antisemitism. If that's what OP meant, I hope they clarify. >>;
@activistwitch even before her,"rad" fems blamed jewish people for patriarchy.Justifying such anti semetism with "pink" and "erythranic" (indigenous like) rhetoric as I call it. "(((They))) enslaved 👩🏻🦰women👩🏻🦰 " they said and implied,as they were ready to bite any jewish person's nose. Their "solution" wasn't to abolish capitalism (and for my liking) civilization and the rest of its manifestations,they proposed a "pagan" theocracy,excluding black people and Muslims for "reasons" (all of them wrong)
@@punkypagan I wonder what "bibliography" means. 🤔 Which is linked with sources and receipts for everything by the way. As if you're the first malevolent naysayer that ever tried this 🤦🏽♀️
Disgusting video, you're no witch, just a sad, pick me, traitor to women. Shame on you!
think that TH-cam not only blocked but even hidden your comment so I wonder why even that system thought you are actually the disgusting one basically. You know where i've seen this kind of accusation done? By zionists against jewish people who speak up against the israel apartheid and geno cide in palestine. I am very happy to have decent sisters and siblings with me. fun fact: i've studied "pick me" culture scholarly, and ironically you know what that tries to latch upon? instrinsic privilege like the ones given by... organs. So truly a master example of projection this comment, thank you for proving my points for me.
Trans women are woman, trans men are men, and the only disgusting thing I see here is your comment.
@@aparker7777 No. Sexes can't be changed. It's "transwomen" and "transmen". What's wrong with that anyway?
@@Womenmatter2009 Sex is a word, and words can be changed. What we describe as sex varies from person to person and culture to culture. If you want to know more about the myths around sex and gender I'd recommend Judith Butler's newest book. Until then please remember: Gatekeeping harms everyone. Whatever fantasy world of perfect sex segregation you envision, and the invasiveness of enforcing it, would be more harmful to women than any trans woman ever could (or would) be. We're out there fighting alongside our sisters for the freedom to control our own bodies.
@@Womenmatter2009 What's wrong with that is when people call women "men" it's a precursor and a validation of violence, because to them a woman's value is how attractive she is or how many children she can produce. Not her mind, not her works, not her presence, not her flaws. I am legally female, a necessary recognition for my safety. At the same time there are laws governing my behavior such that I will always respect whatever space I'm in, as should anyone else.
As a trans guy witch, it means SO much to me to see other witches talking about this. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart. Great video! 🌙🖤🏳️⚧️
❤❤❤ **hugs**
Glad this found it's way to you sibling ❤️🫂
Solidarity!
Solidarity from from a cis pagan 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
As a trans woman and aspiring seiðr/völva, I concur! 🏳️⚧️
I never noticed how the maiden-mother-crone trinity focused specifically on a woman’s reproductive role, especially when you compare it to masculine trinities which are typically divided based on occupation or dominion.
Anyway, amazing video! Trans solidarity forever! 🏳️⚧️
I recognised this too from your video. Kicked myself a bit for not noticing it sooner! Just finished the video. Absolutely brilliant!
the irony is that I realised i last year after talking to a man while at the goddess conference. there's a video i have specifically and the maiden mother crone that explaind that story here th-cam.com/video/FAUZngFlYeY/w-d-xo.html
Me neither. Gives me a lot to think about and I’ll definitely go an watch her video on the archetype as well as the other video she mentioned towards the end of this one!
I've just discovered your videos and really loving them. Something you said near the end of the video has prompted me to share a particular experience of mine.
There are a lot of women, especially in the pagan community, who have joined this "love your menstruation" movement. I understand the idea and I respect it, but it's a breeding ground (no pun intended) for toxicity. Without going into a lot of detail my period has been the source of misery for me almost since it started. And to anyone who tries to say that it's like that for every woman and we just have to see the beauty and the positivity, I say...until you have had your uterus fused to your bowel and your kidney strangled by endometrial scar tissue for years with no help from doctors, you are not allowed to compare your period pain to mine.
This "love your menstruation" movement f'd me up in 2 ways. First when I was young and didn't know that you are not supposed to squeeze out a gallon of clots when you sneeze, I tried so hard to love my menstruation. As I laid debilitated in my bed there was this war going on inside me, wanting it to end, hating my body for the 1-2 weeks that this would go on, but at the same time trying to stuff those feelings down and deny them their right to exist. And then hating myself because I knew I was failing at loving my menstruation.
And the second way is now, about 6 years after I relinquished my uterus, during my second surgery for endometrioma in less than 10 years, there are people who look down their nose at me for being happy to be uterus free.
After I that surgery, I felt so amazing, so free. I felt released from a ball and chain I had been forced to drag around every month. Something that had taken away my ability to live and function on a monthly basis for so many decades. I wanted everyone to be able to experience the joy I felt. I was like Oprah giving out free cars...you get a hysterectomy and you get a hysterectomy. I wanted to shout about it from the mountain tops. I don't think I have experienced that level of joy since I first discovered Witchcraft actually. And yet, if I share this among strangers who are female and pagan they will almost always shun me because I did not love my menstruation like a proper witch.
So I beat myself up for not being able to push through the pain and misery to love the "gift of my gender" and now I am shunned for talking about it in anything but a positive light.
The pain of this is also magnified because I was never able to have children because of these issues. Once your uterus turns heart shaped apparently you just aren't going to have a kid. How ironic. And I really wanted to have kids. I wanted it so badly. And please nobody in the comments tell me how many different ways I could have had kids. Trust me. I have looked down every avenue. Ultimately, no fertility doc can help me, I'm too poor, old and sick to adopt, and I'm not getting any younger. So as much joy as I feel at being free, I feel an equal amount of pain and loss. It's just really awful how people treat you when you have these kinds of issues. I can't even imagine how awful it must be to be trans and people do this same kind of shunning and shaming of reproductive status.
thank you SO much for sharing your experience!
I am so sorry you had to live that, you deserve love and respect, if accepted i send you hugs. 🫂
greetings a trans woman.
I’m a cishet white American pagan, which doesn’t really mean much, but I just wanted to add my perspective as I watch this video. I don’t see how transwomen are erasing my personhood as a woman, I ask but can never get a coherent answer, if I get one. The people who are trying to erase me as a woman are holding up the patriarchy. And the erasure of the personhood of transwomen is frightening. They’re just as human as me, just as deserving as rights, and are women too.
