Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

21 March, 2029 2012: Sooo....apparently somewhere between LJ changing their update.bml page, and me changing my journal's name, my ability to post got temporarily fucked. Something didn't like the fact that my journal's date is 17 years in the future, and so posts were getting "delayed" until 2029 actually hit. Which means A) that I need to be posting at 2012 again, which also means that no new posts will show up at the top of my journal and you have to go into the archives to see what's newest other than in your friend's feed...aaaaaaand, B) that sometime in March 2029 those posts that got eaten will be exhumed as zombies.'

YES, THIS JOURNAL IS STILL ACTIVE!

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A few things:

I renamed my LJ/DW, after the better part of a decade. It's now lupagreenwolf, not lupabitch. Just didn't fit any more. Did the same thing to my Twitter, just because.

The woods that raised me have been completely destroyed.

While trying to distract myself temporarily from the pain from that, I wrote a rant about coming out of any closet, including the broom closet, and the privilege inherent in that act.

This is the cost of free shipping even in the US--demoralized, traumatized workers. And here's a follow-up specifically about Amazon, in case you needed any more reasons to not buy from them.

On a happier note, how much food can you grow on 1/8th acre?

Also, if you want traditional fruit tree wood for making runes, :here's a very limited-time offer to get some for free!

I had some leftover tails from FaerieCon West that I hadn't gotten up on Etsy til today--in fact, I have a bunch more costumery from that event that needs to go up, but today's effort was uploading over FIFTY new tails!

Check them out here :)

(Okay. Bedtime now!)

Ha! I am entertained and amused that I made it onto Regretsy<\a>.

I have been adding ETAs to my main Livejournal post about this since it's been getting the most attention, but I wanted to highlight the latest one as I am on a laptop instead of my phone for once:

So--I feel a bit like my point has been missed on some parts, so I wanted to clarify. I have absolutely no problem with cis-women-only rituals. What I have a problem with is when a ritual that is purported to be for "all women" or, in the case of Z's ritual, "the beauty and grace of the feminine form in all of her infinite variety", is limited to cis women only. This exclusion of trans women from rituals stated to be for ALL women invalidates trans women's identities AS WOMEN. It is NOT enough that trans people have their own trans-centric rituals and spaces, though these have great value to many trans people. "Transgender" is not a third sex separate from "men" and "women". A transgender woman is a woman, and if your ritual is specifically stated to be for ALL women, then you need to include ALL women, cis and trans.

That's what I'm trying to convey. I could also go on about how I feel so many cis women are ignoring the fact that trans women's issues ARE women's issues. I could add in how transphobic it is for cis women who have been raped, abused, or assaulted by men (and I include myself in that demographic as a sexual assault and abusive relationship survivor) use our trauma as a weapon against trans women simply because they were born into male bodies. I could emphasize that cisgender women do have privileges that trans women do not, simply for being cis--no one doubts that we cis women are women because we were born with vulvas, but trans women have their identities as women questioned all the time, within and outside of paganism. But I feel that these issues have been more than adequately covered in the many comments and discussions as a response to this post, for which I am very grateful.

So I am just going to leave this as my main point: have cis-women-only rituals if you want. Or cis-men-only. Or trans-women, or trans-men, or genderqueer, etc. There is space for sharing unique experiences. However, don't call your cis-women-only ritual one that is for ALL WOMEN. That is where I get angry, and why I was protesting this weekend.

ETA the fourth--bonus computer, not phone! So--I feel a bit like my point has been missed on some parts, so I wanted to clarify. I have absolutely no problem with cis-women-only rituals. What I have a problem with is when a ritual that is purported to be for "all women" or, in the case of Z's ritual, "the beauty and grace of the feminine form in all of her infinite variety", is limited to cis women only. This exclusion of trans women from rituals stated to be for ALL women invalidates trans women's identities AS WOMEN. It is NOT enough that trans people have their own trans-centric rituals and spaces, though these have great value to many trans people. "Transgender" is not a third sex separate from "men" and "women". A transgender woman is a woman, and if your ritual is specifically stated to be for ALL women, then you need to include ALL women, cis and trans.

