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Gay Furry Pagan
Honestly belonging to too many different communities to list
Currently still figuring out how to organize tumblr, apologies for the mess x|
Please stop asking for permission from other witches about everything. It’s perfectly normal to want to gain knowledge from others, but avoid seeking validation for every step of your practice. Stop placing absolute authority on witches you think are more advanced than you. One of the most powerful aspects of witchcraft is knowing yourself—uncovering your own magic, developing intuition around your magic, and becoming a sovereign individual. You will hinder this if you need constant validation from other witches regarding your practice. This behavior gives away your power.
Of course, be curious, do your research, and be culturally respectful. But beyond that, you are your own authority. Fuck around and find out!!! You do not need anyone’s permission but your own to call yourself a witch.
The "fuck around and find out" part should genuinely be shouted for the people in the back. So many people, be they new or even more experienced, are scared of trying new stuff out because of how much people demonize witchcraft and results. Especially online.
More often than not people online talk about how spells backfire, how things can go out of whack and cause some disaster, or even be so catastrophic it causes harm or possession...!
...but like...
Most spells fizzle. It just happens, especially if you're using someone else's personal recipe and correspondences without tweaking them to what works for you.
Most bad things can and are blocked by simple precautions. These range from protection works to just being mindful and careful in your everyday life. A lot of people blame a bad outcome on the spell without checking to see if they themselves were careful to begin with.
And let's assume stuff breaks. Let's assume shit hits the fan. That's part of why cleansing rituals exist. That's why we do regular upkeep. That's why people are confident in making mistakes, cleaning up and starting again.
A lot of the truly catastrophic things that people CLAIM happened to them come from their own negligence and not knowing how to handle the situation. Sometimes the best step genuinely is taking a deep breath and clean up shop. It's not derived from bad mojo or spirits out to get you. Rarely, and I can't stress this enough, RARELY does it actually happen. And that's assuming people are telling the truth at all! It's the internet after all.
And sometimes, stuff just happens. Life happens. But people freak out because witchcraft is vague and often undefined, so it's easy to blame.
Disclaimer, of course! I'm not here saying no story is real. Sure, they might be. But it's not the end of the world to say the wrong words, to pass gas at a sensitive time, to use the wrong ingredient, to do the wrong ritual and end up with a result you didn't intend. Shit happens. And sometimes yes: shit has a consequence. But you need to fuck up royally for it to be that bad.
Witchcraft is just like cooking. Sometimes yes, you burn the dish. Oops. But to burn down the whole kitchen? You gotta have done something very clearly and obviously wrong.
But knowing how to handle these things is part of the very first things people recommend learning, and for a good reason. Cleansing, protection and whatnot sounds obvious until you realize they're there specifically to help you know how to handle things. It's not just for mindfulness.
There is a lot of fearmongering going around. Both from within and without. And the sooner people recognise this and learn to be okay with mistakes and how to handle them, the better.
I love the casual substitution of "gods" instead of "god" in colloquial sayings. "oh my gods" "gods, my feet hurt" etc etc. like yeah deconstruct the societal standard of monotheism with me. let's party
yk not to be That Guy because i know the reason male rape victims are treated so terribly is because of the patriarchy and existence of misogyny but i saw a presumably cis guy online talking about how his mom didnt date when he was a child and basically pushed the burden of being her partner onto him (so like textbook emotional incest shit) and then when he got a girlfriend and moved out she got a boyfriend.... who was her sons age. mid 20s but like this guy was a college student, never had a girlfriend before, and she was 64 years old. and the comments on his post were mostly other cis men saying "can ur mom hmu" or "did u play cod as a child" and like i reallyyy dont wanna be that guy but like given the comments ive seen of women/girls saying that their fathers are dating someone their age, they would not be responding like that if the genders were swapped. and ik this is primarily misogynistic cis men but as a male survivor of sexual assault from a woman (multiple women actually as well as being a survivor of child abuse by my mom) who has experienced the hatefulness and dismissive attitude that other male survivors of sexual assault are met with, its just disturbing. and u can say "well evan ur trans thats different" but i would not have been met with what i was if i was a woman and my abuser was a man. rapists are protected in our society and it seems like female rapists experience more societal protections than male rapists do tbh. i had someone comment on a post saying "how can we expect men to take sexual assault seriously when their experiences with sexual assault are treated like this" and like. idk. just been something on my mind because reading that was really fucking disturbing
Honestly, this is something not many people talk about... and admittedly, it's a thing that often gets messy. So I'm going to put it down with a Keep Reading (because I'm ranting).
