What’s in a Name? Sometimes Everything

24 Feb 2010 6 Comments

by narajane84 in Jay Bull, Musings, Writings on Goddess Tags: Dianic, Dianism, Feminism, feminist, Jay Bull, naming, power of words, women's liberation, women's movement, Z. Budapest

While our coven, Daughters of the Sacred Torch, was still in its planning phase, one of the other coven council members and I were discussing what kind of coven we would be, what—if any—tradition we would follow.  I suggested that we just go ahead and call ourselves a Dianic coven.  After all, we are following all of the basic tenants of Dianism, and the major works of Dianic tradition founder Z. Budapest figure prominently not only on our reading list but also on our practices.  The other coven council member present for this discussion agreed.  But her husband—who, by the way, is a nice guy and by no means hostile to Dianism—thought we should reconsider using such a “loaded word” as “Dianic.”

Of course, he himself understood that a lot of the reason why the word “Dianic” has negative connotations is the same reason why the word “feminist” has negative connotations.  People (let’s be honest: generally male people) who are hostile to women’s liberation and women’s empowerment—both in the Pagan community and at large—have mounted a virulent “smear campaign” against movements like Dianism and feminism.  But still, he thought, the fact remains that “Dianic” as a word can come with a bad rap; why should we have to deal with that?

“Why call yourself Dianic?” he asked.  “I mean, if you call yourself that, people are just going to think that…”  You can supply any number of negative stereotypes here—that we all hate men, that we think heterosexual women are traitors, and any number of other things that are patently untrue.  My covenmate and I were asked why we didn’t just come up with a new name that didn’t have all the negative associations that “Dianic” does.

My answer:  I refuse to be chased away from my own discourse.

I’m all for creating new words to serve your purposes if it is being done in an empowering context.  But if there is a word that already exists that already means all the things I want and need it to, and the only reason for using or coming up with a different word is to avoid hostility, then it wouldn’t feel empowering; it would feel like I’m ceding defeat to those who oppose women’s movements.

That’s why I call myself a feminist, instead of using the tired line of “Well, I’m not a feminist (heaven forbid!), but I do believe that…”  And that’s why I insist on calling myself Dianic, even if it means having to deal with people who will—without understanding what the word really means—jump to conclusions based on all the negative things that have been said about Dianism.

I mean, let’s be real here.  What happens if we come up with some other name that means pretty much all the same things to us that “Dianic” would, but that is new enough that it’s not yet weighted down with the baggage of the smear campaigns?  Well, to begin with, we sacrifice a tie to a very rich tradition; sure, we would still be influenced by the Dianic tradition and its amazing foremothers, but we would still lose a little piece of that connection by trying to distance ourselves.  I don’t want to lose that.

And, additionally, it would only be a matter of time before those people who despise women’s groups mount a new attack on our new name.  Do we let them win that battle as well?  Do we call ourselves a new name until that name has been attacked, and then find a new name we use until that is attacked, and just keep going from name to name as long as there are people who vocally hate any group or movement with a feminist ideology?

No.  We make a stand.  We say that in a world where words are power—and in a world where so many of the words of power were created by men—we are using words, choosing names that have been created by women and for women, and we are refusing to lie down in the face of the attacks that always inevitably seem to come whenever women—especially groups of women in solidarity—take and exercise power for themselves.

Consider the words of French feminist theorist Monique Wittig from The Guerrillières:

“The women say, unhappy one, men have expelled you from the world of symbols, and yet they have given you names, they have called you slave, you unhappy slave.  Masters, they have rights as masters.  They write, of their authority to accord names, that it goes back so far that the origin of language itself may be considered an act of authority emanating from those who dominate.  Thus they say that they have said, this is such or such a thing, they have attached a particular word to an object or a fact and thereby consider themselves to have appropriated it.  The women say, so doing the men have bawled shouted with all their might to reduce you to silence.  The women say, the language you speak poisons your glottis tongue palate lips.  They say, the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say, the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated.  Whatever they have not laid hands on, whatever they have not pounced on like many-eyed birds of prey, does not appear in the language you speak.  This is apparent precisely in the intervals that your masters have not been able to fill in with their words of proprietors and possessors, this can be found in the gaps, in all that which is not a continuation of their discourse, in the zero, the o, the perfect circle that you invent to imprison them and overthrow them.”

Often, women get to name only those experiences that men have overlooked, those experiences that they didn’t think were important.  And sometimes, when we name those experiences, and more women gravitate towards it, and suddenly you have a movement on your hands, and that movement has power, that’s when men stop overlooking it, and begin attacking it.  I think that this is what happened with the Dianic movement.

The Dianic movement was about creating a form of Wicca that wasn’t poisonous to a woman’s spirit, that didn’t reduce her to a mere sexual vessel for use by male high priests.

The Dianic movement continues to be about offering woman a discourse made up of signs and symbols that are not killing her, but are rather supportive of her life.

