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That popular bumper-sticker dictum could be considered a by-word of many
goddess womyn. Most of us were not raised in goddess-based, pagan or Wiccan
families, but at some point in our spiritual evolution, we began to question
the lessons taught to us in our earliest years, and we came to different
conclusions from those of our parents or other authority figures.
We learned many other lessons as we grew from toddler to child to young
adult, and even as adults--lessons that covered a range of topics from the
sacred to the mundane and everything in between. Depending on the
culture/community/country in which we came up, we may have learned that
family is everything, that getting an education is paramount, that we can
always (or never, or sometimes) trust parents and extended family members to
protect us; why the world works as it appears to; why our family held its
particular station in life; and that you NEVER wear patent leather after
Labor Day.
As a white, working-class american female born in West Virginia and raised
mostly in northeast Ohio, I learned some of those lessons and others, such
as, anyone can get ahead in the U.S. if they just work hard; our justice
system is fair and impartial; equal opportunity is achieved by treating
everyone "equally."
These lessons are part of the Master Narrative, a term from critical race
theory that describes a grand narrative of How the World Works that is
supported and validated by society as a whole. This is the life story of
the dominant culture, fed to us all with our pablum, supporting beliefs in
the superiority of the dominant culture and affecting members of nondominant
cultures, as a mechanism for spreading internalized racism, internalized
sexism, internalized heterosexism and similar internalized -isms.
Have you ever noticed how the story that is told first resonates in the room
when it is subsequently told? If the first report you hear is John shot
Mary, that's what you tend to believe. And when the story comes out that
John dropped the gun and Mary was shot, it has to go up against your
existing belief that John shot Mary. Stories that tap into the Master
Narrative resonnate yet more deeply, and we often don't even notice how they
gain their power.
A Counter Narrative is the story that runs against (or counter to) the
Master Narrative. Counter Narratives acknowledge that asymmetrical problems
require asymmetrical solutions. Counter Narratives reflect the stories of
nondominant peoples and provide support and validation for the experiences
of people in high-context cultures.
Some of the foundations of the Master Narrative that can be found in U.S.
law and culture include the belief that being "colorblind" is both a
possibility and a laudable goal; that fairness is achieved by procedural
symmetry; that racism/sexism/heterosexism do not exist unless the intent to
be racist/sexist/heterosexist can be proven; and that
racism/sexism/heterosexism are aberrations (and/or morally justified when
they do exist). Our justice system depends on the belief that when the
rules are applied neutrally, in a colorblind, sex-neutral fashion, the
result cannot be racist or sexist. In fact, such a process ensures racist
and sexist outcomes.
Privilege is a form of unearned benefit that gives advantages to
dominant-culture people even when nondominant-culture people aren't in the
room. The Master Narrative teaches us to deny our privilege and to believe
deeply in the Myth of Meritocracy, the idea that choice is equally available
to everyone.
Interlocking privileges often exist alongside interlocking oppressions. As
a white woman, born in West Virginia into a working-class family, and now as
an older, college-educated, middle-class, single, lesbian Dianic witch who
works at our local Big Ten university, I know both experiences to some
degree or other. And this facile movement from privilege to oppression and
back again has helped me start to break down the Master Narrative and its
effects on my life. One way to facilitate this deconstruction is to ask,
Who gets privileged? when you encounter beliefs and customs whose roots are
not apparent.
Who gets privileged when we support a supposedly sex-neutral system? Who
gets privileged when colorblindness is promoted? Who gets privileged in a
"faith"-based grants program?
Goddess womyn have developed our own Counter Narratives--or cosmology--that
inform our belief systems, our goddess paradigms. Our Counter Narratives
are both ancient and newborn, which may help explain how a new idea, a new
ritual sometimes resonates into our bones.
Because we are developing new ideas in an ancient context, we can sometimes
assume or hope or try to believe that we're doing so in ways that eliminate
the possibility of effects from the Master Narrative or other
privilege-based belief systems. I suggest that we, and our growing
movement, are better served by a conscious, intentional effort to examine
each block of belief that we add to the temple in the context of privilege,
in the context of dominant and nondominant cultural issues, and in the
context of the Master Narrative that so pervades our lives.
By questioning the authority that we've lived with so long, we have a real
opportunity to create something new that's so old we'll feel it in our bones
when we see it.
Article by Daña Alder
Copyright by the Author ~ All rights reserved
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