I have dealt with the backlash and the comments myself, even though at this point in my life, I’m not asking for anyone’s birth data or drawing up charts immediately. After 20 years, I pretty much can wait a little bit before deciding if a compatibility chart is needed, and I know that I could easily talk myself into overlooking red flags.

But I hear the a lot of men hate astrology, from simply finding it annoying to downright refusing to engage with a woman with any interest in it.

So…why?

Why do guys hate astrology?

Well, they actually don’t; most astrologers have been men. It’s just now within the past what? five, ten years, that women have really gotten into this and have become the new leaders of a grassroots revival of astrology.

Classically, women were not professional astrologers. First, that’s a good way to get burned at the stake. Second, most astrologers were scientists and doctors, and women weren’t allowed to do that stuff. Third, even if a woman were an astrologer, she wouldn’t normally be able to be an astrologer to men of wealth and power who would be her clients because she wouldn’t be taken seriously if she tried to advise them. Fourth, if she could write, she would have to publish under a man’s name. Fifth, all the social expectations for women – wife, mother, daughter, entertainer of neighbors and the vicar, etc. – always came first.

It wasn’t really until the late 19th century that women started emerging as thought leaders in the realm of astrology, and even then, it wasn’t until the 20th century that women became big names in Western astrology.

And it’s true that a lot of the stuff you see on Instagram and on social media is the fluffier, feel-good and shallow sun-sign based astrology stuff, but not all of it is.

— And I do find that it is more often the men and not the women who are far less tolerant of astrology for fun, which is sad, because that’s the unmistakable hallmark of an amateur. —

And it is true that astrologers struggled to be honest about the Capricorn stellium. At the time that this was coming to a head, I was writing horoscopes and struggling to do the job, because you want to stay positive and give encouragement (and your clients want you write positive stuff), even though it’s obvious that you’re heading for global disaster. There’s a reason for this. If you see “oh shit, the world is going to come to a complete standstill for some reason and everything we value will be flipped on its head,” you still have to tell people how this might affect them personally other than “shit son; save your money and hunker down, maybe make sure your passport isn’t expired,” every day, every week, every month until the end of 2020 at least.

But I am going to tell you this, since I don’t write horoscopes anymore:

Brace yourselves for mid-December 2020. It’s coming around again.

You can laugh if you want and tell me that astrology is dumb. Tell me more about how the gay hippie son of a Canaanite war god is going to save humanity someday when he’s had 2000 years to do it already. Or tell me how the world is going to end but not before 144,000 of the most irritating white people suddenly disappear and that’s somehow supposed to bother the rest of us.

Men don’t actually hate astrology.

Men don’t actually hate astrology. Most of the ones who profess distaste for it don’t actually know a fucking thing about it. They don’t know what a rising sign is, or the difference between Vedic and Western astrology, let alone a sidereal or tropical zodiac, a transit from a progression, or an outer planet from a trans-Neptunian. And if you suggest there is more to it than the sun sign horoscope going on, they shut down. They don’t want to know. Why can’t you just give me a simple answer? It’s easier to scoff at it and hate it than to deign to let a woman teach them something.

But they don’t actually hate it because it’s not astrology that is the object of contempt.

So why do SOME guys hate astrology?

What they hate is that there’s a bunch of women quietly and politely walking away from the paradigms that we all grew up with, saying “no thanks,” and creating their own ideas, their own values, their own ways of looking at themselves, the world, and most importantly: creating their own ideas and own way of looking at and valuing women and men. With broader categories and a personal focus, there’s less to control, nothing to really grasp onto and hold over someone’s head:

It’s okay that I’m single right now because the latest Saturn transit wants me to focus on quality, not quantity, but there’s a transit coming up in a few months that may bring someone special into my life, so I don’t have to answer your stupid DMs even if the world is telling me that if I’m not married with kids by 35 that something is wrong with me.

Being a lesbian is part of my karma in this life. I chose it, there’s nothing wrong with it, and it has nothing to do with getting or keeping a man, because that’s at best a distraction and at worst a detriment to my soul’s needs.

Sometimes you have a long-term relationship that ends, but it’s not a waste because you need to realize your karmic ties in order to break them, and now we’re both free, so leave me alone and go be some other’s woman’s nightmare.

How do you argue with that? You don’t even what a Saturn transit is, or karmic cycles, or whatever she’s talking about.

And that’s what they actually hate: they hate women leaving a gender-bifurcated cosmology in which women are always inferior and thus always needing the very men who are keeping things from them and instead embracing a godless cosmology that champions the individual regardless of what others believe of them, regardless of what one believes of themselves. Even a man who is an atheist still reaps far greater benefit from the social structures of the hegemonic religions than does a woman who actually believes and adheres to the rules, and there are many women who don’t want to keep pretending this isn’t true, so why beat a dead horse?

