It might be a sign you don't fit in
May 7, 2019 12:32 PM Subscribe
What it's like to be queer and an astrology skeptic: Not all queer people believe in astrology — and those who don't often feel alienated from the LGBTQ+ community at large.
I mean, this seems like a slightly overstated problem, in that I doubt that most of us feel actively alienated. But it definitely is a weird little cultural moment. (It's a trend among younger, more on-trend queer people. It's not going to be with us forever. I've been queer for a while and I'm confident of this.)
I've spent enough time around the activist-hippie end of the social continuum that I am not going to harsh someone's mellow and I respect that we all put different frames on the universe, but I do get secretly kind of annoyed when people are all "oh, Aries are like this and Virgos are like that and I could never date a Gemini" and it's just obvious nonsense. There is no other blanket statement that we would ever accept about a basically random group of people, and most of us wouldn't even go along with "women who are born in a Tiger year are this, and women who are born in a Rabbit year are that", which it seems like you should if you're really into star signs, just to be fair.
I guess I can deal with a belief in astrology if it's complex enough to be at least sort of internally plausible, but not when it's just sloppy.
posted by Frowner at 12:49 PM on May 7, 2019 [43 favorites]
I've spent enough time around the activist-hippie end of the social continuum that I am not going to harsh someone's mellow and I respect that we all put different frames on the universe, but I do get secretly kind of annoyed when people are all "oh, Aries are like this and Virgos are like that and I could never date a Gemini" and it's just obvious nonsense. There is no other blanket statement that we would ever accept about a basically random group of people, and most of us wouldn't even go along with "women who are born in a Tiger year are this, and women who are born in a Rabbit year are that", which it seems like you should if you're really into star signs, just to be fair.
I guess I can deal with a belief in astrology if it's complex enough to be at least sort of internally plausible, but not when it's just sloppy.
posted by Frowner at 12:49 PM on May 7, 2019 [43 favorites]
Oh hey, this was also a recent AskMe! Which I largely remember because I am a "queer skeptic" who has had the astrology-obsessed flit around me for many years with their moon proclamations and smudgings alike. While I am willing to engage in the conversation on a shallow level--share my sign and indulge comments thereof, get a tarot reading--I do sometimes feel weird for not pushing back? I certainly understand wanting a guiding framework for life, and I absolutely respect the need for spiritual spaces that feel warm and grounding for queer folk, but the truth is I suppress many judgments (internally and externally) on the matter that I wouldn't if the devotees weren't queer.
Doesn't feel like a big deal, per se, just a bit at odds with a personal likelihood to otherwise keep some distance from those I view as having particularly unscientific beliefs.
posted by youarenothere at 12:52 PM on May 7, 2019 [14 favorites]
Doesn't feel like a big deal, per se, just a bit at odds with a personal likelihood to otherwise keep some distance from those I view as having particularly unscientific beliefs.
posted by youarenothere at 12:52 PM on May 7, 2019 [14 favorites]
Yeah, the article states the problem a lot more strongly than I would have, but I definitely find the astrology trend to be omnipresent and baffling.
posted by zeptoweasel at 12:52 PM on May 7, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by zeptoweasel at 12:52 PM on May 7, 2019 [13 favorites]
I mean I'll be honest - the way that this Vice article was framed did manage to get me pretty rankled when it was published:
Why Straight Men Hate Astrology So Much
It does seem like there's some large-ish subculture out there that is genuinely offended that I find astrology to be awful. That seems... weird.
posted by the_querulous_night at 12:55 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
Why Straight Men Hate Astrology So Much
It does seem like there's some large-ish subculture out there that is genuinely offended that I find astrology to be awful. That seems... weird.
posted by the_querulous_night at 12:55 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
I mean, having long been often adjacent to if not often fully in queer and hippie scenes, I saw myself as... on a path to becoming a better person by becoming respectful of and interested in my friends' beliefs in astrology, rather than openly and loudly finding them hilarious as I did at first. I was the jerk that needed to learn to cater to and care for people, not the other way around. Though I suppose if you really feel outnumbered on this it could feel very different.
Still, every day a school day!
posted by ominous_paws at 12:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
Still, every day a school day!
posted by ominous_paws at 12:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
???
This is a queer thing now? OK, sure. I'm old and out of touch enough to believe I missed that.
I have one circle of friends who do take astrology seriously. I think it annoyed my astrophysicist spouse more than me when we were hanging out with them a lot -- we moved away so it doesn't come up much now. I mostly just gave a noncommital "mm-hm" every time something bad was blamed on Mercury being in retrograde and that was the end of it. (For some reason, Mercury always seemed to be conveniently in retrograde if anything went wrong.)
posted by kyrademon at 12:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [9 favorites]
This is a queer thing now? OK, sure. I'm old and out of touch enough to believe I missed that.
I have one circle of friends who do take astrology seriously. I think it annoyed my astrophysicist spouse more than me when we were hanging out with them a lot -- we moved away so it doesn't come up much now. I mostly just gave a noncommital "mm-hm" every time something bad was blamed on Mercury being in retrograde and that was the end of it. (For some reason, Mercury always seemed to be conveniently in retrograde if anything went wrong.)
posted by kyrademon at 12:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [9 favorites]
[ heavy sigh ] There's this lovely person in my queer choir who just goes on and on about this stuff and some culturally appropriative rituals and etc and and yeah people should get their comfort where they can but all I can do is nod and smile because there's no way any critique of it from me will be seen as anything other than trying to stifle/shut them down. So, I dunno.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:00 PM on May 7, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:00 PM on May 7, 2019 [10 favorites]
Yeah, I've never run into this, like, at all. I joke around sometimes about being a very typical Gemini, but I couldn't even tell you what personalities most of the signs are supposed to have. When dating or even attempting to date, I've never had anybody ask, or suggest that this is a genuinely relevant fact as a part of their dating criteria, or any of that. For those people who've actually run into this a lot, what age/geographic groups are you actually encountering it in? I see a lot of "horoscope" stuff passed around on Tumblr, but none of the people I know who reblog such things actually take them seriously and they clearly are not prepared by actual "trained" astrologers or anything.
posted by Sequence at 1:01 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Sequence at 1:01 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Weird. I haven't really thought or heard about astrology for years; I had no idea it was still a thing. I mean I remember the Nancy Reagan kerfuffle over it but not much since then.
posted by octothorpe at 1:02 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 1:02 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
I still bounce off this stuff because new-age spirituality and neopaganism as I encountered it in the 90s was deeply gender-essentialist, and even some queer branches were still putting heterosexuality on a theological pedestal as fundamental to how the world worked.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [13 favorites]
It's amazing how humans need to always have some criteria to define the "others".
posted by tommasz at 1:09 PM on May 7, 2019
posted by tommasz at 1:09 PM on May 7, 2019
I'd always figured the people who were talking about astrology around me were joking, like the same way people would refer to themselves as a Ravenclaw, but then I just found out my ex roommate now has a business offering reiki and past life regression therapy, and one of Mr. Dinty's former coworkers now believes in the healing powers of magnets, despite fixing electromagnetic lab equipment for a living (and, in theory, should understand how magnets work).
Humans sure are susceptible to magical thinking.
(I have never felt excluded from the queer community for not believing in astrology. This seems akin to being 'excluded' from the queer community for not being into enamel pins and jean jackets)
posted by dinty_moore at 1:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [21 favorites]
Humans sure are susceptible to magical thinking.
(I have never felt excluded from the queer community for not believing in astrology. This seems akin to being 'excluded' from the queer community for not being into enamel pins and jean jackets)
posted by dinty_moore at 1:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [21 favorites]
I'm queer, and I don't put any stock in astrology at all. On the other hand, though, I don't think most people, in or out of the LGBTQ community, put so much stock into astrology that it becomes a problem. Most people I've known who are into astrology are in it more as a fun thing, kind of like a Quija board or Tarot cards.* I sincerely miss the horoscopes in the old "On The L" freebie magazine you could find in NYC, not because of any predictive power, but because they were so entertainingly written.
Basically, if it makes you happy, and you're not hurting anyone, go enjoy whatever silly spiritual crap you find resonates with you. If you find yourself spending money on personal astrologers or actively dismissing people based on their birth sign, that's too far.
* I'm equally skeptical of Tarot, but I've paid $5 at an event to have a card reading done, mostly for entertainment value. It was a small show, and the reading was the classic "vague enough to apply to anyone, but specific enough that it feels real" stuff. And, for what it's worth, my partner collects Tarot decks, not out of any sort of interest in divination, but because the art is cool.
posted by SansPoint at 1:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
Basically, if it makes you happy, and you're not hurting anyone, go enjoy whatever silly spiritual crap you find resonates with you. If you find yourself spending money on personal astrologers or actively dismissing people based on their birth sign, that's too far.
* I'm equally skeptical of Tarot, but I've paid $5 at an event to have a card reading done, mostly for entertainment value. It was a small show, and the reading was the classic "vague enough to apply to anyone, but specific enough that it feels real" stuff. And, for what it's worth, my partner collects Tarot decks, not out of any sort of interest in divination, but because the art is cool.
posted by SansPoint at 1:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
It's unclear just how much of it is genuine versus "haha, these jokes are part of our culture," but I see just so much bullshit about astrology and dumb shit like "Mercury in retrograde."
It's impossible to filter out, because no one uses a hashtag like #astrology, and real, interesting people who I otherwise love to follow will post this bullshit on occasion. Like, do you unfollow someone who is 3/4 life and interesting links, and 1/4 idiotic astrology? Probably not, right?
But the problem is, it's a tough nut to crack, because you never know if it's genuine or joking. The jokesters wouldn't mind if you tell them the astrology is grating, but other folks will feel like you're attacking their genuine beliefs.
So you just sort of grit your teeth and say nothing in queer circles. I don't know if "alienated" is the right word, but sometimes it makes you feel like an outsider because there's just no one really speaking up.
And it's just fucking weird, too. Some of the smartest folks I know are queer. Keeping up with science and sociology has been the thing that literally saved their lives. And then astrology shows up, and you're like, "we know the physical components of these bodies, your best friend is a physicist, why the fuck is astrology interesting to you?"
posted by explosion at 1:11 PM on May 7, 2019 [24 favorites]
It's impossible to filter out, because no one uses a hashtag like #astrology, and real, interesting people who I otherwise love to follow will post this bullshit on occasion. Like, do you unfollow someone who is 3/4 life and interesting links, and 1/4 idiotic astrology? Probably not, right?
But the problem is, it's a tough nut to crack, because you never know if it's genuine or joking. The jokesters wouldn't mind if you tell them the astrology is grating, but other folks will feel like you're attacking their genuine beliefs.
So you just sort of grit your teeth and say nothing in queer circles. I don't know if "alienated" is the right word, but sometimes it makes you feel like an outsider because there's just no one really speaking up.
And it's just fucking weird, too. Some of the smartest folks I know are queer. Keeping up with science and sociology has been the thing that literally saved their lives. And then astrology shows up, and you're like, "we know the physical components of these bodies, your best friend is a physicist, why the fuck is astrology interesting to you?"
posted by explosion at 1:11 PM on May 7, 2019 [24 favorites]
Oh hey I've definitely encountered this in queer spaces and spaces with a lot of queer people in them (I'm bisexual). A lot of people talk about astrology and say stuff like "but it never would have worked out, she's a Pisces" and I stay respectful and don't roll my eyes but it's very odd to me. It's not, like, super alienating or anything but it is a minor source of discomfort in places I feel like I should be comfortable.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
I've run into this a few times, and although it certainly isn't ubiquitious in my social circles (thank f**ing god), I've seen some people people react extremely incredulously when I mention that I'm a member of the LGBTQ+ community and am emphatically not into Astrology – I can certainly see there being some circles where it's enough of a thing to be problematic (and us queer folk are nothing if not problematically-cliquey).
For instance, I'm in a queer urbanism group on Facebook, and when this article was posted, the comments were almost evenly split between those who were unironically in agreement with the idiots who wanted to discriminate based on astrological signs, people who were disagreeing about which particular signs deserve to be discriminated against, and those of us who were completely incredulous that this was how the conversation evolved.
posted by schmod at 1:15 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
For instance, I'm in a queer urbanism group on Facebook, and when this article was posted, the comments were almost evenly split between those who were unironically in agreement with the idiots who wanted to discriminate based on astrological signs, people who were disagreeing about which particular signs deserve to be discriminated against, and those of us who were completely incredulous that this was how the conversation evolved.
posted by schmod at 1:15 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
"Well, I'm a Leo, and Leos don't believe in astrology."
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2019 [34 favorites]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2019 [34 favorites]
In re "the queer community" and alienation:
Queer communities sometimes get awfully small, partly just because GLBTQIA people are minorities, but partly because of the way that queer social circles get constituted. Like, very often people say, "the queer community in my town" and without realizing it they really mean "queer people who have similar social habits to me and a roughly similar background and are between ten years younger and ten years older than I am". So by "queer community" they mean, like, 100 people.
And because people's social circles can be pretty small, I'm absolutely sure that there are specific social circles where people are genuinely assholes about astrology stuff, and that this does make people feel bad. And that this is almost incomprehensible to anyone whose social circle is more on the "Oh, astrology, that's fun, I'm a Leo!" side of things. The same thing can happen in activist circles with other issues, and no one believes you because it sounds so unlikely. And when these are social circles that skew young and people are still figuring themselves out, IME it can get even harder to deal with because a sizable percentage of people are still developing self-confidence and social skills.
And I do think that "are you queer enough" is a weird chronic problem in GLBTQIA communities, perhaps because we're talking about identities that are "invisible" in a way - like, if I say that I'm queer, I have only my word about my feelings to back that up, unless I am very visibly "being queer", and that gives us orthodoxies and competing orthodoxies and anti-orthodoxies that start out well but turn toxic, etc etc etc.
Like, consider femme invisibility. In large parts of the world, femme people are not read as queer, are marginalized, have their queerness questioned or deemed flawed on its face, etc. And yet at the same time, I've had femme people say really, really shitty and mean personal things to me about my gender presentation and I've been pressured to just be totally cool with it because as a masculine-spectrum person I am considered to have privilege, even though I also get a lot more day to day shit because I'm very visible. Both these things are true, even though it sounds like one would cancel the other out.
So anyway, I think that there's always all this tension around "how do we perform queerness" and "what is queer enough" and that in certain spaces this invests astrology with perhaps more weight than it's good to bear.
posted by Frowner at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2019 [64 favorites]
Queer communities sometimes get awfully small, partly just because GLBTQIA people are minorities, but partly because of the way that queer social circles get constituted. Like, very often people say, "the queer community in my town" and without realizing it they really mean "queer people who have similar social habits to me and a roughly similar background and are between ten years younger and ten years older than I am". So by "queer community" they mean, like, 100 people.
And because people's social circles can be pretty small, I'm absolutely sure that there are specific social circles where people are genuinely assholes about astrology stuff, and that this does make people feel bad. And that this is almost incomprehensible to anyone whose social circle is more on the "Oh, astrology, that's fun, I'm a Leo!" side of things. The same thing can happen in activist circles with other issues, and no one believes you because it sounds so unlikely. And when these are social circles that skew young and people are still figuring themselves out, IME it can get even harder to deal with because a sizable percentage of people are still developing self-confidence and social skills.
And I do think that "are you queer enough" is a weird chronic problem in GLBTQIA communities, perhaps because we're talking about identities that are "invisible" in a way - like, if I say that I'm queer, I have only my word about my feelings to back that up, unless I am very visibly "being queer", and that gives us orthodoxies and competing orthodoxies and anti-orthodoxies that start out well but turn toxic, etc etc etc.
Like, consider femme invisibility. In large parts of the world, femme people are not read as queer, are marginalized, have their queerness questioned or deemed flawed on its face, etc. And yet at the same time, I've had femme people say really, really shitty and mean personal things to me about my gender presentation and I've been pressured to just be totally cool with it because as a masculine-spectrum person I am considered to have privilege, even though I also get a lot more day to day shit because I'm very visible. Both these things are true, even though it sounds like one would cancel the other out.
So anyway, I think that there's always all this tension around "how do we perform queerness" and "what is queer enough" and that in certain spaces this invests astrology with perhaps more weight than it's good to bear.
posted by Frowner at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2019 [64 favorites]
I mean, I have friends who are into astrology. Hell, my birth-mom has been deep into it for ages and ages. But, none of them get upset or otherwise insulted that I don’t share their belief in it. Neither do I demean astrology to them, or get all huffy at them for it. This really strikes me as an excuse to claim pain or something.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
Meh. It's amusing, but nothing to live your life by and I got over it in my 20s, which is the last time I dated a woman who was really into it. I'm outside the mainstream lesbian community for so many other reasons that this just doesn't really rate. Like, my big issues are around not doing butch/femme, having a mobility disability, having a professional job, and having a lot of interests associated with low-status nerd stuff like comic books and RPGs. So I have no doubt that this is a thing for a fair number of people, but for me at 40 it's not what makes dating difficult.
posted by bile and syntax at 1:27 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by bile and syntax at 1:27 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
Aha, this explains something. In a discord I hang out in, astrology has been coming up and treated with all seriousness, which led to a lot of silent ??? from me. But it's quite queer-heavy, so it makes more sense now. To the extent that anything nonsensical can make sense.
posted by tavella at 1:28 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tavella at 1:28 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
I really feel this article, as I'm queer and not into astrology and I've encountered it to a degree I find surprising and it does leave me feeling a little separated ("alienated" is too strong a term). Partly because I'm an astrology skeptic, partly because it often seems to be used as a bonding activity so you lose out on that if you're a non-believer.
In general, I think humans have a need for a connection to something greater than themselves and spiritual practices are one way to get there. Some people find their spiritual connection through traditional religions, and for others astrology or similar is a better fit. It is also not at all surprising that people in the LGBTQ+ community would turn to the non-traditional when often the most vocal practitioners of many mainstream religions make it very clear that non-cis, non-straight people are not welcome. So when I am feeling snarky about someone going on about signs or something I remind myself of that and cool it.
posted by Anonymous at 1:38 PM on May 7, 2019
In general, I think humans have a need for a connection to something greater than themselves and spiritual practices are one way to get there. Some people find their spiritual connection through traditional religions, and for others astrology or similar is a better fit. It is also not at all surprising that people in the LGBTQ+ community would turn to the non-traditional when often the most vocal practitioners of many mainstream religions make it very clear that non-cis, non-straight people are not welcome. So when I am feeling snarky about someone going on about signs or something I remind myself of that and cool it.
posted by Anonymous at 1:38 PM on May 7, 2019
When I was born, my aunt did my chart and told my parents they should send me back, and she found this "joke" hilarious enough to repeat once I was old enough to understand. My dislike of astrology is based on this, and all of the other asshole comments over the years, not on my sign. Astrology was so present when I was growing up in California that I didn't notice its popularity in queer circles until a friend complained about it to me. I thought about it, and I realized that I didn't hear the same casual comments in the break room about the Moon or whatever in my current job as I used to in suburban LA. I think that astrology is replacing MBTI for some people, and I really hope it doesn't become the next big trend in business management.
