Feminist Heathen

Heathenry and Boundaries

I don’t owe you anything because we are both Heathen

This is likely the most important thing you will read today. This was written by my friend and all around hero, Destiny, the Gythia of Bifrost Way in Oklahoma. For years, her group has hosted the best Heathen event in the Midwest. She has always been a generous host, and frankly, put up with more shit than she should. Please just read her words, and consider them.

On being Heathen, my place among you, and boundaries:

What I like is the time to get to know people. To weigh interactions beyond seasonal gatherings or shared interests and beliefs. I need more than campfire chats and online interactions to call someone friend.

I need to see and experience mutual respect, integrity, and empathy consistently and across multiple situations.

People must also learn to be comfortable with not being a friend. Especially a beloved one. I do not have to wish ill upon a person or deem them unsavory to not be among those I call friend. Either we have not established those bonds, you are not worthy of those bonds, or I have decided within myself we are just fine with how we currently overlap.

And this is not simply because I will continue through my life to learn, set, and hold healthy boundaries. This is specifically about my being. My right to exist.

The people I call friend have demonstrated repeatedly that my dignity, safety, and value are more important than their politicking, privileged comforts, and social fun and niceties.

When speaking to a mentor recently, they helped me get to the root of my passionate anger concerning certain situations and people. Fear of rejection. Of othering and dismissal. Of direct and indirect harm.

Pain and anticipated grief that all my years, all my giving, and all my worth will be casually denigrated because of the color of my skin.

I have spent decades within the broader Heathen community and not once have I ever felt wholly accepted or safe. That taps at the root of my existence as a multi-ethnic Black person who is gender and sexually queer and committed to a new religious movement.

I have not been waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. It has dropped and been picked up and polished too many times to count. Fresh in my mind’s eye are every instance where someone who hugged me, laughed with me, gifted me, and hosted me has undone those things in seconds by making clear that the hatred of my existence was acceptable. Even by proxy.

Imagine that always being the norm. The expectation and the confirmed reality. Imagine being told angrily and passive aggressively again and again that who you are as a simple human being was inconvenient and disruptive because you demand not be endangered or dehumanized.

I have said it before and I will say it again – I never have the option of shedding this skin. Really think about that the next time you feel exhausted or defensive when I posit a person’s humanity is non-negotiable.

This physical marker that incites such rage, sexualization, bias, exultation, and humiliation. I don’t get a break or time to reset. I cannot walk away from my body and I cannot camouflage it like other aspects of myself for any respite or protection.

So yes, I likely do not trust you. Few have given me reason to and many more have gleefully demonstrated I will always be a casualty to their comfort and need to be socially embraced.

I don’t need to cut large swaths of people from this space after this very draining and heartbreaking weekend. I already knew where most of you stood. You had already shown me when you laugh at racist jokes, call me hysterical or angry when I grieve being dehumanized, make light of rape and assault, casually deride the visibility of women, homosexuals and transgendered people, and left me to stand among wolves without a word of defense so you might enjoy something without the burden of your conscience.

We have co-existed this way for years upon years. With most of you at the boarders and not my friend. I see you. I have always seen you. So for me, little to nothing has changed.