Here are a selected few of the
e-mail comments I've received. Most of the feedback I received helped to
confirm what I have long suspected - bullying in the Pagan community is a
serious and wide-spread problem, and it's time that we as a religious movement
took a stand against it.
I've removed all references that might
identify the writer or his/her location, but I can say that this site has had
more than 100,000 hits (as of January, 2008) and that I have heard from people
in England, Denmark, Australia, central Europe, Thailand, Japan, and all over the United States and Canada. Thank you all for your comments and kind words.
Below the positive comments
is a question/suggestion for dealing with bullies in the community that I
personally don't agree with - and I'm curious as to what other people will think
about it. Following that is a sample of some of the backlash I have seen against this site, and my
reaction to it. Enjoy!
Positive Comments:
Hi! ^_^ I saw your site posted on one of the
mailing lists I'm on. I have not yet been the victim of
bullying in my Pagan community, but I think this site is an excellent resource!
Thank you for being so open and honest about
your story and for sharing your spells on line to the community. It’s a shame
that other members of the Pagan community would treat their own (another pagan
human being) like this. I too have met people that think they are high and
mighty. This has led me into a solitary practice for almost 15 years. I’m now
“coming out” into the community and have met some fabulous witches in
____________ that have actually made me feel like I’m welcome. I hope going
forward that we all can be treated like we want to be treated and live with
honesty and integrity on the path of the Goddess – if everyone could all follow
our own mantra: An it harm none, do as thou will…perhaps someday…;o)
I've just spent a
good amount of time reading your website. I must say that it really hits home
because I've suffered quite a lot of abuse from bullies myself. I can truly
feel empathy for and with you. . . . But most of all, I want to thank you for
having the courage to put up this website. I wish you the best in your journey
upon your chosen path.
I just found your
website, and just wanted to tell you...THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!
While my husband and I are generally left out of the loop, (because of where we
live), friends of ours aren't. I will be studying your site, and see if some of
our coven members who are being harmed by actions like these can benefit.
Again, Thank you, and Goddess Bless!
You say it well and you speak true. Having
witnessed and been at the receiving end of some of the actions you describe. It
is about time some people wake up and smell what ever offering they are burning
:>
I do not know you, nor you me, but you
have given me hope where I thought that there was none - save to continue to
live my Path as best I could and PRAY that Deity could and would enlighten
others to the insidious crap created in our local community. . . You have
empowered me in a such a way that I ask Deity to bless you! Thank you so much!!
The road from here may be rocky and treacherous, but I have a bit more faith in
the outcome knowing that there is a better outcome than to be outcast from the
community because of vicious gossip, slander, and antagonism.
I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed
and appreciate your pagan bullying web site. What a fabulous idea,
and great information! . . . I mostly wanted to tell you that I really think
what you're doing is important, and it needs to be done. Keep up the good
work.
I applaud you for putting together this
web site! Many people in "the community" are so political that they fear
retribution for this type of honesty. Many Pagans don't fit in the "mainstream"
and need a place to validate themselves, their beliefs and lifestyles. Because
the Pagan community is relatively small (compared to Christianity) most people
prefer to conform than create change. . . . Thank you for your thoughtful
work and the courage for taking a stand; fighting the good fight. I am certain
your work will make a difference, one person at a time.
I
would like to applaud you for putting together the wonderful page on bullying in
the Pagan community. I am a Community leader, and often have to watch what I
say and do, because so many are impacted by my opinion. I am sure if I took a
dislike to someone, others would blindly follow suit, to please me. I have had
a few people that, in the past, have been unhappy with me, and some of my
decisions. The way I handle it? Do I gossip about the person? Do I run them down
at community Events? Nope. I call or visit them, and get to the bottom of the
displeasure. I talk with them, and encourage them to get more involved in the
community, or help them rectify the problem they had, which more often than not,
had little or nothing to do with me. Some of my best friends in the
community
are people who didn't like me at first. I do not expect everyone to like
me. That would just be a silly thought. But through years of dealing with
people, I have found that everyone has a good side, and sometimes they don't
realize it themselves. People who thrive on gossip often do so to take the
attention off of their own short comings, you know this. Sometimes if you can
put positive attention on the "gossip offender", they will see the beauty in
themselves and be more apt to do good for the community. I know not everyone
can be saved from this type of behaviour, but everyone deserves the chance.
