I don’t understand why there are so many people who consider themselves “Marxist feminists”, but at the same time are distracted by astrology.
The origin of feminism is working class, and as a working class movement, it is materialist. I don’t know if they at least know what dialectical materialism is, since they don’t see such an abysmal contradiction between astrology (pseudoscience) and feminism (materialism).
They remind me of the liberal “feminist” Gloria Steinem.
And the same with some anarchists.
What do you think about it?
OP, this might seem kinda harsh; and I don’t know you so I don’t intend to attack you personally; but I feel the need to go off a bit and tell you how this and some of your comments below all comes across. Because
This Whole Thing Smacks of Gender
Judging by your pronoun tag, you’re a man telling everyone about how, in the abstract, women “feminists,” are “distracted” by things they ‘shouldn’t be’ because it’s “irrational” and “pseudoscience,” and they “are a problem to the movement” and you apparently know better than such frivolity~ and are here to revoke their ‘diamat credentials’ because they ‘probably don’t even understand it.’ It reads as some pretty blatant chauvinism and patriarchal denigration that’s not based in anything but a misplaced sense of superiority.
Like, can you give me one example where a marxist feminist action has been undermined by someone being interested in this particular personal mysticism? How marxist feminist progress or work has been materially undermined at all by how marxist feminist organizers or others might play with or relate to these things in their free-time? Has any prominent marxist feminist engaged in direct action ever said “I won’t work with you bc ur a scorpio” to another comrade engaged in the struggle and split a party over it, and you saw this and were so shaken by it that you feel the need to bring up the concern? Have any of these things happened for this criticism to be rooted in a real reality as a concern for you, and you are not just concern-trolling about ‘the sanctity and strength of the marxist feminist movement,’ which you may or may not even be a part of, to distance yourself from the visibly likely problematic aspects of your mentality behind it?
Or are you working yourself up in a way that frankly, to me, reads as adjacent to anti-feminist gamergate CHUDS attacking things women like because women like it, and you think it’s “silly” and ‘beneath you’ in some way?
I think you should analyze where this is coming from and maybe do some self-criticism, because this doesn’t sound real. I’ve organized many people, including with many marxists (women and otherwise, cis and otherwise) some of whom were in varying degrees interested in this kind of stuff (with women and non-cis being the most common) and plenty who weren’t or practiced other beliefs. And with those of whom were, I’ve had many quality conversations where it came up and we learned more about each other in how we may or may not relate to or experience supposed signifiers-of-aspects of our personalities represented in these ~jungian-style ‘universal archetypes’ that astrology is constructed around. Just as I have in different ways with people who had other spiritual/religious beliefs. And at no point at all were these mysticisms or religious beliefs made central or even came up at all in the actual analysis and planning and material action of protests, union organizing, or discussion in theory-study groups or anything. Least of all did it ever cause any harm to our work. Many of those individuals have been more committed, do better and more focused work, and have accomplished more to help working people and further socialism than me even at my most involved; and, again I don’t know you, but going off of other people I’ve encountered who’ve expressed similar attitudes, I’d find it VERY hard to believe that these people, who I’ve also never heard speak like this about others’ personal religious/spiritual beliefs, are less capable marxists than you.
And any concern about “abysmal contradictions between pseudoscience and materialism” would equally apply to any marxists of any gender being religious or believing in a higher power at all — but you fixating on astrology and women marxist-feminists sets off alarms for me. So I’m not trying to attack you personally, because I don’t know you, but I want to communicate to you that it sounds like you either harbor some misogynistic attitudes and chauvinism, or that maybe, you like, heard a classmate you like say something bad about your star sign and you’re upset about it and deflecting.
I’m more absurdist when it comes to personal-emotional beliefs. But astrology is just a fun mysticism for some people. For some people it gives them a sense of greater-than-them wonder and/or purpose not so different to what other religion and spirituality does, and without the inbuilt patriarchal structure of most major religions. I’ve found it can also be an effective tool for self-reflection by externalizing aspects of one’s self in an arranged way that expresses the interconnected dialectical strengths-in-weaknesses and vice-versa of aspects of one’s personality, to examine separated from your ego. When I was taught about some of this stuff by a coworker years ago, it did genuinely help me embrace and confront parts of myself that I hadn’t previously thought about, or struggled with due to over-internalization of toxic patriarchal norms. As well it can just be a fun way of getting to know other people according to how they do or don’t relate to certain aspects or signifiers supposedly attached to them, in a way that’s not much different from, and in some cases deeper-reaching or more specific than sharing art that we connect with back and forth, as an extension of ourselves to be felt and understood in ways that we might struggle to be otherwise in the course of normal conversation.
