As The Wild Hunt noted today, it’s International Pagan Coming Out Day, or I.P.C.O.D. This is the second year this has been observed.
It’s a good thing, and I fully support it, even though I’m not totally and fully “out” as a pagan myself.
My immediate supervisor at the current work I do (for which I’m not being paid at present, and technically don’t have any hours on the clock until September) has known about my polytheism since before I got the job, so I’m not worried about him. I have not announced it to the president of the institution, or some of the support staff, because it isn’t any of their business and it hasn’t come up as an issue of concern.
The same is not necessarily true of another place of work that I am in the process of being replaced or phased out on at present…and while I can’t say more about that currently, I am very aware of this being an issue, and because it has direct implications that threaten my livelihood at present, it’s not something very far from my mind. And, the worst part of all this is, they don’t know the half of it…
I have plans in place to more publicly come out about my polytheistic commitments once certain milestones are met, and I’m being pushed in the direction of meeting them more and more in the near future. I hope that by this time next year (or at some stage in 2013), I might be in a better position to be able to not care about this any longer. But, that time isn’t now.
I had a choice, as I’ve said before, to not do any public work on many of these matters (including Antinous and queer polytheistic spirituality) until I was in a better and safer position career-wise and financially/practically, or to do it but under my own terms and not connected with my legal name in favor of acting now. As an ample and enthused Dionysian who loves masks, and a Hermetic who loves using words to both conceal and reveal (amongst other things!), I chose the latter, and I have no doubt I made the right choice.
Some people have criticized me for not using my “real name” in connection with this work, and to them I still have the same answer I have had in the past: fuck you, you have no idea what situation I’m involved with, and don’t even attempt to try and explain (or, rather, ‘splain) why you’re “right” and I’m not to me since no one I currently know of that has these opinions on my situation knows enough about me and about my situation to have even one little toe to stand on in terms of making a useful or productive argument.
Yes, I trust that the world will change eventually and that things will improve as far as the lot of modern pagans is concerned in terms of public discourse; and yes, I’d like to be a part of advancing that cause as much as I can. However, when what amounts to half of my very limited regular income (and by “regular income,” we’re talking about the mid-range of the four-digits in yearly earnings) has just evaporated because I gave an updated C.V., and a person without connections to my particular religion was just given my position in preference to me, my ability to do anything is far more limited at present than I would prefer.
If you want to know how you can help me and support my efforts to actually continue living at the barely subsistence level that I’ve maintained for the past five years, you can buy books by me, or you can sign up for classes with Academia Antinoi.
I wish I had more time for better tidings, but I do not today. I hope everyone is well in their post-Beltaine haze, and I also hope to have more substantive things to say over the next few days in the blog here.
Isn’t the whole point of a “coming out” event the acknowledgment that not everyone is in a position to safely “come out,” so the people who can are doing it on their behalf, to make the world more tolerant to those who come after them? So, trying to shame someone for not being out enough? Totally not the fscking point, eh? You shouldn’t even have to explain about your job situation. What name you publish your spiritual work under is your fscking decision and no one else’s.
…Sorry, I’ve clearly hit my tolerance level for a particular brand of foolishness for the day! XP
By: maryoftheassumptions on May 2, 2012
at 10:03 pm
Well, one would think those things are givens, but apparently not…
The IPCOD organizers have been very good about the whole thing, and especially so this year in terms of not shaming people for not being out, or being less out based on what their own situations are, etc. So, I have no quarrel with them whatsoever.
There are others, though, who are not as broad-minded nor as understanding, and I’ve taken (and continue to take) flack for this. The “fuck you” above is to those people, if they happen to be reading (which they’re probably not, but anyway…).
By: aediculaantinoi on May 3, 2012
at 2:12 am
Being out is difficult, particularly when it impacts your work. Imagine sitting across the desk from a car salesman with a gigantic bling cross and explaining to him you’re the Pagan managing editor for a religion website.
By: Star Foster (@gleamchaser) on May 3, 2012
at 6:18 am
I can see how difficult that might be; but, at the end of the day, he wants to make a sale, and very few people in his position would “refuse service” over religious matters where making a buck is concerned…Welcome to America, where $$$ is the only real god, eh?
By: aediculaantinoi on May 3, 2012
at 2:16 pm
I’m still not fully out, but more out than not. considering I work in an overtly monotheist place, the fact that I can say “I’m not a monotheist” among my coworkers in an amusing aside and no one has ever flipped out about it, I am doing generally okay on the being an “out” pagan.
Though what I really wish is that pagan would have more ideas attached to it than general neopagan stuff. But that will take a lot longer, I know.
By: Soli on May 3, 2012
at 6:38 am
Although it is getting better, “pagan” still means “unbeliever” to so many people…far more than it ought to now. In Ireland, having to explain that was often harder than talking to those who at least “knew” that we “worshipped the false gods” (which was easily answered with “they’re not false for us!”), since the latter would at least understand we had commitments, rituals, practices, etc., whereas the former thought we were basically atheists and religious objectors on every side and with every religion.
By: aediculaantinoi on May 3, 2012
at 2:21 pm
You probably shouldn’t fuck people like that. If they have so little consideration for your feelings and situation, I doubt they’d make very good lovers.
By: thehouseofvines on May 4, 2012
at 10:52 am
True, that.
I heard an interesting thing a number of years ago when I lived in Ireland: how “fuck” is used in situations like this is slightly different in various English-speaking cultures. Americans are rather direct and assertive, so they say “fuck you!” The British and Irish are a bit less direct in their speech, so they say “fuck off!” The Australians are very laid back, so they say “get fucked!” And, come to think of it, I tend to prefer saying “fuck off” to anything else (or, as we said in Cork, “fuck off wit’ya!” sometimes with a “now” thrown in at the end, too, because one wouldn’t want to be too rude!), but because I’m writing about things that have mostly happened in the U.S., that idiom seemed more appropriate.
By: aediculaantinoi on May 4, 2012
at 12:50 pm
‘Fuck’ is a remarkable word. It is one of the very few words in English that can regularly be used as a fixative – that is, placed within another word, as in ‘absofuckinglutely’. The only other one I know that can do that is ‘bloody’, in the British-expletive sense. The Germans, however, can do this with a great deal more words.
‘Real names’ are an odd construct. I’m very rarely known by the name on my birth certificate, instead being called by almost everyone I know a nickname I was given at university (which is neither a variant on my birth name, nor ‘Jack Heron’), to the extent that I had to go to the examinations office in my final year there and explain that for the purposes of a CV, they had better use the name that was on my birth certificate rather than the one my tutor had registered me under!
By: Jack Heron on May 4, 2012
at 2:03 pm
Indeed, names are such a variable thing…What Hindu deity worth its salt has less than 108 of them? While I don’t have that many myself at present, I’m working on it!
But, the same is really true of most deities–they pick up epithets, nicknames, and by-names like a black table collects dust, because names function and have their meaning from particular contexts, and the more versatile the deity, the more names they have, I think…
It’s really too bad we don’t look at humans this way. A whole string of aliases is a sign of criminal behavior, not divine versatility, alas!
By: aediculaantinoi on May 4, 2012
at 5:01 pm
Personally, I have problems with “Pagan coming out day”, to me, that is, essentially, just ripping off the LGBT Community, For myself, and this might reflect my own British attitudes towards Religion, my religion is personal, I don’t get why some Pagans want to tell everyone in their workplace, clients/customers, and, basically, the world that they’re a Pagan.
I’ve been on the main website for this “Coming Out Day”, http://pagancomingoutday.org/resources/ipcods-guide-to-coming-out/ and just disagree with a lot of what it says.