Again, I thank you for putting together the webpage. It's formatted wonderfully,
and it has been saved to the Local Pagan Group webpage that I moderate. I wish
for you much love and friendship with everyone that you come in contact with.
I just wanted to say Thanks for your
website from many different levels.
Both my partner & I have been bullied both inside & outside the pagan community.
I have noticed that many of our pagan experiences were either as a
distraction or (we sometimes suspect) motivated by
fear that our local knowledge may disprove some claim or another they may be
publicly be making or might violate a confidences &/or lower ourselves to
their level.
Your falsely accused article is an absolute gem.
But my biggest thanks is for providing information in such a format that I can
use it to explain to my pagan 7 year old about any kind of bully (but from a
pagan perspective)
Many thanks again. Your experiences ARE helping others - never believe this is
not the case.
I found your website over a year ago, when I was going
thru some awful stuff with being bullied in AA, never fitting in, and it
basically started when this woman with a lot of time (time equals power) decided
she didn't like me and her minions all followed her. They would pretend to be my
friends, yet I was shut out of everything, when I would question it, they would
say I was imagining it. Yeah the parties I heard about I wasn't invited to were
all in my head! The people not returning my phone calls and insulting me were
figments of my imagination. It was truly awful, I put up with this for years,
kept trying to be accepted.
Once I realized what was happening, I found your website,
and it was such a relief to get validation for what I was going thru. (I also
had a dear friend who confirmed that this was real. Thank the Goddess for her.)
The part that listed the attributes of a person who gets bullied was so
comforting, because it was so empowering, and I felt it described me. I wasn't
bullied because I was weak and ignorant and cruel, it was because I am strong
and intelligent and pleasant. This helped give me the motivation to do what I
needed to do.
I moved about 30 miles away to a more urban area. I got
out of typical, 'Christian' AA and started a Pagan 12 step program. There was
none in the area. I started making new friends. I got involved in several pagan
activities.
And I found my tribe. I have a wonderful boyfriend that I
met at a pagan picnic, pagan 12 step is going very well (made nice friends
there, a first for AA for me) and was invited to join several covens, I did join
one. I choose one that I admire the integrity of the people in it, and the
Tradition it is in.
I don't gossip, I don't get in cliques, and I surround
myself with positive people. I also listen to myself, if I hear that little
warning bell, that someone might be a troll, I get away quickly. A couple of
people tried to 'tell me' about my boyfriend when we first got together, but I
refused to listen, saying I judge him by how he treats me, not by rumor. They
shut up and he's a still agreat guy (probably to their chagrin LOL).
And in pagan AA, there was a troll, she tried to get
everyone to dislike me, even started a scene, but the Elders in the church
quickly banned her (UU church) and have taught me a lot about this, how to deal
with bullies and trolls, having to deal with it in their open study groups and
rituals quite a bit. I have learned so much, and am thrilled to keep meeting
Elders who are wise and strong.
I did something else I found empowering: I had a Delete
Ritual, where I just deleted ALL the numbers of the people that were in my
former crowd. I let them go with love and light, wishing them well. Most never
called anyway, it was always me trying to get things to work, and I would just
politely hang up when a few did call, after asking them to never call again.
It's over. What a relief!
He he--the best revenge is indeed living well!
So I just want to thank you for your site and responding
to me when I wrote you last year. You are doing a very valuable service to the
pagan community and don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. I also
checked out the updates to your site and they are great. It takes compassion,
courage and wisdom to do what you have done here. Thank you again.