(For me, tarot cards are a visual storytelling device--nothing magical, no divination. One of my more woo-inclined friends was upset when she saw that my cards had a rubber band around them and were being stored in a plastic baggie. She took them out, apologized to them, told them that I didn't know it was hard to breathe in there...)
posted by betweenthebars at 1:39 PM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]
(For me, tarot cards are a visual storytelling device--nothing magical, no divination. One of my more woo-inclined friends was upset when she saw that my cards had a rubber band around them and were being stored in a plastic baggie. She took them out, apologized to them, told them that I didn't know it was hard to breathe in there...)
posted by betweenthebars at 1:39 PM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]
In the queer history department, they kind of missed out on queer astrologer Gavin Arthur (1901-1972), who also made a zodiac-like alternative to the Kinsey scale, The Circle of Sex.
posted by larrybob at 1:43 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by larrybob at 1:43 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
Astrology is assimilationist. Horuspexy forever!
posted by Parasite Unseen at 1:46 PM on May 7, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by Parasite Unseen at 1:46 PM on May 7, 2019 [12 favorites]
We've also seen a huge uptick in things that seemed weird but harmless in small doses (libertarians, anti-vaxxers) gain critical masses that end up seriously hurting people. So folks who previously would be live-and-let-live are now stringently pushing back.
Is astrology hurting anyone? Nah, maybe not directly. But maybe it's displacing useful stuff like therapy, and so folks are pushing against it where they didn't before, and the choice between being a killjoy or letting ignorance run rampant is definitely a stressful thing.
posted by explosion at 1:48 PM on May 7, 2019 [49 favorites]
Is astrology hurting anyone? Nah, maybe not directly. But maybe it's displacing useful stuff like therapy, and so folks are pushing against it where they didn't before, and the choice between being a killjoy or letting ignorance run rampant is definitely a stressful thing.
posted by explosion at 1:48 PM on May 7, 2019 [49 favorites]
Astrology is assimilationist. Horuspexy forever!
I know you're kinda joking here, but a lot of it is reframed early 20th century psychoanalysis with the same kinds of gender essentialism that gave us inversion theory. And the idea that I just need to find a balance between my masculine and feminine essences just makes me want to hurl.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:57 PM on May 7, 2019 [23 favorites]
I know you're kinda joking here, but a lot of it is reframed early 20th century psychoanalysis with the same kinds of gender essentialism that gave us inversion theory. And the idea that I just need to find a balance between my masculine and feminine essences just makes me want to hurl.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:57 PM on May 7, 2019 [23 favorites]
Weird. I haven't really thought or heard about astrology for years; I had no idea it was still a thing.
Wow, really? I'm a 31-year-old queer woman in NYC and I CANNOT get away from it. It's everywhere. And in comparison to years past, more people seem to actually BELIEVE it rather than just thinking of it as a fun diversion.
I have a theory about this actually - it seems to be very much a parallel to what happened in the Gilded Age, when spiritualism got to be such a huge deal. Both periods saw a combination of extreme wealth inequality and social upheaval, which undermined a lot of people's faith in existing institutions and belief systems. So they turned to an "unsanctioned" belief system that could answer some of their otherwise unanswered questions.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [98 favorites]
Wow, really? I'm a 31-year-old queer woman in NYC and I CANNOT get away from it. It's everywhere. And in comparison to years past, more people seem to actually BELIEVE it rather than just thinking of it as a fun diversion.
I have a theory about this actually - it seems to be very much a parallel to what happened in the Gilded Age, when spiritualism got to be such a huge deal. Both periods saw a combination of extreme wealth inequality and social upheaval, which undermined a lot of people's faith in existing institutions and belief systems. So they turned to an "unsanctioned" belief system that could answer some of their otherwise unanswered questions.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [98 favorites]
This seems to have upticked among the straight women I know too. Or the women I'm dating, at least. (I have been asked if they could do my natal chart by the last two women I've been on multiple dates with. They seriously wanted to know the time I was born.)
I like your theory, Liz.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:03 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
I like your theory, Liz.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:03 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
So they turned to an "unsanctioned" belief system that could answer some of their otherwise unanswered questions.
[shoves hands in pockets, kicks battered copy of the Lemegeton, shuffles away]
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:04 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
[shoves hands in pockets, kicks battered copy of the Lemegeton, shuffles away]
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:04 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
Oh. OH! I moved to CA 15 years ago and started making friends with some lesbians. Every meet started “what’s your sign? I’m not really into astrology, I just think it’s interesting!” And then proceeded to tell me all about myself from my sign.
I assumed it was a CA thing, not a lesbian thing! But now that I think about it, my straight friends rarely did this.
posted by greermahoney at 2:04 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
I assumed it was a CA thing, not a lesbian thing! But now that I think about it, my straight friends rarely did this.
posted by greermahoney at 2:04 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
A science-minded friend of mine was unhappily venting on Twitter about the rising interest in astrology and all I had for a response was "I think the kids these days feel powerless in the face of crippling student debt, shattered job market, wage inequality, political nightmare, police brutality, #metoo, and [gestures wildly in all directions] and are looking for ANYTHING that feels like comfort and guidance."
I had not at the time thought about astrology + the queer community but as soon as I read the start of this post it clicked and yeah, the Venn diagram on my social media of queer friends and astrology talk is approaching a circle.
posted by komara at 2:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [19 favorites]
I had not at the time thought about astrology + the queer community but as soon as I read the start of this post it clicked and yeah, the Venn diagram on my social media of queer friends and astrology talk is approaching a circle.
posted by komara at 2:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [19 favorites]
I can't speak for LGBTQ+ communities, but anecdotally, I feel that I come across more middle class, educated types in their twenties and thirties who admit to taking astrology seriously than, say, ten years ago. Not the sun signs in newspapers but full on charts, ascendants, etc. Plus crystals, all that stuff. I'm fairly tolerant about other people's weird beliefs, but I do find it disconcerting after having grown up loling merrily at Linda Goodman's Sun Signs.
posted by tavegyl at 2:08 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by tavegyl at 2:08 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
It's so prevalent in my social circles (which aren't exclusively queer but are generally at least queer-adjacent) that I just nod and go along with it. Fortunately, no one I'm close to seems to take it super seriously. And, honestly, it is kind of nice to be able to blame communication/scheduling mishaps (of which my life has plenty) on mercury being in retrograde.
posted by treepour at 2:11 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by treepour at 2:11 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think in the case of the uptick of interest in astrology, it comes from the same place as the uptick in paganism and other alternative religions. There's a part of a lot of people's minds that wants the sort of structure that religion and spiritual systems provide, and something like astrology, or Wicca, or the OTO, or any combination thereof, gives them that, without the patriarchal baggage of most Western religions.
And now to hop on to my well-worn hobby-horse in discussing faith, spirituality, and religion: this is the sort of thing that so much contemporary atheist discourse utterly fails to address, and part of why New Atheism is such a joyless, soul-sucking thing that fails to account for the role faith and religion play in people's lives.
posted by SansPoint at 2:15 PM on May 7, 2019 [30 favorites]
And now to hop on to my well-worn hobby-horse in discussing faith, spirituality, and religion: this is the sort of thing that so much contemporary atheist discourse utterly fails to address, and part of why New Atheism is such a joyless, soul-sucking thing that fails to account for the role faith and religion play in people's lives.
posted by SansPoint at 2:15 PM on May 7, 2019 [30 favorites]
and part of why New Atheism is such a joyless, soul-sucking thing
That’s only true if you consider science to be joyless and soul-sucking. Many of us really don’t. I don’t need to make things up about how the world works and convince others to believe in them to think the universe is fascinating. It’s pretty damn cool all on its own.
posted by greermahoney at 2:21 PM on May 7, 2019 [26 favorites]
That’s only true if you consider science to be joyless and soul-sucking. Many of us really don’t. I don’t need to make things up about how the world works and convince others to believe in them to think the universe is fascinating. It’s pretty damn cool all on its own.
posted by greermahoney at 2:21 PM on May 7, 2019 [26 favorites]
greermahoney: Science is great! But scienceism of the sort promoted by New Atheism is joyless, pedantic, and often plain obnoxious.
posted by SansPoint at 2:23 PM on May 7, 2019 [35 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 2:23 PM on May 7, 2019 [35 favorites]
I think it's possible to not ascribe to a religion and still acknowledge the importance of ritual and reflection in people's lives - having a time to celebrate others, to reflect on your past mistakes and have ways of seeking forgiveness, to acknowledge growth, to give yourself an excuse to rest. New Atheism just needs some damn holidays that aren't steeped in irony.
posted by dinty_moore at 2:30 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by dinty_moore at 2:30 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
I think in the case of the uptick of interest in astrology, it comes from the same place as the uptick in paganism and other alternative religions
Yes! I came here to say that in the queer circles around me in the UK (in which I am at best tolerated) it's risen hand-in-hand with naive paganism, self-describing as "witches" all kinds of similar bullshit. I'm kinda of the opinion that all woo is inherently harmful, and I very much feel like this isn't even the biggest problem with this stuff in queer circles - the exclusionary attitudes that it is deployed in aid of our tandem with are. I don't fit the mold for basically any of various flavours of queer culture I move in, and I really can feel it. I am very much alienated and almost shunned for the way I look, dress, talk, and act. This crap is part of that.
posted by Dysk at 2:33 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
Yes! I came here to say that in the queer circles around me in the UK (in which I am at best tolerated) it's risen hand-in-hand with naive paganism, self-describing as "witches" all kinds of similar bullshit. I'm kinda of the opinion that all woo is inherently harmful, and I very much feel like this isn't even the biggest problem with this stuff in queer circles - the exclusionary attitudes that it is deployed in aid of our tandem with are. I don't fit the mold for basically any of various flavours of queer culture I move in, and I really can feel it. I am very much alienated and almost shunned for the way I look, dress, talk, and act. This crap is part of that.
posted by Dysk at 2:33 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
Two questions from the outside: It used to be sun signs. Has it shifted to star signs?
Does queer include male homosexuals? I thought it did, but the article seems to be about women and non-binary people.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:33 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Does queer include male homosexuals? I thought it did, but the article seems to be about women and non-binary people.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:33 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
We live in a world where the very idea of an objective fact is being persistently undermined, mostly by bad actors on the right. Is it any wonder that things like conspiracy theories and astrology are running rampant?
posted by panama joe at 2:34 PM on May 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by panama joe at 2:34 PM on May 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
Does queer include male homosexuals? I thought it did, but the article seems to be about women and non-binary people.
I think this article is using queer not as a blanket term for LGBTQIA+ but to refer to particular cultures that consciously self-describe as queer instead of gay/homosexual/lesbian/whatever. This does include some men, but not the majority of gay men.
posted by Dysk at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
I think this article is using queer not as a blanket term for LGBTQIA+ but to refer to particular cultures that consciously self-describe as queer instead of gay/homosexual/lesbian/whatever. This does include some men, but not the majority of gay men.
posted by Dysk at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
Astrology is having A Moment right now for sure among women in my circles (both straight and not), but many of the people talking about it in the larger culture aren’t taking it seriously, it’s akin to a Buzzfeed quiz on “what do your hamburger toppings say about you.” On Instagram, @costarastrology and @notallgeminis are good examples of this kind of meme astrology. That’s not to dismiss the people who’ve had a long-standing, serious interest in astrology, and maybe the fact that it’s becoming trendy is drawing some people into that more serious stuff. No one I know would make a serious life decision based on Mercury being in retrograde or whatever. But it can be fun to play the “if I was a tree what tree would I be” game with meme astrology.
posted by sallybrown at 2:39 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by sallybrown at 2:39 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
One of the top five most disorienting parts of growing older is that I have a lot less confidence nowadays about whether people are being serious.
posted by penduluum at 2:43 PM on May 7, 2019 [23 favorites]
posted by penduluum at 2:43 PM on May 7, 2019 [23 favorites]
"Well, I'm a Leo, and Leos don't believe in astrology."
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 16:22 on May 7
I believe Arthur C. Clarke said, "I don't believe in astrology because I'm a Sagittarius, and Sags are naturally skeptical."
posted by halfbuckaroo at 2:45 PM on May 7, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 16:22 on May 7
I believe Arthur C. Clarke said, "I don't believe in astrology because I'm a Sagittarius, and Sags are naturally skeptical."
posted by halfbuckaroo at 2:45 PM on May 7, 2019 [9 favorites]
Ah, this explains a thing. I recently started poking around on OkCupid again and was noticing a bizarre prevalence of astrology stuff prominently displayed at the top of profiles.
posted by NMcCoy at 2:47 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by NMcCoy at 2:47 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
Cntrl+ F “Myers–Briggs”
Belive In deterministic mystical systems usually pop up to smooth cultural anxieties around a system in crisis or the floor dropping out of peooe’s Feet - See spiritualism right before the civil war, the bom In mysticism in the 70s, etc
But that’s just one Queer libra’s Opinion.
Astrology Year Zero
There alre already sophicated apps to monitor your star chart and gobble up all your information to advertisers
posted by The Whelk at 2:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]
Belive In deterministic mystical systems usually pop up to smooth cultural anxieties around a system in crisis or the floor dropping out of peooe’s Feet - See spiritualism right before the civil war, the bom In mysticism in the 70s, etc
But that’s just one Queer libra’s Opinion.
Astrology Year Zero
There alre already sophicated apps to monitor your star chart and gobble up all your information to advertisers
posted by The Whelk at 2:59 PM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]
oh christ I know so many otherwise brilliant wonderful gay women who are EXTREMELY into this shit, as well as enneagrams (sp?) and whatever thing gives you a number between 1 and 9 and they literally never. stop. talking. about. it. to the extent that I've had to filter out the use of actual numbers from my twitter feed in desperation. it's not just a passing interest in it for entertainment purposes, it's like a thing they consult before making real life decisions or use to justify the way others behave, while I weep with despair in the distance.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [26 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 3:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [26 favorites]
I think SansPoint has it: this is a natural consequence of the precipitous drop in traditional religious beliefs among a group of people who are categorically excluded by conventional religious groups. (Tough to go to church on Sunday if you're not sure if your church leadership are following papal dogma, or are heretical firebrands who think you're NOT an abomination for your beliefs) . Nature abhors a vacuum, and astrology is as likely an answer as any other dogma. Better, even, because you get your horoscope for free in every morning daily.
posted by Mayor West at 3:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Mayor West at 3:06 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
Y'know, next time someone asks me my sign I'll just tell them my Myers-Briggs instead and see if they can extrapolate. That should totally work, right?
I thought that was a joke as I was typing it but now I'm sure if I google it I'll find out it's a thing and that "and of course all Geminis are ENTJs" or something like that.
posted by komara at 3:07 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
I thought that was a joke as I was typing it but now I'm sure if I google it I'll find out it's a thing and that "and of course all Geminis are ENTJs" or something like that.
posted by komara at 3:07 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
Astrology is having A Moment right now for sure among women in my circles (both straight and not), but many of the people talking about it in the larger culture aren’t taking it seriously
In a lot of respects, it kind of makes no difference whether you're being serious or joking, being ironic, memeing, or whatever we're calling "don't hold me accountable for what I say/do" these days. You're promoting the same ideas regardless, and there is no way to know whether or not everyone else you're joking with is taking it seriously, and to what extent. From an outsider's perspective, there is literally know difference between someone saying that Mercury is in retrograde and meaning it, and someone saying it and not meaning it. If you're not inside their head, all you have is them saying the thing.
posted by Dysk at 3:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
In a lot of respects, it kind of makes no difference whether you're being serious or joking, being ironic, memeing, or whatever we're calling "don't hold me accountable for what I say/do" these days. You're promoting the same ideas regardless, and there is no way to know whether or not everyone else you're joking with is taking it seriously, and to what extent. From an outsider's perspective, there is literally know difference between someone saying that Mercury is in retrograde and meaning it, and someone saying it and not meaning it. If you're not inside their head, all you have is them saying the thing.
posted by Dysk at 3:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
I thought that was a joke as I was typing it but now I'm sure if I google it I'll find out it's a thing and that "and of course all Geminis are ENTJs" or something like that.
If you want to be double plus sure they get the right impression, tell them your Myers-Briggs type is IDGAF.
posted by Dysk at 3:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [15 favorites]
If you want to be double plus sure they get the right impression, tell them your Myers-Briggs type is IDGAF.
posted by Dysk at 3:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [15 favorites]
I have a lot less confidence nowadays about whether people are being serious
Exhibit C: DO YOU WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO LEARN CAT DIVINATION?
Evidently connected to a small but successful Kickstarter.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:25 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
Exhibit C: DO YOU WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO LEARN CAT DIVINATION?
Evidently connected to a small but successful Kickstarter.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:25 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
Y'know, next time someone asks me my sign I'll just tell them my Myers-Briggs instead and see if they can extrapolate. That should totally work, right?
Only because they will find your studyblr and then see the spread you did for your birthday bullet list.
posted by srboisvert at 3:35 PM on May 7, 2019
Only because they will find your studyblr and then see the spread you did for your birthday bullet list.
posted by srboisvert at 3:35 PM on May 7, 2019
Astrology is not a cute look. A few years back I went on a tinder date, we had just sat down with our coffees when she asked me my sign. I laughed to myself internally but told her... and she stood up and left. "Sorry, I just can't do any more Aries."
I've also had friends turned out from housing because they "weren't compatible with our vibes." There's a whole meme series about it...
posted by aw jeez at 3:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [18 favorites]
I've also had friends turned out from housing because they "weren't compatible with our vibes." There's a whole meme series about it...
posted by aw jeez at 3:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [18 favorites]
Yikes, poffin boffin, I am so obsessed with the Enneagram that I came here to defend it angrily because it is not at all like astrology, I swear, and it's actually really helped me understand how I relate to other people in this incredibly profound way and...shit...wait...is this what people who are into astrology feel about it when they insist to me that it's really a good way to categorize and understand people? Ugh.*
I'm a lesbian who also really doesn't give a shit or believe in astrology. I kind of defended it in the AskMe linked above but I'm truly over this whole "well you're a Cancer so you wouldn't do X" or "as a Gemini I can't date a Y." I will say that I encounter this attitude mostly online. Like 99% in people's Instagram stories. And I've started taking it as a red flag because I have found that it correlates strongly to how exhausting that person is in real life in terms of being emotionally needy and lacking in responsibility. And if I don't know them in real life it correlates to how utterly batshit crazy their comment sections get with infighting and drama.
