Science is incapable of ever being truthful because every scientist is an amoral wannabee friend of Jeffrey Epstein. These nerds literally take lessons in school to learn how to beg for patronage to do research. Of course their studies usually end up being about managerial bourgeois praxis like using skull shape measurements to categorize workers. That’s what personality psychology is about at the end of the day, Brave New World style eugenics with humane empathy for wage slaves.
I mean I’m definitely not saying your contempt for astrology is recycled sexism or queerphobia. But I get the impression that the source of the problem is that white people are hostile to examining their understanding of race. If astrology wasn’t present they’d just hide in their prescriptions of hogwarts houses. In that case I’m willing to concede that people use things like astrology to avoid having to grapple with reality.
Besides that, do I not have a point about contempt for something strongly associated with queer people and women being used to smuggle in contempt for those groups? Doesn’t that happen all the time? Like libs scoff at professional wrestling because it’s associated with poor people. It’s classism in a paper mask.
so i do think that reddit stem white dudes malign astrology in a way that evokes the normatively dismissive way they look at anything queer and feminine but when you consider that the thing they are dismissing is accurately being dismissed as stupid, its hard to really defend astrology IMO by virtue of the fact that those who take part in it are dismissed on a greater societal level.
yes women and queers historically have a specific way of seeing the “universe” that should be respected on its own, that feeds into astrology , but astrology itself is still so fundamentally dumb that it kinda supersedes that.
also astrology does not have its roots in queerness /feminity or even in the west…so its not even created in response out of queer or feminine struggle, it seems to be just something people picked up one day. (something can still be a showcasing of a marginalized person’s struggle if its adopted along the way but this is not whats happening here)
this kind of reminds me of how in the 20th century black americans created this collective black identity /view of the ancestors we descend from: egyptian kings and queens, who were all regal and hyper intelligent aka the whole “we was kings meme”. This identity was created due to the fact that black americans as a whole did not know where they came from/ didnt even have a last name reflecting their own lineage/ had been primarily characterized by their white owners rather than by themselves. In response, black americans created this BS egyptian identity of we was kings. But that doesnt mean that the identity they created wasnt BS. While i would think that white people who criticize that fake egyptian like identity are being a little too privileged to have a real take on the matter, this is not whats happening with the reddit stem bros when they take on astrology —something that is dumb enough on its own and not real and not tied to a similar cultural context
i think new agey movements that dont address material concerns/ pledge to do something about them can be escapsim for privileged people.
i also do think that queer and feminine ways of thinking are great, but sometimes have their own failings that should be pointed out, because while reddit bros are homophobic and sexist, there are those on the other side (SJWs) that run with certain theories/ways of being in an unquestioning way and on the virtue that it is a feminine or queer way of thinking that is really damaging. I.E. the tenderqueer phenomenon which is best described here: https://dollyrose.substack.com/p/the-cursed-privilege-of-the-tenderqueer?fbclid=IwAR1NIAM1n6BlGuQZ7BIlKCUKQ9b1QH8szCLkRwyRQDl53ih5cQnQ7xFiaYk
i think astrology really annoys me because even though it is enjoyed by a certain group of people, i also think it speaks to certain weird, privileged, filtered through and just plain toxic (lol buzz word) dynamic girls and gays inact on each other, sometimes under the banner of being queer or being a woman (kind of like how white gay men think being queer means being mean to everyone)
like the tenderqueer persona, astrology determines ways of being/ interpersonal reaction/ ways of processing information based on meaningless signifiers (astrology signs). queer and feminine community should be and has to be more genuine IMO///also queerness as a concept is about interacting within the material world and actively fighting against it (aka Queer as in fuck you) which does not seem to jive with astrology