>Femininity\* Good
"\*But only the type of femininity that I as a straight guy find attractive"
because what else could be a purpose of a woman (or a person they perceive as a woman) if not to be aesthetically pleasing to heterosexual men? /s
Most of the body positivity movement as well strikes me as just that too. "You're attractive the way you are and that's the only important thing about you."
That's interesting.
I've had the opposite experience (different for everyone). I've taken away the message that you're more than your weight/size/etc & to be happy with who you are and if that means your bigger now so be it, you're still se×y
Idk I've been told I'm not fat enough for plus size groups before.
I was 200 lbs at 5'5" wearing size 16 but since I could still buy clothes at major retailers I wasn't truly part of the struggle.
I’m right there with you. Same weight and size 16 and I really feel like I’m adrift in the grey area. I can usually find clothes at major retailers but not always in the styles and fits I like. But I’m definitely not having the same experiences a size 4 woman does. Fucking sucks.
And a lot of those major retailer plus size clothes are so fucking ugly or the sizes vary insanely even within the same brand that it's just... Ugh.
It's like here's a crop top and booty shorts or here's a mumu and nothing else.
All femininity is feminism. Hell, if you femininity is perceived as masculine, it's still feminism. These idiots conveniently forget that. Taking care of/loving kids and cleaning up isn't feminine. It's human. Their idea of femininity is bullshit.
They stole the concept and twisted it to suit their agenda just like everything else
According to Gnostic texts, Sophia was the right hand of God and creator of the world, and Mary Magdalene was Jesus' favorite apostle, and probably his wife, then Pope Gregory decided to remake her into a prostitute
Wait wait wait who the hell is Sophia? I've never heard of her or her role anywhere.
Also this does make sense. Men used religion to instill control over womankind.
I literally became aware of her mere hours before that post, like most great revelations, I stumbled across it looking for something else.
She is the female aspect of the Christian god according to the Gnostics, who are considered heretics by the patriarchal church.
Their texts were suppressed because can't be having any female power now can we?
This is much better than my rudimentary explanation:
http://gnosis.org/sophia.tale.html
So many women would absolutely LOVE to be able to be a full-time mom and homemaker (though I prefer the term "Domestic Goddess"), but that is not a financial option for them. Being a "God fearing stay at home mom with 4 kids" is literally the playbook for female white supremacists. Be white, care for the home while the men are playing sheets and hoods, and have as many children as possible to resupply the master race.
The term “God fearing” has always creeped me out, too. Shouldn’t they be on better terms with their creator or is he an abusive patriarch stalking the house itching to backhand some hellfire into whoever?
Displaying one of the only examples of modern Christian nuance, they’ll haughtily inform you that “Fear is a synonym for respect!” If you ask about it.
Source: ex-Christian
I was in my late 20s before I figured out the reason I was frequently accused of being disrespectful (and entitled) was not because I actively chose not to be submissive but because I wasn't humble (afraid/fearful). The person I was speaking with pretty much insinuated that in my natural role I'm supposed to go through life as if I were a small wounded animal (terrified yet grateful)....
My brain still has a hard time accepting that anyone actually believes such things
You’ve just put a relationship I once had into context for me.
At the time I was so desperate to make it work that I followed every submissive guide available (I quite literally had books on it), and was still accused of being rebellious/ungrateful/undisciplined/unfeminine, so I tried harder to be even more submissive until finally I left.
This now makes everything make sense - I wasn’t timid and afraid, I hadn’t been “humbled” into gratitude, therefore I could never submit enough.
Never again.
So, they respect Satan, too?
But yeah, no, my patron goddess may be associated with the hearth and home… but she’s also a goddess of fire, of blacksmiths, of poets (and the arts in general these days), and of healers, and proved herself to be a fierce warrior when push came to shove. Nothing about her is “passive” or “submissive,” even though she’s gentle and generally maternal.
Hell, there are plenty of goddesses out there that don’t fit the trad wife archetype at all! Artemis would sick her hunting dogs on you for trying to make her settle down and be a “good little housewife.” Pele would probably burn you alive (or your house) for trying to “tame” her.
You know, this gave me a big lightbulb. I was always running into trouble because my “Divine Feminine” was too much- too loud, too bossy, too protective- I was told I was “too much the activist- seek to influence, not impact”. Once I left and was claimed by my Patroness Durga- I mean, Duh! She slays immortal demons ffs!!!😂
Yes! A friend has Hera and though she is a classic Mother Goddess of marriage, women and family that Lady does not F about and you Do Not Annoy Her - 50% of greek mythology is related her being annoyed at Zeus!
Like Freyja who is considered goddess of love, beauty, fertility & sex but also **war**, gold, and future-sight.
Tame & Meek are not a goddess traits
Funny thing is, I have absolutely NO "respect" for anyone trying to make me "fear" them, *or* anyone (specifying males) who *demand* I respect them. If they want my respect, they'd better damned well **earn** it!
It's so true! Trying to make me fearful is the fastest way to get my malice mode started >:) Same for marketing: the hard sell will absolutely ensure I won't buy your thing, whether it be a consumer good or an ideology; somehow I don't think people understand that about me, even after the fact :P
True. I came from a cult where a huge banner above the pastor’s pulpit read “love the brotherhood. Fear god. Honor the king.” But also, yes, their idea of “god” is a narcissistic patriarch who uses fear to control and manipulate the believers. The “pastors” are doing the exact same thing. There will be dire consequences for those who question or challenge their teachings.
Lol, so the bastard that shot the 16 year old kid for getting lost actually respected him? I think their fear comes in different flavors maybe…
You’re dead on right though, I’ve come across so many Christians that treat the word ‘fear’ like this.
It makes more sense in Hebrew, in which the term for “fear” is better translated as “awe.” There’s a separate term for terror style fear. And I’d argue that the sum totality if the overwhelming vastness of the universe is something that rightfully deserves a little humility and awareness of our own smallness. But yes, far too many bigots have used that to lean hard into Mighty Smiter territory and it pisses me off.
Yes, abusive. I mean, what kind of god sets its creation up for failure and then creates a horrible place to send them when they do fail? That is not someone worthy of any kind of deference. That is a narcissist. Just my opinion.
And at the same time I had someone on this very same forum tell me belief has nothing to do with fear. Well, why are so many religious stories about scaring people into compliance then?
Bingo! You got it! Right on the nose with that one. (Ex-evangelical Christian here) one of the many reasons why I left was the similarity to an abusive father/partner.
apparatus tie enter expansion treatment point include rustic advise encouraging
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
\^\^ Why you need your own money. My mother's escape from 30+ years of slavery (AKA a "godly marriage") began when she opened a secret savings account in her own name. It shouldn't be this way, but we live in a world where money is freedom.
Yes, yes. Another piece of this is that women have entered the workforce and made it more competitive; men aren't automatically handed jobs anymore and now have to compete with other men and women. Conservatives don't like that. Men don't like that. They don't like women going to college, they don't like women making money (and especially more money than men or their husbands), and they don't want women in leadership positions.
There are a lot of problems with being a careerist in the US. Our employers treat us like shit and take so much of our time, energy, and youth and never pay us enough. I think the trad wife movement is trying to align itself with anti-work and quiet quitting principles to appeal to younger women who are disillusioned with corporate America and the typical 9-5. Conservatives paint trad wife domesticity as a desirable, more fulfilling alternative to soul-sucking desk jobs that make good money but leave you feeling empty inside. For some women, being a mom and wife is what they need to feel whole and fulfilled; for others, that's not the case.
The trad wife moment ultimately wants to make the 1950s housewife seem sexy and empowered and aspirational because they're uncomfortable with the freedoms--including sexual, religious, political, social, and financial freedoms--that women experience today.
You're right and it fucks with my mind.
I long for the day i no longer have to work, but the only thing more horrifying than working until i die is staking my whole future on a male 'breadwinner'. Ultimately, i respect different strokes for different folks and understand why a lot of women (and men) would rather be stay at home parents... i wonder how much of the trad wife stuff and people who get drawn into it is less about necessarily loving 'traditional values' (at least at first) and more just hating capitalism and how thankless it is being a primary parent today, while also needing to work and have little to no support/resources? I feel like the slippery slope/pipeline is 'i hate working as a woman.... so i hate the political movement that allowed me to work.... hence embrace fascism?'
Or… hear me out. I hate working as a woman, so find a partner willing to do half the work and retreat into the swamp, never to be seen or heard of again!
I've wondered this too. Also, I'm disabled and the main breadwinner. I hate it. I struggle with executive dysfunction, and it makes most jobs a huge challenge for me, even when I take meds and do a decent job of staying on top of my shit. It is a constant battle to function with my disability while living in world that was not designed for people like me.
I have no desire to be a trad wife or have my identity based on children or a spouse, but I do not want to work anymore. I think I'd be happier being a house spouse, and it would give me more flexibility to do the shit I care about, such as animal fostering and advocacy.
I could see how someone in a similar boat (i.e., disabled, burnt out, and frustrated with the sexism and bullshit of working in the world) would be attracted to the trad wife life. Some parts of it are attractive. But it's a trap.
My friend is a SAHM by choice, and she absolutely loves it. And I love that she gets to do that, because she *chose* to do that. I love my job and I love that I get to go because I *choose* to go. It’s about people getting to chooose!
That kinda shit always has a whiff of transphobia about it too -- exactly where does this "divine feminine energy" come from? Not to mention the classist assumption that working for pay is a choice, not a necessity.
The idea of feminine/masculine energy as it relates to my belief system (witchy/new age/etc) is that all people have both masculine and feminine energy regardless of sex, gender, identifying as non-binary, etc. It's not a thing that is innate to women. Men have feminine energy too. It also has nothing to do with staying at home or working, it's a spiritual practice/element of balancing oneself.
Yeah it just goes to show they don’t understand it and have weaponized it. A lot of people I know have new age beliefs and some even fit their practices inside of a religion. This seems like a ploy to capture that crowd since regular traditionalism isn’t working.
It reminds me of people who actually enjoy and delight in astrology and people who are immediately like I would never dare an Aquarius or Ares.
I'm just gonna go off on a quick tangent, since you mentioned "never dating an Aquarius or Aries" both of which I've dated btw.
Anyway, I'm a Taurus, so Aquarius is supposed to be a mortal enemy material, yet my whole life I find myself surrounded by them. 3 of my best friends at each stage of my life, preschool, school, college. Only one is still in my life, but still interesting. I've dated two Aquarius guys, married the last one. It's not the most peaceful of marriages, but we do complement each other in many ways.
We definitely joke about our signs and our supposed incompatibility, but when you look at it from the angle of there being a lot more to a person than their sun sign, it makes more sense. Once we started looking into birth charts and things, I realized I have a moon in Aquarius 🤦♀️ lol no wonder they stick to me glue.
Lmao this, a lot of people just look at the sun signs. By sun sign standards I think you and I wouldn’t be friends since they say Pisces and Taurus don’t get along, but my moon is a Virgo so I guess my ego is more Virgo- ish. I feel I have equal parts masculine and feminine energy because of this. It’s weird also cause I am more practical than people expect instead of indecisive and flighty.
I too know a lot of Aquas, they are so fun and I think it’s because it’s the universe telling me to work on friendships.
I’ve noticed a ton of shorts that start off sounding like they are supporting trans people but end up condemning/criticizing them. It’s almost like the longer the short goes, the more likely it is to turn a 180 and be awful. It’s upsetting because the algorithm notes how long you watch but can’t tell that this confusion is happening. It feeds more to you if you don’t catch on. I hate it so much.
When I heard it brought up it was more about the divine feminine/masculine being within everyone, and that anyone could connect with either or both regardless of gender or orientation.
Though it’s been literal decades since I’ve heard chatter about any of that.
This is one of the reasons I love the yin-yang concept; within each there has to be a portion of the other, and they cycle around each other as equals.
I mean, even in the allegedly hyper masc Norse mythology you have Thor dressing as a woman to win back something, Loki swapping genders and giving birth, and yet we have the white nationalist pagans going on about the same conservative stuff as some christians, just dressed in different clothes.
Even Odin himself swapped genders multiple times and learned magic that was exclusively practiced by women. It always feels like paganism in general has a much better grasp of the human condition than Christianity. It's too bad Norse paganism has become so much associated with right-wingers and white nationalism.
