When I was reading Starhawk’s argument  for why the Pope should apologize, for past crimes by the Catholic Church, I was bothered by a key paragraph  that raised other issues.  When I wrote my piece in response  to David Gibson’s discussion, I decided to deal with it separately, at a later time.  That time is now.

Before I make this criticism, I want to emphasize that in my view Starhawk has made enormous contributions to the Craft, probably more than anyone else now alive.  I was also moved by her discussions of her Interfaith work when I heard her at Pantheacon this February, and reported as such in this blog.  I emphasize these points because I have found out the hard way that some of her more fervent supporters seem to regard all criticism of Starhawk as personal or some kind of rejection or a sign of personal dementia on my part.  

Nope.  It comes from a place of respect and gratitude for past and likely future service to the Craft.  But all of us learn not only from praise when we do something praiseworthy, but also from criticism when we are thought to have done something that falls short.  I certainly have.  And I believe not one of us is wise enough to keep our feet on the ground when we never hear a word of criticism.

So I believe respectful criticism is in reality a kind of praise, recognizing the recipient is worth the time to criticize and able to deal with it.

Starhawk wrote

One of the reasons many of us modern-day Wiccans still proudly call ourselves Witches is to consciously identify with the victims of those persecutions. The Witch persecutions are a suppressed history of abuse. Just as suppressed memories of childhood abuse can hamper us in adult life, suppressed cultural histories still constrain our emotions and our imagination in subtle ways. The Witch persecutions left a residue of fear inside women–that if we speak too loudly or too forcefully, become too strong or visible, we will be attacked. They made imagination, intuition, and magic suspect. They set a pattern that judicial torture is sanctified once your enemy has been labeled ‘evil’. And they made nature herself something a dangerous and suspect.

We use the word “Witch” consciously, as a way of reclaiming our power as women and as men. . . .

I am bothered by these words. I think it is a bad reason, and not one worthy of legitimizing.  I call myself a Witch and likely always will.  It was a word Gerald Gardner’s New Forest coven used, and accurately describes many of the activities we do, activities that were savagely persecuted until not that long ago.  But I never used the word to “consciously identify” with victims of persecutions.  Nor do I know anyone else who does so.  Rather, this is what we are, and in the past people who did similar things were murdered (along with a lot of others).  In addition, the word ‘Witch’ helps to remind other people that we have important differences in outlook from today’s spiritual mainstream.  Finally, given the experiences that led my to becoming a Witch, if there had never been any murders of women and men over Witchcraft, I’d still use the word.

A person can use Starhawk’s reasoning and not be a Witch for spiritual reasons, only political reasons.  But this subordinates spirituality to politics, and as political as this blog can be, it never does that.  I think it is backwards thinking and to some degree reduces the impact of the word to simply a political statement.

There is another aspect to this paragraph I found troubling.  Violence by some men towards women is far older than the Christian Witch persecutions.  Torture is not a Christian invention.  The Old Testament has plenty of lethal penalties for magic, and Pagan Rome had laws against doing the emperor’s horoscope.  None of these things were Christian innovations.

By contrast, the Christian tradition generated a minority of groups that argued for and practiced a considerable respect for women. I am thinking of the Quakers in particular.   Christians did not initiate the critique of slavery, Aristotle mentions such criticisms in ancient Athens, though regrettably he rejects them.  But it was Christians who for religious motives first effectively attacked slavery in the West, even as some other ‘Christians’ quoted the Bible in its defense.  

Societies based on domination and pathological masculinity long preceded Christianity, and were not necessarily simply products of monotheism.  Pagan Rome had Goddesses, and generally treated women poorly.  Greece was not very good either. By contrast, Jesus’ spoken words and recorded actions were often supportive of women in monotheistic societies where they were systematically suppressed, and while most Christian groups ignored his example, not all of them did.  

We should avoid simple dichotomies because they are historically wrong, inflame differences that are off the topic, and confuse us as we try and understand the real causes behind pathological masculinity and domination.  

If Pagan societies could also be oppressive towards women, and some Christian traditions were unusually progressive towards women, the causes of gender exploitation will not necessarily disappear even if everyone became a Pagan.  Nor need they necessarily become so for such oppression to disappear.  Since the former is unlikely, we should treat this as good news.

I personally believe the real cultural change needed to lead to a respect for the feminine as well as for biological women is to see that the immanent world is as Sacred as the transcendent world, that sacred relationships within a world of duality and the material can be as valuable, as perfect, as the experience of transcendence or even Nonduality, that those relationships are characterized by love and respect, and that a person’s personal spiritual experience is as worthy of respect as written accounts passed down of someone else’s experiences thousands of years ago.

So mine is a different understanding of the problem, and a different diagnosis of what to do about it.  I think the logic of Starhawk’s argument leads us away from addressing these evils at their root.