Here’s something I’ve noticed about what passes for mainstream media in the patriarchal twilight zone.  Journalists find out about something a very small number of people have been doing and because this small number is part of a larger group of people against whom the militaristic, war-mongering, power-tripping white male media is prejudiced, they make generalizations about the larger group and try to make the fringe look typical. 

 

The group in question is usually, I find, feminists, vegetarians, anti-war activists, Muslims, or Wiccans.  Gee, isn’t it an odd coincidence that the groups I just mentioned, with the one exception of Muslims, are a threat to patriarchy? 

 

Since I don’t pay a lot of attention to “mainstream news,” I tend to find out about this sort of media bias because I’m around people who smugly share the same prejudice as the phallocratic newscasters or journalists.  The androcentric and otherwise extremely biased “mainstream” news has viewers or listeners who smugly share the same prejudice and who therefore lap the “news” up eagerly and don’t for a moment question the quality of the media.

 

And of course “mainstream news” never or rarely says anything positive about these groups that they despise.  For instance, I don’t recommend turning on the idiot box expecting to hear someone on Fox “news” cheerfully talking about how if it weren’t for feminists and Wiccans, it would be legal for frothing-at-the-mouth hysterical fundamentalist Xians to burn women at the stake.

 

In contrast, bigoted newscasters are eager to give plenty of airtime to war-mongering white males such as generals and politicians, but far from interviewing peace activists, they make dismissive and willfully ignorant remarks about the peace activists.  That’s only when they condescend to even pay any attention to the peace movement, which in the past few years has, as Noam Chomsky pointed out, been bigger than it was in the 1960s.

 

At work today, a Stupid White Male Trapped in a Woman’s Body who flaunts her Christianity and who has on many occasions made scathingly contemptuous remarks about Wiccans huffily said, “Chicago isn’t celebrating Halloween this year.  Wiccans have complained about it, so now it’s called Black and Orange Day.”

 

So, let me guess:  a couple of twenty-year-old Pagans in Chicago haven’t done their research about Samhain, more popularly known as Halloween, an ancient Celtic holiday honoring dead ancestors and loved ones.  The veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead grows thin, and the veil between this world and the world of the fey grows thin.  It’s a very Wiccan holiday, and yet she was making it sound like Wiccans don’t like Samhain.

 

If some Wiccans are irate around Samhain, it’s because of the stereotypical and misogynists imagery of witches as evil and ugly old hags, which becomes so blatantly visible during this holiday.  Additionally, they’re exasperated with being harassed by fundamentalist Xians, verbally attacked for their nature- and Goddess-centered religion, and accused of being satanic.  Sure, intellectually it doesn’t make sense to react toward prejudice with prejudice, yet on an emotional level Pagans get really ticked off at being harassed by smug and self-righteous monotheists. 

 

Incidentally, I am reading a history book called Witchcraze by Anne Llewellyn Barston; this book is about the misogyny that is so blatantly obvious in the Burning Times and makes the connection between the witch hunts of the past and modern day violence against women.  Oppress women to keep them in their “place” in the patriarchal order; this is what we witnessed during the Backlash right after 9/11, among other backlashes.  It is also related to the increased violence against women in a time when patriarchy is under threat of being overthrown at last.

 

But back to my main point:  it is blatantly obvious that many people unquestioningly accept the drivel that the fascist white male news feeds them.  There’s something to be said for looking at the media with an analytical eye and…thinking.

 

When someone else at work later asked what we’d be doing for Halloween, I refrained from saying, “After I’ve given away all the candy, I’m going to go upstairs to my altar and do a Pagan ritual.”

 

Recommended Reading

Barstow, Anne Llewellyn.  Witchcraze: a New History of the European Witch Hunts.  Pandora, San Francisco:  1994.

 

Bonwick, James.  Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions.  Dorset Press, no location: 1986.

 

Budapest, Zsuzsanna.  The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries.  Wingbow Press, Oakland:  1989.

 

Frazer, James G.  The Golden Bough:  the Roots of Religion and Folklore.  Gramercy Books, NY:  1981.

 

Gadon, Elinor.  The Once and Future Goddess:  a Symbol for Our Time. HarperSanFrancisco:  1989.

 

Graves, Robert.  The White Goddess:  a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth.  Farrar, Straus, and Gireaux, NY:  1975.    

 

McCoy, Edain.  Sabbats: A Witch's Approach to Living the Old Ways.  Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN.

 

Morgan, Robin.  The Burning Time.  Melville House Publishing , NY:  2006.

 

Ravenwolf, Silver.  Halloween!  Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN.  (Her writing style is cheesy, but this book is informative and has some good ideas for celebrating.) 

 

Sylvan, Dianne.  The Circle Within: Creating a Wiccan Spiritual Tradition.  Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN:  2003.

 

Ventimiglia, Mark.  The Wiccan Rede:  Couplets of the Law, Teachings, and Enchantments.  Citadel Press Books, NY:  2003.

 

Woodman, Marion, and Elinor Dickson.  Dancing in the Flames:  the Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness.  Shambhala, Boston:  1997.