I don't mean that all people who find it fun or probably even all people who take it really seriously are like that, and I do also understand the appeal — I linked to this, "Why do queers love astrology" in the AskMe and found it really helpful. Also, the author of that piece, Chani Nicholas is a queer astrologist and I sometimes read her horoscopes (for all the signs) because she gives pretty lovely life advice. Look at the explosion of advice columns and podcasts and, uh, the existence of AskMe — people want advice on how to live, so I get that astrology is a venue for that.
* If I may, though, the Enneagram isn't like the Myers-Briggs or like astrology, I do think it's useful for personal reflection on what your fears and motivations are and understanding how that can clash or work with other people, but had it not been my two brilliant queer friends in academia who have never showed any hints of 'woo' that introduced it to me I definitely would have assumed it was bullshit.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 4:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
I'm a lesbian who also really doesn't give a shit or believe in astrology. I kind of defended it in the AskMe linked above but I'm truly over this whole "well you're a Cancer so you wouldn't do X" or "as a Gemini I can't date a Y." I will say that I encounter this attitude mostly online. Like 99% in people's Instagram stories. And I've started taking it as a red flag because I have found that it correlates strongly to how exhausting that person is in real life in terms of being emotionally needy and lacking in responsibility. And if I don't know them in real life it correlates to how utterly batshit crazy their comment sections get with infighting and drama.
I don't mean that all people who find it fun or probably even all people who take it really seriously are like that, and I do also understand the appeal — I linked to this, "Why do queers love astrology" in the AskMe and found it really helpful. Also, the author of that piece, Chani Nicholas is a queer astrologist and I sometimes read her horoscopes (for all the signs) because she gives pretty lovely life advice. Look at the explosion of advice columns and podcasts and, uh, the existence of AskMe — people want advice on how to live, so I get that astrology is a venue for that.
* If I may, though, the Enneagram isn't like the Myers-Briggs or like astrology, I do think it's useful for personal reflection on what your fears and motivations are and understanding how that can clash or work with other people, but had it not been my two brilliant queer friends in academia who have never showed any hints of 'woo' that introduced it to me I definitely would have assumed it was bullshit.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 4:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
Oh my God, I'm not crazy. This is real, my community doesnt just have some weird local culture, and those star sign posts arent sarcastic.
A ton of higher profile queer people around where I live believe astrology. Like, believe believe it. They tend to be younger and working-class-radical-queer types, but there are more exceptions to that than I expected. I think the only reason I didn't see it among my classmates in college is because I went to an engineering school and even the most pastel undercut septum-pierced queers were getting STEM degrees.
I never lumped queer woman witchy stuff in along with it, though - doing spells and meditating always struck me as legitimately spiritual and a way to declare intentions/ reclaim power. Then again, I didn't see any goddess-worshipping going on like was described in the article.
The whole trend just speaks to my growing isolation from queer communities, and this is just one of a million reasons. I have a lot to think about. Thanks for posting.
and solution: date a queer engineer!
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 4:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [14 favorites]
A ton of higher profile queer people around where I live believe astrology. Like, believe believe it. They tend to be younger and working-class-radical-queer types, but there are more exceptions to that than I expected. I think the only reason I didn't see it among my classmates in college is because I went to an engineering school and even the most pastel undercut septum-pierced queers were getting STEM degrees.
I never lumped queer woman witchy stuff in along with it, though - doing spells and meditating always struck me as legitimately spiritual and a way to declare intentions/ reclaim power. Then again, I didn't see any goddess-worshipping going on like was described in the article.
The whole trend just speaks to my growing isolation from queer communities, and this is just one of a million reasons. I have a lot to think about. Thanks for posting.
and solution: date a queer engineer!
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 4:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [14 favorites]
I was a full-on queer New Age astrology obsessive for most of my teens & early 20s, and ran with a very gatekeepery crowd of gays (real lesbians smoke Winstons, all bisexuals are really straight girls or gay dudes, trans women who want to look suburban are boring wastes of transness, etc. ad nauseam).
They definitely (well, me too, if I'm honest about having been a shitty young person) got into astrology as a vector for negging people about their personal traits & declaring superiority on the basis of having a more interesting zodiac sign. One of them who was born further away from the cusp than I was maintained a running "joke" that they were a true Leo while I was actually a Virgo, which, what even the fuck.
My skeptical current self still has a nostalgic fondness for some of the trappings of New Agery, and I think certain presentations of astrology can be close to harmless? But there's definitely potential to use it for heavy heavy toxic nightmare garbage.
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [12 favorites]
They definitely (well, me too, if I'm honest about having been a shitty young person) got into astrology as a vector for negging people about their personal traits & declaring superiority on the basis of having a more interesting zodiac sign. One of them who was born further away from the cusp than I was maintained a running "joke" that they were a true Leo while I was actually a Virgo, which, what even the fuck.
My skeptical current self still has a nostalgic fondness for some of the trappings of New Agery, and I think certain presentations of astrology can be close to harmless? But there's definitely potential to use it for heavy heavy toxic nightmare garbage.
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [12 favorites]
Honestly i think a lot of people here who are real perplexed are in a different generation from me. This happened locally recently, and it's STILL a huge shitstorm with note a huge number, but still quite a few people defending the woman who started it.(and quite a few more i know are abstaining but would purse their lips and go "well..." if you pushed them, or who think the response is way too mean, or). I made a post making fun of the ridiculous apology and actually got some public and private pushback even with a curated friends list. Like, this stuff runs deep unless you're going to isolate yourself pretty significantly from the local art/music/"queer" scene and you're under or around 30.
I myself, multiple times, have run into the implicit accusation that i was uncomfortable with astrology because i like, still had internalized misogyny to work through or hadn't fully accepted my queer womanhood or whatever.
As i grew into my later 20s i came around to being casually interested in astrology, but i will absolutely attribute people taking it overly seriously and being super fucking obnoxious about it with how, and why i recoiled from it and was resistant to doing anything but clowning on it.
Honestly, it pokes at another sore spot for me because i really really really hate the implication that you can't dislike something if shitty people(Men™, the alt right, videogame/movie fans, whatever) don't like it or you're either brainwashed by them or like conspiring with them or some shit. And that one REALLY comes out here.
Sometimes shitty people are correct even if it's for the wrong reasons. And yea, this really has kind of gotten out of hand.
I swear to god if i have to read some bizarre long rant about how astrology is how women communicate their trauma, and warn eachother through the generations away from their bad experiences and etc etc my head is going to cave in
posted by emptythought at 4:52 PM on May 7, 2019 [38 favorites]
I myself, multiple times, have run into the implicit accusation that i was uncomfortable with astrology because i like, still had internalized misogyny to work through or hadn't fully accepted my queer womanhood or whatever.
As i grew into my later 20s i came around to being casually interested in astrology, but i will absolutely attribute people taking it overly seriously and being super fucking obnoxious about it with how, and why i recoiled from it and was resistant to doing anything but clowning on it.
Honestly, it pokes at another sore spot for me because i really really really hate the implication that you can't dislike something if shitty people(Men™, the alt right, videogame/movie fans, whatever) don't like it or you're either brainwashed by them or like conspiring with them or some shit. And that one REALLY comes out here.
Sometimes shitty people are correct even if it's for the wrong reasons. And yea, this really has kind of gotten out of hand.
I swear to god if i have to read some bizarre long rant about how astrology is how women communicate their trauma, and warn eachother through the generations away from their bad experiences and etc etc my head is going to cave in
posted by emptythought at 4:52 PM on May 7, 2019 [38 favorites]
The thing to keep in mind about astrology is that it is a system for pseudorandom combinatoric scheduling. It isn’t very random, but just enough that it’s not the exact same thing over and over again.
given enough variables, any model will fit the data. ya keep throwing in stars and moons until you get a fit, lord knows there are enough of them.
Some folks haven't had the experience of creating models. and i feel with most modelling, it's really at least half about the brain-exercising process of modelling than the results. 'all models are wrong, some are useful' and all that.
I will echo the folks citing the multitude of ecological, cultural, and political ruptures going on in the anglophone world. of the many current epistemological crises, this seems like one.
posted by eustatic at 5:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
given enough variables, any model will fit the data. ya keep throwing in stars and moons until you get a fit, lord knows there are enough of them.
Some folks haven't had the experience of creating models. and i feel with most modelling, it's really at least half about the brain-exercising process of modelling than the results. 'all models are wrong, some are useful' and all that.
I will echo the folks citing the multitude of ecological, cultural, and political ruptures going on in the anglophone world. of the many current epistemological crises, this seems like one.
posted by eustatic at 5:10 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
Is the "Maps of Meaning" mysticism the chiral pair to this epiphenomenon?
posted by eustatic at 5:26 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by eustatic at 5:26 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Still haven't figured out why it's hard for people who already learned that it's inadvisable to put people into categories and build massive stereotypes about all of their behavior, to extend this to a new set of categories, but it sure always is hard.
posted by value of information at 5:42 PM on May 7, 2019 [25 favorites]
posted by value of information at 5:42 PM on May 7, 2019 [25 favorites]
Does anybody else find it kinda bizarre that such a progressive community would come to love and cherish a system that basically says that everything about you was decided before you were born, by forces outside of your control?
It’s practically a caste system.
posted by panama joe at 6:03 PM on May 7, 2019 [24 favorites]
It’s practically a caste system.
posted by panama joe at 6:03 PM on May 7, 2019 [24 favorites]
People are complicated and desperate for meaning in a world that is full of crap. I’m... not a huge astrology fan shall we say, but I get why people are into it. It makes sense that those of us who are hugely disadvantaged and discriminated against by traditional religion might hew to stuff like this. Doesn’t make it right- but I understand it. I grew up in a Reform Jewish synagogue that had a lesbian rabbi- so I always knew I’d be accepted by my faith- that’s a thing so few queer people have. Astrology is essentially a discriminatory system though, so I suppose the only thing this proves is that queer people are people too- and people can be terrible.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 6:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 6:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [10 favorites]
I saw myself as... on a path to becoming a better person by becoming respectful of and interested in my friends' beliefs in astrology [emph. mine]
For what it's worth, in my experience, nobody who really puts stock in it is willing to reciprocate in this regard, so I don't see any moral obligation to profess interest in it unless you actually want to for yourself.
Anyway, I wonder if this is a regional thing given the varying reactions here, because it's totally the predominant disposition in young queer communities in the Bay Area (and non-queer ones, too, if less so). I respect the headspaces of my friends by not shitting on it, but I don't think there's anything disrespectful about being clear with them upfront that it has no place in my worldview and then just not engaging after that. I've for sure seen people frequently wield that belief in insensitive ways in their dealings with others, so I'm not really convinced that it's just a harmless idiosyncrasy.
posted by invitapriore at 6:14 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
For what it's worth, in my experience, nobody who really puts stock in it is willing to reciprocate in this regard, so I don't see any moral obligation to profess interest in it unless you actually want to for yourself.
Anyway, I wonder if this is a regional thing given the varying reactions here, because it's totally the predominant disposition in young queer communities in the Bay Area (and non-queer ones, too, if less so). I respect the headspaces of my friends by not shitting on it, but I don't think there's anything disrespectful about being clear with them upfront that it has no place in my worldview and then just not engaging after that. I've for sure seen people frequently wield that belief in insensitive ways in their dealings with others, so I'm not really convinced that it's just a harmless idiosyncrasy.
posted by invitapriore at 6:14 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
Since i’m Gay and not queer I really found that whole article alienating. How was that not a Buzzfeed article. Make sweeping generalization, pump up the hyperbole and there you go.
Besides, Myers-Briggs seems to be the mumbo-jumbo of choice these days anyway.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 6:22 PM on May 7, 2019
Besides, Myers-Briggs seems to be the mumbo-jumbo of choice these days anyway.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 6:22 PM on May 7, 2019
It is useful for externalizing any potentially negative situations, since all you have to do is explain that Uranus is transiting your seventh house of self-worth to humble you, and Mercury retrograde is responsible for the espresso machine blowing up like that. It had nothing to do with you, personally.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:24 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:24 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
The best thing about being a Capricorn is that people who are seriously into astrology just decide to avoid you after they learn that.
posted by heurtebise at 6:33 PM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by heurtebise at 6:33 PM on May 7, 2019 [11 favorites]
> Astrology is essentially a discriminatory system though Ooh Homo neanderthalensis I’m super curious about this statement and would love if you expanded more on why it’s a discriminatory system! I feel like I don’t understand astrology enough to understand why.
Also, Conrad-Casserole: what is the difference between “Gay” and “queer” to you? I often say queer as a shorthand for the whole acronym salad because I worry about leaving someone out and I’m lazy. I do say I’m a lesbian because sometimes I feel like “queer” has been co-opted by anyone who feels different and I want to be more specific (e.g. fat activist Virgie Tovar calls herself queer because she says being fat is to be queer, a statement I disagree with mightily though I am also fat.)
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 6:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Also, Conrad-Casserole: what is the difference between “Gay” and “queer” to you? I often say queer as a shorthand for the whole acronym salad because I worry about leaving someone out and I’m lazy. I do say I’m a lesbian because sometimes I feel like “queer” has been co-opted by anyone who feels different and I want to be more specific (e.g. fat activist Virgie Tovar calls herself queer because she says being fat is to be queer, a statement I disagree with mightily though I am also fat.)
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 6:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
it's just really fucking horrible to watch people i care about rationalize abusive situations in their lives by saying "well our signs are in opposition so naturally we're going to have some conflict".
posted by poffin boffin at 6:57 PM on May 7, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 6:57 PM on May 7, 2019 [17 favorites]
I feel like this article might be more a reflection of queer communities which are ALSO in arts-based communities like Bushwick in Brooklyn and similar spots? I know as a straight dude who is dating I very often run into women who are serious about astrology. I have ruined dates by not being enthusiastic enough about discussing our signs.
The article explains the association well, but it still blows my mind that astrology is so much a part of leftist and radical communities. To me astrology is the complete opposite of radical politics. Anarchism and socialism are about critiquing the traditional hierarchy while astrology is all about classifying people based on their birth date.
posted by backlikeclap at 6:58 PM on May 7, 2019 [9 favorites]
The article explains the association well, but it still blows my mind that astrology is so much a part of leftist and radical communities. To me astrology is the complete opposite of radical politics. Anarchism and socialism are about critiquing the traditional hierarchy while astrology is all about classifying people based on their birth date.
posted by backlikeclap at 6:58 PM on May 7, 2019 [9 favorites]
I too get the sense that we're all feeling pretty unmoored lately and everyone is looking for anything that seems like it could somehow explain anything or give any semblance of what should be done. I see the astrology stuff on my Twitter and it's like, Pisces: something something something, and I'm like, huh, they're not wrong about that. Or like classifying random things into signs and it seems to me like a harmless joke that makes sense to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but everything in moderation just like everything else.
posted by bleep at 7:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by bleep at 7:12 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
I’m super curious about this statement and would love if you expanded more on why it’s a discriminatory system! I feel like I don’t understand astrology enough to understand why.
Well. People are assigned traits based on the date they were born that have nothing to do with them as an individual. Then other people who believe in this system feel free to say things like "Well of course your relationship failed she's a scorpio!" and see the above case of "I can't date you you're an ares goodbye" It's not that far off from "you shouldn't date him he's bi he'll cheat on you" and "I can't date you you're (insert race here) and that's wrong". It's an inherently discriminatory system, that's very similar to how regular bigots operate, but with a veneer of new-age openness. I'm aware a lot of people don't use it that way, but a lot of people do.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:16 PM on May 7, 2019 [18 favorites]
Well. People are assigned traits based on the date they were born that have nothing to do with them as an individual. Then other people who believe in this system feel free to say things like "Well of course your relationship failed she's a scorpio!" and see the above case of "I can't date you you're an ares goodbye" It's not that far off from "you shouldn't date him he's bi he'll cheat on you" and "I can't date you you're (insert race here) and that's wrong". It's an inherently discriminatory system, that's very similar to how regular bigots operate, but with a veneer of new-age openness. I'm aware a lot of people don't use it that way, but a lot of people do.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:16 PM on May 7, 2019 [18 favorites]
Astrology is mostly a vector for assholery and emotional immaturity, and I have literally never seen it do anything else. It’s malleable enough that people can make the stars say whatever they want to say without having to take any responsibility for the resultant decisions or actions or whatever. It is fucking idiotic, on top of being actually verifiable nonsense.
OTOH it’s a pretty good filter, I guess.
I never lumped queer woman witchy stuff in along with it, though - doing spells and meditating always struck me as legitimately spiritual and a way to declare intentions/ reclaim power.
Lol I went to this herbal seminar thing at a queer bookstore in bushwick (which fellow NYC queers will probably recognize right away) thinking it was going to be, like, how to make tasty herbal teas, and NOPE. It was definitely 2.5ish hours of someone talking about how you can identify which plants are good for which spells by what the plants look like, or what elements they resemble. And people were taking notes. Not for religious introspection, not as spiritual practice, but as an actual means to a causal end.
I kind of assumed it was because no one had health insurance, but there were also a fair number of creepy/sad questions about love potions.
The youth are actually not all right, and in fact are actually kind of terrible about some things, and I am GLAD I kicked them all off my lawn. Like seriously at this point I’d rather go out with another curious professional who is (if the past is any indication) 99% likely to mess with my head before freaking out back to therapy than go out with an astrology queer who wants to seriously lecture me about anarchism as though they would not be first against the fucking wall after they tore down all the institutions and then tell me all about myself on the basis of my fucking birthdate.
Honest to fucking God, none of these kids have any idea what actually scary shit looks like. I say this as someone who is actually in their demographic but who got a front row seat to the horrors of previous generations. Like I find it VERY hard to believe anyone who actually watched the rest of the country cheer and crack jokes about gay men dying in the street would be this fucking cavalier about the thin veil of civilization, because motherfucker, what do you think actually happens to the most vulnerable of us during actual bloody revolution? Christ. It’s...annoying. And all I can say is I hope they genuinely never find out just how dumb they are.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [42 favorites]
OTOH it’s a pretty good filter, I guess.
I never lumped queer woman witchy stuff in along with it, though - doing spells and meditating always struck me as legitimately spiritual and a way to declare intentions/ reclaim power.