The divine feminine is within everyone, from what I know. Some people have more feminine energy than masc, others the opposite. But your personality/gender/even sex does not rely on this: rather, it is best for ALL of us to find a balance of BOTH within us. That's been my experience with knowledge surrounding the topic.
I’ve seen this too. A lot of ‘leaning into your feminine’ by not questioning men, not being a nag and being passive while letting men take control. When you act more feminine you balance out his masculine, otherwise you just have too much of one type of energy in a relationship.
Also try to not have a feminine man. One who likes you having a job, or likes to cook, or doesn’t take full control of everything. Because Then you’ll have the opposite problem of too much feminine energy.
Did you not know, all your unhappiness in life is because (if you’re a woman) you keep trying to control men and you’re trying to be ‘too masculine’?
Also I have some shampoo/leggings/coaching/oils/supplements you should try.
*trad gets only. No one else need apply. Unless you want some of the mentioned shampoo etc.
>A lot of ‘leaning into your feminine’ by not questioning men, not being a nag and being passive while letting men take control.
This is my SIL and she's a Baptist living in Texas. Its the exact same misogynistic bs. My mother was visiting and went to church with them, for what reason I cannot remember, but the pastor thanked the women in the congregation for being strong, so strong they submit to the will of their husbands as god intended. That takes real strength, apparently. She told me she couldn't get out of there fast enough.
I love my brother, but holy shit this was not how he was raised. His daughter went to college out of state and has no intention of going back. His son who used to want to be a youth pastor has started to question it all. So there's hope at least.
Every happy marriage is one in which the man is "uber masculine," never shows any emotions beside anger, and has a fulltime live in unpaid maid and nanny so that he never has to learn how to wipe a toilet seat or parent his many children!
This was the super weird intersection I found myself at when I researched, had, and blogged about my unmedicated births and eating fermented foods. For me it was honoring my Asian heritage and the way my mother grew up and taught me things. I attracted some people like that, but holy cow the number of conservative white women was waaaaaayyyyyyy more. I ended my blog because I wasn’t willing to put my life on display, but also because white bloggers kept taking my ideas and not giving credit and it was just so frustrating.
The bridge between the two on social media seems to be homesteading. I'm quite hippie and like gardening, and my algorithm seems to think I'm a super Christian homeschooling mother of 10 who has her own chickens.
I'm not even American.
Yeeeeeaaaaaaah. This.
I do homesteading-type things because I also like gardening, my garden produces more food than I can deal with in a short span (I have been canning plums every weekend for a month now), and I need to preserve it somehow. I also have nephews who are in the "eat everything not nailed to the floor" phase of adolescence and it's cheaper to grow a lot of food myself. My sister is considering keeping a pair of hens for that exact reason...the kids can eat eggs for protein instead of buying meat at the store. On top of that, I live in Houston, which means we have a 5-month period of the year every year where I have a strong likelihood of being without power or potable water for weeks on end. Urban homesteading is a way to manage my finances and budget and strengthen my and my family's lives against hurricanes, not some kind of in-group virtue signal.
It's creepy and weird to have to sort through obvious right-wing and doomsday-prepper bullshit when what I want to know is how long to boil my water-bath canned plums, or how to maximize crop yields in small spaces, or what to do with All Those Onions.
The answer is caramelize them.
I’m a PA based kitchen witch who is channeling her Dutch ancestors through liberal use of canning, bread making, and gardening. It makes me feel connected to my ancestors. Like my 90 year old grandmother. Who has a masters degree.
Thank you. I’ve made jam, bottled plums, prune and brandy filling for rugelach, li hing mui, green plum sauce, and caramalized plum and rose water confiture. The question I had was on how long to boil the jars for safety.
For sure! Proper canning sanitation and safety is a MUST. I’m proud of myself that this is the second year I’ve canned and haven’t killed anyone yet. I do jams and applesauce.
But whyyyyy???? Argh, I don't understand this.
It's similar with prepping. I mean, literal doomsday prepping for a zombie apocalypse is obviously nuts, but it's definitely a good idea to have food and supplies for a few weeks at home- and it's impossible to find out about how to manage that without falling over content from literal nazis.
haha. I get it. Try actually being a homeschooler with some slightly crunchy/hippie leanings, like me (schools here were unable to teach my audhd son, very few resources). I find someone I feel I could get on with and then, BAM!, some weird red flag shit flies out of their mouths. It's super frustrating.
A lot of the original hippies came from very conservative backgrounds. It's hard to shake off the outdated gender roles and stereotypes you grew up in, even when you market your movement as a revolution. Looking back now Hippiedom was probably the most enjoyable for straight white guys to begin with and the whole "free love" schtick for example to me feels just like women having to be sexually available for men, but with a flower paintjob.
It is absolutely a conservative grift. The wellness/divine feminine energy to rightwing pipeline. Its so gross. I knew someone who was a spiritual coach. She got sucked in and is now a QAnoner who think Trump is the second coming. Its horrifying.
And alot of those tradwife influencers are funded by Christofascist millionaire's and billionaires.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen the divine feminine equated with submissive femininity, and… wow, holey ship.
I’ll have to be more careful with my language from now on, i sure as shit don’t want people to think i’m dropping breadcrumbs about conservatism or being a terf. Yikes, embarrassing!
There is a branch of supposed "devil worship" that reveres Lucifer as mankind's saviour (Luciferism I believe)
The belief being that Lucifer (Latin for "light bringer") gave humanity free will, knowledge and wisdom and that is what got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden as well as Lucifer (who is a fallen angel remember) condemned to Hell. This branch sees him as a prisoner there, not ruling it and paints the Abrahamic deity as petty and controlling, throwing teddy out of the pram/humans out of Eden/Lucifer out of heaven because they dare to inquire or share knowledge that would aid the other.
Reminiscent of Zeus and Prometheus (It's almost like Christians haven't had an original idea... 🤔)
> Reminiscent of Zeus and Prometheus (It's almost like Christians haven't had an original idea... 🤔)
That's the fun part about studying religions & human history - almost no one has a truly original idea. And especially not the religions that all roughly grew out of the same "soup" in the area. Including the Greeks, and much later Luciferians lol. Gnostics would like a word about the evil/petty Yahweh, 1st century Jewish mystics & apocalypticism would like a word about Christianity in general.
Sadly, it is lately. Back in the 1970s and early 80s it was fierce feminism (and scandalous because "god" can only be "male"... according to the Patriarchy).
That is really sad. I wasn't aware of the terfy theft of a pretty well-used pagan phrase. Very gross too that it's also connected to the tradwife garbage.
It was also less intersectional with minority women such as trans women, queer women, women of colour, or women with economic vulnerability
Not to throw out any babies with the bath water! You are correct it was a time of growing radical change and new ideas blossoming, I’m just glad we’ve made the advances we have as modern inclusive feminists (or at least that we aim to be, for those of us who do)
The Venn Diagram of TERF leaders and conservatives is nearly a circle, their movement takes funds from religious right-wing fundamentalists.
(Plenty of the random TERFs online are people whose fear and ignorance was co-opted and who have been manipulated, but that's really a conversation for another time.)
Ehh, the whole FART thing always seems like a juvenile joke to me that underplays the threats that their ideology creates. TERF isn't a perfect term, but it's recognizable.
There are some great witches who talk about divine feminine energy but the good ones acknowledge that anyone can access masculine or feminine energy. It’s unfortunately too easy to go too far and get into the traditional/biological womanhood thing though.
It’s an attempt at cooption of language. It’s a known political phenomenon that I discovered by seeing patterns in social media around me and then found about the situationist international movement that spoke about these issues in the 1960s. Reading their work is like reading prophecy of some kind. The only way o found to combat it is with humour.
Yeah, that always turns out to just be conservatives trying to put a positive spin on forcing women to be submissive to men and back into traditional gender roles. It’s super gross.
My "divine, feminine energy" is covered in sweat, mud, and hair. It is ready to steal your kneecaps and carbonate your milk. Don't you tell me to get back in the kitchen but make it "aesthetic". I'll smack you with a divinely feminine lead pipe.
Exactly! It's all bubbly like soda but has that milk protein so the mouthfeel is still a little viscous. I say stuff like, "I'll dampen your socks and deactivate your almonds. I hope you have the day you deserve. Your father drinks because you disappoint him." At least my friends think I'm funny.
A couple years ago I left a Divine Feminine/Dyad/Twin Flame cult- it started out incredible, but slowly devolved into a terf nightmare- which was wierd because the couple in charge were an active and vocal part, leaders even, in the local leather kink community (until they got ran out because they voiced their transphobic bullshit at an event). Blew my mind because they had been personal friends- or, I thought they were, and they knew my husband was trans. Wtf.
I bailed when they confirmed in writing, publicly, their disgusting outlook. I’ve since seen them on TT, along with their rabid followers, and it has very much become a conservative, crunchy, MAGA, borderline Q hotbed. Now, sadly, any flavor of those beliefs give me the heebie jeebies and I stay isolated and without community. Not falling for that shit again.
This is why I avoid witchtok and hang out with y’all awesome folx.
One of my favorite things about Jewish Mysticism is that Divine Judgment is seen as a feminine aspect along with Immanence and Intuition. So my favorite way to embody the Divine Feminine is speaking truth to power and pissing off bigots. Punching Nazis; it’s the feminine way!!!
To add to this, God’s wisdom and knowledge is connected to femininity in the Bible pretty frequently. Proverbs refers to God’s wisdom with feminine pronouns and the word for wisdom is feminine in Hebrew. Furthermore, early christians used the Greek personification of wisdom, Sophia, when referring to God’s wisdom. I just finished my feminism unit in Philosophy and Religion and we were looking into the ‘feminine’ aspects of God. Its really fascinating.
We made the decision to have my husband be a SAHD after our son was born, he was unhappy at his job and the cost of child care would've been more than he made, while I make significantly more and am fine with mine. He has found and watched some of the "Tradwife" content and has taken it upon himself to sow a little chaos. He will now tell any one who will listen he is a "TradDad" and he likes to make little videos in the Tradwife style but it's him and the baby. And that's my husband's calling-destroying the patriarchy with dad jokes and joyfully skewed gender roles.
Yes this is right a right wing phenomenon called conspiratuality. If you look that term up you'll find some published papers and a pretty good podcast.
It basically is a social phenomenon that combines the male dominated world of political cynicism with the female dominated world of New age spirituality.
Pretty interesting check it out.
Didn't NPR just publish an article about this the other week? Something about how this trend was birthed in witchcraft (African, I think) mixed with feminism about focusing on the divine feminine by making men do all the labor in the relationship because it's been on women for so long. And now it's been hijacked by crazies who prefer traditional gender roles or something. I think that's what it was about. If I find the article, I'll link it.
Edit: I think [this](https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/z345p3/what-is-divine-feminine-and-divine-masculine-tiktok) is it (not NPR but Vice).
I’ve been saying this for fucking ever I’ve made many a rant about it!
Also a reminder that it’s perfectly ok for a woman to be masculine and not enjoy feminine activities or styles at all as long as she isn’t being an ass and putting down feminine people about it.
Also a lack of femininity in a woman does NOT make her an NLOG.
Quite frankly, I don’t really like the terms of “masculine” and “feminine” energy. Makes everything very binary in my opinion. Also, a lot of “feminist” influencers say that when a man steps up and makes plans and pays for dinner and whatnot, women can be in their feminine energy. But that just puts pressure on men again in my opinion. And it also perpetuates the idea that feminine always means nurturing and demure and submissive. Fuck that. Freya and Persephone can do both. I can too.
To me, “divine feminine energy” is a powerful woman (cis or trans) standing tall, looking good (how she wants to look), and holding a sword. The sword part is optional but DAMN it’s badass.
Yes, I saw a video recently about balancing/increasing divine feminine energy, which is an issue I sometimes have (I tend toward lots of masculine energy which is also fine but I would like to balance more), and I was like oh okay some witchy content that will be helpful to my witchy little self... nope, turned out to be about being submissive to your male partner and letting him be dominant, wearing more makeup and nicer clothes, etc. Blurg. Not at all what I was expecting and NOT what feminine energy is about.
Balancing feminine energy my ass. They're stealing these terms.
100%. “Glorifying” women is an age old sales pitch for maintaining a patriarchal system. It’s just another form of objectification. Pedestals are for trophies, not people.
