How do you intend to determine whether somebody's personal experience is honest or not, and how do you support a statement about the supernatural? I am thinking of moneyshot's description of his encounters with dusky SexBratz. What happens when somebody feels they are giving an honest description of something they believe has happened to them, and it just so happens it involves what sounds rather like female beings of color being sexualized in an unpleasantly familiar way? I'm curious to hear how we'll distinguish between honest and dishonest, and supported and unsupported.
These are extremely important questions and it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to find any easy answers.
The subject matter that the Temple covers deals with the personal experience of some of the deepest and most buried parts of ourselves. It deals with the unconscious. It deals with our sexuality, our dreams, our hidden desires, our motivating forces, our fears, our beliefs about who we are and what the world is like. It deals with our bodies and it deals with our pain.
Gypsy's post asks for honest personal experience... and I don't believe a place in which we can talk about our honest personal experience is something that can easily co-exist with a space where racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc are not tolerated for one moment. Prejudice is deeply tied into that which we are not conscious of, our fears, our defensive positions. An honest account of one's experience may have to include those elements, and if someone is asking for help in processing and dealing with their experience then we are going to encounter those elements. And people are not always going to be aware of what they're doing, where their prejudices lie, what assumptions they're making. They're not conscious of them, it's often in the space that light hasn't reached yet, associated with pain and hurt that they've not worked through.
Personal experience: see my posts to the Magical spaces and cultural signifiers thread. I couldn't process my own sexism and racism until I chose to accept difficult things about myself. When I posted them to Barbelith it was with the benefit of hindsight, I could offer all sorts of explanations, caveats and apologies for posting such material. People were gracious in response. The problems that I'm currently dealing with I wouldn't put anywhere near Barbelith right now, they have a lot to do with my sexual history, conceptions of my own masculinity, my insecurities about sex. If I were to post openly and honestly in accordance with my experience you'd find out exact how misogynist I really am, and I have no desire to parade myself around like that until I've resolved some of this stuff. I wouldn't be treated kindly here, to be blunt. But treating myself kindly, openly and honestly investigating myself, not judging myself, allowing the kind of deep exploration that only those attitudes can provide is exactly what I need to make myself the person I need to be. I know I won't heal any other way. It's the cross over between magic, psychology and self therapy and it needs someone who can operate in those spheres. But there are people who are not that aware of the audience here, people who will see an invitation to share their experience and not know what to self-censor, if they know to self-censor at all... and Barbelith is just not set up for that.
Not just because it's an internet message board and anyone can respond to a thread. In the vast majority of cases prejudice is only ever really mentioned here when we point it out in others, which we often do in quite a harsh manner. It's been said many times that it isn't incumbent on people to play nice. Fair enough. But from my own experience that reaction is sometimes the exact opposite of what someone who is being open and honest really needs. As I mention in my account on the above link, if people had condemned me I would probably have condemned myself, and I'd have been further from being better, not closer to it. I would have pressed it all down further and its manifestations would probably have become even more problematic and painful, to myself and others.
I think that could be one of the main reasons why I post less in the Temple these days. It's not equipped to handle its subject matter. When it comes to issues that aren't worked through that are to do with our psychologies you need a therapist, maybe not one who works in the trade but someone who can operate like one. But many people don't have access to that for a lot of reasons, so they come the internet. And as has been said on here many times, it's not incumbent on any Barbelith member to be a therapist or an educator. But an invitation to give honest accounts of experience will be met with... well, honest accounts of experience. Some less processed and self aware than others. Barbelith isn't suited to conversations about personal experience like that. People here are concerned with creating a safe space for some people for whom the world often isn't a safe space. That's a fine thing. But it necessarily limits accounts of personal experience in some cases.
I'm not saying that Barbelith or the Temple should change. What I am saying is that there are times when a space for accounts of honest experience and a space free from prejudice will be mutually exclusive. People who need a therapist will post in the Temple about the issues for which they need therapy. People who have problems and unconscious assumptions bound up in problematic language about sex and race and gender and sexual orientation will post in the Temple. People with unexamined beliefs and assumptions will come there in droves. That's what many people who come to temples come there to do - they're lost, frightened, assailed by nightmares, in need of guidance, in need of company or acceptance or confession or forgiveness. We will have a problem with some of the things they might say, but to expect otherwise in a place that deals with faith, magic and mysticism, bodywork, and applied psychology is insane.
The Temple will always be problematic on Barbelith. Mistakes will be made. Some people who are asked to leave will get hurt. Some people who we would want to stay will get hurt and may leave because of it. The people who want to stay and care about it will get hurt time and time and time again.
I'm interested in discussing any ways in which we can make this reality easier for people who feel regularly hurt or angered by it, and any protocols we can put in place for helping the situation. I don't have any answers myself just yet but I'll think about it. |
