Unsayable: Let's Talk about Stigmas in Paganism

Stigmas, for those unfamiliar, is a term that refers to behaviors and conditions that we ostracize, criticize, and punish, often without rational reason. Because, thanks to the disappearance of Phonics from school curriculums, some folks may be unaware that a single word can contain multiple divergent meanings, I here compare the Dictionary.com and the Merriam Webster denotations.  

From Dictionary.com:

"A mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one's reputation."

From Merriam-Webster.com:

"A set of negative and unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have about something."

I am in error in my attempt to be fair to the very concept of stigma. Based on these two definitions, the version I speak of is anything that causes pearl clutching.

Modern Pagans have lots of stigmas. They have LOTS of dogmas, especially certain subsets of Wiccans.

Modern Pagans, especially certain subsets of Wiccans, will tell you that they absolutely do not have dogmas. The irony is generally lost on them that their insistence on the absence of dogma IS DOGMA.

Also, by making the above statements, I have guaranteed that someone will fly into an absolute rage because they will feel personally attacked by speaking in a critical-examination manner of a group they identify with.

If someone feels personally attacked because of identification with a group to the point that critical examination and comment about it causes pain, the following may happen:

1. Rather than examining the critical commentary to assess whether it's true, that person will respond emotionally and make name-calling and dismissing comments to the person that may or may not have held up a mirror.

2. The halo effect will kick in: everything this person does or says is wrong - they'll find fault with the person retrieving one hundred orphans with a puppy each from a burning building.

3. An especially cantankerous person will set out to find support for their confirmation bias, "doing their own research" via whatever sources will lead them to whatever information causes them to feel they've proven their standing beliefs to be the correct ones. If confronted with inarguable proof with examples of incorrectness, that information will be ignored as if it doesn't exist. This is the modus operandi of the average offended Internet commenter (Paganism is far from unique in having such people.)

I have absolute compassion for the root causes of these stigmas, and while I attempt to bring compassion to all I discuss, the above conditions will always rear their ugly heads. Should this space become anything other than a vent piece for myself, and people feel a need to comment, each will be assessed for whether it demonstrates digestion and understanding of the material. All comments that are merely reactive will be purged. We're trying to move forward here, not stew in the status quo swamp.

So as not to overwhelm, I move to the next post, merely a list of the many things modern Pagans stigmatize.