This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and... more This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article documents and analyzes the various ways in which female bisexuality is performed within a NeoPagan context. The connection between NeoPagan thealogy and bisexuality is addressed. The methods by which female NeoPagan practitioners construct a bisexual identity, the power relations that are negotiated around that identity and the discourse by which practitioners make female bisexuality normative and even idealized within the NeoPagan community are deconstructed and analyzed.
Renowned African American essayist, author, and cultural critic James Baldwin (1962) famously rem... more Renowned African American essayist, author, and cultural critic James Baldwin (1962) famously reminded us that “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (p.11). Learning to face and to name that which is in need of transformation, in need of justice, is in some ways the most difficult aspect of social justice work. This is both because we are trained from an early age not to see those injustices (especially when we occupy positions of social privilege) and because the most profound injustices tend to work at a level just below that which we can readily see, recognize, and name. Perhaps the real power of structural violence (sometimes known as institutional violence) is its very invisibility or its ability to skim along just under the surface of the social and individual consciousness, the way it is inextricably part of the warp and weft of society is such that to recognize the violence inherent in our structures and institutions is to question (and to some minds, threaten) the very foundations of a way of life.
This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any... more This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Authors share joint copyright with the JIWS.
This paper explores and attempts to propose a NeoPagan, or Contemporary Pagan, ethics of abortion... more This paper explores and attempts to propose a NeoPagan, or Contemporary Pagan, ethics of abortion. As a still relatively new religious movement, Contemporary Paganism and the various earth-centered religions (including Wicca) that fall under that umbrella are continuously in the process of creating theology, morality, and practice. Within the religious landscape of the United States in particular, this means engaging with the fraught issues of reproductive healthcare broadly and abortion specifically. This article explores the paradox of Contemporary Paganism’s overall ethic of affirming life and holding all life sacred while also giving primacy of place to individual Will, bodily autonomy, and personal and sexual freedom—ethical principles that lead the overwhelming majority of practitioners to adopt a pro-choice stance. The article describes an ethics of abortion in which Contemporary Pagans find that their pro-life politics and their life-affirming spirituality are not paradoxical but in fact are a coherent whole.
This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and... more This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article documents and analyzes the various ways in which female bisexuality is performed within a NeoPagan context. The connection between NeoPagan thealogy and bisexuality is addressed. The methods by which female NeoPagan practitioners construct a bisexual identity, the power relations that are negotiated around that identity and the discourse by which practitioners make female bisexuality normative and even idealized within the NeoPagan community are deconstructed and analyzed.
Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as "natural" in ou... more Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as "natural" in our lives is actually cultural-it is not grounded in the natural world or in biology but invented by humans. 2 Because culture is invented, it takes different forms in different places and changes over time in those places. Living in the twenty-first century, we have witnessed how rapidly and dramatically culture can change, from ways of communicating to the emergence of same-sex marriage. Similarly, many of us live in culturally diverse settings and experience how varied human cultural inventions can be. We readily accept that clothing, language, and music are cultural-invented, created, and alterable-but often find it difficult to accept that gender and sexuality are not natural but deeply embedded in and shaped by culture. We struggle with the idea that the division of humans into two and only two categories, "male" and "female," is not universal, that "male" and "female" are cultural concepts that take different forms and have different meanings cross-culturally. Similarly, human sexuality, rather than being simply natural is one of the most culturally significant, shaped, regulated, and symbolic of all human capacities. The concept of humans as either "heterosexual" or "homosexual" is a culturally and historically specific invention that is increasingly being challenged in the United States and elsewhere.
This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and... more This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article documents and analyzes the various ways in which female bisexuality is performed within a NeoPagan context. The connection between NeoPagan thealogy and bisexuality is addressed. The methods by which female NeoPagan practitioners construct a bisexual identity, the power relations that are negotiated around that identity and the discourse by which practitioners make female bisexuality normative and even idealized within the NeoPagan community are deconstructed and analyzed.
