Do Pagans face discrimination and prejudice for their beliefs?

[Shadow Wolf]

That's so lame.

What's lame is thinking people should make way for the intolerant majority, even though the fault lies entirely with the majority, and not the minority for just existing or holding the religious beliefs they do.
What is lame is saying "have you never seen a drunk before" or "had a mature understanding of your faith." Blaming the victim, and saying "you shouldn't upset the majority because bad things might happen" is lame. Allowing yourself to be subjugated to a lesser position and accepting that position is lame.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Did he hit you the minute you walked into the "bar" with your long hair or did he wait for you to say something? Had you never seen a drunk before?

Really? Quotes around "bar"??? I have to prove that it really was a bar to show that I wasn't doing something wrong by having long hair?

It doesn't freaking matter what I did or said; I had not said anything to the drunk, but I had sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. I got the usual set of long looks from the others at the bar, but no overt expressions of displeasure that I sometimes got. Not the first bar I'd been in, but the first time in that one. And last.

I was planning on watching the baseball game on the TV. He accosted me, said insulting and insinuating things about me because I had long hair, and I responded quite civilly to him. He then gave a poorly-aimed punch...three other patrons pulled him away from me and escorted him back to his seat.

The bartender, before I even finished asking, called to police, who interviewed everyone and escorted the man out...it was apparently not the first time he'd hit someone that. I have no idea if he was actually arrested, as I never had to go give testimony or anything; I doubt that he was. More likely, they just took him to the police station to sober up, or maybe even took him to his home. I finished my beer and went someplace else to watch the game.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Hey,

I wanted to ask RF many Pagan members if you face discrimination, ignorance, bigotry and prejudice for your beliefs. Do you have to conceal your beliefs for friends, family, co-workers, etc? How do you deal with it?

Not being familiar with Paganism or knowing many Pagans offline, I wanted to ask as it had never occurred to me that this would be an issue even though you probably live in predominantly Christian societies.

You're welcome to go in to detail if you wish. I'm simply curious to know more.

Personally, no I don't. I've never (knowingly) been rejected from a job because I'm Pagan or suffered any kind of discrimination or been subjected to bullying because of it. The worst thing that I can say happens to Pagans is when people laugh at stereotypes of your average British Pagan or when things like horses are found murdered or mutilated in farmers' fields. Satanists and Pagans tend to be blamed whenever these things happen but generally speaking they are race horses which are killed at the behest of rival horse owners. The tabloids don't tend to apologise for baselessly maligning us though. To be honest, if this is all we have to complain about then I think Pagans as a group have it pretty good here in the UK.

 

[SalixIncendium]

A very good question but I would say that if you had a good understanding of it, it wouldn't give you a problem.

Can you rephrase your response, please. It sounds like your telling me that if I had an 'adult understanding' of what and 'adult understanding' of pagan beliefs is, it wouldn't give me a problem...

...which really doesn't answer my question now, does it?

 

[suncowiam]

Hey,

I wanted to ask RF many Pagan members if you face discrimination, ignorance, bigotry and prejudice for your beliefs. Do you have to conceal your beliefs for friends, family, co-workers, etc? How do you deal with it?

Not being familiar with Paganism or knowing many Pagans offline, I wanted to ask as it had never occurred to me that this would be an issue even though you probably live in predominantly Christian societies.

You're welcome to go in to detail if you wish. I'm simply curious to know more.

Who doesn't?

Atheists, Christians, JWs...

Join the club, Pagans!

 

[Quintessence]

I wanted to ask RF many Pagan members if you face discrimination, ignorance, bigotry and prejudice for your beliefs. Do you have to conceal your beliefs for friends, family, co-workers, etc? How do you deal with it?

I find it interesting you include ignorance in this list. Ignorance about religion is a general problem in America for all paths and traditions, though it does affect new religious movements and minority groups more significantly. It is certainly true that ignorance fosters the more significant issues you list in this paragraph - discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice - but in of itself it doesn't bother me overmuch. It seems unreasonable for me to expect Americans to know much of anything about Paganisms, especially when nearly all discussions about religion are dominated by Abrahamic (mostly Christian) assumptions and the atheistic counterpoints to those assumptions.

