Sorry, wasn't gaslighting essentially an obscure term almost nobody used for most of its life, until it exploded in popularity and became an actually commonly-used phrase once people broadened application beyond "manipulating to an institutionalization-worthy level of mental instability"? Was there ever a period where women at large felt a deep and emotional connection to the phrase or is this just more bullshit using women to justify stupid policy.
This post makes me actually angry:
The issue is that astrology today (alongside other "spiritual-but-not-religious" beliefs) is most visibly practiced by marginalized groups (read: women and members of the LGBT community), and while each individual "this is dumb" post isn't going to do any harm, collecting a bunch of people together to shit on it may end up breeding a toxic and/or exclusionary environment.
It's why a "wow, this mainstream religious belief is so dumb, they must be idiots to believe that" is fine, but "wow, the belief system of this indigenous group is dumb, they must be idiots to believe that" is probably over a line. Why you're good to shit on Evangelicals, but shitting on Vodou might be in bad taste. Certain groups require additional privileges and protections; justice and fairness are not equivalent.
Now, I think a reasonable person could make the argument that many "astrology people" are in a place of privilege, or that just because a belief system is mainstream (like Christianity) doesn't mean that vulnerable people won't be hurt by attacks on it. But that's going to be a pretty complex discussion and I can see why no one would want to deal with it if you don't need to.
I've seen variations of this before, and it's bullshit: That grifters find their most visible success in specific minority or marginalized groups does not mean you get to equate those grifts with the general beliefs of those groups. The 'most visible' practicers of astrology are women and LGBT people, that
does not mean most women and LGBT respect astrology or would feel excluded by people pointing at it and going 'lol'. Equating it with indigenous belief systems ought to, by era standards, cop an inflammatory comparison ban. You do not reward snake oil salesman for successfully targeting marginalized groups by giving their snake oil special protections, and you do not conflate that snake oil with an actual belief system deeply integrated with the history of a people.
I was a freshman at an all-girls boarding school eight hundred and sixty two years ago when The Craft came out; I had a roommate I quite liked form a coven and, at one point, inform me she'd cast a binding spell to bind me to the dorm room door. I do not, to this day, know what the fuck that was supposed to do. But it was silly, and I and many many others had a pretty good laugh about it at the time. Because, despite The Craft convincing a bunch of tween/teen girls to try out being a witch, believing that shit never became a default part of being a teen girl. Stop trying to hide your dumb beliefs behind the rest of us, we think that shit's dumb too.