Transmen are not betraying women, they’re men. And they are just as human and as deserving rights. Trans people are not the people going out of their way to harm me, that aren’t going to harass someone just trying to pee because they don’t look exactly the way some weirdo thinks they should look. I don’t get the fear and hate at all. TERFS work very hard for the patriarchy and they are not on the side of any person especially women, cis or trans. Please pardon the rant.
Not a rant at all, thank you for sharing your very level headed take. Towards the second half of the video your question about fear and hate gets an answer: bioessentialism towards serving patriarchy in exchange for protection.
@@activistwitchso far it’s a great video and explains a lot. My first known encounter with a trans person was when I was in a homeless shelter. She was an absolute sweetheart and tough as nails. The things she had been through were horrible. I really hope she’s still around and thriving.
There’s also a trans man who’s a close family friend, more like a member of the family actually. He’s in a gay relationship and I worry about their safety. I’m really grateful to the algorithm for showing me your channel.
@@activistwitchI’ll also add my adult kid is nonbinary and they aren’t trying to do anything other than live their life. And they’re contributing to society better than me!
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, I really hope it helps other allies to see reality. And on a personal note: thank you for being awesome
@@activistwitch❤
Fun fact: Shortly after I joined Twitter my account was copied, they immediately blocked me, and apparently started sending out disgusting tweets and violent dms in my name. I'm a trans woman and this person I discovered later was a Scottish based Terf. I used to give much more credit to the issue of violence on the "TRA" side, and I will still call it out if I see it, but the full story is that at least some of this violence on TERFs is self inflicted and it serves them to further radicalize others even as they claim to be on their side.
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this! Sock puppet accounts are nothing new but of course they would do 💩 like that to literally forge any proof they can make according to their wildest fantasies!
@@activistwitch It's so crazy because I don't speak like that. I'm not a very crazy person, I tend to be upbeat and positive. The few screenshots I got sent from my moots were full of vulgarity and violence. And people make money off this engagement, which is even more sad.
Something that isn't discussed as much as I was expecting is just how bio-essentialist the early witchcraft movement could me. Gardnerian Wicca, aka the beta-test of Wicca, was problematic. It centred cishet sex acts as a central and important ritual, and put emphasis on bio-essentialist roles of men and women in human reproduction. Later there were figures like Zsuzsanna Budapest, who founded the women-only school of Dianic Wicca that again uses a bio-essentialist view of womanhood. It definitely wasn't only Wicca either. Louise Huebner, aka the "official witch of Los Angeles" as she liked to be called, was vocal about not being Wiccan and was another prominent figure arguing for a bio-essentialist view of witchcraft. This type of view isn't just susceptible to gender-critical ideas like the maiden-mother-crone archetype (which as any trans mother can tell you does not actually exclude trans women), it is *the* gender-critical idea. That's why I'm hesitant to view transphobia as being introduced to witchcraft from outside, because in many ways it is an organic result of early views of witchcraft.
That said, this is cause for optimism because it means gender-criticals are actively losing ground. People think it's weird that there are transphobic witches, rather than a given. Most of the criticism of the people mentioned above came and is coming from witches who find their ideas hurtful. They are losing ground to everyone else, and they are screaming as a result.
yeah let's never forget "skyclad" was gardener excuse to be around his coven mates naked.
This! I remember reading the Gardnerian stuff way back in high school and thinking that witchcraft was pretend feminism because it was just as sexist and arbitrary as Christianity. It took me another 20 years to discover chaos magic (Yes, I know. It's infested with morally dubious dudebros, but at least there's no obligation to share their beliefs.) and come around to any sort of workable spiritual system.
and that ties in really easily to reactionary radical forms of feminism, a clear "you think this is weak? (periods, emotionality, motherhood etc) well it makes me strong" reaction, which ultimately reify the whole structure. Continue forward and it's the same reason as they've turned into terfs and "gender critical", they just end up propping up anti-feminist views (like yelling about abortion as a women's issue and talking about trans men is a distraction, just supports the basic view of women as being FOR pregnancy), leading to heavier policing of "normal" appearances in public etc. (Hope this makes sense I'm condensing a bunch of stuff lol)
"They don't need a day of remembrance" mic drop.
i mean, when you boil it down and when they play the victim we have to look to the logical conclusion of "victimhood". trans day of remembrance is always the worst day of the year for me. it's necessary to never forget and pay respect and project into eternity all our siblings lost, but it's something i quite literally don't wish on my worst enemy
@@activistwitch
It's our memorial day. Quite literally. I have veteran family but no friends or family lost in war, memorial Day would be a lot more heartrending if I did.
So trans day of remembrance is our reminder of what we have lost, and why we fight, until the day comes when it is not needed because there are no names to read.
thank you, i have always felt the maiden mother crown to be limiting to feminine power, feminine divine goes beyond the reproduction ability of human organs
I think a great way to deconstruct it is the approach Charlie Claire Burgess uses on radical tarot, considering the qualities in gendered, so curiosity or innocence for the maiden, care and nurture for the mother, wisdom and not-giving-f*vks for the crone ;) at least it's how I see it
@@activistwitch THANK-YOU for this wiser, more compassionate, and benevolently/spiritually expansive mention of the trinity. Greatly appreciated. This whole video is another AMAZING and POWERFULLY educational and healing share. So well done!
I will never stop suggesting radical tarot as a book for this very reason 😉
They’re also not very universal IMO. A lot of goddess trinities were not based on the life stages of women at all, but on dominion or occupation. The Hindu Tridevi for example of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati represent wisdom, prosperity and power, respectively. They also perfectly mirror the masculine Trimurti, which depict Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as the Gods of creation, preservation and dissolution, respectively.
My own religion (Egyptian neopaganism) also doesn’t really have feminine trinities. We have mixed gender trinities, and feminine bimodalities. The best known is the Bastet (or Hathor) and Sekhmet coupling, with Bastet/Hathor representing the creative, protective, wise aspects of the divine feminine, and Sekhmet representing the retributive, violent and passionate side.
"What phase of a woman's life does washing blood from a warrior's armor symbolizing his inevitable violent death fit in?"
As a cis, het, white, American, male, monotheistic wizard I know my word doesn't carry much weight in some circles, but I wanted to thank you for your videos on this topic. Everybody in the magickal community needs to see these and have a good long think about the way that the systems we work with have been influenced by the Greater System in which they were born, and to consider the ways in which othering, marginalizing, and subjugating one another are anathema to magickal/mystical practice. Amazing work, you've earned a new subscriber.
PS- Love the Hades/Calcifer shirt.
I am so glad to hear and see that there are allies everywhere no matter their privilege. I always say that privilege is kept a bad word or thing and no one is playing the oppression Olympics, if anything kudos to those allies who put their privileges to the service of those who don't have them!