The Query From Dragon:
Your site and the opinions and observations expressed there are insightful,
useful, and timely for many people and communities. I'm a bit concerned, though,
about your very scant treatment of one important fact upon which all the other
claims about gossip and character assassination hinge. In order for it to be
"bullying", the claims and allegations must be false!
If this is not made clear, then your work seriously undermines one of the
very few self-regulating mechanisms that any pagan community has: ostracism. I
cannot believe that being a welcoming, tolerant community means we must tolerate
everyone no matter what fucknutism they have indulged in. Paedophiles, rapists,
ritual abusers, and similar predators often commit crimes that, by the time they
are revealed, have no evidence on which to prosecute. It comes down to "he
said/she said" and the community must decide the truth, because the mundane
legal system often fails, or, as I have seen, trials are avoided to protect the
victims from being grilled by the Defence, suffering even more trauma. You say
we should not tolerate bullies in our midst, but I can see these predators who
have been ostracized chuckling with glee over your work, then using it to say
"See? I told you Lady X was picking on me, spreading those lies. So let me back
into your open circles/gatherings/community-wide events, I'm being bullied!"
There's no easy answer. The question of where to draw the line of tolerance
is never an easy one, nor is that of what to do when someone crosses it.
My Answer:
Thank you for your comments on my site. I do agree with you in principle that
ostracism is a very effective weapon against undesirables in the community. I
don't believe for an instant that we should tolerate paedophiles, rapists or
other predators in the community, but people do lie about others. Sometimes the
charges are true - but what if they are not?
On the other hand, my website has been used by at least one bully to attempt
to prove that he, in fact was the one being bullied because he had been banned
from a Pagan function. However, this particular person takes pride in his
bullying, and actually calls himself the "Prince of Darkness" so very few people
were fooled by him. He had been banned from numerous moots, socials, e-mail
lists, open rituals, etc. long before I ever thought of writing the website and
thus people were able to see through him easily.
Most bullies are more subtle than this person, and they are very good at
discrediting others. I for example am ostracized in my own community because of
one person's lies, and I would be willing to bet that if I hadn't already made some
friends in the community before she joined it, I would be completely isolated
now. Very few people take the trouble to get to know persons about whom rumours
swirl.
While I agree with you in principle, I cannot support ostracizing people
because of what we have heard about them - there are simply too many factors
involved and most people would not take all the known facts about the situation
into account, preferring to rely on the rumour mill for their information. It is
very easy for someone to say that another person is a paedophile, but what if
they are not? How would the target of this be affected?
In fact, as angry as I am at her behaviour, I don't want the local bully thrown out of
the community - I just want her to stop gossiping about me. I believe there is
room enough for both of us, and it is not my problem if she thinks differently.
In my experience people in the community tend to avoid those they find a
little strange anyway, and it usually does show fairly quickly if the person is
a bit weird. I'm not advocating being all-accepting, but rather of being
tolerant of differences. If someone is a bit weird, we need to be polite but not
hang out with them unless we are comfortable with the idea.
Dragon’s response:
It seems to me that your personal experiences with the abuse of the
ostracization method may have biased you against it. I personally think it is a
woefully inefficient means of removing someone, but I've yet to see another
solution that is both legal and ethical.
Comment from Riley:
I applaud your posting Dragon's questioning. One of the
core differences between a bully and a non-bully, is the willingness to openly,
directly and honestly respond to criticism. On that note, it seems to me that
one of the main differences between ostracism as a means of bullying, and
ostracism as a defense against bullying, is the open accusation with the
opportunity to give a response before the community takes final action.
If and when I turn to leaders in my community to report suspicions or concrete
evidence of bullying behavior, then it is my obligation to also tell the person
something like "I think that when you do/say ___, you are bullying, and I'm
sharing my opinion with ___ in their role as a community leader".