That's what I'm trying to convey. I could also go on about how I feel so many cis women are ignoring the fact that trans women's issues ARE women's issues. I could add in how transphobic it is for cis women who have been raped, abused, or assaulted by men (and I include myself in that demographic as a sexual assault and abusive relationship survivor) use our trauma as a weapon against trans women simply because they were born into male bodies. I could emphasize that cisgender women do have privileges that trans women do not, simply for being cis--no one doubts that we cis women are women because we were born with vulvas, but trans women have their identities as women questioned all the time, within and outside of paganism. But I feel that these issues have been more than adequately covered in the many comments and discussions as a response to this post, for which I am very grateful.

So I am just going to leave this as my main point: have cis-women-only rituals if you want. Or cis-men-only. Or trans-women, or trans-men, or genderqueer, etc. There is space for sharing unique experiences. However, don't call your cis-women-only ritual one that is for ALL WOMEN. That is where I get angry, and why I was protesting this weekend.

ETA the third: Hey, you all really, really need to read this comment about the men who stood next to Z during her statement. It apparently wasn't what I had felt.

ETA the second: just wanted to tell you all you have been awesome with how well you've been handling discussions in the comments. Will catch up more later but in the meantime, thank you.

ETA: forgot to unscreen comments--my apologies! You still need a LJ or OpenID account so no completely anonymous comments are allowed.

I went to the protest at the Sacred Body of a Woman ritual tonight here at PantheaCon, and you can read about my experiences here.

First, I want to emphasize that this is only my opinion, not that of any organization I am a part of or write or otherwise work for. This is me, as an individual, speaking.

Second, this is raw material—emotionally and otherwise. PantheaCon ends tomorrow (Monday), and I need to release this from myself before I make the long, rejuvenating journey back up the 101 to enjoy the coast as I return to Portland. If there is time to process further, then I will continue to share the distillations when and as I can. Such as it is, I will be reading comments as they come into my inbox, but may not respond immediately. In the meantime, if you feel the need to comment, please keep it as civil as you can; I realize this is an emotionally charged topic for a lot of people on all sides.

Finally, I do have to thank PantheaCon for allowing room for continued discussion, debate, and demonstration. I know it's easy to say that they just shouldn't have allowed the ritual to occur due to discrimination, but they're in a tough place with a lot of pressures and people coming at them from all directions. So I want to thank the PCon people for the space for everything that has occurred this weekend, and handling it as well as they could under the circumstances.

So. I was not at PCon last year, so I did not firsthand experience the controversy surrounding the Lilith Rite, which was limited to cisgender women only, though this was not made clear, to my understanding, until people were turned away at the door for being male or transgender women. If you wish to read more about that, just Google “PantheaCon 2011” “Lilith Rite” and you'll get plenty of observations from people who were there; it may be helpful just to familiarize yourself with what's fueled this year's theme. I will say that I found out about the controversy from people who were here and experienced the situation firsthand, but I would prefer to speak of my own firsthand experience here tonight.

( First, what I observed happen: )

( And now, my initial impressions, still fresh and raw in my mind and heart. )

Muppets fans and prehistory scholars, beware of bad puns! I present to you....the Beaker People!

( Rare illustration and evidence under the cut! )

Hey, Portlanders--OPB is hiring the following positions:

Technical Director/Audio Engineer
Help Desk Specialist
Web Developer
Volunteer Resources Coordinator
Network Distribution Chief Engineer
Producer/Reporter (arts and culture programming)

And there are positions available at another company, but the post over at DamnPortlanders is members-only (not that it's hard to be a member--the job postings are just one good things about the community).

We Do Not Return to Nature. We Are Already There.

This is my newest post up at No Unsacred Place; it was actually prematurely published on Friday, but it's already garnered some really good discussion and commentary, so please feel free to go take a look and what I wrote, and what others have said in response.

It's really solidified a number of things that I've been chewing over in my head for a while now, about the nature of "nature", and what that looks like for an increasingly urban species like humanity. It's probably the most coherent version of it that I've been able to write so far, though it obviously still needs some fine-tuning.

I am just 15 sales away from 1500 over on my Etsy store! And to celebrate, I'm doing a little giveaway...details here!