Personally, I can't say I've had any problems with discrimination bigotry, or prejudice. I don't feel any need to conceal that which I am, and I couldn't even if I tried. For me, religion is way-of-life. Concealing my religion would basically require I purchase some property on an isolated mountain top and have no human contact ever again. Which, come to think of it, is something of an appealing idea...

I digress. Beyond my personal experience, it is a sad reality that Paganisms have run into trouble with day-to-day idiocy and with more drawn out legal affairs. I remember following the Pentacle Quest in some detail when the story was going on. Can you believe that it took a decade of work to get a pentacle listed as an approved symbol for veteran's headstones in this country? I can't. But it happened.

On the other hand, as a religious minority we also enjoy privileges because of how "secularism" works in practice. Secularism is rarely as such - what secularism really does is define what "religion" looks like and then de-privelages expressions that match that description in the public sphere. If your religion falls outside of that, you remain privileged For example, the Christians have to worry about their Ten Commandments monuments being torn off public land on the grounds it violates church-state separation. Meanwhile, the Druids don't have to worry much about a tree being cut down on the same principle, because nobody bothers to recognize that as "religion."

 

[Laika]

I find it interesting you include ignorance in this list. Ignorance about religion is a general problem in America for all paths and traditions, though it does affect new religious movements and minority groups more significantly. It is certainly true that ignorance fosters the more significant issues you list in this paragraph - discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice - but in of itself it doesn't bother me overmuch. It seems unreasonable for me to expect Americans to know much of anything about Paganisms, especially when nearly all discussions about religion are dominated by Abrahamic (mostly Christian) assumptions and the atheistic counterpoints to those assumptions.

It wasn't deliberate.

I was thinking of discrimination and prejudice as a person to person relationship and everyday experience (rather than people and institutions). I would expect that ignorance and then the misrepresentation based on ignorance is going to be the most common practical manifestation of it and the biggest obstacle in the long-run.

 

[Quintessence]

It wasn't deliberate.

I was thinking of discrimination and prejudice as a person to person relationship and everyday experience (rather than people and institutions). I would expect that ignorance and then the misrepresentation based on ignorance is going to be the most common practical manifestation of it and the biggest obstacle in the long-run.

There's certainly some truth to that, but I find it important to recognize that this is largely the product of how contemporary Western culture developed. Paganisms - polytheistic theologies in particular - were systematically oppressed and eliminated. These campaigns were so successful that the ideas are foreign to us. And by "foreign" I mean it is very difficult (if not frequently impossible) for a Westerner to understand Paganisms on their own terms. Even contemporary Pagans inevitably bring Christian/monotheist assumptions and perspectives to the table in their discussions. It takes a lot of time and work to deprogram out of that, but once you do, you start noticing the biases practically everywhere. That's kind of where I sit right now.

Sometimes, I want to make a fuss about it. But it feels like something of a lost cause. There are only two voices when it comes to religion and theology in Western culture - Christianity and their opponents (who tend to call themselves atheists). Everything else gets lost or otherwise dismissed as irrelevant. I suppose that's the worst thing I frequently have to deal with - getting punted into a zone of irrelevancy because I'm a religious minority. Others tell themselves that I don't exist, that I don't matter, and... well... I try hard not to let that hurt.

 

[Laika]

There's certainly some truth to that, but I find it important to recognize that this is largely the product of how contemporary Western culture developed. Paganisms - polytheistic theologies in particular - were systematically oppressed and eliminated. These campaigns were so successful that the ideas are foreign to us. And by "foreign" I mean it is very difficult (if not frequently impossible) for a Westerner to understand Paganisms on their own terms. Even contemporary Pagans inevitably bring Christian/monotheist assumptions and perspectives to the table in their discussions. It takes a lot of time and work to deprogram out of that, but once you do, you start noticing the biases practically everywhere. That's kind of where I sit right now.

Sometimes, I want to make a fuss about it. But it feels like something of a lost cause. There are only two voices when it comes to religion and theology in Western culture - Christianity and their opponents (who tend to call themselves atheists). Everything else gets lost or otherwise dismissed as irrelevant. I suppose that's the worst thing I frequently have to deal with - getting punted into a zone of irrelevancy because I'm a religious minority. Others tell themselves that I don't exist, that I don't matter, and... well... I try hard not to let that hurt.