This is an amazing video, thank you. As a nonbinary trans person, it is painful to hear transphobic words repeated, but this is an extremely important topic to talk about and shine a light on instead of simply ignore and let fester.
i am sorry for that, i did wonder if a content warning shold have been issues but at the same time i thought "terfs is in the title, alas we have to talk about their insanity"
Patriarchy works like a MLM ;)
Pretty much 🤷🏽♀️
I'm trans and live in the SF Bay area. Starhawk absolutely knows trans witches. She has for decades and decades. I know some of the trans people she knows.
@@cedaremberr so really she just played along with the bullies then 😓
I'm glad you did a follow up. I tried paganism and wicca in the 00s, and found at that time (at least in my area) there was a HUGE obsession with the moon cycles, perdiod cycles, motherhood, wombs, and womanhoods link to it all. For me it isn't a huge surprise that the next step in this sort of focus would be a transphobic bioessentialism.
I actually gave up on persuing the craft further because at that time I felt like I didn't fit in as I didn't feel "feminine" enough. I didn't feel maternal in any way, despised my periods as they were hugely uncomfortable to me (I later found out I have PMDD which was another reason for my severe dislike of my own cycle. I am blessedly period free now thanks to pills), and I just felt no strong connection to that portrayal of womanhood over all as I had no strong pride in my body, my womb or my breasts. I was in my teens and then early 20s, and was trying to find something to connect to, and for a masc butch who'd been bullied out of womanhood, that version of witchcraft absolutely wasn't it for me.
@@Spamhard honestly if I had found witchcraft back then with that focus I would have steered clear as well, I feel you sibling!
@@activistwitch Do you have any recs on where to start with it these days? Other than your channel of coruse ;)
@Spamhard books - wise definitely Ari the Oak witch boom for beginners, it's just above 100 pages but does feature everything needed to get the basics, and has an intersectional lens when needed. I made a video review of it. th-cam.com/video/U_T0aNQzbrg/w-d-xo.html If you're already familiar with energy / spells and such, Psychic witch by Mat auryn is also an evergreen I still go back to this day
This is going to sound so stupid but when I was researching for a series of videos I'm doing about pornography I learned that the three most searched for porn categories are Teen, MILF, and Lesbian. I was discussing this with a witch friend of mine and we laughed and said "it's the new Maiden Mother Crone." We imagined the Lesbian as the "crone" - an elder lesbian with a fanny pack full of anything you might need because she's been through it and seen it all. Ever since then that's how I've pictured the Maiden-Mother-Crone thing every time I hear it brought up. Teen-MILF-Lesbian
To me those are just archetypes and not related to how I view witchcraft at all though, so that may be an incredibly offensive thing to say if someone utilizes those concepts in their practice idk. I do see it as how men view women, primarily, rather than helpful concepts for women.
Terfs are so patronizing and spread so many silly lies about trans men. Two I've heard lately that infuriated me were that trans men lose their ability to scream forever, which isn't true. While your voice is changing and cracking screaming may become difficult, but the ability doesn't go away forever. Men can scream too. And that you won't be able to orgasm anymore and it'll hurt forever down there. This came from detransitioners who transitioned for like five months and never got past the bottom growth phase. There is a phase in bottom growth where there can be pain and difficulty orgasming due to the growth, but that too goes away as growth levels off. They spread so many lies about transition to push the idea that "they're mutilating women's bodies." It drives me nuts.
i keep meaning to come back to this comment to give it the attention it deserves but I always have performance anxiety because the stuff you make is so cool and you're a real video essayist so i just fangril all the time, but then i realised that if i kept saying nothing since i reply to most comments it would have been weird so here's the truth. thank you so so much for even watching my videos 😍
@@activistwitch oh my gosh I'm definitely not "real video essayist" lmao, this was a good video!
I grew up in a Fundimentalist Christian and very Patriarchal home. Now as a Non-Binary Queer Witch I see the poison that the patriarchy does. As someone who grew up hearing the things that openly patriarchal white men would say I agree with everything you said in your video. I have also seen how white women (specifically in my family) boulster the Patriarchy by only wanting equality for them and the other white women. The moment I came out as queer they turned their back on me. It's funny how those white feminists who scream about equality suddenly don't want equality once it includes people who aren't them.
I'm sorry to hear your family did that to you but I'm also glad to hear you can be your authentic self now 🫂 thank you so much for sharing this!
@@activistwitch Thank you! I have healed and worked past it! Now I have a community of leftist queer people and witches around me! 🙂
This video is amazing. ❤ We should stop calling them TERFS, not because they are trying to claim it as a slur, but because there is nothing radical or feminist about them. It gives them too much credit.
Yeah there's really nothing feminist about patriarchal bargain
or maybe the meaning of TERF can be changed into "trans exclusionary reactionary fascists" instead? 🙂 feels more fitting.
On point 👍🏽
@@activistwitch There's only the deep rooted misogyny of reducing womanhood to reproductive organs.
FARTs: feminism appropriating radical transphobes
A lot of people who inhabit both privileged and marginalized identities can't seem to get that privilege is simultaneously systemic and SITUATIONAL. You can suffer as a woman without ever having to fear that you're going to be made to suffer for being white, and the specific situation is going to determine whether gender or skin color is the most significant factor in an interaction. But it can really freak them out when interacting with people with different sets of privileged/marginalized identities. A lot of white cis women don't get that there are situations in which they DO have and exert undue power over other people. (There is a heck of a lot of crossover between FARTs and those who believe children are not full human beings and should have no autonomy even beyond issues of gender.)
There's just so much to unpack. The conflation of victimization with morality, the idea that disadvantage means you can't be a crappy person. Which goes along with the misconception of privilege as an individual ACTION, something one person DOES, which automatically makes privilege morally bad, which makes those who have it morally bad, which means systemic discrimination cannot be fought from a position of privilege... Which means a cis FART woman can never admit to having privilege over anyone else. (There are also a lot of them who deny that men can be feminists.)
It's such a a stark and reductive worldview.
(I hope I made that point well; it's really hard for me to keep track of thoughts in the tiny reply box on mobile when I can't see my whole post. XP)
And I like your clickbaity title. You gotta do what you gotta do. Though perhaps it has a bit of a No True Scotsman vibe. Personally, I believe that their rigidity massively nerfs their personal magic, but they're still in the community, as you've said, and have to be addressed as a problem of the community.