The Dianic movement does not call woman “goddess” only to encourage her to get on her knees before a man.  The Dianic movement recognizes the real Goddess within woman.

The Dianic movement does not think women are worthy only when they are in their “fertile” or childbearing years.  The Dianic movement honors Crones as well as Mothers, and knows that woman’s worth only increases with her years of experience.

The Dianic movement offers women a form of spirituality that isn’t dependent upon her submission or subordination to man, and this has drawn an attack from the men in both mainstream Christianity and in mainstream Wicca because, unfortunately, patriarchy thrives in both those traditions, and patriarchy very much depends upon the continued submission and subordination of women.

Allow me to take a moment here to say, with regards to my use of the Wittig quote, that I do not mean to suggest that women are completely passive victims of mainstream language, that we have had no part in the developments of the languages we use.  We are over half of the world’s population, over half of the users of language, and therefore we have undoubtedly contributed to the development of language.

All the same, historically, women have been excluded—often by force—from participation in numerous fields.  Until relatively recently, we have been shut out of fields like politics, medicine, and leadership in mainstream religions.  The languages of power—those of politics, medicine, and religion—were also developed while we were excluded from participation.

For instance, if it were up to you, would you have named your vagina a “vagina?”  Probably not, especially seeing as how, as Ingia Muscio has pointed out in her—I won’t call it a “seminal” text for obvious reasons, nor will I call her insights “penetrating”—awesome book Cunt, the word “vagina” has its etymological roots in a word meaning “the sheath for a sword.”  That’s right.  Instead of women getting to name this body part—our body part—in relation to its function to give us pleasure, or to give life, in all likelihood male anatomists were the ones to decide its name, and they gave it a name only in reference of what they considered its (and perhaps also our) most important function: something they could stick their dicks into.  Nice.

While we are currently making gains in the fields of medicine, politics, religion, we are in the position of having to do so in a “breaking in” capacity.  To make progress, we have had to break into fields that were established not just without us, but often with a lot of hostility towards us.  And that means that we are having to enter under the agreement that we will accept a large part of the tradition as it is handed to us; we don’t get to tear things down to the basics and rebuild them under a model of equality.  No, we have to come in and do our best to operate within the already-established discourses.  We can try to influence and amend them, and often we do to some extent, but this is hard work.

It is in that understanding that I referenced Monique Wittig.  It is in that understanding that I insist on using the word “Dianic” to describe myself in spite of the fact that some people see the word as too weighted-down with the “baggage” of negative connotations to continue using.

Women tried—and hard—to achieve a place of spiritual and political equality within mainstream Wicca.  And many—far too many—women found that they were welcome in mainstream Wiccan religion only in so far as they were naked, sexually available, and preferably silent.  Not enough!  A religion that offers me the opportunity to “feel like a goddess” only if I’m willing to cater to the “sex goddess” fantasies of the man in charge is not enough!

I’m sure that in the early stages of the Wiccan movement in the United States, this was another “problem that has no name.”  Wiccan women were having these feelings of unhappiness, and at first probably had no satisfying means of talking about it.  Having left Christian religion because it offered no suitable recognition of female divinity, how do you articulate your problems with a Wiccan religion that does recognize the existence of female divinity and yet still leaves you feeling somehow lessened, dominated, or exploited?

But enough women finally did find the words for their experiences, even though many in the mainstream, patriarchal Wiccan hierarchy would have liked—and would still like—to suppress these words.  Wiccan women began talking, and realized that these were not isolated experiences they were having, but rather something shared, something valid, and something that they needed to change.

After a great deal of struggle to find our place in the mainstream discourse, Dianic women realized that the time had come to build a movement by and for women.  Instead of wasting energy trying to make a hierarchy more egalitarian in the face of hostile, misogynistic opposition, Dianic women banded together to use their creative energies in a way that would allow women to really come into their own.  What joy.  What grace.  What true strength and beauty.

The process of building something by and for women included coming up with the word “Dianic.”  To use that word today—whether you practice Dianic Wicca (and are in the ordination lineage of Z. Budapest) or you practice Dianic Witchcraft (and are influenced by women like Z.B. but practice self-initiation)—is to draw upon the richness of the history of how feminist witches claimed their power as their right.

In a world where so much of the discourses of power were created in opposition to women’s power, “Dianic” is a word that women created for ourselves, just as the Dianic movement is one created by and for women.  The word is a link to a tradition that nourishes us in the face of hostility.  It is also a link to a tradition that brings us joy.  It is a word that we must not run away from for fear of the false conceptions of others.  Historically, we have been forcibly excluded from so many of the mainstream discourses of power; we must not allow ourselves to be chased away from our own discourses of power as well.

Blessed—and empowered—be.

(Note:  Opinions expressed in this post about mainstream Wicca are those of NaraJane84, and as such may not be held by other members of Daughters of the Sacred Torch or by other bloggers on this forum.  But as for me, yeah, I totally meant every word of it).