Lol I went to this herbal seminar thing at a queer bookstore in bushwick (which fellow NYC queers will probably recognize right away) thinking it was going to be, like, how to make tasty herbal teas, and NOPE. It was definitely 2.5ish hours of someone talking about how you can identify which plants are good for which spells by what the plants look like, or what elements they resemble. And people were taking notes. Not for religious introspection, not as spiritual practice, but as an actual means to a causal end.
I kind of assumed it was because no one had health insurance, but there were also a fair number of creepy/sad questions about love potions.
The youth are actually not all right, and in fact are actually kind of terrible about some things, and I am GLAD I kicked them all off my lawn. Like seriously at this point I’d rather go out with another curious professional who is (if the past is any indication) 99% likely to mess with my head before freaking out back to therapy than go out with an astrology queer who wants to seriously lecture me about anarchism as though they would not be first against the fucking wall after they tore down all the institutions and then tell me all about myself on the basis of my fucking birthdate.
Honest to fucking God, none of these kids have any idea what actually scary shit looks like. I say this as someone who is actually in their demographic but who got a front row seat to the horrors of previous generations. Like I find it VERY hard to believe anyone who actually watched the rest of the country cheer and crack jokes about gay men dying in the street would be this fucking cavalier about the thin veil of civilization, because motherfucker, what do you think actually happens to the most vulnerable of us during actual bloody revolution? Christ. It’s...annoying. And all I can say is I hope they genuinely never find out just how dumb they are.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:37 PM on May 7, 2019 [42 favorites]
Astrology is a religious set of beliefs: something that is believed because of faith and not because of evidence. This has probably been painfully obvious for a long time to everyone else, but as an astronomy professor, this has helped me come to terms with students who believe in it.
Just like all religious beliefs, part of not being a societal asshole is respecting others' rights to believe what they believe, as long as it's not doing harm to others. And as a set of religious beliefs, I find astrology relatively OK.
Now, if you start trying to convince me that there's a scientific basis to astrology, that's where I draw the line. But, honestly, it's so much more harmless than the other religiously-grounded fake science ideas out there (e.g. intelligent design, weird climate change denialism) that it's hard for me to get worked up over. I just smile and nod and try to think of it as if my students told me they were celebrating Passover or Easter.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:44 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
Just like all religious beliefs, part of not being a societal asshole is respecting others' rights to believe what they believe, as long as it's not doing harm to others. And as a set of religious beliefs, I find astrology relatively OK.
Now, if you start trying to convince me that there's a scientific basis to astrology, that's where I draw the line. But, honestly, it's so much more harmless than the other religiously-grounded fake science ideas out there (e.g. intelligent design, weird climate change denialism) that it's hard for me to get worked up over. I just smile and nod and try to think of it as if my students told me they were celebrating Passover or Easter.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:44 PM on May 7, 2019 [4 favorites]
Although, just to clarify, I'm certainly not trying to take anything away from the stories above of people who were treated shittily through astrology, but I have a feeling that the shitty people were always going to find a way to be shitty, with or without astrology.
And, thus ends my defense of astrology. We live in strange times.
posted by Betelgeuse at 8:02 PM on May 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
And, thus ends my defense of astrology. We live in strange times.
posted by Betelgeuse at 8:02 PM on May 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
Astrology is a falsehood, but if a guy tells me he's a Scorpio, that would be a little hot. Just sayin.
posted by polymodus at 8:04 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 8:04 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hey, um, extra thanks for this FPP because that was my askme, and while it helped, it's not like the astrology has gone away.
It is a fairly arty community and definitely a leftist one, ranging from Gay men in Labour right to revolutionary Trots and anarchists, sure.
It is very young, 18-27 or so, but I wonder if a key factor might instead be dating. While I too feel the judging people on sign seems a really bad path to start down, I'm wondering if it's usually only put into practice for selecting romantic partners, if it serves some purpose for people to narrow the field in some way. That seems like it's when it really is most likely to come out, for compatibility, and there's an idea around here that it's the season of the aligned star sign at any given time, so right now Taurus signs are going to be successful in romantic endeavours.
Anyway, I still don't like it, but I've gotten a little better at navigating out of those conversations.
I'd be really interested if anyone ever stumbled upon a good left critique of astrology that really looked hard into it's ontology, division, view of gender, association with appropriation and the political implications of all those things.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:09 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
It is a fairly arty community and definitely a leftist one, ranging from Gay men in Labour right to revolutionary Trots and anarchists, sure.
It is very young, 18-27 or so, but I wonder if a key factor might instead be dating. While I too feel the judging people on sign seems a really bad path to start down, I'm wondering if it's usually only put into practice for selecting romantic partners, if it serves some purpose for people to narrow the field in some way. That seems like it's when it really is most likely to come out, for compatibility, and there's an idea around here that it's the season of the aligned star sign at any given time, so right now Taurus signs are going to be successful in romantic endeavours.
Anyway, I still don't like it, but I've gotten a little better at navigating out of those conversations.
I'd be really interested if anyone ever stumbled upon a good left critique of astrology that really looked hard into it's ontology, division, view of gender, association with appropriation and the political implications of all those things.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:09 PM on May 7, 2019 [5 favorites]
The quotes from this article are wild though.
So like...I don’t care if someone claims it as their religion (although there are plenty of reasons to side eye the shit out of that as well). we don’t tolerate arbitrary bigotry from any other religious group, and I’m not going to tolerate it from queers, either. It’s just as stupid and evil when we do it.
The article also slightly touches on the vulnerability of the queer community to exploitation, which: fucking yeah, dude. Queers are a traumatized lot, and a lot of us have to go through this whole delayed development thing. Astrology as a defining value of the community makes us all more vulnerable to exploitation and control.
Astrology as a community norm is not benign.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:19 PM on May 7, 2019 [24 favorites]
Queer skeptics can be found online, in message boards, forums, and Facebook groups focused on everything from queer life and dating to academia, left-wing politics, feminism, and more. Many told me they feel stigmatized by the larger queer community for their beliefs, and would not allow their full names to be published for that reasonThat...that is bananas. Not to mention all the super creepy gender stuff.
...
A professor of queer theory in New York City, Carrie, reveals to me that “even saying I personally do not practice or believe in divination rituals seems like hate speech to queer people my students’ age.”
So like...I don’t care if someone claims it as their religion (although there are plenty of reasons to side eye the shit out of that as well). we don’t tolerate arbitrary bigotry from any other religious group, and I’m not going to tolerate it from queers, either. It’s just as stupid and evil when we do it.
The article also slightly touches on the vulnerability of the queer community to exploitation, which: fucking yeah, dude. Queers are a traumatized lot, and a lot of us have to go through this whole delayed development thing. Astrology as a defining value of the community makes us all more vulnerable to exploitation and control.
Astrology as a community norm is not benign.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:19 PM on May 7, 2019 [24 favorites]
I'm all science-y and don't think anything of astrology, but a bunch of years back me and a buddy started a zodiac ultimate (frisbee) tournament - 12 teams so you sign up with your birth date and play with other members of your "star sign".
After 5 years each team had played ~ 30 games - all teams were fairly randomly balanced generally, except for Pisces, who were completely hopeless, year after year. Unbelievable. Could barely find the field.
I have no idea whether this is a "Pisces thing" or why (perhaps an astrologer can weigh in here). I'm just reporting the facts.
posted by parki at 8:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [14 favorites]
After 5 years each team had played ~ 30 games - all teams were fairly randomly balanced generally, except for Pisces, who were completely hopeless, year after year. Unbelievable. Could barely find the field.
I have no idea whether this is a "Pisces thing" or why (perhaps an astrologer can weigh in here). I'm just reporting the facts.
posted by parki at 8:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [14 favorites]
I think people nowadays will try and find most anything to point to in order to claim they're being shut out.
I don't think there's such a thing as "queer community", and if there was it definitely wouldn't be due to the things mainstream culture decides are relevant about us and hyper focuses on.
"I feel like one of the rites of passage is when you realize a 'community' you're in is actually just a subculture/scene...i.e., that there's commonality but not cohesion, or interrelationships but not infrastructure"
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
I don't think there's such a thing as "queer community", and if there was it definitely wouldn't be due to the things mainstream culture decides are relevant about us and hyper focuses on.
"I feel like one of the rites of passage is when you realize a 'community' you're in is actually just a subculture/scene...i.e., that there's commonality but not cohesion, or interrelationships but not infrastructure"
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:35 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
I think at one time there was more a queer community, but then a whole lot of them died or fucked off to communes or turned out to be horribly bigoted to anyone who wasn’t cis, and now it is definitely, sadly, a scene
Also I kind of wonder how these astrology queers would react to having astrology identified as a religion? My gut says “not well,” but it’s been wrong before
posted by schadenfrau at 9:07 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
Also I kind of wonder how these astrology queers would react to having astrology identified as a religion? My gut says “not well,” but it’s been wrong before
posted by schadenfrau at 9:07 PM on May 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
I have no idea whether this is a "Pisces thing" or why (perhaps an astrologer can weigh in here).
As if an astrologer would feel safe posting in this thread...
posted by overglow at 9:47 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
As if an astrologer would feel safe posting in this thread...
posted by overglow at 9:47 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
Oh yeah, "Pisces," this "totally explains" why I'm hopeless at softball. Waves eyestalks dreamily...
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:05 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:05 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
FTA: "And you’d be forgiven for assuming that literally everyone in our community believes in astrology."
Cite, please?
posted by davidmsc at 10:11 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Cite, please?
posted by davidmsc at 10:11 PM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
What kind of citation are you looking for? The author is describing the impression one gets from reading the personals ads, nod making a quantitative claim.
posted by argybarg at 10:15 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by argybarg at 10:15 PM on May 7, 2019 [3 favorites]
I assumed it was a CA thing, not a lesbian thing!
I still assume it's a CA thing. I hear people talk about it more here than anywhere else I've lived.
posted by Smearcase at 10:47 PM on May 7, 2019
I still assume it's a CA thing. I hear people talk about it more here than anywhere else I've lived.
posted by Smearcase at 10:47 PM on May 7, 2019
just reporting from the anglophonic british commonwealth side of queer southeast asia, and it's real man. friends unironically warn me of mercury retrogrades and celebrating that it's taurus season now etc. but we've always been a superstitious society that happily take on just about anything into the pot, so the spirituality part of it barely registers on my radar. it's just the details of it, and truly there's been an uptick of unironic embrace of western astrology. you'd think being from here, the same gang would be obsessively tracking the day/month/year branches of their chinese zodiac... but then again, that sort of thing is very much part of normie culture here so i guess i can see why not.
posted by cendawanita at 11:16 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 11:16 PM on May 7, 2019 [8 favorites]
I can see how queer people who experience spiritual harm and trauma from established religions could turn to astrology as a way to try to heal that trauma.
Not everything a person does has to be in service to pure hard science.
posted by nikaspark at 12:56 AM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Not everything a person does has to be in service to pure hard science.
posted by nikaspark at 12:56 AM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Thinking about it a little more, queer people by definition are and always have been an occult, because our myths and archetypes either never had a chance to form, or were destroyed along the way, so we as queer folk, to borrow from astronomy, have been “occulted” for most of history. This creates a gaping hole for us because we get nothing “for free” in the form of myths or religions or cultural institutions. The queering of astrology is also an attempt to reify, and perhaps also repair that loss.
I go into this a little bit in my spoken word piece Berlin Fragments, Seattle’s Ghosts. Basically there is no queer myth or archetype that can be found, so if we want those things, we have to craft it for ourselves.
I myself find the idea of “lost archetypes” to be pretty fascinating and one way I’m healing myself is to think of myself expressing an archetype that has been long lost to history. Now we can debate the usefulness of myth, and I suppose in post-internet modernity perhaps an argument is to be made about whether or not myths are useless and can be torn down, but from personal experience permanent liminality well and truly fucking sucks and seeking to find one’s sense of belonging in the myths and beliefs that underpin our modern world in a consistent arc from antiquity to now is to me a very relatable urge, though I myself see it as a form of performance, a rather useless talisman that gives me a sense of place in history that helps get me through the day, and less an actual fact or truth.
posted by nikaspark at 1:13 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
I go into this a little bit in my spoken word piece Berlin Fragments, Seattle’s Ghosts. Basically there is no queer myth or archetype that can be found, so if we want those things, we have to craft it for ourselves.
I myself find the idea of “lost archetypes” to be pretty fascinating and one way I’m healing myself is to think of myself expressing an archetype that has been long lost to history. Now we can debate the usefulness of myth, and I suppose in post-internet modernity perhaps an argument is to be made about whether or not myths are useless and can be torn down, but from personal experience permanent liminality well and truly fucking sucks and seeking to find one’s sense of belonging in the myths and beliefs that underpin our modern world in a consistent arc from antiquity to now is to me a very relatable urge, though I myself see it as a form of performance, a rather useless talisman that gives me a sense of place in history that helps get me through the day, and less an actual fact or truth.
posted by nikaspark at 1:13 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
All this is reminding me that over twenty years ago oh my god I am so old one of our wedding presents was from one of Mrs. Example's gay friends. It was a very complete and detailed astrological chart for the two of us. I have no idea what happened to it--probably lost in a move somewhere over the years. I haven't thought about it in absolute ages.
Also:
Astrology is a falsehood, but if a guy tells me he's a Scorpio, that would be a little hot. Just sayin.
I don't believe in astrology at all, but as a Scorpio, I do secretly kind of enjoy the reputation it gives me among astrology people of being an intensely moody pervert.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:31 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
Also:
Astrology is a falsehood, but if a guy tells me he's a Scorpio, that would be a little hot. Just sayin.
I don't believe in astrology at all, but as a Scorpio, I do secretly kind of enjoy the reputation it gives me among astrology people of being an intensely moody pervert.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:31 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
queer people by definition are and always have been an occult, because our myths and archetypes either never had a chance to form, or were destroyed along the way, so we as queer folk, to borrow from astronomy, have been “occulted” for most of history
I think this is inaccurate. There have been times and places throughout history where queerness has been accepted, even getting its own slice of mainstream culture, and assuming we've always been targets comes from a very narrow and Euro-centric view of history.
posted by Anonymous at 3:06 AM on May 8, 2019
I think this is inaccurate. There have been times and places throughout history where queerness has been accepted, even getting its own slice of mainstream culture, and assuming we've always been targets comes from a very narrow and Euro-centric view of history.
posted by Anonymous at 3:06 AM on May 8, 2019
I tend to instinctively sneer when people describe themselves as skeptical, rational, etc., and I think the reason why is that people who describe themselves this way tend to fall into a very specific personality type that is difficult and unpleasant for some people who are kind of creative and weird. A nice thing about having an interest in the occult is that when people react this way, I know they're probably not my people. But understand. The problem is not we don't share an interest in the occult! It's a different problem. And it's not even really a problem. It's just a difference. I would like to posit the possibility that belief or disbelief in astrology is, therefore, Not the Real Issue here.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:05 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:05 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
"Astrology is mostly a vector for assholery and emotional immaturity, and I have literally never seen it do anything else. It’s malleable enough that people can make the stars say whatever they want to say without having to take any responsibility for the resultant decisions or actions or whatever. It is fucking idiotic, on top of being actually verifiable nonsense."THIS
We have such a uniquely high concentration of astrologers and tarot readers in our communities because our communities are uniquely vulnerable to predators of all sorts. These things should be understood as tools for generating loose associations between concepts, causality, and feelings. Sure they could potentially be useful as tools for intropection, for example seeing if a sign or card interpretation resonates with how you really feel like how you might make a big decision by flipping a coin to see if you are relived or upset by the result. However, they are tools that are so trivial to weaponize against others, I have never acually seen them used in a group in a way that wasn't at least pretty tainted by some kind of fucked up manipulation, intentional or otherwise. When the stars say whatever you want them to, what that really means is that they say whatever the person with the most sophisticated emotional intelligence in the room wants them to, which is going to almost always be the worst possible thing.
Like with psychics and mediums who predate on grieving people wanting to feel connected to their loved ones, abuse isn't anciliary to the concpet, it is at the very core of what these tools are about. Fucked up varieties of manipulation are the point, the whole idea is to make external input feel internally valid in a way that sidesteps analytical thinking. Sure analytical thinking can get in the way of other kinds of important processing sometimes, but it is an incredibly important safeguard. It is also exactly the kinds of people who would describe themselves as super rational or logical who are most vulnerable to this kind of thing given how useless analytical kinds of thinking are for navigating coflict on an emotional level.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:17 AM on May 8, 2019 [21 favorites]
Yeah thank you for calling that out, I should have bounded my comment within whiteness and eurocentricity.
As a white trans woman who has a complicated Jewish family history my particular erasure and spiritual trauma is very bound up in European/Russian modernity, and well structural racism being what it is it’s easy for me to globalize that...not something I’m proud of by any means.
posted by nikaspark at 4:42 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
As a white trans woman who has a complicated Jewish family history my particular erasure and spiritual trauma is very bound up in European/Russian modernity, and well structural racism being what it is it’s easy for me to globalize that...not something I’m proud of by any means.
posted by nikaspark at 4:42 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Does anybody else find it kinda bizarre that such a progressive community would come to love and cherish a system that basically says that everything about you was decided before you were born, by forces outside of your control? It’s practically a caste system.
I think the pseudo-science aspect of astrology is key to this trend's prominence in queer circles. If, as showbiz liz posited, it's akin to the rise of spiritualism during other Trumpian times, then why this expression instead of more conventional religions? Maybe in part because LGBTQ have found it necessary to reject, reframe or reinvent vast numbers of societal constructs and norms in the simple quest to discover their identity, express who they are, build community and cultivate first tolerance and ultimately acceptance. And maybe turning away from the old-man-in-the-sky model towards a belief system that has a science gloss--where were those stars, exactly,?--works if your habit and self-concept include deep self-examination and rational exploration.
How do LBGTQ astrology believers relate to the "born this way" conjecture? I always thought that was fundamentally a science argument. Are they saying it was determined by the stars?
I think this trend is tragic. My positive bias about the LGBTQ community is that it's skilled, in general, at seeing through bullshit. But this... is one more reason why we have to deal with Trump, global warming, poverty, etc.: to give people real reason to hope and productive ways to help--agency-- so they don't succumb to snake oil.
posted by carmicha at 5:49 AM on May 8, 2019
I think the pseudo-science aspect of astrology is key to this trend's prominence in queer circles. If, as showbiz liz posited, it's akin to the rise of spiritualism during other Trumpian times, then why this expression instead of more conventional religions? Maybe in part because LGBTQ have found it necessary to reject, reframe or reinvent vast numbers of societal constructs and norms in the simple quest to discover their identity, express who they are, build community and cultivate first tolerance and ultimately acceptance. And maybe turning away from the old-man-in-the-sky model towards a belief system that has a science gloss--where were those stars, exactly,?--works if your habit and self-concept include deep self-examination and rational exploration.
