From: emarsh@hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Marsh)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Did someone ask about misogynist pro-life loons?
Date: 8 Sep 1992 17:12:55 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: hernes-sun

In article <nyikos.715901588@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>In <lai5vtINNphn@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> emarsh@hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Marsh) writes:

>>>>>>	"It is about a movement that encourages women to leave their
>>>>>>	husbands, kill their children, destroy capitalism, practice
>>>>>>	witchcraft and become lesbians." [quoted from memory]

[...]

>>>>>is whether this movement is the whole feminist movement, or some subset
>>>>>of it, like Wicca.

>>>>As a third degree Wiccan priest who leads a coven of my own I rebuke
>>>>your statement that Wicca is a subset of the feminist movement.

>>>Are you saying that it is impossible for a male to be part of the 
>>>feminist movement?

>>No, but that has nothing to do with the statement that you made, and
>>I responded to. You stated that Wicca is a subset of the feminist movement,
>>and I said that as someone who is qualified to know, it is not.

>You did NOT say that.  You merely rebuked me for saying the opposite.  
>As far as
>I could tell, your whole follow-up might just have been a little spoof.

Take a look at my response. Perhaps the difficulty lay in my use of
the word rebuke. I thought that word implied a denial, but perhaps
you did not see things that way. Anyhow, I deny that Wicca is a subset
of the feminist movement.

>> I also
>>suggested that in the future you will have better credibility if you
>>got your facts straight in the future before opening you mouth.

>>Both of these statements still apply.

>So does my statement that I am completely in the dark as to why Wicca
>is not a subset of the feminist movement.  Could you please enlighten
>me?

Be happy to. Wicca is a religion that has been around in its present 
form for about 50 years now. In its most common form, it worships the 
divine as both Goddess and God. The Wiccan religion is both polythiestic 
and panthiestic, depending on how one looks at things. It is nature based 
and tends to be very egalitarian. Most mixed Wiccan covens have both a
high priest and a high priestess. While these people lead the coven,
it is by group concent and only because they have earned the respect
of the other members of the coven (generally for community service).
In circle (religious rite) the high priestesses word is considered
final. However, this power is only used when resolving dispute, since
group activities tend to be based on group consensus.

In short, Wicca is simply a religion. It is not specifically feminist
in nature; it is egalitarion in nature. Wicca is in no way rooted
in the feminist movement, and in fact has been around longer than the
modern feminist movement. Wicca is clearly _not_ a subset of the
feminist movement. That is not to say that feminists do not become
Wiccans; a great variety of people become Wiccans. 

I suppose you could try to argue that something that is not strictly
patriarchal is feminst. I would disagree, and counter that by such
a definition most of the world's religions are feminist, since they
use the concept of goddesses.

>Peter Ny.

Eric

Newsgroups: talk.abortion