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| I support CAORANN. |
Well, after three weeks of silence, I get a message from the UU Pagan group's organizer about a decision they reached about me, my actions, and the issue...at a meeting they knew I wouldn't be at. The conversation isn't done, but I want to post what I have so far have collected so I can show it to the Reverend of the UU church (reasons will be given at the end.)
This is the continuation of the discussions from this blog entry and this blog entry. (Actually, probably this one too from way ago.) As I mentioned on the last post, I'm not blocking out my name, nor am I blocking out EarthSoul's name, but I will continue to block out others' names since I do not know how public they are about their spiritual beliefs.
Moving along...
In truth, I had a pretty good suspicion at what he meant by "name calling." He meant when I called EarthSoul a racist. But I wanted to make sure that is what he was referring to first:
(Something I didn't address is that the "argument" is almost mostly decided already: ask the people from the culture you revere. That is the crux of avoiding racism and specifically cultural appropriation.)
Links included in the screen caption:
- "Indian Wannabes" from My Culture Is Not A Trend
- "The Woo of NA" from Blogger and tribe membSeaconke Wampanoag Tribe, Moniquill
- New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans
- "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality" from the Lakota Summit V, an international gathering of US and Canadian Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Nations.
And to avoid further confrontation on the matter, R didn't respond to my points:
I have been meaning to contact some authority figure in the UU church to ask them about questions regarding the UU Principals that were passively directed at me. Specifically, if beliefs that directly involve a form of oppression should also be respected. Examples I gave at the time included Dianic Wicca, which involves transmisogyny as the founder has stated that trans women are not women. The shooter from the recent Kansas City shooting where the murder's beliefs included antisemitism. One I didn't mention but recently came to mind was The Frosts' School of Wicca, which has pedophilia and rape implemented in the teachings (tw: the link includes content on rape and pedophilia.) So, with R's instructions, I guess I'll bring up this entire debacle to the Reverend as well.
[EDIT Also, I need to write up a post about how frustrated I am that I am being indirectly accused of not supporting religions that I disagree with. To be clear: I do not want to coexist with religions or people who are oppressive, racist, sexist, ableist, and/or harmful in any other way. I share a house with a Jewish family, my boyfriend is a secular pantheist, my mother is Catholic, my father is agnostic, and many of the bloggers I talk to have diverse religions under the pagan umbrella such as Kemetic or Otherfaith. I do not keep company with people who support cultural appropriation such as shamanism, nor do I support transmisogynic religions such as Dianic Wicca, nor do I support religions that involve pedophilia and rape like The Frosts' School of Wicca (which is different from Gardner Wicca, by the by.)]
Sadly, it's pretty typical for the UU church to provide a haven for pretendians. They even have pretendians and other appropriators among their ministers, and they have let white people lead fake Native ceremonies at GA. They have let white people lead some of their "POC" groups. It is common for UU ministers to perform weddings for white people where they use what they believe are Native bits of liturgy (though ironically, the bits they use were usually written by other pretendians).
ReplyDeleteLiberal racists think they're doing fine in the race department because they're not burning crosses on anyone's lawn, and they are desperately trying to get some brown faces in the pews so they can feel better about themselves.
But that's usually as far as it goes. The "tolerance" of the UUs usually extends to tolerating appropriators, and the oppressive strategy of Reversal, where they believe that naming racism is worse than actually being racist.
People can believe they're not racist, but if they do something racist, and can't handle being called on it, they're not really doing the work. We live in a racist culture, and everyone has internalized some problematic, often unconscious attitudes. Unless people can have the courage to look at these things honestly and process through them, they will simply keep perpetuating the subtle racism that is the reason their congregations are so blindingly white.
What their "inclusiveness" has succeeded in doing is driving away those who would put limits on racist behaviour. So, their policy of "inclusion" is actually a passive-aggressive mode of exclusion.