Like what is the actual problem here where this needs you to take such a
stand? There is laughably zero threat of some Kautsky-level “Astrolo-marxist” movement misleading the working class into a world war because ‘oops I’m such an aries’. There’s no “Astrological Papacy” that owns 1/3 of the land in Europe and is embedded in the governmental structures of nations. It’s not that serious. And your saying they’re “distracted” and “a problem to the movement” and “not radically useful” like they’re only good “pure” marxist feminists if they dedicate every second of every moment (including self-reflection or leisure time) to pure doctrinal historical and dialectical materialism is… it’s just weird my dude. Who made you the arbiter of feminism? And do you ever watch TV? Play video games? Shitpost online? Imagine fanciful scenarios in your head? These are all distractions. Why is theirs “worse” than yours? I guarantee you that you tell yourself lies every day that are just as inaccurate and anti-materialist as a given mysticism/religion that someone might resonate with. I don’t care how “dialectical-materialist-mensch” you think you are. I do too. We all do to an extent. I think this is all worth you reflecting on.…
…
In short:
JUST like a Capricornactually it’s a fact all capitalists are scorpios
Real flashbacks to various pronoun struggle sessions in early Hexbear where an unusually high percentage of people with “serious concerns” shared a certain pronoun tag. 🤔
Tbh, in the back of my mind I was wondering how much of such a strong reaction against something like astrology in the OP comes from an unstated/unexamined/unconscious bias against some activities women engage in because they’re “too emotional.” It brings up the old patriarchal dichotomy of irrational women, rational men. I think that should be carefully examined in unpacking the topic of the original post.
This guy has just spent the better part of an hour mansplaining feminism to me, so I’d say you’re on the money here.
I hope the original poster actually takes the time to read what anarcho_blinkenist said and actually reflects on his stance.
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go off
thanks for this post. honestly my misogyny alarms start to go off anytime i see a man talk down on or “critique” astrology in any capacity…The messianic belief in an AI that will save us all that many (male) techbros have absolute faith in is a million times cringier than astrology. And not only is it just a very cringey reinvention of the Abrahamic god by so-called atheists who disbelieve and disparage said god, but it also has a direct material impact by accelerating climate change. How much is chasing the AI dragon just them trying to find God with cyberpunk characteristics? When past spiritual and religious people try to find God, they usually have the decency to live in a cave and leave the rest of us alone, not burn down entire forests so they can divine that 1+1=3.
Best post in the thread, honestly.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a feminism thing. I think it’s a millenial/zoomer thing more than anything. It’s sad seeing BS like that get normalized, like, how are we accepting people saying “yes, I actually believe that the positions of given stars and planets affect people’s personality and my future”? That’s 100% against materialism and against the scientific method.
By “how are we accepting” I don’t mean “let’s oppress these people”, just I think we should collectively adopt the same reaction to it, as if an adult told us about the tooth fairy coming.
Do you do the same thing to all religious people too? Aggressively condescend to them? What about Indigenous spiritual mysticisms?
If not, why are you targeting one vs the others, when there’s no materialist or scientific method reason to believe any of them are more or less true than the others in reality? This is worth analyzing.
If so (or you concluded to do so), don’t. Comrade, we don’t need a rehash of the insufferable petulant reddit atheists in the world, let alone in the socialist movement. And most of those reddit atheists all became gamergate CHUDS, which is a logical conclusion of this kind of chauvinist attitude. and because astrology is in general a heavily femme-leaning and trans-leaning mysticism/spirituality, there are certainly these implications that we absolutely do not need to reinforce. We do not need to have men condescending to people’s spiritual beliefs out of a misplaced superiority, when I am certain you tell yourself just as many lies to get through the day as any religious person does. So do I. And I’ve worked with ‘witchy’ marxists who have put more into the struggle than you or I combined.
Your attitude is not as mature and grounded as you think it is, but more importantly, it’s not just counterproductive but actively reactionary to decide to be alienating and spiteful toward others and advocate that “we should collectively adopt” these petulant and petty attitudes towards peoples’ personal beliefs. I’m more of an absurdist, but if someone reacted to me sharing deeply held beliefs of mine with them in the way you are advocating, I might punch them in the mouth. And they would deserve it.
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Do you do the same thing to all religious people too? Aggressively condescend to them? What about Indigenous spiritual mysticisms?