How do LBGTQ astrology believers relate to the "born this way" conjecture? I always thought that was fundamentally a science argument. Are they saying it was determined by the stars?
I think this trend is tragic. My positive bias about the LGBTQ community is that it's skilled, in general, at seeing through bullshit. But this... is one more reason why we have to deal with Trump, global warming, poverty, etc.: to give people real reason to hope and productive ways to help--agency-- so they don't succumb to snake oil.
posted by carmicha at 5:49 AM on May 8, 2019
I mean for me I'm like, if only the people who were very concerned about astrology were this concerned about Christianity and its institutional power in American life. There are so many harmful ideologies out there. I know we can care about more than one thing at a time, but the whole state of Georgia literally just banned abortion
Call me when astrology gets that powerful and then I will understand the criticisms of it.
posted by coffeeand at 5:54 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
Call me when astrology gets that powerful and then I will understand the criticisms of it.
posted by coffeeand at 5:54 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
i'm a boar and it's a bore
I don't believe in any kind of astrology, but if I did my choice would be Chinese because I am a Metal Pig which is kind of awesome.
My response to "what's your sign" has always been "Do Not Disturb".
posted by Daily Alice at 5:55 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
I don't believe in any kind of astrology, but if I did my choice would be Chinese because I am a Metal Pig which is kind of awesome.
My response to "what's your sign" has always been "Do Not Disturb".
posted by Daily Alice at 5:55 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
Astrology is harmful! It is dogmatic and suppresses critical thought. I'm not queer, but I'm a professional environmentalist and my field is absolutely crawling with "natural" people. They don't care about scientific arguments, so I've found other ways to annoy them:
Appear enthusiastic about astrology, and ask them to guess your sign. Say that you always do this to gauge how sensitive a person is. Allow questions about your personality, as many as they want! After so many wrong answers, tell them they're "not ready yet".
Say that you can't tell them your star sign because that's too intimate and you're not comfortable with disclosing that yet.
Say that you're not really sure about your sign, you were born on the night of August 22-23, it was a long and complicated home birth and your mom couldn't check the clock to see if it was before or after midnight.
Tell them that you're adopted and you don't know what your real birthday is. Appear sad and offended. This is useful in a "serious" situation, such as a roommate interview.
When asked about your sign, tell them you're a Dog, you're trying to decolonize your thought and Ptolomaic astrology was made by old white men.
Tell them that you were born north of the polar circle during the midnight sun, so therefore you have no ascendant.
If you're in the southern hemisphere as I am, invoke Jung and ask if Leo is the sunny archetype of the middle of summer, does that mean that our Leo is really in January? When they disagree tell they have a colonized mind.
If the ancient knowledge of astrology comes from societies observing the human condition for millenia, how come there is no overlap whatsoever between the propositions of Ptolomaic, Chinese and Mayan astrology? Is the Chinese human condition fundamentally different? Tell them this proves Ptolomaic astrology only applies to white people.
Ask them if Leo is the center of the world, how come the center of the galaxy, which is infinitely more powerful, is between Saggitarius and Scorpio?
posted by Tom-B at 6:01 AM on May 8, 2019 [40 favorites]
Appear enthusiastic about astrology, and ask them to guess your sign. Say that you always do this to gauge how sensitive a person is. Allow questions about your personality, as many as they want! After so many wrong answers, tell them they're "not ready yet".
Say that you can't tell them your star sign because that's too intimate and you're not comfortable with disclosing that yet.
Say that you're not really sure about your sign, you were born on the night of August 22-23, it was a long and complicated home birth and your mom couldn't check the clock to see if it was before or after midnight.
Tell them that you're adopted and you don't know what your real birthday is. Appear sad and offended. This is useful in a "serious" situation, such as a roommate interview.
When asked about your sign, tell them you're a Dog, you're trying to decolonize your thought and Ptolomaic astrology was made by old white men.
Tell them that you were born north of the polar circle during the midnight sun, so therefore you have no ascendant.
If you're in the southern hemisphere as I am, invoke Jung and ask if Leo is the sunny archetype of the middle of summer, does that mean that our Leo is really in January? When they disagree tell they have a colonized mind.
If the ancient knowledge of astrology comes from societies observing the human condition for millenia, how come there is no overlap whatsoever between the propositions of Ptolomaic, Chinese and Mayan astrology? Is the Chinese human condition fundamentally different? Tell them this proves Ptolomaic astrology only applies to white people.
Ask them if Leo is the center of the world, how come the center of the galaxy, which is infinitely more powerful, is between Saggitarius and Scorpio?
posted by Tom-B at 6:01 AM on May 8, 2019 [40 favorites]
Also, I don't care what straight people think.
posted by coffeeand at 6:03 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by coffeeand at 6:03 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean for me I'm like, if only the people who were very concerned about astrology were this concerned about Christianity and its institutional power in American life.
We're not all American for one, and for another, the bullshit that's much closer to home can be a mor immediate and dispiriting problem a lot of the time. Like, my roommate not ever doing any washing up is less serious than Brexit or Trump or Putin or climate change, but it will be a bigger day-to-day problem and will elicit stronger immediate responses.
posted by Dysk at 6:05 AM on May 8, 2019 [12 favorites]
We're not all American for one, and for another, the bullshit that's much closer to home can be a mor immediate and dispiriting problem a lot of the time. Like, my roommate not ever doing any washing up is less serious than Brexit or Trump or Putin or climate change, but it will be a bigger day-to-day problem and will elicit stronger immediate responses.
posted by Dysk at 6:05 AM on May 8, 2019 [12 favorites]
It's a way of talking about feelings and emotional life that evades the deadening pop psychology and overcoming cbt style narratives that get pushed on people because they're useful for exploiting people in a business context. As a bonus it lets people be vulnerable without putting too much onto other people. Saying someone is acting for instance 'like a pisces' is imo neither so vague that it's saying nothing at all nor is it so specific and box-like it's imposing characterstics onto someone in an oppressive way. It's loosely linking their behaviour to a particular archetype with also plenty of room to riff on or develop the conversation. It's more like comparing them to a very long running tv show character that lots of people have watched.
The way some people here are talking you'd think they'd never had to go along with conversations that they disagree with the basic premises of on a deep political and spiritual level because that's just what small talk is in that particular setting.
posted by mosswinter at 6:07 AM on May 8, 2019 [7 favorites]
The way some people here are talking you'd think they'd never had to go along with conversations that they disagree with the basic premises of on a deep political and spiritual level because that's just what small talk is in that particular setting.
posted by mosswinter at 6:07 AM on May 8, 2019 [7 favorites]
When asked about your sign, tell them you're a Dog, you're trying to decolonize your thought and Ptolomaic astrology was made by old white men.
I'm pretty sure your sign is the corn dog
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:22 AM on May 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm pretty sure your sign is the corn dog
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:22 AM on May 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
if only the people who were very concerned about astrology were this concerned about Christianity
(...)
Call me when astrology gets that powerful and then I will understand the criticisms of it.
Olavo de Carvalho is the brazilian Steve Bannon. He's the "philosopher" guru of Bolsonaro and all the neo-fascists. He started out as a popular astrologer in the 80s, doesn't do that anymore but the anti-scientism and suppression of critical thought is all there, more virulent than ever. Obviously, a climate change denier too. He's just appointed our ministers of education and environment. The fight against fundamentalist Christianity and against astrology is one and the same, it's a fight for rationality and evidence-based thinking. And we're losing.
posted by Tom-B at 6:22 AM on May 8, 2019 [16 favorites]
(...)
Call me when astrology gets that powerful and then I will understand the criticisms of it.
Olavo de Carvalho is the brazilian Steve Bannon. He's the "philosopher" guru of Bolsonaro and all the neo-fascists. He started out as a popular astrologer in the 80s, doesn't do that anymore but the anti-scientism and suppression of critical thought is all there, more virulent than ever. Obviously, a climate change denier too. He's just appointed our ministers of education and environment. The fight against fundamentalist Christianity and against astrology is one and the same, it's a fight for rationality and evidence-based thinking. And we're losing.
posted by Tom-B at 6:22 AM on May 8, 2019 [16 favorites]
Olavo de Carvalho is the brazilian Steve Bannon.
He started out as a popular astrologer in the 80s
Okay, that is valid, that's the kind of influence I'm talking about. I get that. I get being afraid of that.
it's a fight for rationality and evidence-based thinking
Many people have terrible associations with "rationality" and bring a lot of baggage to that word though. I don't have "evidence" for my gender identity or my sexuality. Likewise, women who have opinions men don't like are said to be "irrational." Ten or fifteen years ago I would have felt silenced by that word you used and by this whole discussion to be honest. It's still very difficult for me to engage with this at all.
I'm very interested in the criticism of astrology by people who are actually harmed by it but a lot of what I see in this thread and threads like it is not that. Instead these threads attract a lot of onlookers with no idea what they're looking at or the context it exists in, and forming opinions about people who they don't know or care about.
posted by coffeeand at 6:39 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
He started out as a popular astrologer in the 80s
Okay, that is valid, that's the kind of influence I'm talking about. I get that. I get being afraid of that.
it's a fight for rationality and evidence-based thinking
Many people have terrible associations with "rationality" and bring a lot of baggage to that word though. I don't have "evidence" for my gender identity or my sexuality. Likewise, women who have opinions men don't like are said to be "irrational." Ten or fifteen years ago I would have felt silenced by that word you used and by this whole discussion to be honest. It's still very difficult for me to engage with this at all.
I'm very interested in the criticism of astrology by people who are actually harmed by it but a lot of what I see in this thread and threads like it is not that. Instead these threads attract a lot of onlookers with no idea what they're looking at or the context it exists in, and forming opinions about people who they don't know or care about.
posted by coffeeand at 6:39 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
It is very much one of the tools of exclusion in the notoriously cliquey British queer/feminist punk communities. I've been in several bands they'd happily book, and then demean and exclude myself and other members, while enthusiastically including others, based on star signs, and/or participation in astrology crap. It's not the only tool of sorting people into the right or wrong type of queer or trans, but it is a prominent one, alongside aesthetic.
posted by Dysk at 6:54 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 6:54 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
It's not the only tool of sorting people into the right or wrong type of queer or trans, but it is a prominent one, alongside aesthetic.
That sucks, I'm sorry. The arbitrary in-group out-group rules in certain queer communities really hurt some folks.
posted by coffeeand at 6:57 AM on May 8, 2019
That sucks, I'm sorry. The arbitrary in-group out-group rules in certain queer communities really hurt some folks.
posted by coffeeand at 6:57 AM on May 8, 2019
Honestly though I would much rather radical queer groups if they're going to be cliquey af anyway use astrology as the reason (ugh geminis!!) than what seemed to be the politically acceptable way of excluding people before, which was calling them abusive or problematic for some minor mis-step that everyone is going to make at some point. My feeling is people in those kinds of dynamics use astrology to say what they would find some other way of saying, rather than that its astrological principles creating the right or wrong kind of person, I might be wrong though or seen dynamics in different circles.
posted by mosswinter at 7:00 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mosswinter at 7:00 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Okay, that is valid, that's the kind of influence I'm talking about. I get that. I get being afraid of that.
but not being afraid of the garden variety abuse that astrology enables in everyday life that queers who have self-selected for a queer community are much more likely to actually encounter?
like, it has not escaped my notice that the people who are being defensive are essentially refusing to engage with the way this stuff is actually practiced in real life. like this thread. or like the examples in this thread itself.
Astrology bullying and abuse is, incredibly, a real thing, but hey it's here now, so refusing to acknowledge that by just dismissing it out of hand or saying it's just a joke or responding to some sort of straw man or going with the "but other things are worse" dodge...
like you are not being original. these are literally the rhetorical strategies used to defend every other system of abuse ever. and that's the thing about astrology: it's not some private belief system that's about personal introspection or whatever. it's fucking prescriptivist. it makes pronouncements about other people and their lives, and the people who believe in it then act on those pronouncements.
that queer people in particular don't understand why other queer people might not think it's totally cool to sort them into arbitrary categories and then tell them who they are on the basis of those categories is, at this point, more tragic than it is ironic.
anyway. nothing new under the sun. queers have just found their own way to be abusive to other people while using religion as a shield. not the kind of equality i ever had in mind, but this is the darkest timeline, after all.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:00 AM on May 8, 2019 [26 favorites]
but not being afraid of the garden variety abuse that astrology enables in everyday life that queers who have self-selected for a queer community are much more likely to actually encounter?
like, it has not escaped my notice that the people who are being defensive are essentially refusing to engage with the way this stuff is actually practiced in real life. like this thread. or like the examples in this thread itself.
Astrology bullying and abuse is, incredibly, a real thing, but hey it's here now, so refusing to acknowledge that by just dismissing it out of hand or saying it's just a joke or responding to some sort of straw man or going with the "but other things are worse" dodge...
like you are not being original. these are literally the rhetorical strategies used to defend every other system of abuse ever. and that's the thing about astrology: it's not some private belief system that's about personal introspection or whatever. it's fucking prescriptivist. it makes pronouncements about other people and their lives, and the people who believe in it then act on those pronouncements.
that queer people in particular don't understand why other queer people might not think it's totally cool to sort them into arbitrary categories and then tell them who they are on the basis of those categories is, at this point, more tragic than it is ironic.
anyway. nothing new under the sun. queers have just found their own way to be abusive to other people while using religion as a shield. not the kind of equality i ever had in mind, but this is the darkest timeline, after all.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:00 AM on May 8, 2019 [26 favorites]
No accounting for what's trendy, but Astrology is literally more specious than Meyers-Brigg, the Pottermore sorting hat, or a Buzzfeed Quiz guessing your Overwatch main. Getting pissed at people for being "skeptical" of that seems aggressively ignorant to me.
Unless everybody's just having fun with it and excluding the people who refuse to play along, in which case things start to make a little more sense.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:01 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Unless everybody's just having fun with it and excluding the people who refuse to play along, in which case things start to make a little more sense.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:01 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Just want to say thanks for this post and the thread. This is exactly what I come to MetaFilter for -- articles I wouldn't have otherwise seen about goings-on in communities I'm not part of.
posted by escabeche at 7:05 AM on May 8, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 7:05 AM on May 8, 2019 [6 favorites]
All people on earth have the capacity to be shitty to each other for really awful reasons and queer people are absolutely no exception.
As a queer person I’ve seen it and I experience it and my firsthand experiences being sorted out and sorted in to queer communities based on arbitrary conditions has me feeling that most of our existence as queer people is having an external map placed over our bodies by armies fighting wars that many of us want no part in but we are conscripted into them against our will. That among this we find internecine abuse happening within queer communities based on yet another totally arbitrary set of borders based on birth both saddens me and does not surprise me.
posted by nikaspark at 7:19 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
As a queer person I’ve seen it and I experience it and my firsthand experiences being sorted out and sorted in to queer communities based on arbitrary conditions has me feeling that most of our existence as queer people is having an external map placed over our bodies by armies fighting wars that many of us want no part in but we are conscripted into them against our will. That among this we find internecine abuse happening within queer communities based on yet another totally arbitrary set of borders based on birth both saddens me and does not surprise me.
posted by nikaspark at 7:19 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
A significant percentage of people deeply needing to have a religious belief, and another significant percentage of people finding it convenient (or necessary at pain of exclusion or worse) to pretend to believe in the community's dominant religion, are about as constant phenomena of human society as anything one could name.
posted by MattD at 7:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by MattD at 7:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
> Many people have terrible associations with "rationality" and bring a lot of baggage to that word though. I don't have "evidence" for my gender identity or my sexuality. Likewise, women who have opinions men don't like are said to be "irrational." Ten or fifteen years ago I would have felt silenced by that word you used and by this whole discussion to be honest.
OK, point taken! Maybe "rationality" is not the right word, let me try to rephrase: It's not about a New Atheist kind of argument, where the ONLY valid mode of knowledge is the rational and the intuitive is denied. I accept "spiritual", intuitive or emotional knowledge as valid. For example, I've been doing Lacanian psychoanalysis for years and it helps me a lot, even though it's a pseudoscience. But psychoanalysis is not dogmatic, it expressely states that it is not for everyone. So yeah, maybe the fight is against fundamentalism and dogma.
In these new times, we need to rethink what evidence-based "rationality" is. We desperately need it against the climate apocalypse, against guns, racism, the drug war, even against homophobia. They are trying to implement "gay conversion therapy" on a federal level in Brazil despite there being no evidence whatsoever for it. We're fighting it tooth and nail; the tables have turned, the scientists are on our side now.
posted by Tom-B at 7:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
OK, point taken! Maybe "rationality" is not the right word, let me try to rephrase: It's not about a New Atheist kind of argument, where the ONLY valid mode of knowledge is the rational and the intuitive is denied. I accept "spiritual", intuitive or emotional knowledge as valid. For example, I've been doing Lacanian psychoanalysis for years and it helps me a lot, even though it's a pseudoscience. But psychoanalysis is not dogmatic, it expressely states that it is not for everyone. So yeah, maybe the fight is against fundamentalism and dogma.
In these new times, we need to rethink what evidence-based "rationality" is. We desperately need it against the climate apocalypse, against guns, racism, the drug war, even against homophobia. They are trying to implement "gay conversion therapy" on a federal level in Brazil despite there being no evidence whatsoever for it. We're fighting it tooth and nail; the tables have turned, the scientists are on our side now.
posted by Tom-B at 7:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
> people who are being defensive are essentially refusing to engage with the way this stuff is actually practiced in real life
Not All Astrologers
posted by Tom-B at 7:26 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Not All Astrologers
posted by Tom-B at 7:26 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm very interested in the criticism of astrology by people who are actually harmed by it but a lot of what I see in this thread and threads like it is not that.
A queer friend of mine recently explained away why a past relationship failed by blaming signs and other astro-nonsense, which is a reversal from her previous understanding of that partner as being emotional abusive.
One time I got called by a different queer friend to pick her and her partner up because they got lost in the woods on some sort of celestial quest of the stars because it turns out star navigation requires more than some constellations you know.
Look at any dating app and you'll see inherent exclusion based on birthday, which, I'm sorry, is just a form of bigotry and prejudice. It's inherently no different than 'no blacks' (or the polite one, blue/green eyes only) at a base level. It is entirely inexcusable to think you can identify something about someone based purely on when they happened to be born. I had a rough and long birth and actually split two signs, so which am, Libra or Virgo?
