Oh, I haven't been hauling huge stacks of polemic home from the library; I've been using the 'Net to get a grounding in history, concepts, and vocabulary.
My pet analogy applies here, as well - one doesn't have to understand all the many and diverse Pagan religions to identify as Pagan, but self-defining what being Pagan means for oneself, without doing any research to put it in context, is a recipe for fluffiness. Worse yet, limiting one's "research" to one or two, or even several, books that have an axe to grind about some particular flavor of Paganism.
The axe-grinding is even worse in Feminist Writing (if you say that out loud, you should be able to hear the upper case). A lot of what I'm after is to figure out what axes are being ground, and why.
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Date: 2008-03-23 03:10 am (UTC)My pet analogy applies here, as well - one doesn't have to understand all the many and diverse Pagan religions to identify as Pagan, but self-defining what being Pagan means for oneself, without doing any research to put it in context, is a recipe for fluffiness. Worse yet, limiting one's "research" to one or two, or even several, books that have an axe to grind about some particular flavor of Paganism.
The axe-grinding is even worse in Feminist Writing (if you say that out loud, you should be able to hear the upper case). A lot of what I'm after is to figure out what axes are being ground, and why.