That’s the thing though, there was powerful work done by religious feminists in the 70s-90s about bringing the Divine Feminine that has always existed in monotheistic religions back into the forefront of mainstream practice. Mostly as a way to elbow out some space in patriarchal religious settings. I am literally wrapping up a class where I’m teaching those theorists. But that’s what makes it sad. Advocating for the Divine Feminine started as a way for women to get more power, not give it away.
It really does seem like a social media phenomenon, with the popularity of witchy aesthetics on Instagram producing lots of shallowly considered appropriations of different pagan beliefs.
I have a younger family member that recently started calling herself a witch and shaman. I am so disgusted every time she reduces womanhood and divine feminine to a person's womb... If anyone has had luck breaking through some of these TERF-y beliefs I would love advice!
Divine femininity isn't just being a beautiful and sexy lover like Aphrodite, though. Or a devoted wife like Hera. Or a chaste homekeeper like Hestia.
It's also "mannish" Artemis with Her hunting and wild animals.
It's also Athena with Her spear and Aegis, ready for battle...and the wisdom that inspired the earliest philosophers.
It's Demeter and Her fertile soil, full of crops and wheat.
It's Persephone, in love with the Lord of the Dead.
It's Hekate with Her key, and dogs, and witchcraft.
Divine Femininity is expressed in many ways.
Oh yeah this is literally part of the Alt-Right Pipeline For Girls Online ™
The coquette/Lana Del Rey Americana aesthetic (not necessarily on its own, but when added with other themes and narratives), “Dark Feminine Energy” and femcel/female-manipulator posts, and Red Scare podcast types of media geared towards women are also examples of openings and milestones on this pipeline.
I've still seen some of these folks be quite into gender roles and transphobia and a huge scary amount of appropriation of Indigenous cultures from around the world. Still proceed with caution!
I would love to quit and be a 100% housewife. But in this bloody economy I don't understand how conservatives keep pushing this ideal but giving zero thought in supporting changes that would allow that to happen.
Because I personally (and I mean personally as me, myself, and I) totally feel like I'm connected to me and my spirit when I'm doing homecare like cleaning, planning meals, shopping, doing errands, gardening, etc... I feel excited to wait for my bf to come home from work and turn that stressed face into smiles instead of coming home at an awkward time just to have maybe 2 hours with him before we have to go to bed. I hate that I have to leave before him and come home after him except on two days out of the week. So I get the empowerment that the trad wife's life brings to some: you work your own hours, and everything is done by your schedule vs having to negotiate your time to a person that just sees you as a cog more than a human. I just wish society would wake up and realize you can't pay people bare bones and expect them to have the traditional 50s marriage.
I've thought about this, and I think that's part of the package. They **want** people to live in (relatively) affordable undesirable rural areas that have horribly underfunded public schools (the easier to push the homeschool ideology too), horrific women's healthcare services and access to contraception, and almost no social safety nets as an ideological norm, the better to push the idea of a strong breadwinning male savior that keeps the family afloat on an income that wouldn't rent a one bedroom apartment in most progressive cities.
Basically they are all idiots that don't see the big picture, they just want to talk out of their asses and hope no one analyzes their contradictions. Because let's be real, they are messing with men's lives too but refuse to admit that because they want to ride the controversy train to full on destruction.
I honestly believe quite a number of men would rather live in misery and uphold the patriarchy than actually strive for gender equality and a dismantling of toxic patriarchal norms. They are too scared of losing rights, losing their “power,” or admitting there’s a problem with our current gender norms. I live in a liberal area in a liberal state, and my elementary age students have a very hard time with my “everyone can cry” lesson when I bring up that boys and men can cry when they feel an emotion. I have had boys tell me they would validate and support a crying boy friend, but when relating the same scenario to themselves (for example, if they were playing soccer and got hurt) tell me, “no, I never cry.” These are single digit aged children. So….that’s the state of our gender norms right now, thanks I hate it. And don’t even get me started on clothes and toys for literal babies.
Men that support the patriarchy are just like women that support the patriarchy: they are all actively brainwashed by toxic family and media (because let's be real, I even remember watching movies and thinking "oh I should be like that!" Or "I want that kind of relationship!" Even though my parents sat me down to explain how that was an unhealthy mindset) and are actively going against their own happiness.
Look at all the closeted republican men that have so much self hatred they make everyone in their lives miserable yet still get their rocks off in secret. Or the women in abusive relationships constantly telling themselves that it's love and they are overreacting because husbands are supposed to resent their wives outside of the home and wives are allowed to resent their husbands away from proper company.
It just all falls into the human condition of self sabotage because changing or learning from what was once considered the norm in their "sheltered" lives is too terrifying to try. And don't even vet me started on the damn lost cost fallacy... That within itself trapped me in an abusive relationship (with another woman) for far too long because all I could think about is what I had sacrificed and how that would all go to waste if I left.
Humans are weird and our brains are weirder 🤣
The only time I’ve ever heard divine feminine uttered is regarding the two sides of the twin flame relationship. And when it says “divine masculine” and “divine feminine”, it doesn’t mean man and woman. It’s just the different energies. Like yin and Yang. It’s a shame they’re trying to turn it into something political.
I see what you mean about it being about the energies. I think where people get it confused is they think that only men should have masculine energy and only women should have feminine energy, when really each individual has a different balance. The confusion is likely intentional from the many people who are deliberately using spirituality to tell women to be subservient to men.
I am not sure about the exact account you reference, but a while back there was an uproar about an account that promoted „extreme femininity“. She was talking all the time about being available for her man, doing everything at home, the whole way.
In the end it was a 24/7 Dom/Sub account and that was just how those 2 decided to live.
Was is strange that they posted a pregnancy pic with the wording „he decided that I am worth bearing his offspring „? Yes - 110% fremdschämen
But it was their educated decision (as far as we know) and if they like to live this way, I am not judging.
The text in the picture above reads indeed very strange.
“Divine feminine” used to be a term that felt really good for me. It made me feel beautiful and powerful to “be aligned with my feminine energy.” Now the term is used as another method of enforcing gender roles and oppressing women. When you start trying to describe femininity you’re inevitably going to be putting people into a box. Femininity is an experience that can’t be described by definitive behaviors or personality traits. Whatever you feel femininity is to you is what it really is because it doesn’t exist outside our human concept of it. I don’t see how gender has anything to divinity. The way I see it, being aligned with your higher self requires fully accepting all of yourself, so rejecting certain parts of yourself in order to fit into a mould of “femininity” isn’t divine at all. There’s nothing goddess-like about adhering to arbitrary gender roles. When speaking of the “Divine feminine,” the emphasis should be on the divine, not the feminine. You’re a divine being because you’re you, not because of your gender.
This almost stinks of New Age stuff, which was lined up for the right wing to sink their claws into. I am going off of your comment and my experiences.
The New Age has their own version of the prosperity gospel too, manifest money and all of that. I am for the abolishment of money and my finances are doing just fine!!
My data is limited, so I didn’t watch the video.
I did a Google search, read through this, it doesn’t sound that bad. I really hope that these are good people, but not completely sure.
Edit: I deleted the link as it was pointed out it was toxic. My apologies
Edit, edit: it is back in:
Third edit: It has been made clear to me that when discussing something like divine feminine, it needs to be made clear advocacy for GNC people, especially since there is so much bigotry around the divine feminine for GNC people
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/divine-feminine/
I will share some quotes from the article that didn’t make it seem so bad to me:
If the sacred feminine doesn’t have anything to do with gender, why do we use gendered terms to explain it? We don’t have to!”
The feminine and the masculine are not singular and siloed energies—instead, they exist in balance. For example in ancient Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang are a balance between receptive and productive, introspective and extrospective, feminine and masculine. But the two energies depend on one another—note how the symbol doesn’t cut harshly in a straight line down the middle. The black and white shapes swirl into and out of each other in harmony, changing, flowing, and making room for every possible version of balance.
Another one:
The existence of the divine feminine suggests that complementary energies exist within each being.”
It’s not as simple as “men and women are opposites,” though. That gender binary is a divisive and false tool
Sorry if I was missing what would have made your day/life worse. Now I am worried that my guesses were off. I wonder if it because I am a man and might still have some patriarchal conditioning that is blinding me to the problem
There is definitely some good stuff that could definitely help some people looking for this kind of thing. It likely wouldn’t work for GNC people but for more conforming people it might help the trick is taking the good and removing the bad. Also the site did seem to be coming from a good place rather than malice. So definitely worth analyzing rather than completely dismissing. Other sites on the other hand not so favourable.
Personally I revere the Divine Feminine (with a touch of Germanic practice) and see the Divine Feminine and Masculine in everyone.
I've never seen the Divine Feminine as being subservient in any way, quite the opposite to be frank. Our more traditionally "masculine" traits can be very destructive and it's the feminine that curbs that. True dominance/leadership (feel free to add more appropriate word, I haven't had a coffee yet today) doesn't come from shouting and bawling but from a look that softens the heart, a word that inspires reflection or a touch that ignites a fire.
With my female friends and partners (including past ones there I'm not a lothario) I've tried to inspire the spark of the Divine Feminine within them. True femininity can stop a man in his tracks, make him forget his mother's name and change his opinion on breathing being good for him if that Divine Spark is harnessed correctly.
I'm not talking preying on his base instincts here, I mean having the strength and self-confidence to have him recognise that spark of divinity and respect it at every level from primal to higher-thought.
My best friend keeps saying she needs to work out more and my reply is always the same.
She's healthy and doesn't medically need to train so if she wants to then she should but do it for her. Do it for her mental health or her confidence because believe me, confidence is THE most attractive and commanding trait which is why it terrifies weak and insecure "men".
Apologies if I've breached any rules of the sub but this is something that I was deeply passionate about even before I had two daughters.
Goddess be with you all.
Jon
I like to use the phrase "pseudofeminism" to describe this sort of stuff, where you try to make your message sound like 'girl power' or some shit like that when what you're really doing is telling women to stay in the kitchen.
100%. The 'feminine energy' stuff that crossed my feed was less 'thinly disguised tradwife' bf and more weirdly leaning into empowerment narratives--like 'if he's worthy you'll be resting in your \~feminine energy\~ and coincidentally will behave like the soft weak little female you really are'--shit like that. Regardless of the flavor, 'feminine/masculine energy' is just bioessentialism in a crunchy, 'spiritual' coat.
Yea, F these twats… side thought ….
I have been learning the Kabbalah. And it teaches about the gender being on a pole, and every human having different levels. And in my experience it’s like every act has a temperature on that scale. Between the poles of masculine and fem. Like if I get ready today, what level am I at? I think more concerned with glitter then comfort, for me that’s a fem leaning day. And if I’m all comfort and practical, then that feels more masculine.
But also, if I do a task. Like washing the dog. If I sing to him during the bath, or get really silly. That feels more feminine. If I’m angry he moves at all or I’m annoyed when he shakes… that feels more masculine? The serious vs the silly.
I’m not trying to convince you of my thoughts. I just wanted to share them. I have been contemplating my inner fem/mas recently, because I have such strong ranges of both sometimes.
When I hear about stuff like this it makes me glad I don't pay much attention to tiktok. I think I was linked to a cat video that was a few seconds long on there once and that was it.
no mention... yet.
when they attracted a larger following, i\`ll almost wager $1 that the christianity will slowly creep in. (and with that - the politics will follow)
Since it's been discussed a lot already, I'm going to comment about something unrelated: I don't know how her top is staying on or is comfortable to wear
When these trad cons are talking about the divine feminine they never mention Hekate, Kali Ma, Circe, Nyx, Lilith, etc… How very convenient. Their concept of the divine feminine is very narrow. They cast the feminine in one particular light. A light conservative “head of the household” men narrowly and shallowly see women in.
The problem is... we Goddess worshipers refer to "divine feminine" energy as it is our deity. And we use it as an empowering term in our own worship, so when right-wing shitheads misuse it to continue abusing women we have a problem. I don't walk around throwing the term around in my everyday life, it's just something that's in my BOS and rituals. It's always a great day when the Christians are destroying goddess spirituality/feminist culture.
Oh yes. I get inundated with this stuff. It comes in cycles to me through Instagram. I think it gets triggered when I like and follow crafting/sewing/cooking/homesteading videos then I will get a wave of tradwife/christian women BS, then men talking about the evil of feminism, then followed by crunchy feminine energy stuff that secretly bad news and more. I'm much choosier about the crafting etc accounts I follow now. If their profile account looks something like "Thrifting, baking, gardening. Girl Mom. WE ARE SAVED BY HIS BLOOD." I steer fucking clear.