I don't think I'm actually being harmed, but as someone who does come from a really restrictive branch of christianity, and who spent a significant part of my time recovering from that working in anti-dogmatic, pro-scientific activism and who still really feels sensitive about people taking spiritual stuff too seriously (but does some myself), it's incredibly uncomfortable to sit in on those conversations, cause it reminds me exactly of how my bigoted family would chat about so and so's bad luck was because they weren't coming to church enough. And you can't say anything, that would be rude.
I do some pagan shit, I'll burn some pine needles when a figure of importance to me passes, I buried my rabbit with a knife and his favorite blanket, I say a prayer to the earth in thanks for every animal I've hunted. I'm familiar with dancing with fake things, from several points of view, and it's fine if it makes you feel better and doesn't affect anyone else. Astrology is inherently not that. Systematized and codified systems of spirituality, all of them, can and will eventually be used as tools to harm people.
(also, pointing to the massive, world spanning, unimaginably wealthy beast that is the Christian establishment and saying we need to destroy that before we talk about other problems is like the oldest false equivalence in the book. We can do both, it's not hard, and if you want to read criticism of the Christian church, well, there's plenty of that out there.)
posted by neonrev at 7:28 AM on May 8, 2019 [13 favorites]
A queer friend of mine recently explained away why a past relationship failed by blaming signs and other astro-nonsense, which is a reversal from her previous understanding of that partner as being emotional abusive.
One time I got called by a different queer friend to pick her and her partner up because they got lost in the woods on some sort of celestial quest of the stars because it turns out star navigation requires more than some constellations you know.
Look at any dating app and you'll see inherent exclusion based on birthday, which, I'm sorry, is just a form of bigotry and prejudice. It's inherently no different than 'no blacks' (or the polite one, blue/green eyes only) at a base level. It is entirely inexcusable to think you can identify something about someone based purely on when they happened to be born. I had a rough and long birth and actually split two signs, so which am, Libra or Virgo?
I don't think I'm actually being harmed, but as someone who does come from a really restrictive branch of christianity, and who spent a significant part of my time recovering from that working in anti-dogmatic, pro-scientific activism and who still really feels sensitive about people taking spiritual stuff too seriously (but does some myself), it's incredibly uncomfortable to sit in on those conversations, cause it reminds me exactly of how my bigoted family would chat about so and so's bad luck was because they weren't coming to church enough. And you can't say anything, that would be rude.
I do some pagan shit, I'll burn some pine needles when a figure of importance to me passes, I buried my rabbit with a knife and his favorite blanket, I say a prayer to the earth in thanks for every animal I've hunted. I'm familiar with dancing with fake things, from several points of view, and it's fine if it makes you feel better and doesn't affect anyone else. Astrology is inherently not that. Systematized and codified systems of spirituality, all of them, can and will eventually be used as tools to harm people.
(also, pointing to the massive, world spanning, unimaginably wealthy beast that is the Christian establishment and saying we need to destroy that before we talk about other problems is like the oldest false equivalence in the book. We can do both, it's not hard, and if you want to read criticism of the Christian church, well, there's plenty of that out there.)
posted by neonrev at 7:28 AM on May 8, 2019 [13 favorites]
Honestly though I would much rather radical queer groups if they're going to be cliquey af anyway use astrology as the reason (ugh geminis!!) than what seemed to be the politically acceptable way of excluding people before, which was calling them abusive or problematic for some minor mis-step that everyone is going to make at some point. My feeling is people in those kinds of dynamics use astrology to say what they would find some other way of saying, rather than that its astrological principles creating the right or wrong kind of person, I might be wrong though or seen dynamics in different circles.
But just as with the previous system, the people who are dismissed are the less-popular, less queer-normative, etc. If you're popular and important, no one will "ugh geminis" you, any more than they would have called you "problematic" in 2015 - no matter what you did.
I got burned out on this stuff in the last couple of years, partly by age but substantially by seeing a friend deal with an abusive relationship in which her abuser used all this "you're so manipulative, I should probably tell our community that you're an abuser, when you cry it's because you're manipulative, when you have panic attacks it's because you're the real abuser" stuff to keep her in line, based the abuser's social power, relative wealth and cis-gender identity.
The thing is, yes, astrology does not have broad social power like Christianity does. But you must understand that there are worlds within worlds. We're not only subject to the rules of the larger world, and sometimes the rules of a small world can actually be more dangerous or harmful. If you live in one of the smaller worlds and you transgress its rules, bad things can still happen to you even if the rules don't mean anything in the larger world.
It's not so much that queer people are any worse than anyone else, but there are particular discourse systems that recur again and again where a superficially "woke" or "spiritual" language is used to cover up existing power structures.
posted by Frowner at 7:37 AM on May 8, 2019 [25 favorites]
But just as with the previous system, the people who are dismissed are the less-popular, less queer-normative, etc. If you're popular and important, no one will "ugh geminis" you, any more than they would have called you "problematic" in 2015 - no matter what you did.
I got burned out on this stuff in the last couple of years, partly by age but substantially by seeing a friend deal with an abusive relationship in which her abuser used all this "you're so manipulative, I should probably tell our community that you're an abuser, when you cry it's because you're manipulative, when you have panic attacks it's because you're the real abuser" stuff to keep her in line, based the abuser's social power, relative wealth and cis-gender identity.
The thing is, yes, astrology does not have broad social power like Christianity does. But you must understand that there are worlds within worlds. We're not only subject to the rules of the larger world, and sometimes the rules of a small world can actually be more dangerous or harmful. If you live in one of the smaller worlds and you transgress its rules, bad things can still happen to you even if the rules don't mean anything in the larger world.
It's not so much that queer people are any worse than anyone else, but there are particular discourse systems that recur again and again where a superficially "woke" or "spiritual" language is used to cover up existing power structures.
posted by Frowner at 7:37 AM on May 8, 2019 [25 favorites]
Look at any dating app and you'll see inherent exclusion based on birthday, which, I'm sorry, is just a form of bigotry and prejudice. It's inherently no different than 'no blacks'
...Okay, have a nice thread, everybody.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:37 AM on May 8, 2019 [14 favorites]
...Okay, have a nice thread, everybody.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:37 AM on May 8, 2019 [14 favorites]
Not comparing effect, comparing point of origin. Thinking something about someone because of the color of their skin is not an inherently different thing than judging someone because of their birthday. Neither is something you can have any control over, and neither has any scientific basis behind it. Trying to judge people based on aspects of their body is prejudice.
posted by neonrev at 7:42 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by neonrev at 7:42 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Nope, nope, nope, bye
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:44 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:44 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
I don't think astrology and racism is a useful comparison or analogy in any sense, on any level.
posted by Dysk at 7:46 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 7:46 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
yeah, I don't think they were saying it's "as bad," because VERY OBVIOUSLY it is not. I think they were pointing out that the "logic" involved is the same: making judgments about people on the basis of arbitrary characteristics which they cannot control. race is a social construct, and skin color has no more inherent meaning than birthdate or eye color or any other superficial characteristic; it obviously does have a shit ton more social meaning.
it is an ...unfortunate... and wildly unhelpful comparison, not just because it passes over all the systemic awfulness that comes with racial bigotries (though mostly that), but also because it's going to allow people to dismiss everything else in this while getting to feel morally righteous while they do so
which they definitely should not feel
posted by schadenfrau at 7:47 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
it is an ...unfortunate... and wildly unhelpful comparison, not just because it passes over all the systemic awfulness that comes with racial bigotries (though mostly that), but also because it's going to allow people to dismiss everything else in this while getting to feel morally righteous while they do so
which they definitely should not feel
posted by schadenfrau at 7:47 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
Yes, denying people housing because they're a Gemini or covering up existing social hierarchies with astrology is unequivocally bullshit. And yes, that deserves to be called out. I'm sorry that has happened to people.
At least personally, I am criticizing the influx of straight people and Very Rational Men into this thread just to say, 'lol those queers! So craaazy' and leave and not have any deeper engagement with this subject than that.
posted by coffeeand at 7:56 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
At least personally, I am criticizing the influx of straight people and Very Rational Men into this thread just to say, 'lol those queers! So craaazy' and leave and not have any deeper engagement with this subject than that.
posted by coffeeand at 7:56 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
Trying to judge people based on aspects of their body is prejudice.
Also reducing racism - which is systemic and has a huge imperialist and colonialist history as well as an incredible institutional power - to 'judging people on aspects of their body' is really, really off.
posted by Dysk at 7:56 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
Also reducing racism - which is systemic and has a huge imperialist and colonialist history as well as an incredible institutional power - to 'judging people on aspects of their body' is really, really off.
posted by Dysk at 7:56 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
Mod note: Folks, this astrology/racism thing is an un-apt and offensive comparison, and it needs to be dropped. General rule, if you're saying "x is like racism", back up because you're almost certainly heading down a wrong path.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:57 AM on May 8, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:57 AM on May 8, 2019 [7 favorites]
Unless everybody's just having fun with it and excluding the people who refuse to play along, in which case things start to make a little more sense.
For the record, this is not it at all. It's more like, as Frowner says:
But just as with the previous system, the people who are dismissed are the less-popular, less queer-normative, etc. If you're popular and important, no one will "ugh geminis" you, any more than they would have called you "problematic" in 2015 - no matter what you did.
Which I feel very much bears repeating.
posted by Dysk at 8:10 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
For the record, this is not it at all. It's more like, as Frowner says:
But just as with the previous system, the people who are dismissed are the less-popular, less queer-normative, etc. If you're popular and important, no one will "ugh geminis" you, any more than they would have called you "problematic" in 2015 - no matter what you did.
Which I feel very much bears repeating.
posted by Dysk at 8:10 AM on May 8, 2019 [8 favorites]
I am criticizing the influx of straight people and Very Rational Men into this thread
I'm not straight. And most of the people criticizing astrology in this thread aren't, though there's been a few men. Maybe don't dismiss astronomy's critics as straight?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
I'm not straight. And most of the people criticizing astrology in this thread aren't, though there's been a few men. Maybe don't dismiss astronomy's critics as straight?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [10 favorites]
I mean yeah, it being used as cover to exclude less popular normative people was exactly my point. But it's cover for other things rather than being its own reason. Personally I would much rather it be politically acceptable for people to give the reason that they're dismissing someone else be their star sign than that they're problematic. It feels like it gives more room to breathe and more possibility for disagreement and places less demands on other people to also shun a particular person. I mean obviously neither is great!
posted by mosswinter at 8:21 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mosswinter at 8:21 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
We're also not all super-pseudo-logic-Vulcans, and I'm recognising people from a variety of self professed spiritual traditions. Maybe this false dichotemy is one of the key elements that supports astrology-mediated abuse?
posted by Blasdelb at 8:22 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:22 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
It feels like it gives more room to breathe and more possibility for disagreement and places less demands on other people to also shun a particular person.
In practice, it often doesn't. That is what I meant by excluding people who don't go along with it, as well as based on their actual star signs - if you don't hew to what it's been decided the stars say, you're excluded too.
I would much rather people owned their judgements, rather than hiding behind superficially neutral/unproblematic 'systems' like astrology.
posted by Dysk at 8:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [7 favorites]
In practice, it often doesn't. That is what I meant by excluding people who don't go along with it, as well as based on their actual star signs - if you don't hew to what it's been decided the stars say, you're excluded too.
I would much rather people owned their judgements, rather than hiding behind superficially neutral/unproblematic 'systems' like astrology.
posted by Dysk at 8:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [7 favorites]
Do people not know that Nancy Reagan was into astrology and consulted it while in the White House while her husband presided over the official ignoring of the AIDS crisis?
posted by praemunire at 8:26 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 8:26 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
It's an inherently discriminatory system, that's very similar to how regular bigots operate, but with a veneer of new-age openness.
People who use astrology as a basis for their decisions about people's character and worthiness are assholes, yes.
I grew up in a Reform Jewish synagogue that had a lesbian rabbi- so I always knew I’d be accepted by my faith- that’s a thing so few queer people have.
I'm glad you had that experience. I have never experienced a faith that accepted me. Loads of other queer people also did not get to grow up in a faith tradition that welcomed them.
I honestly don't know what else to say other than that this thread feels shitty to me. It feels like punching down. Or it feels like crabs in a barrel. I guess I'll come back to this when I feel calmer and safer. Or maybe I should just not comment.
posted by coffeeand at 8:29 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
People who use astrology as a basis for their decisions about people's character and worthiness are assholes, yes.
I grew up in a Reform Jewish synagogue that had a lesbian rabbi- so I always knew I’d be accepted by my faith- that’s a thing so few queer people have.
I'm glad you had that experience. I have never experienced a faith that accepted me. Loads of other queer people also did not get to grow up in a faith tradition that welcomed them.
I honestly don't know what else to say other than that this thread feels shitty to me. It feels like punching down. Or it feels like crabs in a barrel. I guess I'll come back to this when I feel calmer and safer. Or maybe I should just not comment.
posted by coffeeand at 8:29 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
People who use astrology as a basis for their decisions about people's character and worthiness are assholes, yes.
The problem is, as multiple people in this thread and others are trying to tell you, this is a very high percentage of people who use astrology. I'm glad in your world it's a harmless or benign force, but for a lot of us it has been used to harm us, by people in our own community who frankly should know better.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:37 AM on May 8, 2019 [12 favorites]
The problem is, as multiple people in this thread and others are trying to tell you, this is a very high percentage of people who use astrology. I'm glad in your world it's a harmless or benign force, but for a lot of us it has been used to harm us, by people in our own community who frankly should know better.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:37 AM on May 8, 2019 [12 favorites]
Astrology helped me regain a sense of self-worth and agency when I had none. It validated my feelings after a lifetime of invalidation.
I'm sorry people have used it to harm you. That is not okay. I don't think it's comparable to bigotry, but it is true that an outsize proportion of queer people does use it and that those of us who like it should be careful lest we turn it into yet another arbitrary system to sort and categorize people.
posted by coffeeand at 8:47 AM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm sorry people have used it to harm you. That is not okay. I don't think it's comparable to bigotry, but it is true that an outsize proportion of queer people does use it and that those of us who like it should be careful lest we turn it into yet another arbitrary system to sort and categorize people.
posted by coffeeand at 8:47 AM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Astrology helped me regain a sense of self-worth and agency when I had none. It validated my feelings after a lifetime of invalidation.
I am genuinely glad it helps you, and I wish it was always a positive force. But maybe I think that because I'm a Leo :)
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:49 AM on May 8, 2019
I am genuinely glad it helps you, and I wish it was always a positive force. But maybe I think that because I'm a Leo :)
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:49 AM on May 8, 2019
It’s incumbent upon us to reflect on whether what’s good for us personally is worth the harm it causes more broadly.
If you're asking me to consider the harm astrology can do, I have done that, at length, in this thread.
If you're asking me to stop believing in astrology, I will not. You have absolutely no authority to tell me what or what not to believe.
posted by coffeeand at 9:02 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
If you're asking me to consider the harm astrology can do, I have done that, at length, in this thread.
If you're asking me to stop believing in astrology, I will not. You have absolutely no authority to tell me what or what not to believe.
posted by coffeeand at 9:02 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
I don’t see how it’s fair to tell people they can’t believe in astrology even if you think it’s bullshit and harmful overall. The same could be said for any traditional religion but most of us feel it’s not our right to stop others from believing. Scientology seems more like an organized tax evasion system mixed with a cult in a way that astrology can’t be because it’s not run by a specific group of people.
As someone raised Catholic...the concept of transubstantiation seems about as ridiculous to me as the idea that someone born in the same month as me has a similar personality. I would struggle to genuinely believe in either one.
posted by sallybrown at 9:08 AM on May 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
As someone raised Catholic...the concept of transubstantiation seems about as ridiculous to me as the idea that someone born in the same month as me has a similar personality. I would struggle to genuinely believe in either one.
posted by sallybrown at 9:08 AM on May 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm glad you had that experience. I have never experienced a faith that accepted me.
I mean. I've never had a faith that accepted me, either, and that includes astrology, which I have literally only experienced as a way for people to be mean and shitty and abusive. And I am just as queer as you. So, like...I'm not super thrilled with the "punching down" dismissal, or the "I don't want to hear from the straights or men" thing, because I am very much a lesbian who is tired of emotionally abusive, manipulative shit in the one thing approaching a community I can maybe be part of. I get the feeling you don't get how exclusionary the omnipresence of astrology is, but, like...that's because it doesn't exclude you. Sound familiar?
And I don't mean to pick on you. Especially because you seem to be, like, the one person who's had a positive experience with this that appears to be open to eventually hearing about experiences that aren't that positive.
I just don't...I mean, it sucks. I've never had any naive utopian illusions about the lgbtq community because I grew up in it, so I have 35+ years of observing how fucked up and full of unresolved trauma creating more trauma it is. But I guess I was more hopeful than I thought, in the last few years, seeing how much easier it was for the youths to come out, seeing how much more accepting the mainstream has become of nonheteronormative experiences and identities, that maybe that would change.
And if anything, it's gotten worse. Not just because of astrology. Astrology does feel like a symptom that has metastasized until it's become it's own fucking entity that must be reckoned with, but it's only one element of toxicity. There's also, like, weird elements of homophobia and misogyny and all kinds of policing, and they all seem to feed on each other until it's just another Hobbesian nightmare with admittedly better styling. And the one common element to all of it is shame for things you can't control. Like we worked so hard to escape shame from the straights only to turn the only weapon we're really familiar with on each other. All the damn time. People being shamed for their birth month or for not caring what their birth month is is just...
I'm just so tired of it.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:08 AM on May 8, 2019 [22 favorites]
I mean. I've never had a faith that accepted me, either, and that includes astrology, which I have literally only experienced as a way for people to be mean and shitty and abusive. And I am just as queer as you. So, like...I'm not super thrilled with the "punching down" dismissal, or the "I don't want to hear from the straights or men" thing, because I am very much a lesbian who is tired of emotionally abusive, manipulative shit in the one thing approaching a community I can maybe be part of. I get the feeling you don't get how exclusionary the omnipresence of astrology is, but, like...that's because it doesn't exclude you. Sound familiar?
And I don't mean to pick on you. Especially because you seem to be, like, the one person who's had a positive experience with this that appears to be open to eventually hearing about experiences that aren't that positive.
I just don't...I mean, it sucks. I've never had any naive utopian illusions about the lgbtq community because I grew up in it, so I have 35+ years of observing how fucked up and full of unresolved trauma creating more trauma it is. But I guess I was more hopeful than I thought, in the last few years, seeing how much easier it was for the youths to come out, seeing how much more accepting the mainstream has become of nonheteronormative experiences and identities, that maybe that would change.