Is there grounds for hope that some bullies can change, and if so, ways to push
them in the direction of positive change? I suspect that many or most bullies
will change only if their bullying becomes unprofitable, eg it gets them banned
from one or more communities, and then only if they have the courage to abandon
what they know and start building a whole new interpersonal skill set from
scratch. Still, I prefer to leave the option of reconciliation open - within a
framework that has lots of boundaries
and does not budge on its principles.
So what do the rest of you think about this? Please
send further comments and opinions to my
e-mail.
Backlash Regarding this Site
Although I
have had no negative comments come to me through direct e-mail, I am on many
e-mail lists where it has been posted and the comments
have not always been positive. Usually the negative comments have been made by
people I would consider bullies of one ilk or another, and that tells me that
they are afraid.
This is my
message to bullies in the Pagan community: Be very
afraid, because your days are numbered. I'm not going away, and I'm not going to
shut up about this. I'm going to continue to empower people to stand up to you,
and if you don't like it, you can leave - and good riddance!
That being
said, most of the negative comments have been denying the existence of bullying,
or attempting to justify it in one way or another. Did you know that you
should thank a bully for pointing out your faults? This is the kind of bull%^&*
these people are spewing.
A common
attitude that infuriates me is "This is how the Pagan community is. Either
accept the bullying that goes on or don't be Pagan." Excuse me? Because we're
Pagan we should be allowed to bully others with impunity, and those who can't
take it are weak and don't belong anyway? Haven't we evolved beyond this caveman
attitude? I will admit
that some Pagan sects do tend to put themselves on a pedestal, but whatever
delusions of superiority a coven or branch of Wicca may have does not make it
acceptable for bullying to take place, under any circumstances.
Another
person said that the bullied usually bring trouble on themselves. Really? So
this makes it okay for you to behave like a prepubescent brat? Yes, we're not going
to like everyone we meet and we may want to avoid their company - and that's
okay. But it's NOT okay to abuse them, spread rumours, or try to drive them out
of the community simply because of a personality clash. And yes, Paganism does
attract a certain number of rather odd people, but most of them are quite
harmless and deserve our compassion, not our scorn. Don't invite them to private
rituals and gatherings unless you want to, but don't shun them entirely, or
leave them out of public events either.
I have also
had reports of a serial bully attempting to use this site to prove that he, in
fact, was being bullied because people were banning him from lists and events in
reaction to his abuse of them! While this did not surprise me (bullies do this
sort of thing with sickening regularity) I was livid that other people sprang to
his defence by disparaging this website and me, personally. One person, who
seemed to have read only part of the first page of this site, said (while
quoting out of context) that "the author" appeared to be "childish and
absolutely dripping in self-pity," "whining" from personal experience and that I
should "grow the F*&# up". They went on to say to their bullying friend; "Don't
you dare lower yourself to this decade's disgusting and weak mentality - I'm a
victim. . . I'm not responsible 'cause my daddy was an alcoholic and my mommy
was a bitch. Everyone has to like me and accept me. . . 'cause I'm a victim . .
. "
I am NOT anyone's victim. Yes, some people don't like me very
much, but I consider that their problem, not mine. If I were stuck in victim
mentality there is no way I would ever have the balls to go ahead and set up
this website, knowing what kind of ignorant claptrap I could expect,
not to mention the personal backlash I'm already having to deal with. More than 95% of the comments I've seen have been very positive, and
this tells me that there is a great need for such a site in the Pagan community.
United and empowered, we can do anything.
In other
words, bullies, Karma is about to bite you in the ass. May the scar last ten
lifetimes, and serve as a reminder.
Here are a selected few of the
e-mail comments I've received. Most of the feedback I received helped to
confirm what I have long suspected - bullying in the Pagan community is a
serious and wide-spread problem, and it's time that we as a religious movement
took a stand against it. 
Backlash Regarding this Site
bravenet.com