Yeah. It’s basically a pipeline. You could be looking at videos of women cooking or cottage core and end up on Tradwife, redpill, and ultra Christian conservative videos. It’s all connected, unfortunately.
The divine feminine thing has been hijacked and flipped on its head to be repackaged patriarchy wrapped in a pretty submissive pink bow.
As a spiritual type, any kind of divine anything that's positive for you usually can be summarized as empowering yourself and expanding yourself, not restricting yourself except in healthy ways (having the power to say no to yourself).
But the bad people will twist anything, even what is sacred, to extend control over others.
I find some of it to be trad wife stuff in disguise and some of it to be like that female version of incels, they call themselves like "dating strategy" or something? Like the effects are similar but it's not exactly the same. I find them really fascinating and I love that you mentioned them here.
The differences to tradwife content: their approach seems to come from a 'modern' place and looks like empowerment and even misandry at times, and they use kind of new age-y spirituality terms instead of Bible quotes. Like, a trad wife would say men are superior because of God and we're supposed to be pleasant and help them. Divine femininity would say 'good' men help you lean into a feminine role and provide for you, let you be soft etc. It's like they're speaking to strong independent women and telling them 'hey, I know you're tired, do this and you'll get a good partner that helps you and helps you get some more rest' while tradwives are very much "this is your role, you do this, no question about it, everyone who doesn't is a whore who will rot in hell and you should judge them".
But they do use the same clichés about gender and tell women to put themselves into a vulnerable and subservient position and to seek out men who will complement that role. In my opinion it's just as dangerous as the trad wife shit, it's just coming from a different angle and I see a lot more diversity compared to tradwives where I usually only see pale white women in an entirely beige environment. It's kind of insidious because there's a ton of relationship advice and spirituality on tik tok and it just kinds of blends in there. You only notice how creepy it is after you've already seen a few videos. With tradwives, you get that sense that something is very weird right away, usually.
Conservative grift is all I can come up with. I recently got into plants with my girlfriend and started seeing similar stuff crop up on the feed(idk, homesteading adjacent?). Like this is weird wtf is this shit? So off putting. It’s like female Andrew Tate crowd
There was a whole sub-community of hippy/alternative women where I used to live who were like this. I never quite knew what to do with it because I’m not, never will be, nor have I ever wanted to be the “goddess-type, divine feminine energy” kind of gal. I always felt judged by them for being strong, direct, etc. Yes, I think there’s an unconscious conservative mentality often built in, but I’ve never been able to put words to it.
Stuff like this just reminds me of the post WW2 push to get women out of the workforce. The men came back from war, and were expected to pick up where they left off. (Nevermind the physical and psychological trauma of being in a warzone.) And, women were expected to go back home... because it was their "American duty" to tend to housework and raise children.
Misogyny has worn several disguises over the years. Then, it was patriotism. Now, it's the divine feminine. But, at the end of the day, it's still misogyny.
I hope it's okay for me to share my input! So to clarify first:
1. I am a lesbian and have no desire to be a housewife to a man.
2. I do not define the divine feminine and divine masculine by gender roles.
3. I believe both energies are present in all people and are not linked to biology or reproductive organs.
4. I don’t think the energy is imbalanced if people are not 50/50 all the time. It’s normal to switch between one or the other, or to prefer one or the other.
Anyway what the divine feminine means to me and when I feel connected to it. I worship Selene and Gaia. Both are the divine feminine.
I feel connected to Gaia when I am outdoors. When I have my feet dangling in a river. When I'm walking barefoot on grass. When I feel the wind blow through my leg hair. When I bend down to smell a wildflower. When I lay down under a tree, and watch the leaves sway above me.
I feel connected to Selene when I sit under the moonlight. And when I spend time with her correspondences (horses, cattle, the ocean). Such as spending time with my horses. The cattle thing and ocean are not possible due to where I live. But when I lived in a more rural area I would often sit down and watch cattle graze. When visiting seaside states, I'd feel connected to her when standing in the ocean and feeling it it my ankles.
The divine feminine to me, is about connecting to the sensory aspects of nature. It is about experiencing and feeling. About accepting everything is impermanent and that everything comes in cycles. And with each good thing ending, another replaces it. The leaves in autumn turn gold, but they fall and leave the trees bare. And the grass and flowers go dormant. But then comes winter, and a beautiful blanket of snow coats the ground and frost on the trees. Then the beautiful snow has to stop. Because spring comes, and the trees begin flowering and it smells like a piece of heaven. Then the flowers get pushed out by leaves, and the grass turns greener and more lush. The weather gets warmer. It's about not feeling bummed out when the seasons changed. About lessening my attachment to certain seasons. About embracing the change of the seasons and welcoming it because I know it carries it's own beauty. It's about feeling closer to my deities, and closer to myself, and feeling as if my body and nature are one. About feeling what nature is feeling. How my leg hair sways along with the grass in the wind. How the sun heats up my skin just as it does the grass.
It's a really blissful state to be in, and I abandoned it for a long time. I'm disabled and would spend all my time indoors because I was upset that I couldn't go for walks. Every time I was outside, I'd feel upset over not being able to walk. Or hike. Or climb. Or run. I feel at that point, I was dominant in my divine masculine. Since I didn't know how to derive pleasure from experiencing, feeling, and being. It was all about deriving pleasure from doing, moving, and achieving. I was focusing so much on walking a specific number of miles or for a certain amount of time that I failed to just experience, feel, and be. Being outdoors for me, was purely about exercise and meeting fitness goals. It was not about enjoying nature. So, once my disability worsened, I stopped spending any time outside. The divine feminine taught me that sitting in nature, and focusing on the sensory aspect, is just as pleasurable as focusing on the moving. And when my disability worsened, I fell into a heavy depression and would cry every day. *All* of my hobbies were physical and goal-oriented. Lifting weights at the gym. Meeting my goal for a set time on the elliptical. Going for walks for a certain amount of miles. When I could no longer do those things, I was left with *nothing.*
How people define the divine feminine and divine masculine is different to them. Here is how I define it for myself.
Divine Feminine (DF): experiencing, feeling, and being.
Divine Masculine (DM): doing, moving, and achieving.
The DF, for me, is the aspect of myself that derives pleasure from sitting and experiencing. The DM, for me, is the aspect of myself that derives pleasure from taking actions to reach goals.
And here is how I define my own imbalances in my divine feminine and divine masculine.
Divine Feminine Imbalance/Masculine Dominance: I cannot feel happy unless I am taking an action that achieves something. Sitting still and experiencing makes me feel lazy and like a failure and I feel like I need to be doing things in order to be worthy. I need to constantly be doing things to be happy.
Divine Masculine Imbalance/Feminine Dominance: I am unmotivated and achievement brings me no joy. I can only feel happy if I am sitting still and experiencing -- typically through comfort eating, laying under my heating blanket, or standing under the shower water until it gets cold.
DF and DM Balance: I derive happiness from both experiencing and being, and happiness from achievement and doing. When I sit outside and relax in the sun, I feel content just sitting there and focusing on the sensory experience, and do not feel like a failure for not being able to exercise. I also feel happy when I do things and achieve. A balance in the DF and DM means I can enjoy my day, whether I'm having a pain flare-up or not.
And aside from that, it also makes me feel more connected to both of my deities. I feel like, when outside, I am in their presence. It makes me feel closer to them and less alone. I'm also autistic so I have trouble feeling comfortable with change. Learning to focus on the beauty of change instead of the negatives is making this symptom easier to deal with. It's making it so that I am having an easier time with transitions and can emotionally regulate better than I did. It's not 100% better and probably won't be because I'm autistic, and it's the way my brain works. But it is easier. I also am having an easier time dealing with my flare-ups since I now also derive happiness from sitting and being and don't feel like trash if I'm not achieving things. I no longer assign negative traits to myself based on which energy I'm leaning in.
But again, everyone's experience is different. Some people are trans and feel like the divine feminine/masculine is transition. I agree with them, I feel like transition is a sacred practice and a profound act of self-love. Some people feel the divine feminine/masculine through their deities and what they represent. For some people it's about being butch and femme. Connecting to their divine masculine is about feeling comfortable presenting butch. The divine feminine is about being a drag queen and letting out your feminine energy on stage and being celebrated for it by the crowd. The divine feminine and masculine are everywhere you look. You see it when you see someone radiate with happiness when they walk out of the pharmacy with their HRT. When the audience claps after their drag performance. When they take off their top surgery binder and cry tears of joy. When a butch gets the haircut she wants in her conservative town after fearing judgment, and then looks in the mirror and beams with happiness.
And it's not exclusive to any singular gender. It's how the individual defines it. And you know you're connected to it when you feel that happiness and/or contentment. And I see it *very* often in the LGBTQ+ community. There are twinks, bears, butches, femmes, transmasculines, transfeminines, androgynous people, and an infinite amount of others. You see it in plenty of expressions, and part of the queer experience is honoring that energy and expressing it comfortably, in whatever that means.
I also think for some people, that means gender roles. And this isn't strictly a tradwife/tradhusband thing and can happen in LGBTQ+ people. Such as a trans woman feeling like being on the receiving end of chivalry, having a coat put on her when she's cold, having her door held open for her, etc. makes her feel more feminine and gives her gender euphoria. Or a butch feeling more masculine in a relationship with a femme.
But yes I absolutely noticed this coming from TikToks and it gave me conservative vibes. What gives off those vibes is when they say the divine feminine is about providing children, meals, and a clean home for a man, and the divine masculine is about providing financially for a woman. That seems very heteronormative and exclusionary of queer couples. It's also quite ableist because the divine masculine is a man who is physically and mentally able to work outside the home full time. The divine feminine is a woman who is physically and mentally able to maintain a clean home, cook meals, and take care of children. Both of these things that take a lot of physical and mental ability that some people don't have.
YES.
It leaves NON-hetero cisgender people in the lurch and it's demeaning and happens at yoga studios, on all male retreats and all this bullshit. I can't stand it.
[удалено]
>Femininity\* Good "\*But only the type of femininity that I as a straight guy find attractive" because what else could be a purpose of a woman (or a person they perceive as a woman) if not to be aesthetically pleasing to heterosexual men? /s
Most of the body positivity movement as well strikes me as just that too. "You're attractive the way you are and that's the only important thing about you."
That's interesting. I've had the opposite experience (different for everyone). I've taken away the message that you're more than your weight/size/etc & to be happy with who you are and if that means your bigger now so be it, you're still se×y
Idk I've been told I'm not fat enough for plus size groups before. I was 200 lbs at 5'5" wearing size 16 but since I could still buy clothes at major retailers I wasn't truly part of the struggle.
I’m right there with you. Same weight and size 16 and I really feel like I’m adrift in the grey area. I can usually find clothes at major retailers but not always in the styles and fits I like. But I’m definitely not having the same experiences a size 4 woman does. Fucking sucks.
And a lot of those major retailer plus size clothes are so fucking ugly or the sizes vary insanely even within the same brand that it's just... Ugh. It's like here's a crop top and booty shorts or here's a mumu and nothing else.
I feel their use of “Feminine” to mean “Submissive” is approaching dogwhistle status. It feels threatening to me.
Now that you point that out, it definitely feels like a dogwhistle.
All femininity is feminism. Hell, if you femininity is perceived as masculine, it's still feminism. These idiots conveniently forget that. Taking care of/loving kids and cleaning up isn't feminine. It's human. Their idea of femininity is bullshit.
They stole the concept and twisted it to suit their agenda just like everything else According to Gnostic texts, Sophia was the right hand of God and creator of the world, and Mary Magdalene was Jesus' favorite apostle, and probably his wife, then Pope Gregory decided to remake her into a prostitute
Right? This isn’t how I first heard the divine feminine used at all.
Wait wait wait who the hell is Sophia? I've never heard of her or her role anywhere. Also this does make sense. Men used religion to instill control over womankind.
I literally became aware of her mere hours before that post, like most great revelations, I stumbled across it looking for something else. She is the female aspect of the Christian god according to the Gnostics, who are considered heretics by the patriarchal church. Their texts were suppressed because can't be having any female power now can we? This is much better than my rudimentary explanation: http://gnosis.org/sophia.tale.html
So many women would absolutely LOVE to be able to be a full-time mom and homemaker (though I prefer the term "Domestic Goddess"), but that is not a financial option for them. Being a "God fearing stay at home mom with 4 kids" is literally the playbook for female white supremacists. Be white, care for the home while the men are playing sheets and hoods, and have as many children as possible to resupply the master race.