Fair points, I think I will adjust the title on your suggestion. Thank you so much for such insightful take. In the previous video I had to explain to a white man both claiming that racism doesn't exist institutionally but that I was racist to white people (and white privilege and critical race theory are tools of white racism 🤦🏽♀️) that privilege is seen as something people have or are given when in reality most of the times it's justz not having extra trouble, so for instance not risking getting shot when pulled for a ticket (or even on their own bed) because their skin is white
@@activistwitch O_o He what now?
Like, I can at least UNDERSTAND the misconceptions about intersectionality - it's complicated. But the "marginalized people are the ones who ACTUALLY have all the power" crowd just... make me squint. A lot. I almost have more respect for outright supremacists - at least they're honest with themselves.
Yeah the victimhood seems weird when it goes "I want you in a camp" along with "actually white supremacy cannot exist because whites are not the majority" 🤦🏽♀️ it's my pinned post on the last video if you want to check how unwell these people are
@@activistwitch Sounds like a quantum opinion, they exist in a state of superposition between the two most convenient lines of mutually exclusive reasoning. Absolutely brain-breaking :/
@@rainkidwell2467 omg, that is BRILLIANT phrasing, and I am snitching it.
Fantastic video. I’m so glad I recently stumbled across your channel. This is such an important topic. I appreciate you approaching it from a witchy perspective as well. Thanks for posting! 😊
I'm so glad the algorithm gods brought you here!
I'm not pagan but I've been interested in this culture for years now and I had noticed, as more time went by, that a lot of people seemed to simply repackage misogynistic and transphobic points of view as being quintessential to Paganism and it had alarmed me. It's so nice to see a witch actively talking about the issue and deconstructing it as well as you do! Genuinely love this channel, keep it up! :D
Just because they are loud doesn't mean they get to speak for the community and I'll do my best to make it clear: the cornerstone of witchcraft as rebellion to the system is INCLUSIVITY!!!
@@activistwitch exactly!! Keep it up beautiful friend, I'll support you and do my best too, on my side of the world >:D
Clicked play SO fast!! Thank you for making this video ❤❤❤
@@dontnoable this excitement repays all my work, thank you for watching 🙏🏽🥰
Hell yeah!
Maiden, Mother, Crone has never hit for me, so I'm glad you mentioned and explained about it.
glad to make it make sense for others that can question the "standard"!
Reclaiming has moved on, it's a very queer tradition and bio essentialism isn't ok
i have been told that and I was very glad to hear in fairness
I just came across your channel and it's wonderful! I never knew that Starhawk had been attacked... I love her deeply and especially her amazing novels Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge. I'm a cis woman, a pagan, and consider myself a trans ally. I find the arguments of TERFs so utterly nonsensical (and online they are always scarily aggressive) - how can someone identifying as a woman be done in order to 'erase' women? Cis women and trans women have certainly had some different challenges in our lifetimes, but that's also true of individuals within these groups. And the idea that we should treat all trans women as though they are potential rapists (they never mention trans men, do they?) because a tiny proportion have been, suggests that we should treat all cis men as rapists too. What a depressing way to interact in the world. The maiden-mother-crone can be part of our spirituality, but if we make that the entirety of how women can be depicted, it sounds a bit like a trad wife/ Trump project 2025agenda! And it disempowers so many women...those who can't become pregnant, menopausal women . Let's focus on the warrior/scholar/priestess/gardener archetypes!
just to put it into perspective because otherwise terfs love to make the talking point of the rare examples of trans women r*pists and conflate it with "see? men are just pretending to get into our spaces", statistically there's r*pists in every demographic, arguably the women r*pists are under reported and under recognised because of the patriarchal benevolent sexism of "women are wonderful" archetype. clearly, what is currently actually dangerous in a bathroom is a TERF coming to look under your door if you don't look stereotypically feminine, than anyone else.
Oh! Your archetypes are much better! I'm going to use those going forward!
@@cleonawallace376 OMG Thank you for saying that. How on earth does me being a woman erase women? And why would I want to? All my friends are women. I'd be pretty lonely if that were the case.
@@activistwitch I think the really scary part of British TERFism is the notion that women can't r*pe others, a notion reinforced by British law. It's a massive red flag. I wish we could address the systemic problems that lead to SA rather than waste our energy fighting each other over phantasms.
I am a huge advocate for the understanding and education on how our societal (patriarcal) idea of "women are wonderful" is actually protecting a lot of abusers and sex offenders who happen to be women. Fun fact: the one and only time I ever called into a radio show (James O'Brian's) was exactly to point out how in British law, as a woman one can't r*pe only sex assault which goes to show our wrong bias and ironically leaves so many more people at risk than the "big bad wolf" Terfs try to create, while their own obsession with checking and policing other people's bodies ironically makes them much more likely to be perpetrators
You're amazing, this video concept is amazing, I can't wait to watch!
School is indeed in session ! (I keep having auditory allucinations of the boss of scholomance in world of warcraft saying that now!)
Also can we talk about how amazing black lipstick looks on you, dismantling TERFs suits you so well, you’re glowing ✨
@@SaplingTarot I won't lie, I spent the last week crawling from how tired I am, but glowing at the idea that I can talk about these articles finally to a larger audience. The xtra magazine piece on the Terfs to nazi pipeline I've had in my chrome tabs for, no joke, two years!
I visited the museum of witchcraft in Cornwall a few months ago and damn there were a lot of references to blood, bleeding, and periods 😅
shoot for real? here's me not holding my breath to go there then
@@activistwitch In all fairness, they had their fair share of dicks too 🤷🏿
When I saw Starhawk named, I thought "Shit don't tell me she's a TERF" but I am now somehow relieved.
She could have stood up for the oppressed but she was a bit wishy washy back then. Thankfully I heard she got better
@@activistwitch I mean... wishy washiness can be explained by a lack of understanding, etc. but at least her heart is in the good place.
I love how you explain things in such an empathetic manner. I wasn't fully understanding where all the Trans hate was coming from on the female side of things, but this really helped put it in perspective!
Oh goodness me in so glad to hear! This is truly one of the best compliments I can be given because for a LONG time living as an autistic person in an allistic world I always felt like I couldn't understand, let alone explain things to others. So truly this means the world to hear thank you!
I'm just a few minutes into the video, and I just had to stop and call out the blatant irony of that person admitting gender can't be put into a rigid box, but then immediately following it with "only natural born women are women". As well as the post saying trans women are trying to "erase women", while actively erasing trans women by calling them men in dresses (and by the same logic are also erasing trans men, nonbinary, gender fluid, and any other gender expression beyond the binary).