And if anything, it's gotten worse. Not just because of astrology. Astrology does feel like a symptom that has metastasized until it's become it's own fucking entity that must be reckoned with, but it's only one element of toxicity. There's also, like, weird elements of homophobia and misogyny and all kinds of policing, and they all seem to feed on each other until it's just another Hobbesian nightmare with admittedly better styling. And the one common element to all of it is shame for things you can't control. Like we worked so hard to escape shame from the straights only to turn the only weapon we're really familiar with on each other. All the damn time. People being shamed for their birth month or for not caring what their birth month is is just...
I'm just so tired of it.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:08 AM on May 8, 2019 [22 favorites]
Mod note: Couple comments deleted. This needs to not get into "you personally should believe x" or the flip side, "you can't talk about your own personal beliefs/experiences, because by doing that, you're trying to tell me personally what to do." If the thread is feeling like too much, it's ok to just step away for a while, close the tab, take a walk, etc.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Similarly, we can prove that the Eucharist does not transform from bread to flesh.
Exactly, and while this is part of a Catholic ritual it’s also a Catholic belief that we swear to when being confirmed (becoming an adult in the Church). We literally swear that we believe this. It’s not my place to tell someone they can’t be Catholic because it requires swearing to a provably false thing.
It’s no surprise that malignant assholes and narcissists are drawn to astrology or that they’ll use it as an excuse to be jerks to other people. We also see this with religion. When a person points to their faith for why they did something terrible, is the faith itself to blame or the bad actor? For me it’s always the bad actor but I know people disagree on this.
posted by sallybrown at 9:22 AM on May 8, 2019
Exactly, and while this is part of a Catholic ritual it’s also a Catholic belief that we swear to when being confirmed (becoming an adult in the Church). We literally swear that we believe this. It’s not my place to tell someone they can’t be Catholic because it requires swearing to a provably false thing.
It’s no surprise that malignant assholes and narcissists are drawn to astrology or that they’ll use it as an excuse to be jerks to other people. We also see this with religion. When a person points to their faith for why they did something terrible, is the faith itself to blame or the bad actor? For me it’s always the bad actor but I know people disagree on this.
posted by sallybrown at 9:22 AM on May 8, 2019
Also, all the "it's just harmless fun, it's just jokes, it's not serious" arguments -- you know the last time we heard all of that right?
There aren't any astrology nazis that I'm aware of (and if someone shows up with a goddamn link about astrology being used as a cover for eliminationism I will hurl my cursed laptop into the sea), but astrology isn't any more immune to the "it's just memes" to "this is a fact and Geminis cannot be trusted" pipeline than any other belief system. "Just memes" is usually a defense mechanism while people explore something that makes them feel good. Which is human, I think, even if it's not harmless. And it's shitty on an individual level, but at scale it becomes a different sort of problem.
So like. Believe what you want, get through the day, find what helps you access joy and peace. But I think we're all kind of justified in pointing out when those beliefs cross over from a personal practice to a prescriptivist world view that has an effect on other people.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:27 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
There aren't any astrology nazis that I'm aware of (and if someone shows up with a goddamn link about astrology being used as a cover for eliminationism I will hurl my cursed laptop into the sea), but astrology isn't any more immune to the "it's just memes" to "this is a fact and Geminis cannot be trusted" pipeline than any other belief system. "Just memes" is usually a defense mechanism while people explore something that makes them feel good. Which is human, I think, even if it's not harmless. And it's shitty on an individual level, but at scale it becomes a different sort of problem.
So like. Believe what you want, get through the day, find what helps you access joy and peace. But I think we're all kind of justified in pointing out when those beliefs cross over from a personal practice to a prescriptivist world view that has an effect on other people.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:27 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
I'm a big queer and I hate all of it. I hate astrology, I hate personality tests, I hate religion! Certainly they're important to people's lives. They also inevitably seem to lead to mass bad behavior and bad politics. It is alienating being the only person you know who doesn't collect crystals, want to look at acquaintances' birth charts to form weird assumptions about them, or go to a church.
I've got to have friends to live in this world. I do not act mean when people talk to me about things I don't believe in. But internally, as soon as I hear "church", "energy", "signs", or "personality type" I immediately feel like I'm receiving transmissions from the earth and I'm alone, trapped on the goddamn moon, and will never truly know or be known by that person.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 9:30 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
I've got to have friends to live in this world. I do not act mean when people talk to me about things I don't believe in. But internally, as soon as I hear "church", "energy", "signs", or "personality type" I immediately feel like I'm receiving transmissions from the earth and I'm alone, trapped on the goddamn moon, and will never truly know or be known by that person.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 9:30 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
Also, when astrology is being used as a cover for dividing people into those who are the right and wrong kind of queer, the hiding the true nature of the division (ie right kind of queer or wrong kind of queer, whatever axis that is along - too femme, too masc, not femme enough, whatever) then it almost functions as a form of gaslighting as well as deniability and obfuscation - especially combined with the "it's just jokes/ironic/fun!" angle from a lot of the people who seem to be taking it pretty damn seriously. How can you complain about being excluded for being too femme? It's just cause you're a [star sign] and so-and-so is a [star sign] so you're not compatible! And then later, how can you complain about being excluded for astrology, that's ridiculous, and it's all just ironic and in good fun anyway, don't take it so seriously!
posted by Dysk at 9:38 AM on May 8, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 9:38 AM on May 8, 2019 [13 favorites]
When a person points to their faith for why they did something terrible, is the faith itself to blame or the bad actor? For me it’s always the bad actor but I know people disagree on this.
Sometimes the faith provides a framework that (A) discourages critical consideration of what actions are bad or (B) actively encourages bad actions.
I have an older relative for whom (A) is tremendously important. Astrology allows her to assign a narrative to her life which holds her blameless for all her personal failures. The denial of her own agency permits her to remain utterly toxic without any sort of honest self-contemplation.
If more of her friends had been willing to say, "No, this is nonsense, you should think about why things actually happen" perhaps she would have found a less harmful framework for understanding reality. I wish that had been the case.
posted by YoloMortemPeccatoris at 9:40 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
Sometimes the faith provides a framework that (A) discourages critical consideration of what actions are bad or (B) actively encourages bad actions.
I have an older relative for whom (A) is tremendously important. Astrology allows her to assign a narrative to her life which holds her blameless for all her personal failures. The denial of her own agency permits her to remain utterly toxic without any sort of honest self-contemplation.
If more of her friends had been willing to say, "No, this is nonsense, you should think about why things actually happen" perhaps she would have found a less harmful framework for understanding reality. I wish that had been the case.
posted by YoloMortemPeccatoris at 9:40 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
And then later, how can you complain about being excluded for astrology, that's ridiculous, and it's all just ironic and in good fun anyway, don't take it so seriously!
This happened, almost word for word, in the linked AskMe. Like, if you don't believe in it, why do you care what they say about Capricorns ;)
Because they're still talking about me.*
Christ on SALE.
*I am not a Capricorn, as far as I know, and I now, for real, have a policy about not telling the women I date my birthdate, because wow does it suck to think they actually care about your birthday and then get hit with this fucking shit. I would almost rather they try to steal my identity.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:45 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
This happened, almost word for word, in the linked AskMe. Like, if you don't believe in it, why do you care what they say about Capricorns ;)
Because they're still talking about me.*
Christ on SALE.
*I am not a Capricorn, as far as I know, and I now, for real, have a policy about not telling the women I date my birthdate, because wow does it suck to think they actually care about your birthday and then get hit with this fucking shit. I would almost rather they try to steal my identity.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:45 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
the distance between gender science/sexual biology and phrenology (and straight up fascism and white supremacy) is not as great as I’m comfortable with to be quite honest.
posted by nikaspark at 10:01 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by nikaspark at 10:01 AM on May 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
"so I've found other ways to annoy them:..."
I'm not one of them, but woo-boy I sure was annoyed.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:02 AM on May 8, 2019
I'm not one of them, but woo-boy I sure was annoyed.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:02 AM on May 8, 2019
like, it has not escaped my notice that the people who are being defensive are essentially refusing to engage with the way this stuff is actually practiced in real life. like this thread. or like the examples in this thread itself.
See i kind of get this. It's asinine, but understandable. I think the dismissal of people "taking it this seriously" was partially a backlash to having a few friends who were casually interested, combined with seeing as the misogynistic nerd dudes and general bros going "ugh these WOMEN take astrology SOOOO seriously it's SOOO stupid" to where they think it's all smoke and no fire.
There were very, very few people who took it too far like this when i was in high school(at a very unusual school, surrounded by other lgbt kids and witchy women) and it kind of abruptly grew really hard in the early 2010s
Everyone i know sort of remembers having a friend or two who was WAY too into it, but also usually way too into lots of other occult/conspiracy/etc stuff about magick or whatever. Even to me it's bizarre that it's become so widespread, but, here we are.
I myself was very sucked into "It's not that deep" after seeing stupid fucking rants about it being like, queer culture and feminine coded and stuff(which is, in a sense, true from the opposition side but... idk, most people will get why that's reductive and can be misused)
This was kind of a perfect storm of people having good, or at least understandable reasons to dismiss it being This Obnoxious and Bad
posted by emptythought at 10:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
See i kind of get this. It's asinine, but understandable. I think the dismissal of people "taking it this seriously" was partially a backlash to having a few friends who were casually interested, combined with seeing as the misogynistic nerd dudes and general bros going "ugh these WOMEN take astrology SOOOO seriously it's SOOO stupid" to where they think it's all smoke and no fire.
There were very, very few people who took it too far like this when i was in high school(at a very unusual school, surrounded by other lgbt kids and witchy women) and it kind of abruptly grew really hard in the early 2010s
Everyone i know sort of remembers having a friend or two who was WAY too into it, but also usually way too into lots of other occult/conspiracy/etc stuff about magick or whatever. Even to me it's bizarre that it's become so widespread, but, here we are.
I myself was very sucked into "It's not that deep" after seeing stupid fucking rants about it being like, queer culture and feminine coded and stuff(which is, in a sense, true from the opposition side but... idk, most people will get why that's reductive and can be misused)
This was kind of a perfect storm of people having good, or at least understandable reasons to dismiss it being This Obnoxious and Bad
posted by emptythought at 10:16 AM on May 8, 2019 [4 favorites]
oh my god really? fine, let's try again. I AM in fact deeply concerned about the parade of horrors and abuses perpetrated by organized religion over the past 2,000 years, ESPECIALLY CHRISTIANITY, but I don't feel that I have to specifically worry about that wrt my fellow gays because none of them would ever, for a billion dollars, go back to the abusive conservative evangelical situations in which they were raised, which they still fear, filled with the family members who have deliberately harmed them, physically and emotionally, all their lives, and who continue to hatefully reject them and all that they are.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:23 AM on May 8, 2019 [9 favorites]
Humanity will go extinct and the stars are not even capable of caring about or effecting you beyond gravity. Make the most of the time you're given because you won't get any more.
If you want to draw goofy pictures in the sky and ascribe meaning to them go right ahead. This is your right as a human and I will fight and die to defend it. But it's fucking goofy and some people would do well to at least come by it honest.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:37 AM on May 8, 2019
If you want to draw goofy pictures in the sky and ascribe meaning to them go right ahead. This is your right as a human and I will fight and die to defend it. But it's fucking goofy and some people would do well to at least come by it honest.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:37 AM on May 8, 2019
I am here for "these actions are harmful," but mega-boos to "these beliefs are stupid"
planet-based spiritual beliefs ain't any dumber than religions based on individual human narratives
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:42 AM on May 8, 2019 [6 favorites]
planet-based spiritual beliefs ain't any dumber than religions based on individual human narratives
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:42 AM on May 8, 2019 [6 favorites]
Well that's undeniably true.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:54 AM on May 8, 2019
posted by East14thTaco at 11:54 AM on May 8, 2019
My first experience with astrology was finding the book Horrid Horoscopes (I can recall at least one bit that was quite homophobic in that book, and there's probably more, so it's not a book I'd want around anymore) at my great Aunt's house and even at age 8 or so being mildly amused by the snide and nasty descriptions of the various signs.
I've always remembered that as a Capricorn I have to avoid standing still for too long or else I could take root and become a tree.
As a straight guy I don't encounter a lot of astrology, so like a lot of straight people I'm surprised to learn that it's growing in popularity among the LGBT crowd. On the few occasions when someone does ask my sign I tend to say that I was born a Pieces but had it legally changed to Virgo for tax reasons.
showbiz_liz I have a theory about this actually - it seems to be very much a parallel to what happened in the Gilded Age, when spiritualism got to be such a huge deal. Both periods saw a combination of extreme wealth inequality and social upheaval, which undermined a lot of people's faith in existing institutions and belief systems. So they turned to an "unsanctioned" belief system that could answer some of their otherwise unanswered questions.
Hmm. I can see that. People want to believe in stuff, and if they can't believe in institutions there's this extra belief sort of sloshing around, as Archchancellor Ridcully would put it, that needs an outlet.
I wonder if there's any sort of polling on mystic beliefs or sales data on mystic books or number of newspapers offering a horoscope or whatever that could be analyzed to see if belief in astrology, or crystal healing, or whatnot really does seem to link up to times of social turmoil and declining institutional trust. I'ma have to go do some research now...
posted by sotonohito at 12:13 PM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've always remembered that as a Capricorn I have to avoid standing still for too long or else I could take root and become a tree.
As a straight guy I don't encounter a lot of astrology, so like a lot of straight people I'm surprised to learn that it's growing in popularity among the LGBT crowd. On the few occasions when someone does ask my sign I tend to say that I was born a Pieces but had it legally changed to Virgo for tax reasons.
showbiz_liz I have a theory about this actually - it seems to be very much a parallel to what happened in the Gilded Age, when spiritualism got to be such a huge deal. Both periods saw a combination of extreme wealth inequality and social upheaval, which undermined a lot of people's faith in existing institutions and belief systems. So they turned to an "unsanctioned" belief system that could answer some of their otherwise unanswered questions.
Hmm. I can see that. People want to believe in stuff, and if they can't believe in institutions there's this extra belief sort of sloshing around, as Archchancellor Ridcully would put it, that needs an outlet.
I wonder if there's any sort of polling on mystic beliefs or sales data on mystic books or number of newspapers offering a horoscope or whatever that could be analyzed to see if belief in astrology, or crystal healing, or whatnot really does seem to link up to times of social turmoil and declining institutional trust. I'ma have to go do some research now...
posted by sotonohito at 12:13 PM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
I remember when New Age stuff was big with dykes (which is what queer women called ourselves) in the 90s. I’ve always been on the sciencey/skeptical side, but I did enjoy tarot as a storytelling/meditation/intuition tool.
posted by matildaben at 8:04 PM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by matildaben at 8:04 PM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
I am generally ambiguous to people having even strong connections to otherwise harmless woo - lucky coins, never put a hat on a bed, etc. Go ahead and knock wood, spill salt, don't move house on a Tuesday, whatever.
And I and many others in my life and in this thread have seen some benefit from divination tools (toys?) like tarot or runestones from time to time:
e.g. a daily single draw as something to contemplate/meditate on/set a tone for the day - oh, I drew the Six of Cups, OK I'll think about childhood memories on my run today OR
hey, I picked the Horse rune out of the bowl this morning on my way out the door, that means Progress & Forward Motion, I'll use that as a confidence boost at work today.
But for Astrology, I've seen too much evidence for it not being so harmless:
a) when people get Really Into it as an advisor/predictor because they have trouble making their own life decisions. "Sorry, I can't go out shopping with you today, my Horoscope says this is a really bad week for me to buy new clothes." Giving up your own agency and doing what The Stars tell you to do (or what some grifter, or bored copywriting intern at a website, tells you The Stars say) is really bad for you in a lot of ways.
OR
b) MUCH much more commonly, even when people are not True Believers and giving up their own agency, it's a way for people and groups to effortlessly and instantly erase the agency / individuality of Others.
A Capricorn? Oh, you're one of those people.
Which is why it's such a head-scratcher for me that marginalized people who get targeted for a lot of identity erasure & pigeonholing - "oh, you're a gay man? well, then I know all about you, all gay men are _______, everybody knows that" - would fall for it as a systematized worldview.
Is it a giving in to the exhaustion of having to navigate the world with a burdensome identity? The idea that there are just twelve types, and a chart of who is compatible with whom, is just so much easier than dealing with how complicated everyone and everything is?
A way to think you've got the Secret Formula? "Quitting your job and moving across the country? But you've only known her for three weeks!" "Oh don't worry, everything's going to work out great! See, she's a Pisces!!"
Or maybe it's turnabout, of the same syndrome? Everyone thinks they know everything about your life and your relationships and your destiny, from this one arbitrary circumstance of birth; so as a defensive / coping mechanism you turn around and do it to everyone else via another one? I don't get it.
posted by bartleby at 10:15 PM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
And I and many others in my life and in this thread have seen some benefit from divination tools (toys?) like tarot or runestones from time to time:
e.g. a daily single draw as something to contemplate/meditate on/set a tone for the day - oh, I drew the Six of Cups, OK I'll think about childhood memories on my run today OR
hey, I picked the Horse rune out of the bowl this morning on my way out the door, that means Progress & Forward Motion, I'll use that as a confidence boost at work today.
But for Astrology, I've seen too much evidence for it not being so harmless:
a) when people get Really Into it as an advisor/predictor because they have trouble making their own life decisions. "Sorry, I can't go out shopping with you today, my Horoscope says this is a really bad week for me to buy new clothes." Giving up your own agency and doing what The Stars tell you to do (or what some grifter, or bored copywriting intern at a website, tells you The Stars say) is really bad for you in a lot of ways.
OR
b) MUCH much more commonly, even when people are not True Believers and giving up their own agency, it's a way for people and groups to effortlessly and instantly erase the agency / individuality of Others.
A Capricorn? Oh, you're one of those people.
Which is why it's such a head-scratcher for me that marginalized people who get targeted for a lot of identity erasure & pigeonholing - "oh, you're a gay man? well, then I know all about you, all gay men are _______, everybody knows that" - would fall for it as a systematized worldview.
Is it a giving in to the exhaustion of having to navigate the world with a burdensome identity? The idea that there are just twelve types, and a chart of who is compatible with whom, is just so much easier than dealing with how complicated everyone and everything is?
A way to think you've got the Secret Formula? "Quitting your job and moving across the country? But you've only known her for three weeks!" "Oh don't worry, everything's going to work out great! See, she's a Pisces!!"