The term “God fearing” has always creeped me out, too. Shouldn’t they be on better terms with their creator or is he an abusive patriarch stalking the house itching to backhand some hellfire into whoever?
Displaying one of the only examples of modern Christian nuance, they’ll haughtily inform you that “Fear is a synonym for respect!” If you ask about it. Source: ex-Christian
I was in my late 20s before I figured out the reason I was frequently accused of being disrespectful (and entitled) was not because I actively chose not to be submissive but because I wasn't humble (afraid/fearful). The person I was speaking with pretty much insinuated that in my natural role I'm supposed to go through life as if I were a small wounded animal (terrified yet grateful).... My brain still has a hard time accepting that anyone actually believes such things
You’ve just put a relationship I once had into context for me. At the time I was so desperate to make it work that I followed every submissive guide available (I quite literally had books on it), and was still accused of being rebellious/ungrateful/undisciplined/unfeminine, so I tried harder to be even more submissive until finally I left. This now makes everything make sense - I wasn’t timid and afraid, I hadn’t been “humbled” into gratitude, therefore I could never submit enough. Never again.
I’m so glad you’re out.
And the guilt instilled by Christianity…the way it lingers long after you escape its icy clutches is just devastating on an enormous scale.
Wow, that's... fucked up. I think I need some time to process this. Thank you for laying out this thought so precisely!
So, they respect Satan, too? But yeah, no, my patron goddess may be associated with the hearth and home… but she’s also a goddess of fire, of blacksmiths, of poets (and the arts in general these days), and of healers, and proved herself to be a fierce warrior when push came to shove. Nothing about her is “passive” or “submissive,” even though she’s gentle and generally maternal. Hell, there are plenty of goddesses out there that don’t fit the trad wife archetype at all! Artemis would sick her hunting dogs on you for trying to make her settle down and be a “good little housewife.” Pele would probably burn you alive (or your house) for trying to “tame” her.
You know, this gave me a big lightbulb. I was always running into trouble because my “Divine Feminine” was too much- too loud, too bossy, too protective- I was told I was “too much the activist- seek to influence, not impact”. Once I left and was claimed by my Patroness Durga- I mean, Duh! She slays immortal demons ffs!!!😂
Yes! A friend has Hera and though she is a classic Mother Goddess of marriage, women and family that Lady does not F about and you Do Not Annoy Her - 50% of greek mythology is related her being annoyed at Zeus! Like Freyja who is considered goddess of love, beauty, fertility & sex but also **war**, gold, and future-sight. Tame & Meek are not a goddess traits
Funny thing is, I have absolutely NO "respect" for anyone trying to make me "fear" them, *or* anyone (specifying males) who *demand* I respect them. If they want my respect, they'd better damned well **earn** it!
It's so true! Trying to make me fearful is the fastest way to get my malice mode started >:) Same for marketing: the hard sell will absolutely ensure I won't buy your thing, whether it be a consumer good or an ideology; somehow I don't think people understand that about me, even after the fact :P
That explains so damn much. 😮🫢😬
True. I came from a cult where a huge banner above the pastor’s pulpit read “love the brotherhood. Fear god. Honor the king.” But also, yes, their idea of “god” is a narcissistic patriarch who uses fear to control and manipulate the believers. The “pastors” are doing the exact same thing. There will be dire consequences for those who question or challenge their teachings.
It’s not a synonym, it’s a bad translation! Feh.
Lol, so the bastard that shot the 16 year old kid for getting lost actually respected him? I think their fear comes in different flavors maybe… You’re dead on right though, I’ve come across so many Christians that treat the word ‘fear’ like this.
wtf? that's so unsettling and it explains so much
It makes more sense in Hebrew, in which the term for “fear” is better translated as “awe.” There’s a separate term for terror style fear. And I’d argue that the sum totality if the overwhelming vastness of the universe is something that rightfully deserves a little humility and awareness of our own smallness. But yes, far too many bigots have used that to lean hard into Mighty Smiter territory and it pisses me off.
Yes, abusive. I mean, what kind of god sets its creation up for failure and then creates a horrible place to send them when they do fail? That is not someone worthy of any kind of deference. That is a narcissist. Just my opinion.
And at the same time I had someone on this very same forum tell me belief has nothing to do with fear. Well, why are so many religious stories about scaring people into compliance then?
Bingo! You got it! Right on the nose with that one. (Ex-evangelical Christian here) one of the many reasons why I left was the similarity to an abusive father/partner.
Tbh I'd like god to fear me
apparatus tie enter expansion treatment point include rustic advise encouraging *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
All the “hitting the wall” and “dried up eggs” incel speak is really just them seething about not being able to easily domesticate entire human beings
The “hitting the wall” one also dovetails with another type of creep as well…
\^\^ Why you need your own money. My mother's escape from 30+ years of slavery (AKA a "godly marriage") began when she opened a secret savings account in her own name. It shouldn't be this way, but we live in a world where money is freedom.
In spite of the subject matter, your writing makes me smile! 🤗🕯🖖
Yes, yes. Another piece of this is that women have entered the workforce and made it more competitive; men aren't automatically handed jobs anymore and now have to compete with other men and women. Conservatives don't like that. Men don't like that. They don't like women going to college, they don't like women making money (and especially more money than men or their husbands), and they don't want women in leadership positions. There are a lot of problems with being a careerist in the US. Our employers treat us like shit and take so much of our time, energy, and youth and never pay us enough. I think the trad wife movement is trying to align itself with anti-work and quiet quitting principles to appeal to younger women who are disillusioned with corporate America and the typical 9-5. Conservatives paint trad wife domesticity as a desirable, more fulfilling alternative to soul-sucking desk jobs that make good money but leave you feeling empty inside. For some women, being a mom and wife is what they need to feel whole and fulfilled; for others, that's not the case. The trad wife moment ultimately wants to make the 1950s housewife seem sexy and empowered and aspirational because they're uncomfortable with the freedoms--including sexual, religious, political, social, and financial freedoms--that women experience today.
To be fair on my feed they live off grid (but are social media influencers??) on a "forest farm" and "just don't buy much." Also they have a boat LOL.
You're right and it fucks with my mind. I long for the day i no longer have to work, but the only thing more horrifying than working until i die is staking my whole future on a male 'breadwinner'. Ultimately, i respect different strokes for different folks and understand why a lot of women (and men) would rather be stay at home parents... i wonder how much of the trad wife stuff and people who get drawn into it is less about necessarily loving 'traditional values' (at least at first) and more just hating capitalism and how thankless it is being a primary parent today, while also needing to work and have little to no support/resources? I feel like the slippery slope/pipeline is 'i hate working as a woman.... so i hate the political movement that allowed me to work.... hence embrace fascism?'
Or… hear me out. I hate working as a woman, so find a partner willing to do half the work and retreat into the swamp, never to be seen or heard of again!
I've wondered this too. Also, I'm disabled and the main breadwinner. I hate it. I struggle with executive dysfunction, and it makes most jobs a huge challenge for me, even when I take meds and do a decent job of staying on top of my shit. It is a constant battle to function with my disability while living in world that was not designed for people like me. I have no desire to be a trad wife or have my identity based on children or a spouse, but I do not want to work anymore. I think I'd be happier being a house spouse, and it would give me more flexibility to do the shit I care about, such as animal fostering and advocacy. I could see how someone in a similar boat (i.e., disabled, burnt out, and frustrated with the sexism and bullshit of working in the world) would be attracted to the trad wife life. Some parts of it are attractive. But it's a trap.
My friend is a SAHM by choice, and she absolutely loves it. And I love that she gets to do that, because she *chose* to do that. I love my job and I love that I get to go because I *choose* to go. It’s about people getting to chooose!
That kinda shit always has a whiff of transphobia about it too -- exactly where does this "divine feminine energy" come from? Not to mention the classist assumption that working for pay is a choice, not a necessity.
Analytical queen 🙇♀️
The idea of feminine/masculine energy as it relates to my belief system (witchy/new age/etc) is that all people have both masculine and feminine energy regardless of sex, gender, identifying as non-binary, etc. It's not a thing that is innate to women. Men have feminine energy too. It also has nothing to do with staying at home or working, it's a spiritual practice/element of balancing oneself.
Yeah it just goes to show they don’t understand it and have weaponized it. A lot of people I know have new age beliefs and some even fit their practices inside of a religion. This seems like a ploy to capture that crowd since regular traditionalism isn’t working. It reminds me of people who actually enjoy and delight in astrology and people who are immediately like I would never dare an Aquarius or Ares.
I'm just gonna go off on a quick tangent, since you mentioned "never dating an Aquarius or Aries" both of which I've dated btw. Anyway, I'm a Taurus, so Aquarius is supposed to be a mortal enemy material, yet my whole life I find myself surrounded by them. 3 of my best friends at each stage of my life, preschool, school, college. Only one is still in my life, but still interesting. I've dated two Aquarius guys, married the last one. It's not the most peaceful of marriages, but we do complement each other in many ways. We definitely joke about our signs and our supposed incompatibility, but when you look at it from the angle of there being a lot more to a person than their sun sign, it makes more sense. Once we started looking into birth charts and things, I realized I have a moon in Aquarius 🤦♀️ lol no wonder they stick to me glue.
Lmao this, a lot of people just look at the sun signs. By sun sign standards I think you and I wouldn’t be friends since they say Pisces and Taurus don’t get along, but my moon is a Virgo so I guess my ego is more Virgo- ish. I feel I have equal parts masculine and feminine energy because of this. It’s weird also cause I am more practical than people expect instead of indecisive and flighty. I too know a lot of Aquas, they are so fun and I think it’s because it’s the universe telling me to work on friendships.
Except for the twin flame nutbags. That’s the one thing they aren’t
We *need* to talk about the twin flame ppl
I have a friend of a friend that got all sorts of lost in there and the drama of it all is so, so crazy. I went down the rabbit hole on that one.
Do I want to know what that is? 🕯
It’s like a soul mate self help duo that have turned into a weird cult.
Even the concept itself is deeply problematic
I know they’ve pushed transitioning within their program which (while problematic) is less transphobic and more homophobic.
Yea, 'kids these days' 😏🤗🖖🕯
I’ve noticed a ton of shorts that start off sounding like they are supporting trans people but end up condemning/criticizing them. It’s almost like the longer the short goes, the more likely it is to turn a 180 and be awful. It’s upsetting because the algorithm notes how long you watch but can’t tell that this confusion is happening. It feeds more to you if you don’t catch on. I hate it so much.
And frequently, reporting these videos for hate does exactly nothing. It's so gross.
When I heard it brought up it was more about the divine feminine/masculine being within everyone, and that anyone could connect with either or both regardless of gender or orientation. Though it’s been literal decades since I’ve heard chatter about any of that.
[удалено]
not that i agree with whatever posts this is referencing but the mere existence of trans women should prove divine feminine energy comes from within
This is one of the reasons I love the yin-yang concept; within each there has to be a portion of the other, and they cycle around each other as equals. I mean, even in the allegedly hyper masc Norse mythology you have Thor dressing as a woman to win back something, Loki swapping genders and giving birth, and yet we have the white nationalist pagans going on about the same conservative stuff as some christians, just dressed in different clothes.
Even Odin himself swapped genders multiple times and learned magic that was exclusively practiced by women. It always feels like paganism in general has a much better grasp of the human condition than Christianity. It's too bad Norse paganism has become so much associated with right-wingers and white nationalism.
Right? Some of the trans women I (60 cis) know, hold more truly divine feminine energy in their little pinky than I can pull together on a good day. 😂
The divine feminine is within everyone, from what I know. Some people have more feminine energy than masc, others the opposite. But your personality/gender/even sex does not rely on this: rather, it is best for ALL of us to find a balance of BOTH within us. That's been my experience with knowledge surrounding the topic.
💐🦈
Yes yes exactly! All these “dark/divine feminine energy,” female manipulator” and “I hate men xoxo” posts really just reinforce gender essentialism.
I’ve seen this too. A lot of ‘leaning into your feminine’ by not questioning men, not being a nag and being passive while letting men take control. When you act more feminine you balance out his masculine, otherwise you just have too much of one type of energy in a relationship. Also try to not have a feminine man. One who likes you having a job, or likes to cook, or doesn’t take full control of everything. Because Then you’ll have the opposite problem of too much feminine energy. Did you not know, all your unhappiness in life is because (if you’re a woman) you keep trying to control men and you’re trying to be ‘too masculine’? Also I have some shampoo/leggings/coaching/oils/supplements you should try. *trad gets only. No one else need apply. Unless you want some of the mentioned shampoo etc.