Do they not hear themselves and the hypocrisy, misogyny, and queerphobia in their own voices? Is their concept of womanhood, femininity, gender expression, and the "female experience" so flimsy that they can't acknowledge the diversity it encompasses? Do they not understand that trans women are also victims of patriarchal violence, discrimination, and oppression? Have they bothered looking at the statistics of violence perpetrated by trans women against other women (in comparison to women-on-women violence rates) before calling them rapists and batterers simply for existing in the same spaces? Conversely, have they bothered to look at the statistics of violence perpetrated against trans women (or the mental illness, suicide rates, and homeless among them) before screaming that they should be turned away from shelters for not passing? They're pointing fingers in the wrong direction, which does nothing to address the REAL issues, inequalities, and dangers that women face, while simultaneously spreading misinformation, fear, and discrimination toward their allies. How is this feminism in any way???
Just some initial thoughts. Back to the video...
@@earthaforester3141 please I look forward to your next thoughts bit by bit! This is the kind of attention that makes me feel valued in my work of putting this together 🥲
That "rigid boxes" part also caught my ear. Putting people in rigid boxes, that's what they do, and it harms trans and cis women! It is transphobes who are making the world less safe for women
Like the rest of the radically fascist agenda, the inversions of reality you cite are intentional. Cognitive dissonance is one of the fascist movement's most formidable weapons.
Yes this was such a educational and informative video, and I really appreciate this video and your work in general thank you and definitely going to be supporting
❤❤❤Activist Witch❤❤❤
@@sorceress_eye glad you appreciate it! Thank you for watching and commenting it really does make a difference for a channel like ours!
This video is such an important topic. Those hateful people also try to pull the "being 'phobic' means I'm scared and I'm not scared" when they say they're not transphobic. Terfs are 🗑 and always will be. YOU'RE ALWAYS WELCOME IN MY SPACE. YOU ARE LOVED. YOU ARE IMPORTANT. YOU DO MATTER. ❤ I will always stand up for your rights to just exist and it's so fucking sad that this even has to be a battle constantly fought. 💔 🏳️⚧️
@@ConjureCutie thank you for giving such amazing example within the community 🙏🏽❤️
Thank you
For this
I'm a trans woman that's struggled to really find spaces that I can just exist in. I don't really belong in men's spaces, and I'm scared to enter women's space. The only place I've ever felt like I belonged that wasn't exclusively t4t was in witchcraft.
Just, hearing this helps clear up some doubts and fears I've been struggling with, thank you.
Witchcraft needs to be innately inclusive, it's make of weirdos like us and it's better for it sister 🫂✊🏽
i have nothing to add 💜 so this comment is mostly for the algorithm
also thank you for bringing this stuff up. having a radical, anti-authoritarian and inclusive magical community is more important than most people really understand i think, including me
thank you for feeding the algorithm gods!
When I think of ladder climbers and girl boss feminism. Really when I think of any position that argues for the climbing up hierarchies instead of smashing them, I think of the the lord of the rings. "The ring answers to Sauron alone, it has no other master" or "I would use the ring with good intent but through me it would work great evil", that's why, despite generally agreeing with marxists and other socialists who are pro-seizing state power, I remain highly sympathetic to the anarchist position that states cannot be used for good. They are indeed a hierarchy, yes even anarchist revolutionaries have used violence to suppress the opposition, but institutions, especially states always seem to prioritize their own propagation and stability over the principles they claim to defend. It's something in the structure of them, I think. Once you climb to a given position in a hierarchy the pressures of that position will push you into behaving in the way that position was originally designed to act. Hence, women who climb to the top of patriarchal systems will act in ways that demean and devalue women.
this is what i'd like people to understand when they claim russia was the example of communism failing: no russia never had communism past the military overtake. the fact they called each other "comrade" never actually meant they were all on the same level.
Hi Ysha! Thanks so much to you and Raven, for all your hard work at unraveling some of these belief systems. I think your content is wonderful. You clearly act from a place of deep empathy, and your intellect, and intelligence shines. Trans rights are human rights, and all those that don't believe this...well...just don't believe in human rights in my opinion.
Thank you so much for your support and appreciation, we both appreciate it so much 🙏🏽❤️
Thank you for this very much needed video! I didn't know that fascists also see their similarities/collaboration potentional with terfs so thank you for sharing that information! It totally makes sense that they make a great fit but it's also super scary that those links between fascism, conspirituality, and terfism become clearer every day. I also didn't know this about Starhawk, so sad.
On Starhawk I have been told that in the last 6 years her position must have changed again because her reclamation camps are supposedly very inclusive and queer led
@@activistwitch Ok, thank you, that's good to know. But I wish she would also be critical towards that second essay she put out and maybe write a new one or repeat the first one.
Same honestly. This left me a bit meh to be honest. To be fair I couldn't go through the rest of her blog for all six years since..I'd like to think she wrote something if nothing else more recently, but I couldn't find it in the dates around the original happening
@@activistwitch yes, I really hope so! I think she has some responsibility to speak out on this as she's so well-known and respected.
Very well said!!!
Trying to tie divinity to bio essentialism is crazy to me when divine mythology around the world isn't like that at all.
bizzare isn't it?
The maiden mother crone idea has always seemed very prescriptive to me. I also don’t like the idea of divine feminine and divine masculine. I’m NB and it just doesn’t make sense for me
@@dexaria same 👋🏽
I attended a class at a progressive church and it was amazing to hear these cisgender people talking about God with a variety of pronouns, their logic is that if God is a reflection of all of us then He/She/They must possess all aspects of gender simultaneously.
I am floored by the wisdom you provide. This video was top tier. Thaaaaank u
i'm glad years within this kind of discourse finally are turning useful!
Thank you for another outstanding video 🙂
so glad you enjoyed it! thank you for watching!
about 20 years ago I heard from attendees about a workshop Starhawk ran in Palestine for Palestinian activists where she advised them to walk towards IOF soldiers saying "my heart is filled with love for you" so to be perfectly honest I'm not in the least surprised she is now advising trans people to just be nice to our oppressors, it's completely on brand for her
@@fallingdream ah 💩 see? Those are the details I didn't know about her Palestinian activism 🤦🏽♀️
@@activistwitch I mean it's not exactly a matter of public record so absolutely not a failure of research on your part, just thought you should know you were right about that whiff of white saviourism
@@fallingdream see I always tread very carefully on saying these things without sources and then, what do you know, autistic recognise patterns even when I don't realise I do 😅
@@activistwitch to be fair, from where you stand this is hearsay, I'm telling you something I was told 20 years ago by someone who was there and you have no way of verifying any part of that, including whether I was told this, whether I'm remembering it correctly, or whether that person was there, much less whether it happened as described, so definitely stay critical and be particular about your sources for anything you publish, just be alert for any more examples that emerge (did you know "recognising patterns" is a fash dogwhistle? makes it difficult to talk about actual autistic pattern recognition sometimes)
@@fallingdream 💩 no I didn't know fascists also went to appropriate ND stuff!