It was your thread "keeping silent" in the Neopagan and revival religions DIR that made me think about it. For all the passion involved in exploring the intellectual ruins of a dead civilisation, everyone else believes that the fact the civilisation is extinct is sufficient basis to believe effectively it didn't deserve to exist at all. It struck a chord and I have nothing but sympathy for the experience. Its very bitter-sweet.

 

[DanishCrow]

A primary issue in many countries is our connection to neo-nazis. The original German nazis appropriated the norse rune system of magic and writing, and neo-nazis still use both those and the hammer of Thor.

Further complicating the matter is that neo-nazis have seized control of the largest pagan organizations in America (the Asatru Folk Assembly) and my native Denmark (by way of the fascist and racist Hefjendur blót association), further propagating anti-pagan and anti-modernist hate speech because they can't read the sagas to save their useless hides.

 

[The Great Wanderer]

May I express my frustration?

I do not like reading sites which critique Hinduism, I mean no Hindu is really interested in doing all sorts of bad stuff as we're being made to look out for today. Our religion is defamed, we are falsely attacked for worshipping Cows as if it's the worst thing in the world when in reality Cows were worshipped in other religions as well. I mean sure once in a while I don't mind reading about Hindus in a positive light, but I certainly don't do anything the International Media loves to depict our polytheistic religion as being backward, we worship false Gods, we worship in make belief, we are this, that, we do all sorts of wrong. If one person reads an article defaming Hindus without realising it, it gets spread around the society, and thus it defames us and more importantly becomes a source of annoyance.

No, I don't believe in caste, that's nonsense. I don't believe in the usual stereotype, it makes me outraged. The media hates us, Academia dismisses our beliefs, Leftists and Liberals and Marxists view our religion as false, etc. I have no problem with anyone, I respect all Gods, and I am tolerant, not intolerant. And women do worship at our temples, for crying out loud, we once were a sexually liberated society over 2000 years ago, before the British invasion of India where their monotheistic concepts crept in, and now to even find love in India is annoying because of a Conservative culture. They claim oh we have 'sanksari' which means values but that means nothing tbh. A lot of Indian society is full of contradictions left to right and center. The Colonial legacy of the British hasn't left our minds. Example? I read somewhere in Wikipedia, that an Englishmen in the 16th century had visited India, and the preference for skin color was given to the Brown man. Now, it's changed. It's now fair and lovely and white promoted by our own version of Bollywood liberal celebrities that pretend to copy and emasculate every concept of Liberal Hollywood, and yet they claim tweets of equality when they endorse stupid adverts like this, where do you think that concept came from? It's....urgh!!!

Not asking anyone to believe what I say, this is the opinion of one individual only. In RL I haven't encountered much of it for now, but on the internet, it's astounding the hatred for Hinduism. I could hardly care less what goes on in someone's individual life than anything else.

Hinduism does have faults, but times change. We're in the Age of Kali Yuga(According to us Hindus.) so therefore, people are bound to get worse at each other. Hinduism that was practiced 2000 years ago is different compared to what is practiced today.

Really makes me outraged sometimes, but then again, I just wanted to express my frustration

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Wanderer, I know blaming the Raj is a popular sport in India, but purdah and puritanism were introduced by the Muslims long before the East India Company arrived!

To get back on topic, non-monotheists in the USA have it easy compared to those in some places. In Muslim lands they have to stay anonymous or they can wind up dead:
http://wildhunt.org/2013/03/the-fall-of-a-syrian-pagan.html

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

To get back on topic, non-monotheists in the USA have it easy compared to those in some places. In Muslim lands they have to stay anonymous or they can wind up dead:
http://wildhunt.org/2013/03/the-fall-of-a-syrian-pagan.html

I remember reading about this not long after it happened. Absolutely sickening. And to think it was her brother, of all people, who informed IS about her. I hope the Furies still hound the sororicidal ******* if he still lives.

 

[tayla]

When I was a Pagan I did. People tended to assume it's demonic in nature, conjuring demons, giving your soul to the devil, and that they are very misguided and lost and in need of realizing they are doing "the devil's" bidding. I was called demonically possessed, given mean looks over wearing a pentagram, and even thought to be a Satanist.

Sorry that people didn't try to understand your belief system.