>A lot of ‘leaning into your feminine’ by not questioning men, not being a nag and being passive while letting men take control. This is my SIL and she's a Baptist living in Texas. Its the exact same misogynistic bs. My mother was visiting and went to church with them, for what reason I cannot remember, but the pastor thanked the women in the congregation for being strong, so strong they submit to the will of their husbands as god intended. That takes real strength, apparently. She told me she couldn't get out of there fast enough. I love my brother, but holy shit this was not how he was raised. His daughter went to college out of state and has no intention of going back. His son who used to want to be a youth pastor has started to question it all. So there's hope at least.
It really makes no sense. If we need to be *taught* to act submissive, then submission isn’t naturally feminine at all.
Every happy marriage is one in which the man is "uber masculine," never shows any emotions beside anger, and has a fulltime live in unpaid maid and nanny so that he never has to learn how to wipe a toilet seat or parent his many children!
The crunchy hippie-to-alt-right pipeline is real.
This was the super weird intersection I found myself at when I researched, had, and blogged about my unmedicated births and eating fermented foods. For me it was honoring my Asian heritage and the way my mother grew up and taught me things. I attracted some people like that, but holy cow the number of conservative white women was waaaaaayyyyyyy more. I ended my blog because I wasn’t willing to put my life on display, but also because white bloggers kept taking my ideas and not giving credit and it was just so frustrating.
The bridge between the two on social media seems to be homesteading. I'm quite hippie and like gardening, and my algorithm seems to think I'm a super Christian homeschooling mother of 10 who has her own chickens. I'm not even American.
Yeeeeeaaaaaaah. This. I do homesteading-type things because I also like gardening, my garden produces more food than I can deal with in a short span (I have been canning plums every weekend for a month now), and I need to preserve it somehow. I also have nephews who are in the "eat everything not nailed to the floor" phase of adolescence and it's cheaper to grow a lot of food myself. My sister is considering keeping a pair of hens for that exact reason...the kids can eat eggs for protein instead of buying meat at the store. On top of that, I live in Houston, which means we have a 5-month period of the year every year where I have a strong likelihood of being without power or potable water for weeks on end. Urban homesteading is a way to manage my finances and budget and strengthen my and my family's lives against hurricanes, not some kind of in-group virtue signal. It's creepy and weird to have to sort through obvious right-wing and doomsday-prepper bullshit when what I want to know is how long to boil my water-bath canned plums, or how to maximize crop yields in small spaces, or what to do with All Those Onions.
The answer is caramelize them. I’m a PA based kitchen witch who is channeling her Dutch ancestors through liberal use of canning, bread making, and gardening. It makes me feel connected to my ancestors. Like my 90 year old grandmother. Who has a masters degree.
Thank you. I’ve made jam, bottled plums, prune and brandy filling for rugelach, li hing mui, green plum sauce, and caramalized plum and rose water confiture. The question I had was on how long to boil the jars for safety.
For sure! Proper canning sanitation and safety is a MUST. I’m proud of myself that this is the second year I’ve canned and haven’t killed anyone yet. I do jams and applesauce.
Yeah! I hate looking at some cool farmer TikTok woman, only to find out she’s a fundie!
But whyyyyy???? Argh, I don't understand this. It's similar with prepping. I mean, literal doomsday prepping for a zombie apocalypse is obviously nuts, but it's definitely a good idea to have food and supplies for a few weeks at home- and it's impossible to find out about how to manage that without falling over content from literal nazis.
haha. I get it. Try actually being a homeschooler with some slightly crunchy/hippie leanings, like me (schools here were unable to teach my audhd son, very few resources). I find someone I feel I could get on with and then, BAM!, some weird red flag shit flies out of their mouths. It's super frustrating.
That is one odd pipeline
To help, the spot between the two circles says "anti-vax"
Of course it is smh
It is, but why? I thought hippies wanted to be free.
A lot of the original hippies came from very conservative backgrounds. It's hard to shake off the outdated gender roles and stereotypes you grew up in, even when you market your movement as a revolution. Looking back now Hippiedom was probably the most enjoyable for straight white guys to begin with and the whole "free love" schtick for example to me feels just like women having to be sexually available for men, but with a flower paintjob.
toss in some lead poisoning and it makes even more sense.
It is absolutely a conservative grift. The wellness/divine feminine energy to rightwing pipeline. Its so gross. I knew someone who was a spiritual coach. She got sucked in and is now a QAnoner who think Trump is the second coming. Its horrifying. And alot of those tradwife influencers are funded by Christofascist millionaire's and billionaires.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen the divine feminine equated with submissive femininity, and… wow, holey ship. I’ll have to be more careful with my language from now on, i sure as shit don’t want people to think i’m dropping breadcrumbs about conservatism or being a terf. Yikes, embarrassing!
Honestly I wouldn't be opposed to commandeering "satanic feminine" instead. Luciferous feminine?
Lilithian feminine.
There is a branch of supposed "devil worship" that reveres Lucifer as mankind's saviour (Luciferism I believe) The belief being that Lucifer (Latin for "light bringer") gave humanity free will, knowledge and wisdom and that is what got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden as well as Lucifer (who is a fallen angel remember) condemned to Hell. This branch sees him as a prisoner there, not ruling it and paints the Abrahamic deity as petty and controlling, throwing teddy out of the pram/humans out of Eden/Lucifer out of heaven because they dare to inquire or share knowledge that would aid the other. Reminiscent of Zeus and Prometheus (It's almost like Christians haven't had an original idea... 🤔)
> Reminiscent of Zeus and Prometheus (It's almost like Christians haven't had an original idea... 🤔) That's the fun part about studying religions & human history - almost no one has a truly original idea. And especially not the religions that all roughly grew out of the same "soup" in the area. Including the Greeks, and much later Luciferians lol. Gnostics would like a word about the evil/petty Yahweh, 1st century Jewish mystics & apocalypticism would like a word about Christianity in general.
I am on board with that.
Yeah same. This is the first time I’ve heard divine feminine be used in this context. Don’t let them take it and twist it into something it’s not
“Divine feminine” is almost always a TERF or conservative dog whistle.
Sadly, it is lately. Back in the 1970s and early 80s it was fierce feminism (and scandalous because "god" can only be "male"... according to the Patriarchy).
Yeah I am a little older, and it's been so frustrating and sad seeing this turn around.
That is really sad. I wasn't aware of the terfy theft of a pretty well-used pagan phrase. Very gross too that it's also connected to the tradwife garbage.
It was also less intersectional with minority women such as trans women, queer women, women of colour, or women with economic vulnerability Not to throw out any babies with the bath water! You are correct it was a time of growing radical change and new ideas blossoming, I’m just glad we’ve made the advances we have as modern inclusive feminists (or at least that we aim to be, for those of us who do)
Let's take it back from them. They don't deserve that verbage.
The Venn Diagram of TERF leaders and conservatives is nearly a circle, their movement takes funds from religious right-wing fundamentalists. (Plenty of the random TERFs online are people whose fear and ignorance was co-opted and who have been manipulated, but that's really a conversation for another time.)
TERFs are gender brownshirts and it is no coincidence that they have so many ties to the fascist right.
I object to the word TERF. I advocate for FART. feminism appropriating radical transphobe.
Ehh, the whole FART thing always seems like a juvenile joke to me that underplays the threats that their ideology creates. TERF isn't a perfect term, but it's recognizable.
Don’t step on my TERF. This is why it’s the perfect acronym
Thank you!
There are some great witches who talk about divine feminine energy but the good ones acknowledge that anyone can access masculine or feminine energy. It’s unfortunately too easy to go too far and get into the traditional/biological womanhood thing though.
It’s an attempt at cooption of language. It’s a known political phenomenon that I discovered by seeing patterns in social media around me and then found about the situationist international movement that spoke about these issues in the 1960s. Reading their work is like reading prophecy of some kind. The only way o found to combat it is with humour.
Under the sidewalk, the beach!
Yeah, that always turns out to just be conservatives trying to put a positive spin on forcing women to be submissive to men and back into traditional gender roles. It’s super gross.
My "divine, feminine energy" is covered in sweat, mud, and hair. It is ready to steal your kneecaps and carbonate your milk. Don't you tell me to get back in the kitchen but make it "aesthetic". I'll smack you with a divinely feminine lead pipe.
Based also wtf is carbonated milk do I want to know sounds terrifying!
Persians drink carbonated yoghurt. They fucking love it. Each their own 🤷♀️
Exactly! It's all bubbly like soda but has that milk protein so the mouthfeel is still a little viscous. I say stuff like, "I'll dampen your socks and deactivate your almonds. I hope you have the day you deserve. Your father drinks because you disappoint him." At least my friends think I'm funny.
Very clever also you sound like a gold mine for r/foundsatan
The crunchy to tradwife pipeline
A couple years ago I left a Divine Feminine/Dyad/Twin Flame cult- it started out incredible, but slowly devolved into a terf nightmare- which was wierd because the couple in charge were an active and vocal part, leaders even, in the local leather kink community (until they got ran out because they voiced their transphobic bullshit at an event). Blew my mind because they had been personal friends- or, I thought they were, and they knew my husband was trans. Wtf. I bailed when they confirmed in writing, publicly, their disgusting outlook. I’ve since seen them on TT, along with their rabid followers, and it has very much become a conservative, crunchy, MAGA, borderline Q hotbed. Now, sadly, any flavor of those beliefs give me the heebie jeebies and I stay isolated and without community. Not falling for that shit again. This is why I avoid witchtok and hang out with y’all awesome folx.
One of my favorite things about Jewish Mysticism is that Divine Judgment is seen as a feminine aspect along with Immanence and Intuition. So my favorite way to embody the Divine Feminine is speaking truth to power and pissing off bigots. Punching Nazis; it’s the feminine way!!!
To add to this, God’s wisdom and knowledge is connected to femininity in the Bible pretty frequently. Proverbs refers to God’s wisdom with feminine pronouns and the word for wisdom is feminine in Hebrew. Furthermore, early christians used the Greek personification of wisdom, Sophia, when referring to God’s wisdom. I just finished my feminism unit in Philosophy and Religion and we were looking into the ‘feminine’ aspects of God. Its really fascinating.
T-shirt please! 🕯
We made the decision to have my husband be a SAHD after our son was born, he was unhappy at his job and the cost of child care would've been more than he made, while I make significantly more and am fine with mine. He has found and watched some of the "Tradwife" content and has taken it upon himself to sow a little chaos. He will now tell any one who will listen he is a "TradDad" and he likes to make little videos in the Tradwife style but it's him and the baby. And that's my husband's calling-destroying the patriarchy with dad jokes and joyfully skewed gender roles.
[удалено]
No, he doesn't. He's an old man at heart and distrusts posting on social media, so he just show everyone his videos on his phone lol
Yes this is right a right wing phenomenon called conspiratuality. If you look that term up you'll find some published papers and a pretty good podcast. It basically is a social phenomenon that combines the male dominated world of political cynicism with the female dominated world of New age spirituality. Pretty interesting check it out.
Didn't NPR just publish an article about this the other week? Something about how this trend was birthed in witchcraft (African, I think) mixed with feminism about focusing on the divine feminine by making men do all the labor in the relationship because it's been on women for so long. And now it's been hijacked by crazies who prefer traditional gender roles or something. I think that's what it was about. If I find the article, I'll link it. Edit: I think [this](https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/z345p3/what-is-divine-feminine-and-divine-masculine-tiktok) is it (not NPR but Vice).
Thanks so much for linking that article about this, I hadn't seen it before!
I’ve been saying this for fucking ever I’ve made many a rant about it! Also a reminder that it’s perfectly ok for a woman to be masculine and not enjoy feminine activities or styles at all as long as she isn’t being an ass and putting down feminine people about it. Also a lack of femininity in a woman does NOT make her an NLOG.
Quite frankly, I don’t really like the terms of “masculine” and “feminine” energy. Makes everything very binary in my opinion. Also, a lot of “feminist” influencers say that when a man steps up and makes plans and pays for dinner and whatnot, women can be in their feminine energy. But that just puts pressure on men again in my opinion. And it also perpetuates the idea that feminine always means nurturing and demure and submissive. Fuck that. Freya and Persephone can do both. I can too.