Why not engage in the very daring, very taboo act of self-discovery?

Astrology predates Christianity and all of the Abrahamic, patriarchal religions. Folk magic, herbalism, spiritualism, shamanism, etc., is not exclusive to men, and has no eons-long history of alienating and dehumanizing women the way that the Abrahamic religions have.

There’s really nothing to hate about astrology in and of itself…

No one has ever killed anyone in the name of astrology (don’t bring up the zodiac killer; it wasn’t a holy crusade for him). No one has ever justified murder, or child abuse, or slavery in the name of astrology. No one has ever told someone else that they don’t belong to the universe if they get a divorce, or if they are a certain skin color, or if they come from a certain culture, or that they can’t marry someone of a different skin color because that’s not what astrology wants.

But moreover, this isn’t a sweeping generalization of what people are like, unless you are talking about mere sun sign astrology. An astrological chart — particularly when you start getting past the basics of a full natal reading with the known plants and luminaries – is full of personal information unique to the individual. It’s not a gate that you can someone out of because as long as they’re alive, they’re still going to be subject to the forces of the universe.

You can’t even really hate another women because of astrology. Put two charts next to each other with no hint of men being around, and no one can tell which one is prettier, which one is going to throw herself at men, which one is going to stab the other in the back.

…except fear of the unknown and vagina devil magic.

Most of the time you read someone’s chart, you’re reading the chart of someone who isn’t as well-versed in astrology as you are, particularly if they had to call up their mother to get their birth time. Chances are the woman reading the chart has a network of other women she can ask or seek out for astrological advice too, and all these people are looking at these symbols on a circle constructing an idea of you in their heads that you have zero control over.

You had no control over it anyway, but now they’re opining on what they think you are, what you will be like in a relationship, whether you’re worth the time to invest in, regardless of whether you’re a person who is otherwise a perfectly fine, kind, caring individual who has clearly shown that.

Welcome to our world.

Astrology is kind of taking that same sort of control away and making all things equal. You can read a chart and still go through the motions of making someone care for you while you’re still on the fence as to how well this guy is going to fit into your life and be all the things you need and believe you deserve in a relationship instead of you know, just trying your best to figure out what he wants and how you can be those things.

And what’s worse is that it’s all symbolic. It’s in a jargon that not everyone understands, and it can be as simple or as complex as they want it to be.

And they can play your game and not tell you or really explain to you in a way you’d understand why they’re pulling away.

And if you’re not used to women having this kind of power, it could be scary, and now you can’t just retaliate by accusing them of witchcraft and getting your village to burn them.

Of course, it might behoove them to learn some astrology themselves, but that takes work and a certain amount of humility, and not everyone is willing to do that kind of thing when they think they’re right.

Never date a guy who doesn’t respect your “belief” in astrology.

I’ll go one further: if you ever find yourself pregnant by a man who doesn’t respect your “belief” in astrology, get an abortion. Men who always think they’re right even about even the things they know nothing about make terrible husbands and even worse fathers, and you don’t need that shit, and neither does any potential child.

I mean, do what you want, but no judgment from me if you terminate.

You also don’t owe a man an explanation of why you think as you do just as he would probably never dream of justifying his cosmology to you. You don’t have to apologize for it, rationalize it, or try to get him to learn along with you. You don’t have to not talk about it for his comfort.

Just go on your merry way. After all, there’s billions of men in the world.

And if he refuses to indulge you his birth data (but he’s not an astrologer himself), that’s a red flag. Not knowing his birth data is one thing; knowing and outright refusing to tell you when he was born was another.

Trust me.

Whenever a man outright refused, I usually just did a birthday chart, and that was scary enough.

What about identity theft?

Yeah, that can be kind of a thing except you can get someone’s birth date and birthplace if you know anything about them at all. If it worries you so, don’t give them a last name right away.

Why don’t you give me your birth data?

Why don’t you give me a reason to do so?

Actually, if you read around this blog, you could pretty easily figure out the location, date, and approximate time of my birth.

Why do women still do astrology if guys seem to hate it?

Why should a woman do anything simply because some guy may not like it? It’s really just one more thing we do simply for ourselves that a lot of men seem hate but we don’t care either way, like growing our nails, drinking pumpkin spice coffee, collecting throw pillows, watching romantic movies, wearing perfume, “wearing makeup,” taking control of our own reproductive cycles, choosing our own last names upon marriage, and not laughing when your jokes aren’t funny.

And no one asks men to stop doing things like ranking women, which is far more demeaning than reading a birth chart could ever be, just because women don’t like it.

It sucks to feel vulnerable all the time, doesn’t it? Where are the men who do astrology?

Where are the men who do astrology?

Well, they’re not on social media loudly lamenting about women doing astrology, for starters. They’re here though. They’re around. They’re all around us.