Or maybe it's turnabout, of the same syndrome? Everyone thinks they know everything about your life and your relationships and your destiny, from this one arbitrary circumstance of birth; so as a defensive / coping mechanism you turn around and do it to everyone else via another one? I don't get it.
posted by bartleby at 10:15 PM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
**Astrology isn’t a spiritual belief, it’s literally a materialist pseudoscience that seeks a tangible explanation for behavioral/personality characteristics. There’s nothing spiritual about it at all.**
--That's quite a blanket statement you've got there. While there are definitely very popular flavors of astrology that are as materialistic as you describe, there are plenty of spiritual flavors as well.--
I am unfamiliar with this flavor of astrology , and am honestly good-faith asking for some more description of what that might be like.
Like, I've lived with a polytheist who prayed to Poseidon for mercy during earthquakes and consulted Hestia when rearranging the furniture. Sincerely, and as a way to be connected to the divine both spiritually and practically. I thought it was cool, a way to address a Concept as a personified deity.
But I've never had any exposure to anything like an Astrology that says 'I myself am a Libra, but when I look to Taurus in the night sky, it gives me Strength'. Is that a thing? Or something akin to that, or very different? I am actually interested.
posted by bartleby at 10:30 PM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
--That's quite a blanket statement you've got there. While there are definitely very popular flavors of astrology that are as materialistic as you describe, there are plenty of spiritual flavors as well.--
I am unfamiliar with this flavor of astrology , and am honestly good-faith asking for some more description of what that might be like.
Like, I've lived with a polytheist who prayed to Poseidon for mercy during earthquakes and consulted Hestia when rearranging the furniture. Sincerely, and as a way to be connected to the divine both spiritually and practically. I thought it was cool, a way to address a Concept as a personified deity.
But I've never had any exposure to anything like an Astrology that says 'I myself am a Libra, but when I look to Taurus in the night sky, it gives me Strength'. Is that a thing? Or something akin to that, or very different? I am actually interested.
posted by bartleby at 10:30 PM on May 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
When b1tr0t mentioned astrology traditions tied to spirituality, what came to mind for me was Hindu astrology, where the distinction between what is a spiritual belief, what is a ritual practice in support of a spiritual belief, and what is a common cultural practice in a community that shares spiritual beliefs doesn't seem very clear. I understand there are temples to the planets though, which seems like an overlap between religion and astrology worth thinking about.
I'm not sure that's super relevant to astrology / New Age stuff elsewhere. Maybe? But I think you could make stronger points about it by saying well astrologers in the LGBTQ+ community may seem to be making materialist claims about the influence of the planets, but probably it's just metaphysics in pseudoscientific language. And people fairly often reach for metaphysical answers when they feel the alternative is to look at their own lives as determined by chance. As yet another tradition to compare that to, here's the classic anthropological example [PDF].
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:58 PM on May 8, 2019
I'm not sure that's super relevant to astrology / New Age stuff elsewhere. Maybe? But I think you could make stronger points about it by saying well astrologers in the LGBTQ+ community may seem to be making materialist claims about the influence of the planets, but probably it's just metaphysics in pseudoscientific language. And people fairly often reach for metaphysical answers when they feel the alternative is to look at their own lives as determined by chance. As yet another tradition to compare that to, here's the classic anthropological example [PDF].
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:58 PM on May 8, 2019
bartleby, I might try to answer more in depth later, but check out this interview with Richard Tarnas and this discussion by Steven Forrest about spiritual astrology.
posted by overglow at 12:03 AM on May 9, 2019
posted by overglow at 12:03 AM on May 9, 2019
Also this essay about the astrological worldview, by Ray Grasse, which includes this quote:
Imagine a play where the lead character finally awakens to a truth he's long hidden from himself. As the playwright penned the scene, the moment of his breakthrough is accompanied by the image of a rising Sun depicted at the back of the stage—a dramatic device meant to complement the change of heart experienced by the character.posted by overglow at 12:20 AM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Now, how should we understand the relationship between the sunrise and the psychological change of character? Are there any secret "rays" emanating from the mock-Sun to the lead character which a scientist could measure and quantify? Is there some energy field set up amongst the characters acting on stage, or amongst the objects and props which comprise the backdrop? Clearly, there isn't. Nonetheless, there is a connection between the character's psychological shift and the change of lighting on stage—but it's a symbolic rather than causal one. Each element in the story unfolds within a larger framework of meaning and is interpretable only in relation to a transcendent, or "implicate" ground of reference—the dramatic design conceived in the mind of the playwright.
Here, as in astrology, meaning can only be accessed through the lens of symbolic understanding. In much the same way, each person's life-experience represents a unique and highly personalized context of meaning. The seemingly unrelated events of someone's daily life—which include, among other things, the positions of the stars and planets in the sky—are best understood as mutually arising elements in a greater field of significance, the archetypal script of a life and consciousness, as reflected in the horoscope.
The astrological worldview is, therefore, one in which each person's life is regarded as a living book of symbols, unlocked through the key of metaphoric knowing. Like a kind of "waking dream," each person's world is an archetypal drama containing multiple levels of resonance and interconnectedness, encoding information about the past, present, and future.
Imagine a play where the lead character finally awakens to a truth he's long hidden from himself.
Except it’s not a play, it’s the moment you realized that thing that’s been happening to you your whole life is called being trans, and you want something other than the medical institutions and modernity to lay claim over you. How do you claim your body away from that and attach yourself to history (that’s been stolen from you)
each person's world is an archetypal drama containing multiple levels of resonance and interconnectedness, encoding information about the past, present, and future.
It’s an elaborate larp, and that queer people are using this process to be shitty to each is the story here. This is not a referendum on the internal mechanisms and systems by which LGBTQ+ people are queering mythology to find one’s place in the world.
posted by nikaspark at 12:32 AM on May 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Except it’s not a play, it’s the moment you realized that thing that’s been happening to you your whole life is called being trans, and you want something other than the medical institutions and modernity to lay claim over you. How do you claim your body away from that and attach yourself to history (that’s been stolen from you)
each person's world is an archetypal drama containing multiple levels of resonance and interconnectedness, encoding information about the past, present, and future.
It’s an elaborate larp, and that queer people are using this process to be shitty to each is the story here. This is not a referendum on the internal mechanisms and systems by which LGBTQ+ people are queering mythology to find one’s place in the world.
posted by nikaspark at 12:32 AM on May 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
In much the same way, each person's life-experience represents a unique and highly personalized context of meaning.
Here's the thing, though, and I say this as a person who has so loved the taste of this particular Kool-Aid that she can tell you offhand that her sun is in the first house at 27° Leo, a degree said to be (along with 27° Aquarius) indicative of a deep fascination with astrology (fun fact!):
Humans already have really complex explanations for their behaviors and relationship choices. It's called "having parents" and "different kinds of weird/bad stuff happening to you in childhood" and "developing coping strategies that were adaptive in the moment" and "internalizing the reactions of others to your actions" and maybe even "having unrecognized neurodivergence" and it is a rich friggin' tapestry. You will never be bored.
The key advantage of this framework vs. the astrological worldview is that if you think of your behavior patterns as a collection of formerly adaptive learned strategies, you can critically examine which ones have stopped working and replace them with healthier ones, whereas the star chart is locked in at birth. Libras just gonna Libra; you don't have to change kangaroo jack about yourself.
This becomes more pronounced when you've got two people trying to have a relationship, they're being abusive to each other in various ways, and instead of examining the one's intergenerational alcoholism & treating the other's bipolar they're writing it all off as what happens when Libras try to date Cancers -- and the friends who could be saying "Jesus Pete treat your bipolar" are instead saying "ugh, Cancers are the worst."
Obviously not every person who interfaces with astrology is going to take it to this level, but if we're gonna have the conversation, we gotta be honest about the sheer potential for horse patooty.
posted by taquito sunrise at 3:12 AM on May 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
Here's the thing, though, and I say this as a person who has so loved the taste of this particular Kool-Aid that she can tell you offhand that her sun is in the first house at 27° Leo, a degree said to be (along with 27° Aquarius) indicative of a deep fascination with astrology (fun fact!):
Humans already have really complex explanations for their behaviors and relationship choices. It's called "having parents" and "different kinds of weird/bad stuff happening to you in childhood" and "developing coping strategies that were adaptive in the moment" and "internalizing the reactions of others to your actions" and maybe even "having unrecognized neurodivergence" and it is a rich friggin' tapestry. You will never be bored.
The key advantage of this framework vs. the astrological worldview is that if you think of your behavior patterns as a collection of formerly adaptive learned strategies, you can critically examine which ones have stopped working and replace them with healthier ones, whereas the star chart is locked in at birth. Libras just gonna Libra; you don't have to change kangaroo jack about yourself.
This becomes more pronounced when you've got two people trying to have a relationship, they're being abusive to each other in various ways, and instead of examining the one's intergenerational alcoholism & treating the other's bipolar they're writing it all off as what happens when Libras try to date Cancers -- and the friends who could be saying "Jesus Pete treat your bipolar" are instead saying "ugh, Cancers are the worst."
Obviously not every person who interfaces with astrology is going to take it to this level, but if we're gonna have the conversation, we gotta be honest about the sheer potential for horse patooty.
posted by taquito sunrise at 3:12 AM on May 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
New age magical thinking in the hands of a person with undiagnosed mental illness and personality disorder is dangerous as hell and from my experience of spending 17 years of my life married to someone being physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused by that toxic cocktail I can assure you yes I absolutely do understand just how fucked up and horrific magical thinking can get.
But also if you put the right boundaries on where “social life” and “science life” interact, you absolutely can derive creative meaning out of some of the tapestries of myth, paganism and religion in a way that helps you navigate some of the weirder aspects of living through post colonial late capitalism.
posted by nikaspark at 3:58 AM on May 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
But also if you put the right boundaries on where “social life” and “science life” interact, you absolutely can derive creative meaning out of some of the tapestries of myth, paganism and religion in a way that helps you navigate some of the weirder aspects of living through post colonial late capitalism.
posted by nikaspark at 3:58 AM on May 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
New age magical thinking in the hands of a person with undiagnosed mental illness and personality disorder is dangerous as hell
Good job all of those things aren't absolutely endemic in explicitly queer spaces then!
Oh wait...
posted by Dysk at 6:09 AM on May 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Good job all of those things aren't absolutely endemic in explicitly queer spaces then!
Oh wait...
posted by Dysk at 6:09 AM on May 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Yes dysk my ex wife and I are both bi and before we got married I told her I wanted be a woman, this reality is absolutely endemic in queer communities and I’ve lived through trauma that’s not really appropriate to discuss here, it’s why I’m trying to get into therapy instead.
Anyway I think all this shit is goofy but I also see how when applied in a not shitty way it can be grounding and yet at the same I can’t take on ownership of protecting the entire LGBTQ+ umbrella from its own comorbitity. I’ll call it out as something to be aware of, but pragmatically speaking the best thing any of us queer folks can do is learn how to recognize when another queer person is bad for your health and give them extremely wide berth. I’ve learned firsthand that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want saving. Best you can do is learn to recognize the signs and avoid them.
posted by nikaspark at 6:50 AM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Anyway I think all this shit is goofy but I also see how when applied in a not shitty way it can be grounding and yet at the same I can’t take on ownership of protecting the entire LGBTQ+ umbrella from its own comorbitity. I’ll call it out as something to be aware of, but pragmatically speaking the best thing any of us queer folks can do is learn how to recognize when another queer person is bad for your health and give them extremely wide berth. I’ve learned firsthand that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want saving. Best you can do is learn to recognize the signs and avoid them.
posted by nikaspark at 6:50 AM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure if this is an under-30 (under-25?) queer thing, an "only on Twitter/Extremely Online Queer thing" or if I really just don't have a queer posse despite the fact that basically all my friends are bisexual women like me. I also don't wear loud prints (I'd love to, but I can't pull it off). Am I being queer wrong? Will I be alone forever? Whoah, this comment took a turn.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 7:08 AM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by pelvicsorcery at 7:08 AM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
P.S. I don't enjoy how it feels like socialism:liberalism:centrism:rightwing :: astrology & paganism:atheism:soft christianity:fundamentalist christianity. Especially given how socialists/the hard left views liberals. Don't run from science, guys. It's got evil in it, but so does everything else.
I guess not even realizing it was becoming big before it was everywhere also lends to the feeling of, "Shit, I have no idea what's cool anymore, oh God I'm old" alienation thing.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 7:19 AM on May 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I guess not even realizing it was becoming big before it was everywhere also lends to the feeling of, "Shit, I have no idea what's cool anymore, oh God I'm old" alienation thing.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 7:19 AM on May 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
My queer GenX-who-is-friendly-with-millenials experience has been that belief in astrology is largely related to being raised female in the US. People raised male tend to be dismissive of anything outside the realm of Approved Science. Straight or queer, doesn't matter. Boy magazines and media don't have astrology in them, girl magazines and media do; boys learn all about Things and girls learn about Relationships.
As I've transitioned from male to female I've found myself becoming much less dismissive about things outside of the realm of Science, but I haven't gotten into astrology. It's complicated and I really don't feel like trying to learn it right now; maybe someday it will be obvious that the time has come for me to find some good texts on the subject and start studying, maybe never.
I've moved to telling people my birthday is a different day than the one on my birth certificate for an assortment of reasons, and am somewhat amused that descriptions of my new sign seem to fit the woman I've become about as well as the old one, while other signs don't sound too much like me. Maybe there's something there; maybe there's also a lot of over-complexifying bullshit, people are really good at filling in the gaps of things they don't understand very well with that.
posted by egypturnash at 7:59 AM on May 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
As I've transitioned from male to female I've found myself becoming much less dismissive about things outside of the realm of Science, but I haven't gotten into astrology. It's complicated and I really don't feel like trying to learn it right now; maybe someday it will be obvious that the time has come for me to find some good texts on the subject and start studying, maybe never.
I've moved to telling people my birthday is a different day than the one on my birth certificate for an assortment of reasons, and am somewhat amused that descriptions of my new sign seem to fit the woman I've become about as well as the old one, while other signs don't sound too much like me. Maybe there's something there; maybe there's also a lot of over-complexifying bullshit, people are really good at filling in the gaps of things they don't understand very well with that.
posted by egypturnash at 7:59 AM on May 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's definitely a thing in Millenial Queer Australia and people do take it seriously. I'm kinda half hearted about it - fun to read, annoying when people hang everything on it, but sometimes it can be helpful for small stuff.
It is definitely linked to the rise in queer witchcraft (which I would argue is a very different thing to the New Agey Wicca of the 90s popularised by Llewellyn) and there's also a strong element of PoC tying this back to ancestral practices.
Those of you suggesting throwing the MBTI in response: yeah, that's also trendy, so it's not going to be as effective a takedown as you think it is.
Y'all might appreciate this tweet.
posted by divabat at 9:42 PM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
It is definitely linked to the rise in queer witchcraft (which I would argue is a very different thing to the New Agey Wicca of the 90s popularised by Llewellyn) and there's also a strong element of PoC tying this back to ancestral practices.
Those of you suggesting throwing the MBTI in response: yeah, that's also trendy, so it's not going to be as effective a takedown as you think it is.
Y'all might appreciate this tweet.
posted by divabat at 9:42 PM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
as a Scorpio, I do secretly kind of enjoy the reputation it gives me among astrology people of being an intensely moody pervert
Honestly, I think that around 30% of the underlying reason astrology is making a comeback right now is that gay men looooove self-identifying as Scorpios, because it legitimizes the personality traits of being horny, neurotic, and disagreeable.
I wouldn't say I felt "alienated" by this neo-Theosophical current but it's definitely one of the few ways in which I feel kind of disappointed by the modern queer zeitgeist. For one thing, if you want insight into the broad strokes of someone's personality, there are a million OCEAN/HEXACO inventories out there. Those have the benefit of being medium well-validated tools used in personality psych, and I am proof positive you can be just as annoying to all of your friends by being obsessed with them. And while I have to admit I do feel a little warm nostalgia about pentacle necklaces and the Tarot from my teenage years, can't we just satisfy that with like, a Buffy reboot and a few ASMR videos and some therapy instead?
posted by en forme de poire at 11:48 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
Honestly, I think that around 30% of the underlying reason astrology is making a comeback right now is that gay men looooove self-identifying as Scorpios, because it legitimizes the personality traits of being horny, neurotic, and disagreeable.
I wouldn't say I felt "alienated" by this neo-Theosophical current but it's definitely one of the few ways in which I feel kind of disappointed by the modern queer zeitgeist. For one thing, if you want insight into the broad strokes of someone's personality, there are a million OCEAN/HEXACO inventories out there. Those have the benefit of being medium well-validated tools used in personality psych, and I am proof positive you can be just as annoying to all of your friends by being obsessed with them. And while I have to admit I do feel a little warm nostalgia about pentacle necklaces and the Tarot from my teenage years, can't we just satisfy that with like, a Buffy reboot and a few ASMR videos and some therapy instead?
posted by en forme de poire at 11:48 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
To be an MBTI apologist for a hot sec, I think it turns out not to be quite as unscientific as astrology, although I also think that's... kind of by accident. When people in the literature compare it to the tools personality psychologists actually use, they usually bring up these issues: 1. it binarizes people along axes where most people are actually somewhere in the middle; 2. it more or less correlates with around four of the dimensions in something more principled like OCEAN or HEXACO, but only medium-well, and mushes some things together that seem more like they vary independently in real populations; and 3. it doesn't capture either susceptibility to negative emotions (which is in both OCEAN and HEXACO) or honesty-humility (HEXACO only), which are pretty important, if not always flattering, aspects of personality. Also people's personalities often actually change: there's a result or two suggesting that over the long term, people seem to become less open-minded but more agreeable and conscientious, on average of course. Personality also seems to change in reaction to specific life events (therapy reduces negative emotionality, and doing mushrooms can increase openness long-term -- I swear to god this last one is a real paper). That goes against what people are typically told when they take a Myers-Briggs, which I think can make people over-identify with their results. And I suspect that leads to a focus on justifying behavior rather than describing or explaining it -- let alone using it as a prompt for personal change/growth. All that said I'm just an interested amateur who knows a bit about statistics, not a personality psychologist.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk
posted by en forme de poire at 4:44 PM on May 10, 2019
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk
posted by en forme de poire at 4:44 PM on May 10, 2019
Just chiming in after seeing confused comments up top: this is VERY much a thing where I am (small midwest city with a healthy queer community, my friends are mostly 30-somethings, with some gen z and gen x interlopers). It's exhausting. I'm not even a die hard atheist or anything but the level of woo in my friend circle is a source of real confusion and discomfort for me. I feel like such a spoilsport. Not that I'm dismissive or rude about it to friends, but even non-participation is seen as a weirdly cishet quirk. I literally looked up my star chart to see if there was a reason I was limiting my radical queer credibility, but I just can't take it seriously.
posted by libraritarian at 7:00 AM on May 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by libraritarian at 7:00 AM on May 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
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