Originally this casting was going to be a careful and subtle but direct confrontation of the imbalance of the masculine and feminine in modern Wiccan practice. I was going to start by making the honest statement that Wicca has helped me get in touch with my masculine side, something that is not as easy as one might think growing up in our culture, especially when you were raised by a feminist and most of your friends, historically, have been female. I deleted a rather lengthy piece on the piece when I realized that in context this imbalance is not only logical and unavoidable, but also greatly exaggerated.

Oh, I'm not saying there isn't an imbalance. It's just that most of the imbalance is not in Wicca but rather in our society as a whole. In an ironic twist that even I can appreciate, the viewpoints on men and women seem to have changed. A generation ago a man who was sexually active was a man's man, and a woman who was sexually active was a whore. Today, a woman who sleeps with whom she chooses is empowered, and the man with the same behavior is a whore. Men were expected to take charge, now we're expected to defer. This has manifested itself in Wicca, as well, as many have fled from the male-dominated versions of Christianity into a female-friendly religion that calls for empowerment, not deference.

The religion of Wicca teaches balance, and women have found their balance both within Wicca and within society itself. Goddesses in Wicca take on the aspects of the masculine as well as the feminine, as do heroines in the media. Women-- Wiccan and otherwise-- still face sexist issues, but in the eyes of the public, these issues are throwbacks to a darker time.

Men, on the other hand, have managed to be left out of the new wave of political correctness. It is now safe to stereotype a man as a penis-driven bigot with violent tendencies. Within the boundaries of Wicca, this has manifested as a tendency to gloss-over or ignore entirely the masculine aspects of Deity. This is a subject of great sensitivity within the Wiccan community, and like most subjects of sensitivity, the people who fight it make a whole lot of noise. The rest of us have our leanings toward one side or another but take the whole fight about as seriously as most of the country took the whole Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown thing.

Recently I came to an understanding of myself-- I realized that I was dealing with a lot of shame for things I hadn't done. There was a lingering shame of my masculinity, and, ironically enough, it was Wicca that helped me overcome that. Although it wasn't necessarily aimed at my end of the spectrum, Wicca teaches a very accepting view of sexuality. Once I stopped holding myself up to a different criteria than I did the rest of the world and accepted myself as a human rather than a reject of the human race, I was able to get over it.

I try to avoid the blame game-- my general solution to the blame problem is to assign the blame to Bill Gates. (It's pretty effective. Bill Gates is remote, untouchable, and since I work in computer field, more often than not at least indirectly responsible for my problems.) That way I can quit wasting time assigning the blame and get on with resolving the problem. But despite myself, I found myself starting to blame the imbalance in Wicca for my own problems. But in the course of writing the first draft of this little tirade, I realized that I was being pretty stupid.

The imbalance exists within our society as a whole, the result of men being comfortable with their dominant positions and depending on the unequal enforcement of a harsh standard that women were fighting against. So women liberated themselves, and we have kept our chains. What's worse is that in fighting to keep that harsh standard in place for women under the guise of "Average Family Values", the more outdated men in the political and social machine have actually tightened the bonds on the rest of us.

So guys, don't blame the women. It's not true and it won't help. In fact, by liberating themselves, they've paved the way for us to do the same. And just like them, we're going to have to do it ourselves.

© 1999 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp