A few days ago I was reading John Michael Greer's latest weekly blog post—plus the comments, which are always valuable—and in replying to one comment he made a passing reference to something he called the "Neopagan disability cult." Someone asked him what he meant, and he explained as follows:
"I know a very large number of Neopagans who have dropped out of the workforce, gotten a compliant doctor to label them disabled, draw government disability checks, and will go on about their health problems by the hour. Most of the ones I know personally are perfectly capable of working; they just don’t want to have to put up with a job, and they learn from more experienced Pagans which doctors will rubberstamp their claims of disability and which government offices won’t ask hard questions. Then there are the Wiccan traditions where it’s axiomatic that once you’re initiated as a High Priestess, you’re going to gain 100 pounds, lose your job and your boyfriend, and go on disability. It’s not something to look into if you want to think well of your fellow human beings."
The questioner replied with recognition:
"Thank you for that explanation of 'disability cult'… ick. I have known people who have gamed the government for disability money. They make a real fetish out of pitying themselves and part of their schtick is teaching themselves (and others) to believe they are oppressed by their handicap."
Perhaps to placate the "Not all …!" contingent, JMG wound up the conversation by saying:
"I know people who are genuinely disabled who survive because they’ve got a government disability check every month — but I also know far too many people who are gaming the system."
And of course right away I thought of Wife.
Of course I don't spend a lot of time around her these days—as little as I can possibly manage, in fact. (I'm pretty sure this is the last time I saw her in person.) So of course you can't prove anything by me about her general condition or capacity. But when I visited she didn't seem particularly disabled. She didn't seem to be any more physically restricted than any other skinny little old lady. Nonetheless she still gets regular Disability checks; and the last time I talked with her about ways to make money she flatly refused to consider anything like a regular job because it would make her earnings traceable and her Disability would stop. The possibility that she might earn enough more at a job to make her Disability income irrelevant did not seem to enter into the calculation.
But is it possible that this has anything to do with her years as a Wiccan priestess? Certainly JMG's description above of a certain kind of High Priestess comes uncomfortably close to describing the woman that dedicated, initiated, and ordained Wife: on the one hand she (I mean the HPS) was actually married (though she also had a lesbian lover); but on the other hand she was fat (✔) and seriously afflicted with phlebitis, so that she could not work (✔) and had to go on Disability (✔). Her mobility was gravely impaired. She was unable to conceive a child, but was in the process of trying to adopt back when we were last in touch with them. (This is the teacher whose death I learned of in this post.)
At the time I just thought of this as random chance. It never occurred to me that it was a pattern.
Although, come to think of it, Wife herself did remark back in those days that nearly all the Pagans she met seemed to have bad teeth. Wife herself flossed almost compulsively, and criticized the others (behind their backs) for not doing likewise. On the other hand, all that flossing didn't stop her from needing serious, ongoing dental work in later years, once she was on my insurance. Naah … that has to be a coincidence!
I don't have a pithy conclusion from all this. I just look at the picture and think, alternately, "That has to be just a train-wreck of multiple coincidences, because how could it be anything else?" and "What a mess!"
Cross-references:
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