Another amazing video essay. Thank you. 💖
Glad you enjoyed it! thank you so much for watching!
As a life long animal rights activist, Im shocked at racist, ultra right wing fascist vegans, as veganism itself is anti oppression.
One of the most common comments I get is about how it's a white privileged movement, and yet research has found that about 8% of Black Americans are vegan or vegetarian, which is much higher than the 3% rate among Americans of other ethnic groups.
Sisters Syl Ko and Aph Ko first proposed the intersectional framework for and coined the term Black veganism. The Institute for Critical Animal Studies called Black veganism an "emerging discipline".
There are many more theories that present veganism from a far-right perspective. There are interpretations on the vegan Cain and non-vegan Abel, on the farming ancestry of White people, the classic “blood and soil”, the physical purity of a White warrior and so on.
You have inspired me to talk about this taboo subject more... gratitude ❤
@@sarahjaneross2918 I do really look forward to hearing some of these theories because my only knowledge of veganism comes from global emissions data research I did years ago
@@activistwitch
Veganism is absolutely an anti oppression and social justice movement. A benefit to health and the environment is just a bonus 😊
Maybe start with Dr Angela Davis and see where she takes you 🙂
Literally learn so much from you... thanks so much for this
so glad the receipts i collected through the years finally are useful to share!!!
Thank you again. That is so sad to read Starhawk supporting TERFs. The spiral dance was the first and formative book that I read about witchcraft.
To her credit I've heard that her reclamation camps are now very inclusive and queer led, so maybe without as loud a statement, she took back her own moral compass after that bullying
You are my new favourite channel ❤
Goodness me 🥰
Thank you for your hard work in sharing this essential message and in educating so thoroughly. I find incredible inspiration in your content, and it guides my own path as I’m sure it does so many others. Break the damn ladder!
I live to hear that what I put together means so much to someone else that's not in my brain, thank you so much for taking the time to watch and leave us this comment 🫂❤️
The reaction to Starhawk is wild to me. Are people not familiar with Reclaiming's stance on gender and transness?
@@Jiihariial well they realised the usual: if they kick and scream some people (Starhawk included at the time) will do anything to make their screeching stop whether they are right or not.
This is so necessary. ❤
I love your content. So grateful to our Lord on the Internet, the Algorithm 😂
@@AngieDeAguirre every comment is an offering to the algorithm gods to bring us more of what we commented on 😉🙏🏽
@@activistwitchhahaha ✨Brilliant!✨
I think the idea of the Matriarchal Bacchanalia vs the patriarchal "later" greek religion might actually be another Robert Graves/Jonathon Frazer gendered stereotype. The Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy dynamic in historiography has a lot of the same problems that the maiden mother and crone idea has.
The Bacchic cult was contemporaneous with greek patriarchy, the idea that it's older is based on progressivist ideas about culture evolving from a more primal animistic feminine dark way of being into a more masculine disciplined way of being and we gotta be careful about reproducing it. Really culture has always been complex and contradictory. maybe there were matriarchal utopias in the past (as Robert Graves believed) but Bacchic Religion doesn't tell us anything about that one way or another.
"like" tha bacchanalia. I don't think by the time of the bacchanalia it was much matriarchal anymore but a lot of the legends of pre Christian virgins that have children "by the god" usually stem from that kind of culture. There's a book about it, I'll remember and find it!
@@activistwitch The problem is with using colonised societies contemporary with modern European Imperialism as evidence for the past of European cultures. This is a deliberately colonialist viewpoint designed to put colonised peoples into 'the past', justify colonialism as 'progress' and cover up genocide.
I get that most people making this argument aren't intending to refer to a universalised Christian/Patriarchal/Modern/Center vs Pre-Christian/Matriarchal/Ancient/Periphery but the language used tends to be pretty indistinguishable from those who did so in the 1800s.
Bachanalias were specific festivals associated with specific places in time and there's very little evidence for them being sexual outside of Christian propaganda. Greek Bacchanals were often women only affairs so using the term without qualification as a time when women would get pregnant really makes no sense. We have one Roman source in Livy about heterosexual sex supposedly happening at Bacchanals in Italy but this text is a classic example of what today we'd call a 'conspiracy theory' that led to what has been called 'history's most bloody witch hunt'. Its pretty dubious as a source for actual Italian cult practices but he does see the mixed gender bacchanals as an Italian corrupted of the single gender Greek cult.
Then we have an even later Christian source who mocks the sexuality of the cult of Dionysus but in context he's talking about a model phallus kept concealed in a basket carried in sacred processions and it was only later theologians who misquoted him as talking about unrestrained sexuality.
The idea of the sexual Bacchanal is very heavily connected to the same orientalism that saw non-European cultures as hypersexual and feminine and reinforced the idea that Imperialist cultures needed to be hyper-masculine and heteronormative in order to protect themselves from foreign powers. These same orientalist tropes were projected onto the 'declining' late Roman Empire and early Christian propaganda was misread and interpreted overly literally, sometimes with entire fake meanings being invented for Latin words ('orgy' being the most notable which was a non-sexual term in pagan latin).
Of course its more implausible that parties + alchohol never led to pregancy in Greece and Rome but outside of motivated reading of very dodgy sources there's no good reason to assume Bacchanals were exceptional on that front over other parties from various ancient or modern cultures.
@@AC-dk4fp thank you so much for educating me with this. I will look more into it.
Omg i love your shirt...
Eheh thanks I think it's an old TeeFury
Hahaha my dyslexic ass thought you said "I love your Sh1t" 😂
I was like "yeah, this is my sh1t" 😂😂😂😂
You have no idea how many times that happens to me too!
Yes!
thank you so much for this great essay
So glad to hear you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching and commenting!
Thank you so much for this video ❤❤❤
You are most welcome! I was glad to see the topic was of interest because boy oh boy if I have stuff and research to share on the topic!