Keep in mind, I'm giving my viewpoint, so... naturally, it's going to be rather incomplete. It's one of those topics that always needs studies and people far smarter than me to comment further on. Especially since it's so far-reaching.
But first, a disclaimer. This isn't a thing that can be waved away with a bioessentialist or gender-essentialist viewpoint. I don't want to vilify men or masculinity here. Doing so would be unhealthy, and it helps NOBODY to reduce this down to "it's inherent to all men\masculinity".
This is a behaviour.
One that is taught.
A behaviour that confuses and wears down empathy, glorifying the worst, and IT. IS. TAUGHT. It's a product of a very specific form of conditioning. It happens at home, in social groups and through the media boys are exposed to. It's the sort of thing that got normalized and internalized VERY early on.
It's derives from Rape Myths (which are obviously harmful) and gender role stereotypes (whose harm isn't always clear or obvious): comments like "Men always want sex", "men can't be overpowered by women", "arousal, especially erections, equal consent", and the old bullshit that a "real man" should display sexual prowess. Ever heard boys being told "they're such a ladies' man"? It sounds innocuous, until you realize what it may be validating and what it can grow to if the parent isn't careful. It's conditioning. That's why people don't often recognize how bad their actions can be, and what society in general, from one's family to the media, is promoting.
Behaviour like this happens because society frames male sexuality as constant and opportunistic. It's an outlook that distorts empathy. A teaching that can distort a person's ability to emotionally process coercion, loss of control, confusion, violation of intimacy, shame and trauma when exposed to an extreme. Men are told to find any form of sexual advance as validating and desirable. That it's "winning". It teaches flattery, but doesn't teach discomfort. That's why a victim is seen as successful, "lucky", the situation fantasized as pleasurable rather than violating. It reframes being a victim of sexual assault as proof of masculinity. It's toxic and incredibly dangerous both to victims of sexual abuse (in general!) but also to male mental health.
The reason why women don't react this way is because a) their upbringing is generally framed around threat detection. So it doesn't glorify sexual prowess. And B) Society doesn't link Femininity to sexual conquest like Masculinity is.
Keep in mind: women themselves also end up with other unhealthy behaviours that get conditioned: passivity and fear of\shaming being assertive, avoidance of sexuality, ignoring their own sexuality and the role it plays in both their pleasure and sexual identity, trust issues…
What I mean by this is "just because women don't do stupid comments online does not mean they're not affected by their own upbringing". IDK if I can call it "two sides of the same coin", but... I wouldn't be too far off.
And no, it's not all men. A lot of men DO recognize these situations as harmful. A lot of men DO understand, and many do so often without even deconstructing what they learned. But it is still a problem regardless and something that people ARE trying to combat, because even though it's not all men, it's something the more toxic aspects of society want super hard that men internalize.
It's still affecting male mental health even when it doesn't lead to stupid immature and insensitive comments. The dangers go far beyond those...
The good news is that all this is an attitude that's decreasing over time. Likely due to there being more awareness and a focus on better upbringing for boys and girls… but of course, it's going to take a while.
And the sad part? Chances are most of the men who make those comments DO understand and recognize what rape is. Especially when discussing female victims: they know what it is, what it does and why it's bad, they feel outrage, they do empathize. They just fail to identify the harm when it's about their own group. They don't understand how problematic it can be, because they're projecting. Society tells them not to think of the man as a "victim". So they don't recognize the danger it can represent to them... instead, it got reframed as a social expectation to be met.
And that is why social expectations suck ass and should be brought down.
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