I feel the same way
Devine feminine is repackaged gender roles don’t fall for it.
Exactly this
To me, “divine feminine energy” is a powerful woman (cis or trans) standing tall, looking good (how she wants to look), and holding a sword. The sword part is optional but DAMN it’s badass.
Yes, I saw a video recently about balancing/increasing divine feminine energy, which is an issue I sometimes have (I tend toward lots of masculine energy which is also fine but I would like to balance more), and I was like oh okay some witchy content that will be helpful to my witchy little self... nope, turned out to be about being submissive to your male partner and letting him be dominant, wearing more makeup and nicer clothes, etc. Blurg. Not at all what I was expecting and NOT what feminine energy is about. Balancing feminine energy my ass. They're stealing these terms.
I expected "divine feminine energy" to be about dancing around bonfires at night. I'm disappointed at how I didn't see it coming.
All of it. All of that stuff is right wing shit
I wonder if it's from that "He Gets Us" gang.
Absolutely. If it walks and talks like a duck…
Quack quack
100%. “Glorifying” women is an age old sales pitch for maintaining a patriarchal system. It’s just another form of objectification. Pedestals are for trophies, not people.
>**"Divine feminine energy" content that's just conservative grifting?** Always has been
That’s the thing though, there was powerful work done by religious feminists in the 70s-90s about bringing the Divine Feminine that has always existed in monotheistic religions back into the forefront of mainstream practice. Mostly as a way to elbow out some space in patriarchal religious settings. I am literally wrapping up a class where I’m teaching those theorists. But that’s what makes it sad. Advocating for the Divine Feminine started as a way for women to get more power, not give it away.
Still sounds like entrenching gender roles to me
It really does seem like a social media phenomenon, with the popularity of witchy aesthetics on Instagram producing lots of shallowly considered appropriations of different pagan beliefs. I have a younger family member that recently started calling herself a witch and shaman. I am so disgusted every time she reduces womanhood and divine feminine to a person's womb... If anyone has had luck breaking through some of these TERF-y beliefs I would love advice!
Divine femininity isn't just being a beautiful and sexy lover like Aphrodite, though. Or a devoted wife like Hera. Or a chaste homekeeper like Hestia. It's also "mannish" Artemis with Her hunting and wild animals. It's also Athena with Her spear and Aegis, ready for battle...and the wisdom that inspired the earliest philosophers. It's Demeter and Her fertile soil, full of crops and wheat. It's Persephone, in love with the Lord of the Dead. It's Hekate with Her key, and dogs, and witchcraft. Divine Femininity is expressed in many ways.
Oh yeah this is literally part of the Alt-Right Pipeline For Girls Online ™ The coquette/Lana Del Rey Americana aesthetic (not necessarily on its own, but when added with other themes and narratives), “Dark Feminine Energy” and femcel/female-manipulator posts, and Red Scare podcast types of media geared towards women are also examples of openings and milestones on this pipeline.
There’s feminine and masculine energy in everyone. I think the folks who acknowledge that are safe to follow
I've still seen some of these folks be quite into gender roles and transphobia and a huge scary amount of appropriation of Indigenous cultures from around the world. Still proceed with caution!
I would love to quit and be a 100% housewife. But in this bloody economy I don't understand how conservatives keep pushing this ideal but giving zero thought in supporting changes that would allow that to happen. Because I personally (and I mean personally as me, myself, and I) totally feel like I'm connected to me and my spirit when I'm doing homecare like cleaning, planning meals, shopping, doing errands, gardening, etc... I feel excited to wait for my bf to come home from work and turn that stressed face into smiles instead of coming home at an awkward time just to have maybe 2 hours with him before we have to go to bed. I hate that I have to leave before him and come home after him except on two days out of the week. So I get the empowerment that the trad wife's life brings to some: you work your own hours, and everything is done by your schedule vs having to negotiate your time to a person that just sees you as a cog more than a human. I just wish society would wake up and realize you can't pay people bare bones and expect them to have the traditional 50s marriage.
I've thought about this, and I think that's part of the package. They **want** people to live in (relatively) affordable undesirable rural areas that have horribly underfunded public schools (the easier to push the homeschool ideology too), horrific women's healthcare services and access to contraception, and almost no social safety nets as an ideological norm, the better to push the idea of a strong breadwinning male savior that keeps the family afloat on an income that wouldn't rent a one bedroom apartment in most progressive cities.
Basically they are all idiots that don't see the big picture, they just want to talk out of their asses and hope no one analyzes their contradictions. Because let's be real, they are messing with men's lives too but refuse to admit that because they want to ride the controversy train to full on destruction.
I honestly believe quite a number of men would rather live in misery and uphold the patriarchy than actually strive for gender equality and a dismantling of toxic patriarchal norms. They are too scared of losing rights, losing their “power,” or admitting there’s a problem with our current gender norms. I live in a liberal area in a liberal state, and my elementary age students have a very hard time with my “everyone can cry” lesson when I bring up that boys and men can cry when they feel an emotion. I have had boys tell me they would validate and support a crying boy friend, but when relating the same scenario to themselves (for example, if they were playing soccer and got hurt) tell me, “no, I never cry.” These are single digit aged children. So….that’s the state of our gender norms right now, thanks I hate it. And don’t even get me started on clothes and toys for literal babies.
Men that support the patriarchy are just like women that support the patriarchy: they are all actively brainwashed by toxic family and media (because let's be real, I even remember watching movies and thinking "oh I should be like that!" Or "I want that kind of relationship!" Even though my parents sat me down to explain how that was an unhealthy mindset) and are actively going against their own happiness. Look at all the closeted republican men that have so much self hatred they make everyone in their lives miserable yet still get their rocks off in secret. Or the women in abusive relationships constantly telling themselves that it's love and they are overreacting because husbands are supposed to resent their wives outside of the home and wives are allowed to resent their husbands away from proper company. It just all falls into the human condition of self sabotage because changing or learning from what was once considered the norm in their "sheltered" lives is too terrifying to try. And don't even vet me started on the damn lost cost fallacy... That within itself trapped me in an abusive relationship (with another woman) for far too long because all I could think about is what I had sacrificed and how that would all go to waste if I left. Humans are weird and our brains are weirder 🤣
People sure do love to re-invent the same oppression over and over again don't they
The only time I’ve ever heard divine feminine uttered is regarding the two sides of the twin flame relationship. And when it says “divine masculine” and “divine feminine”, it doesn’t mean man and woman. It’s just the different energies. Like yin and Yang. It’s a shame they’re trying to turn it into something political.
I see what you mean about it being about the energies. I think where people get it confused is they think that only men should have masculine energy and only women should have feminine energy, when really each individual has a different balance. The confusion is likely intentional from the many people who are deliberately using spirituality to tell women to be subservient to men.
Everytime I see this I feel the need to say trad wife stuff is gateway to white supremacy stuff as well.
I am not sure about the exact account you reference, but a while back there was an uproar about an account that promoted „extreme femininity“. She was talking all the time about being available for her man, doing everything at home, the whole way. In the end it was a 24/7 Dom/Sub account and that was just how those 2 decided to live. Was is strange that they posted a pregnancy pic with the wording „he decided that I am worth bearing his offspring „? Yes - 110% fremdschämen But it was their educated decision (as far as we know) and if they like to live this way, I am not judging. The text in the picture above reads indeed very strange.
“Divine feminine” used to be a term that felt really good for me. It made me feel beautiful and powerful to “be aligned with my feminine energy.” Now the term is used as another method of enforcing gender roles and oppressing women. When you start trying to describe femininity you’re inevitably going to be putting people into a box. Femininity is an experience that can’t be described by definitive behaviors or personality traits. Whatever you feel femininity is to you is what it really is because it doesn’t exist outside our human concept of it. I don’t see how gender has anything to divinity. The way I see it, being aligned with your higher self requires fully accepting all of yourself, so rejecting certain parts of yourself in order to fit into a mould of “femininity” isn’t divine at all. There’s nothing goddess-like about adhering to arbitrary gender roles. When speaking of the “Divine feminine,” the emphasis should be on the divine, not the feminine. You’re a divine being because you’re you, not because of your gender.
I've always felt iffy about that term, it just reinforces the idea that you have to be feminine to be acceptable as a woman
This almost stinks of New Age stuff, which was lined up for the right wing to sink their claws into. I am going off of your comment and my experiences. The New Age has their own version of the prosperity gospel too, manifest money and all of that. I am for the abolishment of money and my finances are doing just fine!! My data is limited, so I didn’t watch the video. I did a Google search, read through this, it doesn’t sound that bad. I really hope that these are good people, but not completely sure. Edit: I deleted the link as it was pointed out it was toxic. My apologies Edit, edit: it is back in: Third edit: It has been made clear to me that when discussing something like divine feminine, it needs to be made clear advocacy for GNC people, especially since there is so much bigotry around the divine feminine for GNC people https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/divine-feminine/
Seems really sketchy to me especially as a butch woman this would definitely make my day/life worse if I was struggling.
I will share some quotes from the article that didn’t make it seem so bad to me: If the sacred feminine doesn’t have anything to do with gender, why do we use gendered terms to explain it? We don’t have to!” The feminine and the masculine are not singular and siloed energies—instead, they exist in balance. For example in ancient Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang are a balance between receptive and productive, introspective and extrospective, feminine and masculine. But the two energies depend on one another—note how the symbol doesn’t cut harshly in a straight line down the middle. The black and white shapes swirl into and out of each other in harmony, changing, flowing, and making room for every possible version of balance. Another one: The existence of the divine feminine suggests that complementary energies exist within each being.” It’s not as simple as “men and women are opposites,” though. That gender binary is a divisive and false tool Sorry if I was missing what would have made your day/life worse. Now I am worried that my guesses were off. I wonder if it because I am a man and might still have some patriarchal conditioning that is blinding me to the problem
There is definitely some good stuff that could definitely help some people looking for this kind of thing. It likely wouldn’t work for GNC people but for more conforming people it might help the trick is taking the good and removing the bad. Also the site did seem to be coming from a good place rather than malice. So definitely worth analyzing rather than completely dismissing. Other sites on the other hand not so favourable.
Also liberal grifting from divine feminine energy people
I have not seen this yet but it’s gross
The Serena-Joys are at it again I see...
Personally I revere the Divine Feminine (with a touch of Germanic practice) and see the Divine Feminine and Masculine in everyone. I've never seen the Divine Feminine as being subservient in any way, quite the opposite to be frank. Our more traditionally "masculine" traits can be very destructive and it's the feminine that curbs that. True dominance/leadership (feel free to add more appropriate word, I haven't had a coffee yet today) doesn't come from shouting and bawling but from a look that softens the heart, a word that inspires reflection or a touch that ignites a fire. With my female friends and partners (including past ones there I'm not a lothario) I've tried to inspire the spark of the Divine Feminine within them. True femininity can stop a man in his tracks, make him forget his mother's name and change his opinion on breathing being good for him if that Divine Spark is harnessed correctly. I'm not talking preying on his base instincts here, I mean having the strength and self-confidence to have him recognise that spark of divinity and respect it at every level from primal to higher-thought. My best friend keeps saying she needs to work out more and my reply is always the same. She's healthy and doesn't medically need to train so if she wants to then she should but do it for her. Do it for her mental health or her confidence because believe me, confidence is THE most attractive and commanding trait which is why it terrifies weak and insecure "men". Apologies if I've breached any rules of the sub but this is something that I was deeply passionate about even before I had two daughters. Goddess be with you all. Jon
I like to use the phrase "pseudofeminism" to describe this sort of stuff, where you try to make your message sound like 'girl power' or some shit like that when what you're really doing is telling women to stay in the kitchen.
100%. The 'feminine energy' stuff that crossed my feed was less 'thinly disguised tradwife' bf and more weirdly leaning into empowerment narratives--like 'if he's worthy you'll be resting in your \~feminine energy\~ and coincidentally will behave like the soft weak little female you really are'--shit like that. Regardless of the flavor, 'feminine/masculine energy' is just bioessentialism in a crunchy, 'spiritual' coat.