Oh the MMC
Its such a frustrating bugbear
There is a greco-mediterranean goddess somewhat close to Leland's thing; but Hera is venerated as Girl, Wife & Widow
Which albeit relates to relationships to male power but is less about procreation?
you are correct, i do remember reading about the three aspects of hera considered specifically in a certain city
@@activistwitch something that strikes me of those aspects (perhaps because my mother has a saying from my paternal grandmother "no woman is so wicked she does not deserve at least seven years of widowhood" *) is how they are fundamentally different social roles (versus say, one does not cease to be a mother when one ages, yet mmc presuposes it) & they have very different powers (with widows historically often having much (relative) autonomy at least in rome) (there is some interesting... parallel? with the trade of becoming a subject to power for the bestowing of inherent social place/protection being replicated fractalwise within the kyriarchy.
* or perhaps due to my own fascination with Hera due to my Heracles mysticism (i for example disagree with the wholly antagonistic relationship between them; and see her as a hypernym of the goddess who he elected at the crossroads)
Exactly🎉🎉🎉
@@sorceress_eye glad you liked it! 😉🙏🏽
@@activistwitchthank you I love trying to help fellow witches, and fellow queer people out,🎉🎉🎉
This is incredible information. I've learned a lot.
I'm so glad it was useful, I o go very proud of this video and its sibling (was done a week prior)
I agree with a lot of what you ate saying but I have to disagree with the idea that the -Maiden Mother Crone- archetype only serves patriachal ideals. Matriarchy preceeds patriarchy. These are the pre-Abrahamic origins of Goddess worship and illustrate the stages of life for the majority of women historically. As an Indigenous person who has cultural heritage that pre-dates Christianity, this is not an idea that serves patriarchy. In my tribe menstruation demonstrates the power of women as life givers and the stages of her life as far as women participate in ceremony. We also had trans people although they were not medical trans people like today because it wasn't available. They were more similar to cross dressers who lived as a man or woman because no one had the right to decide the identity of another individual. Intersex people were also accepted in my tribe because there were no class systems or forced roles. Eurocentric traditions and religious beliefs often remain in the subconscious because they've been indoctrinated for so long and many people retain and cherry-pick the parts of those cultures that they agree with. Someone like Richard Dawkins for example, claims to be an atheist however, he has merely stopped attending church but still believes in patriarchy, misogyny and elitism that organized Abrahamic religions do. I feel like a lot of people who started out in Christianity, etc still approach life within that mindset while claiming to be pagan. All European folklore is tinged with religious undertones to make pre-Christian culture seem evil and the Church controlled who was allowed to write things down. Imo, it's really difficult for white people who are separating themselves from this aspect of their religous culture and reclaim their roots that existed 1,500 years ago. My people were only introduced to these bizarre, Eurocentric, colonial, societal ideas around 1880. So my great-grandparents remembered their grandparents who lived pre-colonization and pre-Christian life. I have given birth to three children but I don't see myself as overly special because I have a uterus. I believe most adoptions are unethical because of the trauma to the child. The U.S. spent decades removing Native kids from their homes and adopting them out to white people to force assimilation. Indigenous people in North and South America are better at stewarding the environment because we've been living on our lands for thousands of years. White, Eurocetric settlers often imitate Indigenous environmental practices without regard that the topography and environment is very different and they will do more damage to the environment and then say "Native Indigenous People were wrong!" Europe is just the western side of the Asian continent but Europeans have assigned themselves the role of policing the world despite being a hot mess throughout the last 2,000 years of constant wars and religious oppression that began with the Roman Empire, imo.
Matriarchy predated Patriarchy yes, I even mention it in this video. So you see how bizzare it is that the 3 aspect of the goddess consider womanhood just in function of the role of woman in patriarcal society. But I appreciate your take on your own experience of motherhood and therefore I appreciate you see much past the otherwise limited way that unfortunately, the maiden mother crone is seen in witchcraft circles under benevolent sexism
This is an interesting conversation. The points comes from fear. Men can and do rape women (and vice versa). That fear is real. But trans people also face dangers for being who they are. Women have suffered since birth for being women. But that doesn't take away the suffereing that trans go through. I'm struggling with this one. Neither side should dismiss the fear of the other side. Thank you for making me think.
Women also r*pe. We don't talk about it because patriarchy has promised women benevolent sexism "oh but you're so good and kind, how could someone who can be a mother assault others."
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So as a pagan what do think the sun and the moon are?
@@racheladkins6060 a satellite and a star?
The existence of transwomen does not erase me. I'm still here. #TransSolidarity #TERFsAffirmThePatriarchy
Sorry just realised you already found this video that I just suggested to you on the other video comments 😅
@@activistwitch I think I watched them in the wrong order 🤣
their use of the triple goddess, the MMC archetype.. it astounds me. It lacks any of the depth and consideration you'd usually expect with any imagery from religion. Rather than consider it a reflection of life in general - as maiden you grow, you take in, you gather, you become. As mother, you take what you have gathered and become, and bring it out to the world.This is the stage of life where you feed and nurture the world around you, you give to it, you help others, you bring life *to* the world, generally. And crone, you wither, you retreat, you relax, all you have left to give to the world is yourself, the breath from your lungs. There is vast insightful metaphor and imagery available within the archetype and yet.. these people focus on the first assumption, the basic glance. A group, that in any other belief system would be quickly reminded of their naivity, of their need to spend more time thinking on such concepts. Religion, as a fundamental personal concept.. is all about peeling back the layers of the world, and searching for the deeper meanings, and these folks.. declare their journey complete without ever having taken a single step into the depths, seeing MMC and going "yup, we are the circle of life, therefore we deserve superiority", never having considered deeper meanings, that apply to *all*, that can enrich *all*. No consideration of how even men can fit into the archetype. No consideration of why the archetype treats all three as equally important. I honestly see a reading of Maiden, Mother, Crone such as theirs a failure to scratch the surface. Rather than see the value in three equal parts of this whole, they inject a heirarchy, The crone ruling over the mother, the mother ruling over the maiden. A stale approach that does not consider how the crone is also a mother, the mother once a maiden. That whilst experience and advice are invaluable, so to is the freedom of the maiden and mother to break from the path the crone took, to carve a new path, to find their own fonts of experience. The maiden, mother, and crone each have their own, sometimes conflicting wisdom. They are equals in part because the wisdom of each is equally valuable. Because sometimes in life you have the choice of who's advice to follow. The final result is the same, but the artistry, the flair, the journey is different.
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thank you for feeding the algorithm gods
❤Starhawk, one of my favorite authors ever!