I don’t actually do that because it’s a fringe position that would most likely get me shunned, but yes, I think we should be consistent in our treatment towards anti-materialist beliefs, and by this, I mean claims towards the effect of “metaphysical” things such as deities or mysticism in the material reality. And it’s an important distinction to me.
The posture shouldn’t be condescending towards religion in general, but towards actual material claims derived from religion. You wanna observe Ramadan, or you don’t wanna eat pork, or you don’t wanna have sex before marriage, or you want to believe that grandma is watching you from above? Go off. These are at best tangential to material reality, and they’re more of a cultural system of moral beliefs and traditions, which is absolutely fine and we should fight to preserve.
When it comes to claims on the material reality from anti-materislist beliefs, it’s different, and it promotes illogical and unhealthy thinking patterns towards our world. Don’t go telling me that there’s gonna be a deluge if we don’t do X because a deity claims so, or that the stars claim I’m gonna have a shitty Tuesday, or that my palm reads that I’m gonna cheat on my wife. Those are strong, anti materialist claims, that in my humble opinion, a rational society should discourage. By discourage I don’t mean “let’s forbid these practices entirely”, but rather let’s not show them on media and newspapers, and most importantly, let’s ban people from profiting through these activities. Do you think it should be legal that a fake practitioner tells your grandma that for just $2000 they’re gonna give them a massage and a concoction of herbs that will cure her cancer?
Your two last paragraphs boil down to “don’t be a condescending petulant Reddit atheist gamer chud”. My point isn’t “abandon every mystical and religious aspect”, it’s “let’s avoid anti-materislist thought that actively makes claims on reality”. I’d understand you’d want to punch me in the face if I told you to burn your religious book and abandon your cultural practices, I wouldn’t understand you wanting to punch me in the face if I told you “believing that my personality is X because the stars say Y is idiotic”
I just see it as a way some people of all genders try to fill the space left by religion. It doesn’t necessarily have to be coded as an activity exclusive to one gender. I know plenty of guys into stuff like that. I’ve heard others describe this phenomenon as a way to question the accuracy of outcomes predicted by the secularization thesis.
Regardless, I still am diplomatic with people who like that stuff, despite me not believing in it. I don’t want to come off the same way the New Atheists did when discussing religion. That sort of militant attitude can be off-putting when trying to make the case for socialism.
I’d say the best way to discourage taking such practices too seriously, I’d suggest deconstructing such practices by reading about it’s history. Understanding the history of a topic helps one realize the fallible and changing nature of a supposedly unchanging process for discerning truth. I use the same approach with religion
This “space left by religion” shit never made sense to me. Is that a thing other people/normal people/neurotypicals actually experience?
i’m definitely not neurotypical and have had some wild experiences that lead me to ontological inquiry, the insinuation that ‘lmao only normies do that not me i’m so much better and above it all’ is pretty toxic imo
Have you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future? I showed it to somebody who left religion decades earlier and could see what a gut punch it still was. I think he had basically substituted indefinite space exploration for heaven and finding out that even that’s not an option was like losing faith a second time.
Future events more distant than the entirety of human civilization are filed firmly under Not My Problem
I sure as hell don’t lol. Can’t relate at all.
I’d say not necessarily everyone, but I guess it exists for some people.
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Everyone believes something
This feels like you’re playing a little semantic trick with the ambiguity of the meaning of belief, conflating ideology and metaphysics.
I think there are lots and lots of people who do just that
This isn’t necessarily related to the feminism part of your question, but I’ve read some about modern day Daoist divination practices in China that are essentially like tarot cards. One book (The Souls of China by Ian Johnson) had an interesting perspective because some of the priests said there wasn’t any magic involved and they weren’t literally predicting the future. At least in that context, people have specific questions they want answered, and they have answers that they want. The divination only provides yes/no answers.
Someone asking if they’re going to be successful some day isn’t helped in any way by saying “nah sorry you’ll be poor forever” nor are they helped by saying “yea you’ll be a hollywood star” and having their ego inflated, but what they’re looking for is some sort of comfort that their life won’t always be miserable or meaningless.
So the priest guides them through their questions like a conversation and tries to give them the comfort they’re looking for in the least harmful way possible. The yarrow root (or tarot cards, or whatever) are just the vehicle to have that conversation. You can say maybe that person should just go to a therapist, and maybe they should, but essentially the priest is trying to help people work through whatever issue it is they’re having so they can come to some sort of resolution. And that’s a role that existed before the contemporary therapist.
