“The essence of any prejudice is seeing all members of a group as the same and
erasing the differences between them.” -Starhawk, from an article about
prejudice written for the On Faith panel of the Washington Post.
When I
first saw this quote embedded into an article Starhawk had written, I was quite
astonished on how many levels it spoke to me. On my journey towards the Wiccan
Path I’ve had to make a lot of adjustments to my lifestyle and general outlook
on the world, and this quote seemed to sum up what I’d been doing wrong since my
early teen years.
Two months after my thirteenth birthday I fell head
over heels in love overnight with a young man on a reality television show (who
I shall call K) . It was completely unplanned and unexpected and, unfortunately,
on the day he left the show. For the following six weeks (most of which was the
remainder of my summer holiday) , I was left feeling dizzy and disorientated,
and all interests I’d previously had suddenly had no appeal anymore.
I
spent almost all day every day bouncing a tennis ball against the wall of our
house and then rushing to the TV to watch shows he appeared in (before the days
of YouTube) . I’d spend some time every day hunting the Internet (which I’d
barely ever used until this point) for a fan site, but to no avail. What I did
find was a down the middle split of people who liked the guy and people who
hungered to push him off the nearest cliff, posting on various forums on the
reality show.
I began to list recurring names of people from either side
on post-it notes, and was dismayed to see one name in particular crop up
repeatedly on the hater side, spreading his homophobic and racist message of
loathing on almost every forum I came across.
In mid-September that year
I hit the jackpot. I found a forum devoted entirely to K, filled with girls
about my age who all felt the same way, and I was overjoyed. But I was also
quite nervous; I only just about knew how to use a computer let alone navigate a
forum, and I didn’t know a soul. K was a controversial character, and true fans
were rare, so it created for the forum (which I called DTC – ‘Devoted To- Club’,
being too ashamed at the time to reveal his identity) , a very tight-knit
community.
Because of this I was instantly sucked in and began making
like-minded friends from all over the British Isles quite rapidly. Joining the
DTC community was a steep learning curve for me; on the technical side, learning
how to use a forum, and for the other members to introduce me to other related
websites; and on the social side, making new friends from all different walks of
life with such an unusual common bond.
We created for ourselves a little
island, like a safe bubble from where we could look out at what K was doing, and
his fellow contestants from the show. Latecomers, then, were viewed with
suspicion, as so many of them eventually turned out to be haters in disguise.
These haters, usually only a distant threat (apart from individuals who
occasionally permeated our bubble) , were lumped into a single group that at the
time I labeled ‘the Lakies’.
An ‘Us versus Them’ attitude was very
quickly established among the group. The Lakies were the enemy, and every
opportunity was taken to retaliate against them, since they never hesitated to
attack K and us directly. They were very aggressive at times, and all too often
the admin would angrily post us a link to some other forum where a group of
Lakies, often led by the name I had seen crop up over and over again while I was
looking for a forum, would post reams of hateful comments towards K and
sometimes with a link to DTC, jeering at us and our values.
The admin’s
intentions were good, but it only stirred up loathing and hatred among the
group. I often felt intimidated and feared standing up to the snide and nasty
comments made about K on larger forums, without the backup of the DTC crew. DTC
was like my second home, and I loved the people there; I, like nearly everyone
else there, was prepared to fight tooth and nail against anyone at all who had
something unsavory to say about K or our group.
We worshipped K like a
god, we really did, so in a strange way, it became like a religious war. Most of
the Lakies we found supported the contestants on the reality show who had not
got on at all with K, and those who in DTC’s view had bullied him.
Eventually the Lakies grew bored of tormenting us, and later our
community grew bored of K as well and DTC disbanded (much to my dismay) , but I
still loved him, and I found myself having to do all the things we used to do as
a group on my own year after year. Now that the Lakies had no large target, they
largely left individual followers of K alone.
Depression struck not long
afterwards, (no longer having the only community I’d ever fit in with was a
contributing factor) , and it stretched out for an agonizing year until it
occurred to me to have another shot at Wicca. I’d first discovered it when I was
ten, and was fascinated by it, but admittedly never fully understood it. It had
held my interest up until that fateful summer when I was thirteen, when it was
bulldozed, along with all my other interests, unceremoniously to one side. By
age fifteen I had tried everything I could think of to break out of my
depression and I was at my wit’s end.
I spontaneously dug out an old
unread book I’d had since I was twelve on a practical guide to the basics of
Wicca, and sat down and read it cover to cover. Given a more mature approach to
Wicca, and since it handed me the lifeline I so desperately needed, I grabbed
what it had to offer with both hands and used the tools it gave me to begin to
help me out of my depression.
The only problem was that I had great
difficulty adapting a well-hammered in negative view that made very quick, often
irrational generalizations about people with an opposite viewpoint. I had to
replace my learned ‘eye for an eye’ philosophy with ‘mind the threefold law ye
should, three times bad and three times good’.
