Supporting Pagan Journalism

March 21, 2012 By Star Foster

People ask me to attend a lot of events. I have to decline a lot. I just don’t have the funds to travel. This year I missed out on PantheaCon, but, far more heartbreakingly, I won’t be able to attend Pagan Spirit Gathering. I could attend technically, but it would mean eating ramen for a couple of months and putting off needed car repairs. Traveling to Pagan events like this is expensive, and I don’t make a lot of money right now. When I came back from PSG last year I had less than 50 cents to my name, and I didn’t spend a dime in the vendor booths. I rarely even attend events in Atlanta, and it’s just an hour down the road from me.

So if people ask a piddly blogger like me to attend a lot of events, imagine how many events Jason Pitzl-Waters over at The Wild Hunt gets invited to? Jason does a good job of covering events. I know if I held an event I’d want Jason there.

And there are a lot of events Jason should attend. Jason should have been at Paganicon, he should go to the East Coast Thing, he should attend Merry Meet, he should go to Pagan Spirit Gathering, he should go to Florida Pagan Gathering, he should go to Theurgicon and many others. And Jason isn’t the only one. There are a lot of folks at the PNC who need to be covering large Pagan events. Cara Schulz and Nels Linde come to the top of my mind.

The problem is that if Jason attended every major Pagan event in the US, not little piddly festivals but the big stuff, his travel expenses would exceed my projected gross income for 2012. (Yes, I know, I’m a sad specimen of adulthood.) Traveling to these festivals is a financial strain on journalists and their families. There is no news organization underwriting the travel expenses of Pagan journalists.

So I’m glad to see Jason is fundraising so he can attend the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting in Chicago this year. I know a lot of Pagan academics would love for him to attend and cover their programming.

If you have an extra buck or two, please consider pitching in to help Jason get to AAR this year. And consider the events you’d like Pagan journalists to attend. Let them know that you would support fundraising for their travel expenses. I think the PNC needs to set up a fund where people can donate to cover journalists travel expenses.

Because AAR is small potatoes. If you want Pagan journalists at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Belguim in 2014, then we all need to start fundraising now. Because my last projection was that it would take well over $3,000 for someone to attend. So deciding who we want to go and fundraising for them is a decision we as a community needs to make pretty soon. It’s a big conference. We would need several journalists to cover it properly. There is Pagan programming to cover as well as Hindu, Vodou and myriad other indigenous religions to cover. It’s a big event. The Parliament in Belgium would be a huge opportunity for Pagan journalism.

Who would you trust to represent Pagan media in Belgium? Would you contribute towards their travel and equipment expenses? What kinds of coverage would expect from them?

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Hint: It’s Because We Have Vaginas

March 20, 2012 By Star Foster

In response to my post on veiling yesterday someone responded that in ancient times veiled women were unable to participate in civic life.

That is wrong.

People with vaginas were unable to participate in civic life, whether or not they wore a veil.

There are a lot of Pagans out there studying ancient practices and seeking ways to revive them in the modern world. Women in particular are interested in finding ways to take the best of ancient practice and marry it to a modern sensibility. We live in a world of hybrid cars and iPads, so many things the ancients did obviously don’t make sense. That doesn’t mean that studying them and learning from them lacks value.

Practicing religion in the same vein as ancient women will not mean you abdicate your rights. The way they practiced their faith and kept the spiritual sanctity of their homes is not the reason they lacked civil rights. They lacked civil rights because they had vaginas.

It’s just another version of the principle behind slut-shaming. What a woman wears, whether or not she uses birth control, or if she is married have nothing to do with with the misogyny she experiences. They are convenient excuses, but she faces misogyny because she has a vagina.

There is some idea floating around that if we all behave in compliance with some feminist orthodoxy we won’t face misogyny, or that if we shun the trappings of feminist orthodoxy we won’t face misogyny. This is false. Sandra Fluke wasn’t called a slut because of her testimony or her assertion of her right to birth control. Any man could have made that testimony without incident. Sandra Fluke was called a slut because she has a vagina.

So we need to stop worrying about whether a woman is in submission to Apollo, chooses to be a Pagan homemaker, covers her hair for religious reasons or subscribes to a more conservative view on religion or politics.

We need to be asserting, emphatically, that people who have vaginas are entitled to full human rights.

People who have vaginas are entitled to full human rights.

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