This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and... more This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article documents and analyzes the various ways in which female bisexuality is performed within a NeoPagan context. The connection between NeoPagan thealogy and bisexuality is addressed. The methods by which female NeoPagan practitioners construct a bisexual identity, the power relations that are negotiated around that identity and the discourse by which practitioners make female bisexuality normative and even idealized within the NeoPagan community are deconstructed and analyzed.
Renowned African American essayist, author, and cultural critic James Baldwin (1962) famously rem... more Renowned African American essayist, author, and cultural critic James Baldwin (1962) famously reminded us that “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (p.11). Learning to face and to name that which is in need of transformation, in need of justice, is in some ways the most difficult aspect of social justice work. This is both because we are trained from an early age not to see those injustices (especially when we occupy positions of social privilege) and because the most profound injustices tend to work at a level just below that which we can readily see, recognize, and name. Perhaps the real power of structural violence (sometimes known as institutional violence) is its very invisibility or its ability to skim along just under the surface of the social and individual consciousness, the way it is inextricably part of the warp and weft of society is such that to recognize the violence inherent in our structures and institutions is to question (and to some minds, threaten) the very foundations of a way of life.
This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any... more This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Authors share joint copyright with the JIWS.
This paper explores and attempts to propose a NeoPagan, or Contemporary Pagan, ethics of abortion... more This paper explores and attempts to propose a NeoPagan, or Contemporary Pagan, ethics of abortion. As a still relatively new religious movement, Contemporary Paganism and the various earth-centered religions (including Wicca) that fall under that umbrella are continuously in the process of creating theology, morality, and practice. Within the religious landscape of the United States in particular, this means engaging with the fraught issues of reproductive healthcare broadly and abortion specifically. This article explores the paradox of Contemporary Paganism’s overall ethic of affirming life and holding all life sacred while also giving primacy of place to individual Will, bodily autonomy, and personal and sexual freedom—ethical principles that lead the overwhelming majority of practitioners to adopt a pro-choice stance. The article describes an ethics of abortion in which Contemporary Pagans find that their pro-life politics and their life-affirming spirituality are not paradoxical but in fact are a coherent whole.
This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and... more This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article documents and analyzes the various ways in which female bisexuality is performed within a NeoPagan context. The connection between NeoPagan thealogy and bisexuality is addressed. The methods by which female NeoPagan practitioners construct a bisexual identity, the power relations that are negotiated around that identity and the discourse by which practitioners make female bisexuality normative and even idealized within the NeoPagan community are deconstructed and analyzed.
Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as "natural" in ou... more Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as "natural" in our lives is actually cultural-it is not grounded in the natural world or in biology but invented by humans. 2 Because culture is invented, it takes different forms in different places and changes over time in those places. Living in the twenty-first century, we have witnessed how rapidly and dramatically culture can change, from ways of communicating to the emergence of same-sex marriage. Similarly, many of us live in culturally diverse settings and experience how varied human cultural inventions can be. We readily accept that clothing, language, and music are cultural-invented, created, and alterable-but often find it difficult to accept that gender and sexuality are not natural but deeply embedded in and shaped by culture. We struggle with the idea that the division of humans into two and only two categories, "male" and "female," is not universal, that "male" and "female" are cultural concepts that take different forms and have different meanings cross-culturally. Similarly, human sexuality, rather than being simply natural is one of the most culturally significant, shaped, regulated, and symbolic of all human capacities. The concept of humans as either "heterosexual" or "homosexual" is a culturally and historically specific invention that is increasingly being challenged in the United States and elsewhere.
This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and... more This article examines female bisexuality in the Texas NeoPagan community. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article documents and analyzes the various ways in which female bisexuality is performed within a NeoPagan context. The connection between NeoPagan thealogy and bisexuality is addressed. The methods by which female NeoPagan practitioners construct a bisexual identity, the power relations that are negotiated around that identity and the discourse by which practitioners make female bisexuality normative and even idealized within the NeoPagan community are deconstructed and analyzed.
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