The idea is then that the ‘prediction’ part is just that person resolving to act in a way that would make it true. So if they ask if they’ll be successful, the priest guides them to some sort of action they can do to work toward that goal.
I can see people wanting to use stuff like new age astrology and tarot and all that kind of stuff in a similar way, but the difference is that unfortunately, the person conducting those ceremonies may not have those good intentions in mind or any sort of philosophical, cultural, or ethical training to guide people to beneficial actions. They’re not a community figure invested in the lives of the people talking to them, but a fortune teller with a building in the middle of town just advertising their services to random people for profit.
EDIT: As to how I feel about it, I obviously don’t believe in it but I try not to bash it too much unless that person uses it as an excuse to be discriminatory or justify their bad decisions. Especially in more ingrained cultural contexts like the above, but even for the ‘fairies and tarot’ folks.
This is a good understanding of divination.
I used to do tarot readings when I was a traveling bum. They really are just a way of talking through shit with someone while putting up a barrier so that you aren’t discussing your personal business with a total stranger. They don’t tell the future they let you hash out your own hopes and/or fears. Most of the time I wouldn’t even know what the person was asking about.
The cards give the reader something to say and the questioner responds to the prompts that the cards give. The reader keeps track of the responses and then parrots them all back to the questioner essentially telling the questioner what they told the reader to say.
Asstrology
I think Philosophy Tube has a video about witchcraft and Marxism which explains the connection.
Should be similar to tarot.
One reason women, in particular, flock to it is because it’s already a woman centered space. Witchcraft is anti-patriarchy and anti-hegemony, so Marxists would find that aspect appealing.
Also, as an aside, there’s an old book on Wicca from the 70s called A Witch’s Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar, which at one point encourages readers to study Marxism and Dialectical Materialism, because the underlying spiritual philosophy of witchcraft is very dialectical. And I think that’s pretty cool
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i think shunting off non rational belief into a category of “bullshit not worth exploring or interrogating” is kind of, i dunno, itself ignorant? you can at least take the approach of people who study these matters academically, and separate your ego and emotional responses from the equation and seek to actually, not just approximating marx fourth hand, actually try to understand the phenomenon before jumping to this kind of shit.
astrology fits this category for me - it’s not remotely productive for anyone to silo yourselves off from understanding for a lack of “getting it” - you’re not omniscient, there’s shit you don’t know. Human tendencies towards these phenomena, whether imaginal or real, and you already know what you think about that, are not something to just go “lol i dont get it fuck all that noise” because you wanna actually reach people and find common cause with them, you refusing and even being hostile to this shit is gonna lose people who might, despite your assumptions, be radically useful.
I know it is difficult to know everything in depth, but it is easy to know when something is so irrational that it is even harmful to the movement itself (in this case, feminism).
In fact, it is anti-materialist to say “lol i dont get it f*ck all that noise” when you don’t know about a subject, since you are ignoring its history, the material conditions that produced that thought, idea, subject, etc.
I think such people distracted by astrology, sperituality and manifestation, are a problem within the movement. They are not radically useful. Capitalism wants you to be distracted by it, to believe that you, individually, can change the outside with your mentality, and not the outside (your material conditions) to your way of thinking.
I think you have to accept that people will get distracted by useless bullshit and deal with things as they are. I know astrology people that contribute to the community in various ways (mutual aid and such) despite believing in all kinds of woo.
It’s simply not your call or place to say something is “harmful to the movement” when you’re not a part of it, you can’t speak or know about it from experience. Saying stuff like that is a very easy way of getting dismissed entirely by basically every member of “the movement”, as I am doing now, i truly do not care about the topic of astrology.
Maybe go talk to feminists that like astrology and calmly ask questions, and maybe ask yourself why you care so much about something of such little consequence for a movement that is, materially speaking, probably in contradiction with your own position and benefits in the current system and will naturally tend to be seen as uncomfortable to you.
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i call myself a marxist and a communist because i agree with marx’s analysis and critique of capitalism, and other marxist and adjacent theorists critiques of imperialism and advocacy for democratic centralism. i largely agree with historical materialism as a means of analysis, but i’m just not sold on strict ontological or epistemological materialism, in the sense of eliminativist physicalist realism. i have yet to be convinced out of epistemological nihilism and metaphysical/ontological agnosticism. obviously any specific beliefs like astrology or solipsistic idealism without any empirical evidence or epistemological basis are probably BS, but it would be foolish to assume we know basically everything about reality imo.
