D is for the Dianics of my youth

D is for Dianic

The Dianic I came to as a new student of the formal Craft is not the Dianic that people are practicing now. For one thing the population of women is different. When I became a Dianic in 84 or 85 there were very few straight women. There were no queer women. There were no transgendered women. It was just a bunch of dykes that wanted to worship a goddess that looked like them and acted like them. The women I met were primarily of the androgenous or butch variety. There were a few fems but most of them showed up later as someone’s girl friend.

We were the women that organized the rituals at the West Coast Women’s Music Festival. We were the women that didn’t shave. That bared our breasts or did until sunburn set in. This was way before the alphabet soup that divides rather than unites community. We were the ones that came down from the mountains and Girl Scout Camp. We wore shirts that said things like Uppity Women Unite and Mountain Women. At that time it was the Gay community and you just hoped the boys remembered Lesbians existed. We were the norm.

Slowly straight women and fems joined the party and those of us that were more dykey or butch got shoved to the outside. Sometimes we were even told that we were “too much like men” so only fems and straight women could cast a circle. It’s changed beyond any recognition to where it started. I am not the Dianic practioner I was then because the community only seems to accept dykes in the so-called Guardian contingent.

I liked it better when we were all her Priestesses. I liked it better before PC terms were set in stone. I liked it better when all that mattered was that we saw Goddess in each other and all women were the Goddess. Now the pants police want to check what’s in your pants and heaven forbid you actually wear pants instead of a long and floaty goddess approved gown. We used to put a few feathers in our sun-bleached hair and paint on our tan skin and be done.

I miss when Dianic meant we looked like Amazons and Diana welcomed us in our hairy unshaven glory. I miss the time when embodying the Goddess meant strength. I miss the time when it was okay to be butch. I miss when the Goddess looked like me. A muscular dyke who was proud to drawn down the moon into a strong body before the PC police caught up with us.

I may be an arthritic old dyke but that young kid still lives in my heart and wonders where the Dianic craft of my youth disappeared to. Is there still a meadow in the summer land for us ex-Girl Scout camp counselors and laughing strong women who flooded the Circle when I was young? I miss us.