It seems like some Pagans want to try and create links between what they go through and what LGBT people go through, but, the differences are vast, for starters, I’d like to see how many Pagans slit their wrists because they’re fed up with the constant bullying that goes on (and, yet, with LGBT youth, it’s incredibly high), you choose your Religion, but, you do not “choose” your sexuality (which is why I don’t buy into the “social construction BS” that says “homosexuality is only a couple of centuries old”, they’re were “no gays in the ancient world”, that only works if you believe sexuality is just like choosing between ice cream flavours, when, in fact, being gay is something you’re born with (same for being Bi, Trans, Lesbian, Straight, whatever, etc).
For me, if I tell people that I’m a Pagan, it will only be people I want to tell, and for good reasons, if they find out indirectly, then, so be it, it still wouldn’t matter to me. Another reason why I’m not interested in “coming out as a Pagan” is, I’d get bogged down in trying to explain what I believe which is a complex issue in and of itself!.
There’s only one Closet door I’ll proudly walk out of, and it’s not the Religious Closet, as I don’t see myself in a “Pagan Closet” or a “Broom Closet” (we don’t keep brooms in a closet in my house!).
Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking post, and the links to the other pages where I could learn more, as I had never heard of this day before, coming here is definitely always thought provoking.
By: spiritualseeker22 on May 4, 2012
at 7:33 pm
I certainly agree with you: not many pagans that I’ve ever heard about have contemplated suicide over their paganism; and, no one is “forced” to be pagan, everyone who is pagan chooses to be. So, the appropriation aspects of IPCOD are certainly present, and very likely not at all understood or acknowledged by the people who organized it (who are cisgendered heterosexuals, to my knowledge).
I do think there’s a slight nuance you’re missing in the social constructionism argument, though. It’s not that there weren’t males who were attracted to other males in premodern periods, it’s that the way it was understood is not the same as “homosexuality” or “gayness” is understood now, and has been for the last 150 years or so. To quote David Halperin, one of the main proponents of this theory, in something he said to me when we met and spoke a few years ago, “Homosexuality and homoeroticism don’t really mean anything for the premodern periods; that doesn’t mean people weren’t fucking, though.” Before the term homosexuality was coined by sexologists in the 19th century (and “Uranian” and a few similar terms), the prevailing notion was that there was a “sin” called “sodomy,” and it was something that potentially anyone could end up being “guilty” of; however, in certain theological circles, there was a notion that some males and females had a kind of inborn condition that made them want to do “sodomy” more than other people. Some (medieval Christian!) theologians even said, therefore, that this was not sinful in their cases, because their literal wiring (or, rather, in their opinion, “plumbing”) made them have no other options. That was a very different construction of homoeroticism than what the ancient Greeks and Romans had, where certain homoerotic sexual acts were always permissible for some people (i.e. an adult citizen male Roman could penetrate any orifice of anyone he wanted, except another adult citizen male Roman, so long as he was never penetrated), while at some ages it was permissible to be passive in certain sexual acts (e.g. intercrural intercourse, etc.), and so forth, without transgressing the gender norms expected. There were people who did transgress those norms, and they were often thought of as just as objectionable as many gay people are today to fundamentalists: lesbians, for example, were given this kind of derisive treatment throughout antiquity by Greeks and Romans alike, with very few exceptions (e.g. Sappho).
So, it’s not that social constructionist suggests that homoeroticism (for lack of a better term) has not existed before 150 years ago, it’s just that it wasn’t understood or visualized in the same manner. The modern gay identity, in which a man can be gay and never have to be married to a woman, have children with her, or do anything to “keep up appearances,” and not suffer total social ostracism for not “continuing the race” and so forth, has only really been possible in a society in which humans are plentiful and not in danger of dying out, and in which there is a thriving middle class that doesn’t need to continue family lines, etc. Issues of race, class, and gender certainly come into how permissible and possible being gay still is for some people in the modern world–Latino and African-American men, for example, still have a great deal of difficulty being out, and are often on the “down-low” because of this lack of social acceptance within the Black and Latino communities, so “gayness” is–again–something different there, and socially constructed in a vastly different manner to the way it is for white middle-class people.
Does that make sense?
By: aediculaantinoi on May 4, 2012
at 8:36 pm