#obviously this isn't going to apply across the board but i've noticed it A Lot

[uncanny-tranny]

I think a lot of homophobes and transphobes don't just feel hatred toward queer people, but they genuinely fear us in an almost literal sense, and so they assume the inverse is true for gay and trans people.

I think that's why you have so many cishet people who smugly say that they're going to make queer people angry, afraid, "triggered" by displays of heterosexuality and/or displays of traditional gender - they think we aren't used to living in a cishet world, that we fear cishet people for their identities as much as they fear us for ours.

#gay #queer #trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #homophobia #homophobia tw #transphobia #transphobia tw #queerphobia #queerphobia tw #just saw somebody brag that they're going to trigger the queers by... making straight art???? #buddy i grew up indulging in straight media like...? how is that going to offend people? #the idea seems to be that queer people fear straightness because the queerphobe can genuinely fear queerness #does this make sense. #bro one of my favourite childhood movies was about a heterosexual couple and i ate that shit up (imagining 'what if i was the man...') #obviously this isn't going to apply across the board but i've noticed it A Lot

[maddiviner]

i think it's okay to leave out the UPG disclaimer when someone is acting like their UPG is universally correct. especially when it's as wildly blatantly ahistorical and made-up as the hecate person's (don't remember her username because i IMMEDIATELY blocked her). also when you use your UPG to demand other people practice a certain way

I thought about it a bit after I posted that.

IMHO? None of what she posted counts as unverified personal gnosis. Reason being that UPG is by definition the kinda thing that you can't disprove, exactly. If you're making false claims about objective, known history, that doesn't count. That's just called lying, either to yourself, or other people, sorry.

UPG is also personal. It's one thing if other people find your UPG compelling and join in on their own. It's also, IMHO, appropriate to share it if you're comfortable. If you're trying to force it on other people as the absolute truth, it really stops just being your UPG, and it's a jerk move. This is, obviously, especially true if the claims are ahistorical nonsense (which, again, doesn't count as UPG).

How I view this might piss people off, but I'm going to break down my views. I'm open to discussion of course, but this is just how I use the phrase ("unverified personal gnosis," I mean).

Some different UPG-ish things I've heard over time...

A certain Goddess considers me Her daughter in a spiritual/metaphysical sense. She expects certain things of me.

Humans all contain a lil piece of the Divine. I will work on connecting with that by prayer/meditating/whatever.

Reincarnation is real (or not real).

After death, I will join my loved ones in the Summerlands/etc to rest or something similar.

Everything above is, IMHO, UPG. I say that because it's unfalsifiable and personal. It's not ahistorical, nor does it conflict with physical reality. And, in the situations where I saw the above comments, it wasn't presented as absolute fact.

Some things that definitely don't qualify as UPG for the reasons I've mentioned...

Rather than originally being a Greek Goddess, Hekate was actually Scottish-Irish human woman who was murdered by men. (This was the original claim by the OP, actually.)

Jesus revealed to me in a dream that the earth is actually flat. The truth is being concealed by elite reptilians.

The Christian holiday of Easter connects to the Sumerian Goddess, Ishtar. Ancient pagans worshiped Her in springtime with eggs and bunnies.

I was burned at the stake in Europe as a witch in the 1700s along with the rest of my Wiccan coven. I reincarnated as a witch again.

None of the above is UPG. It's misinformation instead. You can look at historical/scientific sources and prove it's inaccurate.

I found the concept of UPG hard to grasp initially. I think some others do, too. Many of us are coming from or steeped in more organized religions.

I don't think a lot of them, at least in the pervasive American sorta Christianity, have anything like UPG? I mean, I didn't see much of it. So, it's kinda been a new concept for some, and a lot of us have to feel our way around it a bit.

Another thing I wanna add? UPG isn't always healthy or good even if it does quality as UPG. Some ways of thinking about the world just work better, I guess, and that applies across the board. A lot of UPG tends to be very fluid and adaptable, I've noticed, which I think is good.

The Hecate person is kinda funny because she just posted this huge spiel about how she knows she's doing it right now that she has "haters" and called us all ignorant "heathens" (her words) for not accepting her divine truth straight from God's Hekate's mouth.

The idea of someone who claims to be pagan using "heathen" as an insult is just... weird. I know there's probably some kinda discourse around the word but... still.

Someone I talk with on Facebook commented that it's weirdly Protestant?! Similar to how Jesus gets portrayed. You've got a divine being that was, uhhh, actually from a completely different culture being portrayed as Scottish/Irish, Greek roots being erased. Said divine being was somehow also incarnated as a human, and martyred? And then we have a prophet, too! Sounds super similar to me, too, now that I start to think about it in those terms, but I didn't notice before.

#witchcraft #pagan #witch #paganism #magic #occult #witchblr #upg #eliza.txt #doused #hecate #hellenism #history #unverified personal gnosis #definitions #terminology #i think my facebook friend might've #had a point