Who Owns Your Head?

May 16

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This morning on Facebook, I was in a brief comment thread about the AFA. They made a Mother’s Day post that got some people’s pussy hats in a twist (which of course, now one cannot read because FB has deleted their page). I don’t care about the AFA, but so much time and energy was being expended in whining about their praise of Aryan Mothers, that I interjected essentially asking “why? Why waste all this time bitching about a group that doesn’t care and isn’t going to change and was willing to boot out a major member, an honorable and devout man because he had a transgender child?” Do you think sending memes to them is going to change their minds? None of us hopefully are that deluded.

Someone fired back that many people assume Heathenry, in all its denominations, is racist because of groups like the AFA. So here are my thoughts on that. Firstly, so what? Are we to define ourselves by the uneducated assumptions of outsiders? Secondly, and more importantly  (and what I posted on fb):

It all comes down to how much space one wants to give them in our heads/minds and practice. They’re going to be doing their thing, but I’d like to see other branches of Heathenry being organized and louder, if that makes sense. what rituals are you doing? What are you reading? How are you living your faith, etc., writing about that, showing through practice that it’s not a racist religion, because in the end, if they take up too much space in our minds, then all we’re doing is giving them more power. I don’t want my practice to be a response to theirs. I want it to be a response to the Gods and my relationship with them. The AFA is irrelevant to that.

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(Not the Aryan mother the AFA was looking for?)

About ganglerisgrove

Galina Krasskova has been a Heathen priest since 1995. She holds a Masters in Religious Studies (2009), a Masters in Medieval Studies (2019), has done extensive graduate work in Classics including teaching Latin, Roman History, and Greek and Roman Literature for the better part of a decade, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Theology. She is the managing editor of Walking the Worlds journal and has written over thirty books on Heathenry and Polytheism including "A Modern Guide to Heathenry" and "He is Frenzy: Collected Writings about Odin." In addition to her religious work, she is an accomplished artist who has shown all over the world and she currently runs a prayer card project available at wyrdcuriosities.etsy.com.

Posted on May 16, 2017, in Heathenry, Uncategorized and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.

  1. Richard Norris | May 17, 2017 at 12:05 AM

    The AFA is now banned from Facebook.

    Like

    • ganglerisgrove | May 17, 2017 at 12:07 AM

      yes they are and I’m not in favor of that decision. I don’t think they should have been banned. The solution to speech we don’t like is more speech, not shutting it all down.

      Liked by 6 people

  2. polytheismuncucked | May 17, 2017 at 1:34 AM

    I disagreed strongly with the AFA’s decision re: Joe and wouldn’t piss on their leaders if they were on fire. That being said, I also disagree with Facebook’s decision to remove the AFA. If they are “racist” then any folkish Heathen group can be removed for “racism:” figures like Stephen McNallen and Robert Taylor (or, at this point, yrs. truly) could also be booted using the same twisted logic.

    Liked by 4 people

  3. Jön Upsal's Gardener | May 17, 2017 at 2:11 AM

    When I saw the headline, I thought it was about the whole head transplant thing that’s been in the news lately.:-D

    That said, I’m not a big fan of the AFA at the moment for a number of pretty obvious (and some not so obvious) reasons. But I don’t think they should have been banned (although, yes, of course, Facebook is a private organization and can ban whomever they want, unlike bakers or wedding planners; one wonders what’ll happen when they’re declared a “public accommodation” and all sorts of PC laws start applying to them).

    Eventually, this slope will slip into “if you’re a non-feminist structural Marxist, that’s hate speech, but if you’re an analytical Maoist post-materialist, you’re okay” territory. And that’s wrong.

    Liked by 4 people

    • kaye | May 17, 2017 at 12:20 PM

      Facebook might be one of the Big 5 technology giants, but they’re not going to be a public accommodation anytime soon. Just think about the entire situation around efforts to make people see the Internet as a utility and not as a luxury — one needs it to do basic things now, like job applications, and yet it’s still a political hot topic due to net neutrality.

      I left Facebook at the end of 2016, and it was the best decision I ever made. I think that part of the problem is that the bubbles one inhabits on social media are vulnerable to hysteria whenever there’s a threat to the group’s identity, and it’s easy to play Katamari Damashii with human emotions and escalate things out of control. One sees this regardless of a group’s political persuasion. It’s fine to vent, but venting on most things should happen in private to trusted third parties. Crowdsourcing self-care is one of the disasters of the social media age, and things get hyperbolic fast.

      Back in the early days of Hellenism on the public Internet, Timothy J. Alexander called me a feminist infiltrator who wanted to take down Hellenism from the inside, and our original argument was actually just about modern medical understandings of menstruation, as he was trying to talk about menstruation and miasma while citing ancient understandings of anatomy and medicine. (I menstruate. He doesn’t.) I think that these small disagreements get caught up in the things happening at the extreme edges because humans have a negativity bias. Like, there are translations of the Orphic Hymns on the Internet that omit every hymn to Zeus and Herakles. I’m not ideologically the same as the ones who put those translations up, but I think that he was lumping us together because we’re all feminists. Point is that this happens on all sides. 😉

      Liked by 1 person

  4. polytheismuncucked | May 17, 2017 at 2:34 AM

    Much as it may cause some to froth at the mouth, Heathens could learn something from Donald Trump. Don’t apologize, don’t admit guilt, and don’t give your enemies an inch. Bending over backwards to prove you’re not one of those “racist Heathens” will only convince them you’re one of the lying racist Heathens. Making it clear that you don’t give a damn what they think about you and will practice your religion as you see fit without concern for their input is the only way forward.

    Liked by 3 people

  5. neptunesdolphins | May 17, 2017 at 3:12 PM

    They are dancing with delight over the removal. But what if the tables were turned and Blue Star Wicca was removed because of Kenny Klein? What then?

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Chas S. Clifton | May 18, 2017 at 6:59 PM

    AFA is back on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/AsatruFolkAssembly/

    So how does this “banning” thing work anyway?

    Liked by 1 person

    • Lady Bryan | May 21, 2017 at 2:59 PM

      This is always something that has amused me about Facebook. The only way to truly get banned, and I mean as close to permanently as possible, is to be outed as on the sex offender registry. I wish I was joking.

      But for everyone else, the AFA for example, it’s as simple as just making another page. If the person who created the page gets their personal profile deleted, another member can easily just make another page for the organization.

      The amusing part for me in these situations is that those who celebrate the banning/deletion don’t seem to realize that it’s actually that easy. We see this with scammers on FB all the time in every social strata and community on there. And this is something anyone from any ideology can and have the option to do, and it’s as simple as hitting a few buttons.

      Rarely is anything ever permanently deleted/blocked/banned from Facbook.

      Like