We had damned them all as
‘stupid Lakies’, and while a fair few of them did fit the Lakie stereotype (a
homophobic white male in his thirties who was a bully and probably a violent
drunk) , many more of them I’m sure were very interesting and friendly people
beneath this thin exterior.
Unfortunately, we only ever saw them within
the context of when they gave their often very acidic opinions on K; deep down,
that was all I ever wanted to see of them. That way I could condemn them all as
a single, faceless body of racist and homophobic hatred, and it would be easy to
hate those who came under a heading like that. At the time, this is what they
all looked like, and it was how they seemed to want to present themselves.
Situations similar to this have been repeated throughout history. Take
for example 1940s Britain, gripped with fear of a Nazi attack that could arrive
at any moment. Anti-German propaganda posters were published that demonized the
enemy nations, making it easier for the public to hate them, and therefore
making it seem more justified to send their sons, brothers and fathers into war
– far beyond simple patriotism.
Similarly, in my Psychology class we
studied the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis in central Africa, and the
brainwashing used by the local media to instigate and justify blind hatred
against the other tribe based on very little information.
When I was
introduced to the idea of interconnectedness, that all things vibrate with
energy and all things are interdependent, it shook the philosophy that had been
welded into my mind for so many years. Wicca, and no doubt most other Pagan
traditions, promote freedom of speech, sexual orientation, gender, race – they
encourage a global community.
Wicca is built largely upon the practices
of the indigenous tribes of the Native Americans, the Celts and Asian
traditions, when of-course there was an ‘Us versus Them’ lifestyle – it was a
natural instinct imperative for the safety of the group.
But now that we
live in a much more global community, connected by the Internet and quick and
cheap travel, petty rivalries should no longer be necessary. In the face of
climate change and economic crisis, I believe that this sustainable way of life
is made all the more important.
So as you can see, my old lifestyle and
way of thinking is polar opposite to my relatively new Wiccan way of thinking.
Sometimes, when I see a venomous comment made about K on a website, or even have
horrible comments made about him to my face (which I still do) , I automatically
find myself muttering under my breath, “Stupid Lakie… oh, no, no I can’t think
that, ” and I find myself having to stop myself from slipping into deeply
embedded old habits.
I had to adapt very quickly to the tribal mindset
of hating a group of people that posed a threat, and it’s been difficult to lose
it. But now, instead of arguing pointlessly over strong differences of opinion
that neither side obviously would change, I try to put differences aside and
seek out the things that that person and I have in common, things that we agree
about.
At DTC I had been trained to take a zero-tolerance approach to
Lakies, and after arguing with them I would make a point of blanking them
entirely. This happened with a friend from school, long after DTC had disbanded,
but the attitude still remained. This girl, who I had been close friends with,
set up a group on a social networking site proclaiming hatred for K, complete
with a poll as to why we hated him, a rant filled with hurtful comments, and
defaced pictures, and invited her friends enticing them to join the bandwagon
(when she knew nothing about him; this was fuelled only by her irritation at my
constant talking about him) .
I was mortified; after DTC shut down my
only outlet of expressing adoration was to my friends, but unintentionally, they
found it very grating. At the time, my personal definition of a Lakie was
clear... not someone who disliked K, but someone who actively and maliciously
expressed hatred for him. To me, it looked like suddenly one of my best friends
fit the description of a Lakie, and I gave her the standard treatment I gave all
the Lakies who crossed my path twice; total silent treatment.
She was
confused at first, but she cottoned on after a couple of days, and we went to
school together every day, some of the same classes together, ate lunch together
in the same group for nearly ten months without saying hardly a word to each
other. There were times when I wanted to talk to her and almost cracked, but how
then would anyone take my zero-tolerance attitude seriously? I had to make my
point clear, and stood firm despite another friend begging us to end it.
When
rediscovering Wicca, I studied for a few months, and then dedicated the
following Imbolc, and the very first working I did was to gather the courage to
make the first move to heal the rift with my friend. I brought a peace offering
(a chocolate bar) and had a nerve-wracking chat with her. It turned out she
didn’t hate K, only hated my preaching about him, and she had wanted to make the
peace as well.
It’s been a long and challenging, but fascinating journey
for me, since that fateful summer just after my thirteenth birthday over four
years ago, but I suppose rapidly changing attitudes during teen years is only a
natural part of growing up.
Dropping the habit of automatically judging
a person as soon as I found out they were a Lakie was only the most prominent of
many conflicts I’ve come across in learning about Wicca; a conflict between an
old love of modern technology and a new love of a simple Earth-based lifestyle,
and a love of flying and cheap and fast travel in conflict with a new awareness
of protecting the environment add to the list.
So I thank the people who
went to DTC for all that they gave and taught me, and for the community we had,
but also to the many Pagan writers and teachers who have made me realize that
all being the children of the God and Goddess, from whatever background, who
have whatever ideals and beliefs, who have whatever views on K (and yes, there
are good people behind the ‘Lakie’ mask) , we’re all not so different after
all.
Sophie Horrocks, Southeast England.
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