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I think part of it depends on where your sensitivities in reading/intake are set. I find a considerable amount of material, magick and otherwise, that is undeniable anti-female sexism, to also be anti-male, if simply for the presumptions it makes about its hypothetical male audience. That 'extreme case' PDF TTS mentions being a good example, or half a thousand 'they're your children, Crowley' moments involving someone churning on and on about unleashing the sacred beast in conjunction with as many scarlet women as possible befor they get all old and wrinkly and turn evil.
In Native American magicky circles it tends to seem more predominant to me, at least, in certain geographical areas. On the Plains, and a lot west of the Miss. I have a hard time dealing with a number of groups, whose individual members I sometimes can remain sociable with, because when it comes down to a spirituality, many of the men happily launch to how potent and protective they are to those who suffer bouts of a sick time, dirty evil wimmenz bleeding nasty noise, and many of the women get fired up about woman's inherent deeper connection to earth and life and hope, and man's violent warlike possessiveness.
The changes of the past few decades in the 'white buffalo woman' story/stories, and the why of the death of one or both of the guys who first see her illustrates this well. It used to be that they see her as she's appeared as a woman, naked and alone, and one of the men's brain goes straight to rape, hence the punishment. It's now usually told as if they simply had a thought or impulse towards something erotic, not even necessarily sex but a dirty thought and immediately he's eaten by snakes. The women who used to die, similarly, in the story (for having jealousy-turn-violent thoughts) have been excised completely.
The changes are misandrist, and being told to little kids, is doing what all stories you get as a kid do, and steering the way you approach everything else in life. Especially a religious story, whether taken as history or parable.
I can't help but be distresed by that, especially in conjunction with a growing tendency with many Native communities towards holding gender-specific ceremonies or operations that are then broken because someone's decided person X is important enough or good enough they should qualify as a man or woman, despite their physical qualifiers or what they personally feel they are. I don't want to be 'nice enough' I qualify to sit in a women's sweat. If we pull transexuality into the discussion, there's something to be considered, but who the heck has a right to make the call that woman X should be invited into a man's ceremony without consideration of whether she IDs as a man or not? The presumption, on either end, approaches misandry and/or misogyny.
I'm actually seeing it more with women's ceremonies. The apparent assumption being, being nice or functionally polite or whatever, somehow slides men out of the man club and into the woman club and that has to be misandry, ostensibly well-meaning or not. It's the gendering equivalent of complimenting with 'that's very white of you' which you can still hear nonwhite (and white people, for that matter) use, un-sarcastically.
It's not everyone in these communities certainly, but the vitriol makes it hard to operate alongside people who really are caught up in it, and I do note a progression towards these men believing quite a bit of these misogynistic myths but learning to keep quieter about it in mixed company, whereas the women seem to believe they shouldn't have to keep it under hat and anyone calling them on it, male or female, is mentally subnormal or culturally warped and trying to shut women up. Believing and keeping quiet for social reasons is still unhealthy and breeding another level of attack/opression, but being loud about it can't help, either.
There's hardly a worse feeling than hearing a bigot divulge as soon as they think they're in agreeing company, but put on a polite face otherwise. |
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