A TIMELY RANT, POST HALLOWEEN 

Note:  This rant is expressly NOT intended to condone one spiritual path over another.  It is merely intended to challenge the wording used on soap operas.  Also, I'm quite comfortable in my spirituality, so please refrain from sending religious materials seeking to convert me to a different path.  Thank you!

 I’m actually going to leave the journal and step back up onto the old soap box today to address an issue that is pissing me off in a pretty king sized way.  It will be belittled by some, scorned by other and attacked by a few with narrow minds, but it is what I feel, nonetheless.  Open your minds to me and try to think objectively about the points I’m about to make.  That will be easier for some of you than others, but I KNOW you can do it.  Just relax, take big breaths and open to the voice of reason. 

I am SO sick and tired of evil women on soaps being referred to as “witches” that I could scream.  Just yesterday on GH, Luke told Laura in reference to Helena, “That’s the hazards of working for a witch.”  Laura told Helena to “find a cauldron and jump into it.”  I’ve heard Asa call Blair a witch more times than he’s called Nigel to throw someone out of the mansion.  Enough already!  I’m going to stop rattling around in this broom closet and come out long enough to make a stand on this last frontier of discrimination.  I have listened to this crap for years, but in the enlightened year 2000, I feel it is unconscionable.  In my life, I have been honored to know many Witches of the true variety.  Now before you slam those wonderful minds of yours shut on the word or start rolling your eyes, hit the pause button on your auto-responders and hear what I have to say.  If you are going to throw up a preconceived “Out to Lunch” sign while I speak my peace, please rethink that notion and work to learn a little.  Those of you who did not react in such a way, you know I’m not talking to you.   

The Witches that I have known, beginning when I lived in England in 1982 and carrying all the way to the present time, spanning literally hundreds of people, have all mostly been wonderful people.  In fact, when considering the Witches I have known, I have to say that this particular slice of society (statistics based solely on the many slices of composite society that Katrina has acquainted beyond a brief ‘hello’) has maintained a consistently higher percentage of honorable, ethically motivated and kind folks.  As with any group of more than two people, you have your jerks, but get rid of the stereotype that the media and discrimination mongers have purported.  They do not sacrifice living things (or dead ones), they do not usually make things fly around, they do not seek to draw others to their path, they do not abhor goodness and they are of the most gracious and open-minded groups of people I have ever met.  They honor nature and the life force that drives it.  They have a great respect for other humans and their individual faiths, so long as it doesn’t involve burning folks at the stake or condemning those who are different from others.  They believe that the Earth is a gift to us and that we must all work individually and collectively to protect that gift.   

Given the fact that being a Witch is NOT about those nasty stereotypes AND that said stereotypes were created in the hysteria that preceded, carried through and unfortunately followed into present day, one of the most horrible, regrettable chapters in American and European history AND given that there are there are thousands and thousands of Witches quietly practicing their Craft in the US with no evil intent or influence on any one else AND given that being a Witch is a path of extreme ethical and societal conscience, is it not politically incorrect (help me on this, Miss Adrian) and down right discriminatory to have the word flung around as a ready replacement for “bitch” at every opportunity?   

I am so sick of hearing people excuse this behavior by haughtily declaring that the word has been synonymous for an evil woman for so long that it is part of our cultural vocabulary and should be accepted as such.  This sort of ignorant response baffles me.  I’ve actually had people tell me, when I have drunkenly brought up this topic, that the WITCHES should change their name if they don’t like the way the word is being used.  I heatedly challenge the idea that WITCHES who have been around since the first cave person used an herb to heal or promote health should have to change their identity just because people are too lazy to watch their mouths and pens and take responsibility for their words!  Many words in our cultural vocabulary have left common usage as we have evolved into a more considerate and ethically conscious people.  Getting away from some of the real buggers that I wouldn’t have in my column, I’d say that you won’t often hear someone on a soap say that a storekeeper “jewed” them out of $20 for a radio.  They almost never say they were “gypped” out of their inheritance (and I hope that people of the Romany persuasion come to task if they do).  “Want to go Dutch” is seldom used for a treat that isn’t really a treat because you’re paying for yourself.  It’s disparaging to the group in question and lacks any evidence of class or responsibly upbringing.  If we are going to be considerate of our words in demeaning the ethnicity and/or individual religious choices of others, let’s take it all the way across the board and go for broke.  Give the Witch a break and let them stop rolling their eyes and thinking “Sheeesh, here we go again,” every time someone needs to refer to Helena, Blair or Greenlee.  Just say “bitch” and be done with it or get creative and come up with something else.   The word “Witch” is not a necessary word for script writers and I challenge them to take the high road and stop this ongoing discriminatory action.  Enough is enough, already. 

(stepping off the soap box and back to the journal – ahem)         

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