I am conflicted about her now to be fair. It was the inspiration for me to consider activism and witchcraft as the same thing, though the way she quickly threw trans people under the bus depressed me a lot..though I've been told that her reclamation camps nowadays are very queer friendly and inclusive so hopefully time has helped her understand.
Okay, you gonna hate me for this, but I have to ask. I really like your videos, and enjoy listening to your profound opinions. And I tried to understand why it is so important for transpeople, that transwomen are women and transmen are men, but I don’t get it.
So, first of all: We have this weird pictures of what it means to be a man/woman. And these pictures are so toxic. Many people suffer because of them. And instead of changing these pictures, we discuss if you belong to one or the other, based on those toxic stereotypes? I don‘t get it.
And there is one more thing: You could get operations to make you look like a Kardeshian, you can live like a Kardeshian. You‘re a human being, that deserves all respect, but is it so wrong, unless you marry or get adopted by a Kardeshian, if people tell you, that you‘re not a Kardeshian? I even understand that it hurts to hear that, because it scatters dreams. And if you define yourself as a Kardeshian, are the Kardeshians allowed to disagree? This doesn‘t make your opinion less valid. But can’t we have different points of view and just agree to disagree? I‘m sorry, if these lines hurt somebody who reads this, but maybe there is someone out there, who can explain it to me.
@@UrsulalaFleur I think everyone would agree that the cultural representation of the extremes of the gender spectrum (total masc or total femme) indeed ruin it for everyone. But gender expression and gender identity and sexual identity and sexual expression are all different things.
The idea that gender is based on toxic stereotypes is literally what Terfs are supporting: there's only a specific way to be a women and if you don't tick all the boxes you fault at womanhood and we will shun you.
What I find in myself and most queer and trans people that I know is that having the power to understand and claim a label and definition for ourselves is the first step to find our world of reference. And humans are gregarious animals that cannot lived isolated, no matter how introverted.
This is true for so.much more than gender and that's why we have subcultures and that's why subcultures were born out of being mistreated and bullied in those mainstream groups that represent at any point in time the "average accepted expression".
You have an excellent poi y and actually trans people's existence is helping everyone breaking down those string expectations of gender expression. The reason why "passing" becomes so important is only when the abuse is such from the mainstream society that passing (and therefore passing I noticed as out gender) is needed for safety.
Hope this helps.
Dear activistwitch, thanks for your answer. It does help. This may be a silly question, but wouldn‘t it be an easier way to fight for human rights, body automony and against violence in general to make things safe? Is „punch a terf“ not the same game that patriarchy plays? Isn’t it a nice secondary theatre of war that keeps us busy, instead of fighthing for what we all need: Our basic rights? I mean, its sad enough, that some people need to be re-educated in human decency, but when we must re-educate, we should imho live the future, we want to see., not grab the shit the others are throwing at us, to throw it back.
@user-wf3os8vg1m the fight for trans rights is literally the fight for human rights and bodily autonomy. Look at the case cited on this video and the attack on gillick's competency and how ultimately anything that claims to be "just" anti trans ends up being anti human rights. "The transgender issue" by shon Faye literally goes into all of this and looks specifically at how trans rights sounds like they are focused on trans people because Terfs single them out (and then expand and go ahaiocis women if they don't have uteruses, or look too "unfeminine" like imane khelif) but that is indeed already the case.
@@activistwitch I do disagree, because both sides do hurt for example the freedom of opinion and speech and sometimes it is beside the point. A simple example are pronouns. You deserve respect as a trans person. And as you deserve respect people should talk with you, not about you. So in the offline world there are rare occasions where it matters if you’re an he, she, ley or whatever, because most of the time, conversations are like our conversation. We use you and I. So, if people respect me, they use my name or they talk directly to me. Do I really have the right to stipule, how people talk about me, if I‘m not there? Again I have the right, that they talk respectfully about me, but a male or female pronoun is not derogatory, if I‘m not a misandrist or misogynist. And people who share your opinion about transwomen are woman will care about it and use the pronoun you wish. But some people don‘t share that point of view (see the Kardeshian-example). So it‘s their right to express their point of view, as long as it is respectful. Their point of view is as important and permitted as the transgender point of view. This is what freedom of opinion and speech means. We have to tolerate different opinions. I agree, this is not always easy. But this is what separates a democracy from a dictatorship. And what drives innovation.
@@UrsulalaFleur we can disagree over coffee, not human rights. And you've just given a great example of the paradox of tolerance. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance?wprov=sfla1
(Off topic; audible inhales from voice recordings can be edited out. It takes a bit more time in the editing, but it gives the quotation sections a professional polish. Ideally, the VA will know how to pace their breath so there are fewer or none of these. At worst, when left in, they can be extremely distracting.)
I feel flattered you think my videos are so professional that I should know how to do this 😅 they are not and most people doing my voice overs are my friends who find the time to do a voice note on their phone for me.
So that explains why J.k Rowling is the way she is?
That (hopefully) explains the position jk Rowling occupies in the system and the reasons she might find it easier to oppress those more marginalised than her.
1 term:antisemetism
@@Γι3ργ0ς you sure you're on the right video?
@@activistwitch
To be fair, a lot of Gender Hypocritical activists are anti-Semitic. They usually point at people like George Soros and blame them for the rise of trans rights.
I mean we mentioned Jennifer Bilek here who truly believed the Jewish conspiracy so...
@@paulanaylor3548 Very true. Most right-wing conspiracy theories can be boiled down to antisemitism. If that's what OP meant, I hope they clarify. >>;
@activistwitch even before her,"rad" fems blamed jewish people for patriarchy.Justifying such anti semetism with "pink" and "erythranic" (indigenous like) rhetoric as I call it.
"(((They))) enslaved 👩🏻🦰women👩🏻🦰 " they said and implied,as they were ready to bite any jewish person's nose.
Their "solution" wasn't to abolish capitalism (and for my liking) civilization and the rest of its manifestations,they proposed a "pagan" theocracy,excluding black people and Muslims for "reasons" (all of them wrong)
Starhawk is right!! 💜💜💜💜💫💥
Well Starhawk could have stood up a bit more for trans people at the time, but I'm told she got better in theast 6 years so...
@@activistwitch we'll, yeah, that's also true. 💖
Lots of misinformation here. Sorry about your totally blind hatred.
awww do receipts and proven info not sit well with you when it doesn't protect YOUR blind hatred?
@activistwitch you don't have any recipts or proof. Those are windmills Don.
@@punkypagan I wonder what "bibliography" means. 🤔 Which is linked with sources and receipts for everything by the way. As if you're the first malevolent naysayer that ever tried this 🤦🏽♀️