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SOUND A BABY SLOTH MAKES? YOU NEED TO KNOW. RIGHT NOW.

Cultural Appropriation 101 for Dead Critter Artists - most recent Therioshamanism post.

Okay. Going to sleep now. *thud*

Consider this a placeholder until I can put together an art dump specially for here, but Lupa-calia is LIVE! Yes, LupERcalia is NEXT month--but this gives you a chance to get some ritual gear now!

All sorts of new wolf headdresses, and TONS of wolf TAILS!!!!! Plus wolf bone knives, and wolf bone runes, and wolf bone jewelry, and sooooo much more! I've been working my own tail off for weeks on all this.

The first two pages of my Etsy are entirely wolf stuff, plus overflow onto page 3--so go check it out! Here ya go :)

(Art dump here later today, but right now it's 8:15am and I HAVEN'T SLEPT YET.)

I've been on a HUGE artwork tear the past few days, in prep for Lupa-calia on Monday (yes, there's another hint--it's art-related!) While I've been doing so, I've been watching a LOT of various nature documentaries on Netflix. I find it entertaining that they call the sorts of things I like to watch "cerebral", especially as some of what I've been watching has been things about the evolution of Homo sapiens. However, it's ranged from that, to disasters that shaped the Earth and made life here possible, to what the nature of death is and how it's ultimately defined.

The more I find out about the world, and indeed, the universe we live in, the more I fall in love with it and the more precious it becomes. On an immediate level I worry for the very near future of this planet and its inhabitants. The only people denying climate change caused by humans are the most stubborn and least willing to listen, those who desperately grope for anything to support their continued denialism.

But on a broader scale, all this research--and it is a form of research--is making my perspective continually less anthropocentric, and more awe-struck by the immense scale of time and space. We are not all-powerful beings, though our ability to manipulate our environments and ourselves is impressive. For example, if another asteroid like the one at the K-T boundary at the end of the Cretaceous hits the Earth, we would be just as dead as the dinosaurs; the animals that survived the chain reactions of natural disasters that resulted were mostly small burrowers. And yes, the Earth and the existence of life on it have survived several mass extinctions, but the scale of time it has taken to recover from these has been almost unfathomable, measured in millions of years. Being relatively large, calorie-hungry critters would definitely be a hindrance to our survival as a species if a disaster on that scale occurred--and if we keep up our actions, we may cause enough global climate change to test that hypothesis.

I am also less and less enamored of the claim that the Earth loves us, and that Nature cares about us. We are but a tiny brief blip in history; on the one-year calendar that represents all of time, we exist in the last few seconds of New Year's Eve. We're really not all that important, and why should we be more important than species that lasted for many more millions of years than we have? But I also don't think "Nature" is angry with us, either. We're talking about a planet that routinely obliterates entire ecosystems with massive volcanic eruptions and the like. While the Earth isn't in as much of a state of upheaval as it was a couple of billion years ago, it's still not exactly the safest it could be.

We've gotten complacent in the past couple of hundred years as the Industrial Revolution has caused some of us to live longer and be more insulated against illness, injury, and other such problems. For me, being more mindful of where we are in all of this has contributed a certain level of humility to my perspective. On a short-term level, sure, we're doing some neat things, and there's no reason not to try to make human existence as universally good as it can be as long as we're here. And yes, the fact that we are conscious, aware, observant on a level that perhaps no other animal has ever been, is a damned impressive thing.

But we are just one of a plethora of amazing, fascinating, and uniquely skilled species that have graced this planet. Most are gone now. But as I trace the lines of my ancestors and their relatives far, far back, all the way to tiny bacteria, and before that, perhaps, chemicals that gave rise to DNA--my sense of my place in all this is that I am a much smaller, younger, and less overarching being than many humans would claim.

And I'm alright with that. They say spirituality is about feeling one with something bigger than the self. All metaphysics and otherworldly things aside, knowing that I am a part of this ever-evolving macro-eco-system Planet Earth, in an impossibly vast Universe, is enough of a spiritual core for me.

Originally posted by mountain_hiker at Wikipeda