Sexism and the cards

[Zechariah13]

Why is it that the powerful masculine cards tend to be seen as bad?
Emperor- domineering and suppressing/controlling
Hierohpant- Oppressive Structure, blind dogma,
Magician- hell, ive heard him called a manipulative salesman before.

Im sure if i went on to every masculine aspected card (Chariot and Tower among others) i could find that people tend to see them as horrible in general, aside from the Sun, everyone loves the Sun.

So why is that? It just seems too blatant for nobody to have noticed it

 

[Sar]

The Emperor is the type that goes for the Whore/Madonna thing.
Hierophant: Opress sexuality totally.
Magician: You does not know how and when it came down to "We are going to bed", burt suddenly you find your self in a relationship with him, his dick and his excuses.
Devil: You know you want that sucker, even if it is not good for you. (prefer him for the magician though).
Herrmit: Love and sex is for people who has not found their self.
The Fool: There it is a hole, there is a hope. Anytime, baby. And then walks his path.

 

[Chiriku]

Conversely,

Why are all the relatively passive Majors female and the active ones male, in a society (Western) in which the active, dynamic and agency-possessing mode of being is favored over the contemplative, passive one? (And in many historical and post-RWS decks alike, Strength is depicted as female and not actively clubbing the beast like her male counterpart).

Further, in the RWS-inspired Minors, why are the majority of work and financial related cards filled with men, irrespective of the element and corresponding gender associated with the suit in the Western tradition?

A direct answer: Tarot is sexist because our societies are. Our societies metaphorically separate the sexes, almost to the point of treating us as different species (and without allowance for people who are neither sexually men nor sexually women), assign different elements and traits to each of us on the basis of our genitals (some valued in society and others denigrated, for men and women each), and reinforce those categorizations in us from our earliest childhoods.

Tarot, "mirror of the soul," is also the mirror of society.

 

[EyeAmEye]

I would say in general, the vast majority of people who attribute those meanings to those cards would be women, and most women don't have a very high opinion of men.

A to B to C...

Not saying they'd be wrong about it...

 

[vee]

I think that's the influence of New Age/New Pagan thinking, which has many elements ole which are feminine centered, mostly as a response to Abrahamic thinking, which is very male driven. So you get a whole dynamic where the masculine represents oppressive forces, which you're right, is not fair. Some decks do a better job with finding the divine aspects of masucline. I really like the Druidcraft deck wrt to gender, it feels balanced.

But I personally don't think the Magician or the Hierophant are negative cards at all. The Emperor is one to ME, but I have big daddy and authority issues. The Fool and the Chariot are not bad cards either imo. The Hanged Man and the Hermit cards are extremely deep and poweful cards too. I think that negative readings like you're describing are usually superficial readings.

There are also some sexist elements in the Tarot I think towards women as well, especially the tendency to draw yound ng, beautiful passive naked women while men are powerful and clothed. And don't even get me started on race. Previous poster is right, Tarot decks are going to reflect their creators and sexism is pretty ingrained in our society

 

[Bhavana]

I would say in general, the vast majority of people who attribute those meanings to those cards would be women, and most women don't have a very high opinion of men.

A to B to C...

Not saying they'd be wrong about it...

what? Most women don't have a very high opinion of men? I think that is very untrue. Also, look at the time that the RW system, which so many decks are based on, was designed. Women were wives, stayed home, took care of the kids, their role in society was limited, in general.

 

[Thirteen]

Faulty Premise, Invalid Evidence

Why is it that the powerful masculine cards tend to be seen as bad?
Emperor- domineering and suppressing/controlling
Hierohpant- Oppressive Structure, blind dogma,
Magician- hell, ive heard him called a manipulative salesman before.

Oh, Zechariah! Tsk, tsk, tsk! You can't base a premise on mix and match like that if you're going to argue such a point. For example, the Magician--you may have heard him called a manipulative Salesman, but his definition in Waite is:

"...the divine motive in man, reflecting God, the will in the liberation of its union with that which is above. It is also the unity of individual being on all planes, and in a very high sense it is thought, in the fixation thereof."

Hardly anti-male! And what about the marvelously positive definitions for Hermit, Hanged Man and the male angel in Temperance? Even the very male Fool? And if you're picking and choosing, then why ignore definitions of the High Priestess being a bitch? The feminine moon being moody and deceptive, the Queen of Swords being a cold, depressed, divorced woman? Why not point out Eve there in the Lover's card, the one who listened to the snake and lost us Eden? And what about the Thoth deck where Strength, usually a very positive female card, has been re-named "Lust" and defined with references to the whore of Babylon?