Not to mention that western materialism erases or dismisses indigenous peoples’, and for that matter, any non-western forms of knowledge. This is colonialist in nature, and reinforces the patriarcal, objectivist, project that is the social institution “science”.
What we call “facts” are politically loaded notions, and what we accept as fact and fiction reflects the power imbalances of an already unequal and oppressive society. So, thinking that our knowledge is complete only through western, objectivist ways of knowing, is to tacitly accept the power structures that led to it being dominant in the first place.
First of all, how does materialism “dismiss and erase” indigenous knowledge? Most materialists (Marxists) are in favor of recording, recovering, and rejuvenating indigenous culture and knowledge. Those who aren’t, are anti-Marxist and should not be taken seriously. That being said, a rejection of materialism and science like this is also completely nonsensical and is an attack on the very fabric of Marxism and Scientific Socialism.
Yes, I ageee - something being accepted as “fact” can be used to reinforce oppressive power structures, such as patriarchy, slavery, etc. - however, using this as justification to reject science, materialism, and “objectivism” makes no sense. Pseudoscience like eugenics and other forms of “scientific” racism were used (and are still being used) to reinforce horrible oppressive and colonial power structures. But using the horrors commited as a result of pseudoscience - which is a rejection of actual science in favor of theories that lack proper evidence and are not backed by any real science, as cause to reject science, is self-contradictory and oxymoronic.
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I’m not sure myself. Maybe they’re referring to stuff like indigenous technical knowledge of environmental management. When you look into that, all the generations of accumulated knowledge gained by observation and experimentation, it really upends the traditional Western descriptions of indigenous peoples as lacking any scientific tradition.
It blew my mind when I learned about it, especially the major environmental impacts not maintaining those systems had on the western hemisphere post-Columbus.
yea, seeing online internet leftists on an english speaking forum saying things like ‘religion is cancer’ while Islam is uniting anti-genocide and anti-imperialist struggles against israel is… A Vibe, i guess.
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Anti-patriarchal aspects of witchcraft, as others have eloquently stated here already. Also on some level it’s a chicken/egg thing as some point, as girl power culture (I’m sure there’s a term for that) embraces certain hobbies and interests. For every girl that seems to embrace dangerous woo-woo shit, there’s thirty more that just wanna have fun.
I may have my biases as a former Wiccan, though.
we need to stop men from being allowed to post on here until we figure out what’s going on
Humans and mysticism is pretty much a fact of life you can’t separate the two. Most people will have their own personal set of rituals that don’t have any basis in material reality but are done anyway for comfort and trying to feel some level of control in a chaotic world. I don’t really see the importance of focusing on one specific kind of mysticism and correlating it to feminism it doesn’t really make any sense to me. The fact that some people like astrology doesn’t prevent or interfere with feminism they’re not contradictory.
An aggressive dislike of it is more of a red flag to me tbh. I have my own silly little rituals I do to make me feel better. If I believe an item I have gives me good luck and I take it with me when I go outside am I now not a marxist because i hold contradictory beliefs between political ideology and the concept of luck? I don’t think so
Humans and mysticism is pretty much a fact of life you can’t separate the two
Speak for yourself. Making claims about “hooman nayture” being linked to mysticism isn’t any more historically accurate than saying human nature is linked to violence and war. Sure, it’s been a constant in most societies for most of history, but who’s to say that’s not just something we’ll examine in textbooks in the future?
I agree with the particular focus on astrology, and I don’t even see the link between astrology and feminism and I think it’s weird from OP.
Silly rituals are one thing (culture, tradition), belief that supernatural forces affect the material reality is a very different category
Realistically speaking, who fucking cares?
A whole lot of people spilling ink about astrology, “pseudoscience” and “mysticism” in here that don’t seem to know anything about it or its relation to the patriarchal, racial and class contradictions. And a whole lot of people that don’t seem directly concerned with most of those things themselves but feel it’s important to share their opinions on something they’re not informed about and not concerned about.
For the record i don’t care for astrology at all, I don’t like the (extremely, extremely rare) people who take it 100% seriously, but it’s still one of those things that’s kinda fun sometimes. But i don’t care, and i have no trust in people who are worried about “feminists hurting their own movement by doing things wrong” when they’re not a part of that movement.
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Could you elaborate on the link between pseudoscience, mysticism, and patriarchal/racial relations and class contradictions?
Could you elaborate on the link between pseudoscience, mysticism, and patriarchal/racial relations and class contradictions?
god forbid women get distracted by anything
Astrology is for fun, I truly don’t think it’s any deeper than that
