Performative Paganism

There are two main stereotypes about pagans:

1. The Fluff Bunny
1. hippie
2. usually white with dreadlocks
3. usually Wiccan or neopagan
4. believe in the Rede and force that belief on everyone else
5. liberal
6. appropriates concepts from closed religions that they don't belong to (i.e. spirit animal, chakras)
2. the Dark Lord
1. angry
2. use "dark magic"
3. usually a Satanist or recon-oriented polytheist
4. hates Wiccans
5. thinks christophobia is a thing in the west
6. arrogant
7. amoral
8. mean-spirited
9. pretentious
10. rude
11. ableist

And sure, there are a lot of pagans of both archetypes who fit the stereotypes, but their existence is causing a lot of infighting among pagans and...can we not?

Just stop throwing other pagans under the bus in order to lift yourself up and make yourself seem better! It's nothing but respectability politics and can only end badly for pagans and anyone who is technically under the pagan umbrella but would rather not identify that way.

I promise, as someone who has been lumped into both stereotypes in the two and a half years or so since I converted, that we're not doing shit to help anyone. And the infighting only harms vulnerable pagans, especially new converts: teenagers in Christian households who are still exploring their newfound faith, LGBT people who find healing in polytheist religions with lore involving gender transcendence or gay love, women who begin to love themselves through goddess worship and escaping a religion that uses sex as a weapon against them, and pagan converts of color who are just happy to be away from the religion that was likely forced on their ancestors through colonialism and to have found a faith that they're more comfortable in.

They also pressure pagans to perform their religion to a degree that they no longer find joy in it. Like...it took me a really long time to genuinely see my gods as loving, as someone who fits into three of the above categories of vulnerable pagan converts, and the reason why is that, as an impressionable high schooler who was unsure how to navigate my faith, I was constantly faced with pretentious, cynical adult pagans who wouldn't shut up about how brutal their gods could be and who couldn't be bothered with offering patient, compassionate guidance to a scared kid, and with liberal hippies, mostly cis white women, who were angry that I wasn't constantly filled with rainbows and puppies and wasn't particularly interested in cis/heteronormative ideologies like "the polarity of masculine and feminine energies" and "the rain is semen pouring into the fertile womb of the earth".

I had to fight for my paganism. I left a religion that was causing me harm and took a huge risk in finding a new one. And now that I've found that new religion, damn right I'm going to find joy in it.

We have better things to do, as a religious community, than fight each other over petty things and constantly try to be more pagan than thou - if I wanted that, I'd just go back to Christianity completely.

What we should be doing is fighting racism, fascism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia among our own communities. 

Fighting for the liberation of all pagans and the abolition of Christian supremacy and religious oppression while also acknowledging that white, non-Muslim gentile pagans are in a position of privilege over Jewish and Muslim people, as well as non-pagans of color, and that privilege is conditional or even non-existent for many Christians: LGBT Christians, Christian women, Christians of color, non-western Christians, syncretic Christians (i.e. christopagans and Christians who combine Christianity with ancestral folk beliefs, something that is present among many Christians in Appalachia, Latin America, and rural parts of Europe, not to mention indigenous, black, and Rromani Christians all over the world), and even Christian witches.

What paganism means to me isn't just my personal faith, but also radical, leftist, spiritual revolution, anti-capitalism, sexual liberation, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism (usually, anyway...unfortunately), respect for the environment, sharing of resources, anger for the right reasons, social justice rooted in love and compassion rather than a self-righteous desire to make yourself look good, and justice for all marginalized people. I think that's what it means to a lot of young converts, especially to young trans people and LGBT women.

Fuck performative paganism. Fuck fascist paganism. Fuck liberalism. Fuck infighting. I want that feeling back. So let's make it happen.