You can't stack the deck with definitions you've hand-picked and then say, 'Sexist!" Because if you can do that, believe me, I can as well, and I can easily point out, with my hand-picked definitions, that almost all the male cards are overwhelmingly positive. And given that there are twice as many more male than female figures in the deck, even the ratio of unfavorable to favorable definitions for the males is about equal to those for the female.

I'm afraid your evidence of anti-male bias is unconvincing. If you want us to believe you, then you really need to be more scientific about this. Go through the definitions on several decks and prove that anti-male definitions are more common than pro-male or anti-female definitions even when the overwhelmingly male ratio of the cards is taken into account.

Otherwise, all you've proven here is that you, personally, are sensitive to the negative (reversed) anti-male definitions and notice them when you hear them--but you don't notice the positive definitions, nor have you bothered to take into account that you're at least twice as likely to hear about about a card with a male than a female. Hence, the appearance of a bias where there may be none.

 

[caridwen]

Why is it that the powerful masculine cards tend to be seen as bad?

Do they? I don't see them as bad. I think that some readers project their own hang ups onto the cards but the cards themselves aren't bad.

I also don't see the cards as male and female but masculine and feminine. I think that's an important distinction to make. Male and Female are biological genders. Masculine and Feminine are social constructs.

Emperor- domineering and suppressing/controlling
Hierohpant- Oppressive Structure, blind dogma,
Magician- hell, ive heard him called a manipulative salesman before.

People tend to read the cards differently and according to traditions. The manipulative salesman meaning tends to be more TdM than RWS tradition for example.

Just as people project how they see and feel onto their pets and give them human like characteristics, they tend to do the same with the cards. If someone was brought up with strict church going parents, they may tend to view the Hierophant negatively. Again if someone was gay and had been rejected by the church community for those reasons, they may project that onto the Hierophant.

I believe that both women and men can display all the nuances of all the cards. All the cards have positive and negative meanings. Part of the problem is the misogyny inherent in most if not all cultures, imbalanced I'm afraid against women. Women have been blamed for bringing original sin into the world (Eve) or all evil (Pandora) and have been punished ever since.

Some of us are very fortunate to live in societies that offer women the same opportunities as men for example the right to an education and work. These rights are protected by law. There are many cultures however, that do not recognise the rights of women or even see them as equal to men. It is a man's right in these cultures to beat their wives or rape them without fear of punishment. Parents send their sons to school and keep their daughters at home. Daughters are bought and sold to the highest bidder and treated as chattel. Female fetuses are aborted in favour of males. This is the reality I'm afraid for many girls and women today.

It is hardly surprising therefore, that there is a swing against such anti female thought. Women have been denied the simple right to live alongside men as equals and have been punished for simply being female. They have been denied and still are being denied, their basic human rights. I wish I was discussing ancient history here but I’m afraid this is still happening today. Women are the poorest most disabused people in the world.

Just as I don’t believe hating whites is the answer to racism, I don’t think misandry (the hatred of men) is the answer to misogyny. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I hear misogyny all the time here when looking at the cards especially the female courts. People make such judgmental assertions and don’t even realize they are doing it. All I can do, just as all you can do is acknowledge that the world is not perfect and neither are people, develop your own hopefully less biased meanings to the cards and refuse to join in with gender bashing.

 

[EyeAmEye]

what? Most women don't have a very high opinion of men? I think that is very untrue. Also, look at the time that the RW system, which so many decks are based on, was designed. Women were wives, stayed home, took care of the kids, their role in society was limited, in general.

I work in an office with nearly 40 women for over 8 years. Not one of them has anything good to say about men at all

The RW system doesn't exactly attribute those meanings to the cards, at least from what I have ever seen. Those meanings seem to be tacked on somewhere else, hence my assumption it is coming from the readers themselves.

 

[nisaba]

Why is it that the powerful masculine cards tend to be seen as bad?

I'm a woman, I love being a woman, and I love these cards that you criticise!

Emperor- domineering and suppressing/controlling

Reversed, maybe. More, someone who knows what they want and has a certain amount of self-esteem - a good card.

Hierohpant- Oppressive Structure, blind dogma,

Reversed, maybe. Usually a card about spiritual calling, teaching spirituality to others, learning from the traditions of your ancestors. All good things.

Magician- hell, ive heard him called a manipulative salesman before.

In his negative incarnation, perhaps. Otherwise, he reminds you that you have all the tools and abilities you need to work miracles of improvement in your life. Pretty much the card of the inspired and motivated, I would have thought.

Im sure if i went on to every masculine aspected card (Chariot and Tower among others) i could find that people tend to see them as horrible in general, aside from the Sun, everyone loves the Sun.

Yes, every card has a positive and negative side, the supposedly "female" ones as much as the male ones.

What does it say about your personal security in your gender-role, that you focus on the negative in male cards but not in female cards? (This is a thought for you to look at in privacy or with a counsellor, not here).