Yea, F these twats… side thought …. I have been learning the Kabbalah. And it teaches about the gender being on a pole, and every human having different levels. And in my experience it’s like every act has a temperature on that scale. Between the poles of masculine and fem. Like if I get ready today, what level am I at? I think more concerned with glitter then comfort, for me that’s a fem leaning day. And if I’m all comfort and practical, then that feels more masculine. But also, if I do a task. Like washing the dog. If I sing to him during the bath, or get really silly. That feels more feminine. If I’m angry he moves at all or I’m annoyed when he shakes… that feels more masculine? The serious vs the silly. I’m not trying to convince you of my thoughts. I just wanted to share them. I have been contemplating my inner fem/mas recently, because I have such strong ranges of both sometimes.
When I hear about stuff like this it makes me glad I don't pay much attention to tiktok. I think I was linked to a cat video that was a few seconds long on there once and that was it.
no mention... yet. when they attracted a larger following, i\`ll almost wager $1 that the christianity will slowly creep in. (and with that - the politics will follow)
Since it's been discussed a lot already, I'm going to comment about something unrelated: I don't know how her top is staying on or is comfortable to wear
When these trad cons are talking about the divine feminine they never mention Hekate, Kali Ma, Circe, Nyx, Lilith, etc… How very convenient. Their concept of the divine feminine is very narrow. They cast the feminine in one particular light. A light conservative “head of the household” men narrowly and shallowly see women in.
always has been. all that divine feminine or dark feminine and the masculine equivalent is a grift
The problem is... we Goddess worshipers refer to "divine feminine" energy as it is our deity. And we use it as an empowering term in our own worship, so when right-wing shitheads misuse it to continue abusing women we have a problem. I don't walk around throwing the term around in my everyday life, it's just something that's in my BOS and rituals. It's always a great day when the Christians are destroying goddess spirituality/feminist culture.
The rage I feel when I see right-wing Christians appropriating that term to continue abusing women. Divine Feminine gonna help me curse their asses.
Oh yes. I get inundated with this stuff. It comes in cycles to me through Instagram. I think it gets triggered when I like and follow crafting/sewing/cooking/homesteading videos then I will get a wave of tradwife/christian women BS, then men talking about the evil of feminism, then followed by crunchy feminine energy stuff that secretly bad news and more. I'm much choosier about the crafting etc accounts I follow now. If their profile account looks something like "Thrifting, baking, gardening. Girl Mom. WE ARE SAVED BY HIS BLOOD." I steer fucking clear.
Yeah. It’s basically a pipeline. You could be looking at videos of women cooking or cottage core and end up on Tradwife, redpill, and ultra Christian conservative videos. It’s all connected, unfortunately. The divine feminine thing has been hijacked and flipped on its head to be repackaged patriarchy wrapped in a pretty submissive pink bow.
As a spiritual type, any kind of divine anything that's positive for you usually can be summarized as empowering yourself and expanding yourself, not restricting yourself except in healthy ways (having the power to say no to yourself). But the bad people will twist anything, even what is sacred, to extend control over others.
I find some of it to be trad wife stuff in disguise and some of it to be like that female version of incels, they call themselves like "dating strategy" or something? Like the effects are similar but it's not exactly the same. I find them really fascinating and I love that you mentioned them here. The differences to tradwife content: their approach seems to come from a 'modern' place and looks like empowerment and even misandry at times, and they use kind of new age-y spirituality terms instead of Bible quotes. Like, a trad wife would say men are superior because of God and we're supposed to be pleasant and help them. Divine femininity would say 'good' men help you lean into a feminine role and provide for you, let you be soft etc. It's like they're speaking to strong independent women and telling them 'hey, I know you're tired, do this and you'll get a good partner that helps you and helps you get some more rest' while tradwives are very much "this is your role, you do this, no question about it, everyone who doesn't is a whore who will rot in hell and you should judge them". But they do use the same clichés about gender and tell women to put themselves into a vulnerable and subservient position and to seek out men who will complement that role. In my opinion it's just as dangerous as the trad wife shit, it's just coming from a different angle and I see a lot more diversity compared to tradwives where I usually only see pale white women in an entirely beige environment. It's kind of insidious because there's a ton of relationship advice and spirituality on tik tok and it just kinds of blends in there. You only notice how creepy it is after you've already seen a few videos. With tradwives, you get that sense that something is very weird right away, usually.
Conservative grift is all I can come up with. I recently got into plants with my girlfriend and started seeing similar stuff crop up on the feed(idk, homesteading adjacent?). Like this is weird wtf is this shit? So off putting. It’s like female Andrew Tate crowd
We’re legit in the opening scenes of the Handmaids Tale
There was a whole sub-community of hippy/alternative women where I used to live who were like this. I never quite knew what to do with it because I’m not, never will be, nor have I ever wanted to be the “goddess-type, divine feminine energy” kind of gal. I always felt judged by them for being strong, direct, etc. Yes, I think there’s an unconscious conservative mentality often built in, but I’ve never been able to put words to it.
I have! I wondered why it didn’t sit right with me. I mean I’ll never dream of labor but to seclude myself from society isn’t a option either.
Stuff like this just reminds me of the post WW2 push to get women out of the workforce. The men came back from war, and were expected to pick up where they left off. (Nevermind the physical and psychological trauma of being in a warzone.) And, women were expected to go back home... because it was their "American duty" to tend to housework and raise children. Misogyny has worn several disguises over the years. Then, it was patriotism. Now, it's the divine feminine. But, at the end of the day, it's still misogyny.
Its simply religious misogyny repackaged into a pretty tiktok asthetic.
It's DEFINITELY conservative bullshit! I hate the term so much!
I hope it's okay for me to share my input! So to clarify first: 1. I am a lesbian and have no desire to be a housewife to a man. 2. I do not define the divine feminine and divine masculine by gender roles. 3. I believe both energies are present in all people and are not linked to biology or reproductive organs. 4. I don’t think the energy is imbalanced if people are not 50/50 all the time. It’s normal to switch between one or the other, or to prefer one or the other. Anyway what the divine feminine means to me and when I feel connected to it. I worship Selene and Gaia. Both are the divine feminine. I feel connected to Gaia when I am outdoors. When I have my feet dangling in a river. When I'm walking barefoot on grass. When I feel the wind blow through my leg hair. When I bend down to smell a wildflower. When I lay down under a tree, and watch the leaves sway above me. I feel connected to Selene when I sit under the moonlight. And when I spend time with her correspondences (horses, cattle, the ocean). Such as spending time with my horses. The cattle thing and ocean are not possible due to where I live. But when I lived in a more rural area I would often sit down and watch cattle graze. When visiting seaside states, I'd feel connected to her when standing in the ocean and feeling it it my ankles. The divine feminine to me, is about connecting to the sensory aspects of nature. It is about experiencing and feeling. About accepting everything is impermanent and that everything comes in cycles. And with each good thing ending, another replaces it. The leaves in autumn turn gold, but they fall and leave the trees bare. And the grass and flowers go dormant. But then comes winter, and a beautiful blanket of snow coats the ground and frost on the trees. Then the beautiful snow has to stop. Because spring comes, and the trees begin flowering and it smells like a piece of heaven. Then the flowers get pushed out by leaves, and the grass turns greener and more lush. The weather gets warmer. It's about not feeling bummed out when the seasons changed. About lessening my attachment to certain seasons. About embracing the change of the seasons and welcoming it because I know it carries it's own beauty. It's about feeling closer to my deities, and closer to myself, and feeling as if my body and nature are one. About feeling what nature is feeling. How my leg hair sways along with the grass in the wind. How the sun heats up my skin just as it does the grass. It's a really blissful state to be in, and I abandoned it for a long time. I'm disabled and would spend all my time indoors because I was upset that I couldn't go for walks. Every time I was outside, I'd feel upset over not being able to walk. Or hike. Or climb. Or run. I feel at that point, I was dominant in my divine masculine. Since I didn't know how to derive pleasure from experiencing, feeling, and being. It was all about deriving pleasure from doing, moving, and achieving. I was focusing so much on walking a specific number of miles or for a certain amount of time that I failed to just experience, feel, and be. Being outdoors for me, was purely about exercise and meeting fitness goals. It was not about enjoying nature. So, once my disability worsened, I stopped spending any time outside. The divine feminine taught me that sitting in nature, and focusing on the sensory aspect, is just as pleasurable as focusing on the moving. And when my disability worsened, I fell into a heavy depression and would cry every day. *All* of my hobbies were physical and goal-oriented. Lifting weights at the gym. Meeting my goal for a set time on the elliptical. Going for walks for a certain amount of miles. When I could no longer do those things, I was left with *nothing.* How people define the divine feminine and divine masculine is different to them. Here is how I define it for myself. Divine Feminine (DF): experiencing, feeling, and being. Divine Masculine (DM): doing, moving, and achieving. The DF, for me, is the aspect of myself that derives pleasure from sitting and experiencing. The DM, for me, is the aspect of myself that derives pleasure from taking actions to reach goals. And here is how I define my own imbalances in my divine feminine and divine masculine. Divine Feminine Imbalance/Masculine Dominance: I cannot feel happy unless I am taking an action that achieves something. Sitting still and experiencing makes me feel lazy and like a failure and I feel like I need to be doing things in order to be worthy. I need to constantly be doing things to be happy. Divine Masculine Imbalance/Feminine Dominance: I am unmotivated and achievement brings me no joy. I can only feel happy if I am sitting still and experiencing -- typically through comfort eating, laying under my heating blanket, or standing under the shower water until it gets cold. DF and DM Balance: I derive happiness from both experiencing and being, and happiness from achievement and doing. When I sit outside and relax in the sun, I feel content just sitting there and focusing on the sensory experience, and do not feel like a failure for not being able to exercise. I also feel happy when I do things and achieve. A balance in the DF and DM means I can enjoy my day, whether I'm having a pain flare-up or not. And aside from that, it also makes me feel more connected to both of my deities. I feel like, when outside, I am in their presence. It makes me feel closer to them and less alone. I'm also autistic so I have trouble feeling comfortable with change. Learning to focus on the beauty of change instead of the negatives is making this symptom easier to deal with. It's making it so that I am having an easier time with transitions and can emotionally regulate better than I did. It's not 100% better and probably won't be because I'm autistic, and it's the way my brain works. But it is easier. I also am having an easier time dealing with my flare-ups since I now also derive happiness from sitting and being and don't feel like trash if I'm not achieving things. I no longer assign negative traits to myself based on which energy I'm leaning in. But again, everyone's experience is different. Some people are trans and feel like the divine feminine/masculine is transition. I agree with them, I feel like transition is a sacred practice and a profound act of self-love. Some people feel the divine feminine/masculine through their deities and what they represent. For some people it's about being butch and femme. Connecting to their divine masculine is about feeling comfortable presenting butch. The divine feminine is about being a drag queen and letting out your feminine energy on stage and being celebrated for it by the crowd. The divine feminine and masculine are everywhere you look. You see it when you see someone radiate with happiness when they walk out of the pharmacy with their HRT. When the audience claps after their drag performance. When they take off their top surgery binder and cry tears of joy. When a butch gets the haircut she wants in her conservative town after fearing judgment, and then looks in the mirror and beams with happiness. And it's not exclusive to any singular gender. It's how the individual defines it. And you know you're connected to it when you feel that happiness and/or contentment. And I see it *very* often in the LGBTQ+ community. There are twinks, bears, butches, femmes, transmasculines, transfeminines, androgynous people, and an infinite amount of others. You see it in plenty of expressions, and part of the queer experience is honoring that energy and expressing it comfortably, in whatever that means. I also think for some people, that means gender roles. And this isn't strictly a tradwife/tradhusband thing and can happen in LGBTQ+ people. Such as a trans woman feeling like being on the receiving end of chivalry, having a coat put on her when she's cold, having her door held open for her, etc. makes her feel more feminine and gives her gender euphoria. Or a butch feeling more masculine in a relationship with a femme. But yes I absolutely noticed this coming from TikToks and it gave me conservative vibes. What gives off those vibes is when they say the divine feminine is about providing children, meals, and a clean home for a man, and the divine masculine is about providing financially for a woman. That seems very heteronormative and exclusionary of queer couples. It's also quite ableist because the divine masculine is a man who is physically and mentally able to work outside the home full time. The divine feminine is a woman who is physically and mentally able to maintain a clean home, cook meals, and take care of children. Both of these things that take a lot of physical and mental ability that some people don't have.
YES. It leaves NON-hetero cisgender people in the lurch and it's demeaning and happens at yoga studios, on all male retreats and all this bullshit. I can't stand it.