To point out this horribly patriarchal article which makes me almost embarrassed to write for Patheos. It’s by Aiden Kelly:
The pendulum has swung far back from the Enlightenment of the 1960s toward medieval mental illness. In the late 60 and the 70s, it was normal for a college professor (at least in San Francisco and environs) to have a romance with a woman student. As long as they were both consenting adults, no one cared. And teenagers were not prosecuted as sex offenders. These days I could be fired if I had a cup of coffee with a woman student off campus in order to offer some counseling advice. (I’m 73. My libido has subsided to what I suppose many people would consider normal.)
Dottering old white men complaining that they can’t just have sex with whomever they’d like and blaming it on Puritanism is fortunately not indicative of Paganism. If it were, I’d drop the label in a fucking second.
Ever been to a pagan music festival? Ever witnessed the old, unkempt horny men flocking around the teenage girls with fairy-wings? I have and it’s disgusting.
Bringing heterosexual white male privilege into any spirituality, Pagan or otherwise, is abhorrent. So is this article.
Rhyd Wildermuth 
Feck…
I quit reading Kelly a long while back, because every time he wrote about gender (in a binary sense), or sexuality (in a heterosexist sense), and then tried to talk about “universals” involved in either/both of these, and I spoke up and said “Do you really mean to exclude queer people or gender-variant individuals?” and got slammed for doing so because he was “of his era” and isn’t meaning to exclude anyone (you know, by not mentioning them or admitting they exist in the normative humanity’s universals that he was trying to tell all of us about in his infinite wisdom), I thought it was far more trouble than it was worth to keep reading him and wasting time and brain cells better spent on other endeavors.
But anyway…
I’m all about elders. I’m also all about telling elders that they’re being nauseating. And defense of being “of his era” is pathetic. Those arguments fall apart in almost every context–they’re used to justify racist thinking amongst older generations, which entirely ignores that just as their were racists in an era, there were also non-racists and anti-racists.
He reminds me of the tragedy of the southern women in Flannery O’Connor’s stories, where redemption from small-mindedness only comes through the end of the small-minded life (sometimes on the horns of a bull or the heart-attack on the sidewalk…)
In addition, abusing positions of power isn’t a new, PC thing as he asserts in his comments. One need not to have studied post-modern theory to understand that consent between vulnerable people and powerful people (particularly those holding knowledge or spiritual truths) is not merely a matter of “two consenting adults.”
Jason Pitzl-Waters also pointed out in his comments on Aine’s facebook thread that he very quickly glosses past hiv as a mediating factor in sexual liberation.
But ugh. I’m hoping one of the reasons that very few people have called him out on this is because no one reads him any longer.
Did you see him tell me I just didn’t understand the point he was trying to make EXACTLY as I had predicted he would? Because OF COURSE the only real explanation for me thinking his post was deeply offensive and problematic was that my weak ladybrain was unable to grasp his sophistication.
I just did. It’s disgusting.
Really, “weak ladybrain” might precisely describe how’s he’s viewing you (and apparently others). I’m not surprised he hasn’t responded to my post.
More people need to call this out. His estimation of women in his post was offensive; the way he’s dealing critique in his comments is even worse and more indicative apparently of his views. Anything I can do to help, I will gladly do.
Harassment and abuse apologia => unspoken by me, at least this week when I’m preppping for three holidays.
are there holidays coming up? : P
Yeah. It’s a dodge, but I’m finding that it’s better to just shun someone than to attempt dialogue with someone whose ideology is alienating and hostile.
I’ll admit: I’ve stopped reading his stuff. I find it pedantic. I’m sure there’s an audience for it, but his style plus his points are generally not to my tastes. It’s kind of sad that he and I both got our graduate degrees from the same place. Sigh.