Do you really hate it, or do you just not understand it?
When I was younger, I remember googling my crush’s astrology sign after not-so-subtly asking him what his birthday was. I proceeded to be heart-wrenchingly disappointed after learning that he was a Taurus, and therefore incompatible with my Leo self. According to the astrology website I visited, his nonchalant and down-to-earth personality would clash with my outgoing, attention-seeking self. I proceeded to move on to the next crush. Life was just much simpler back then.
At 21, I care a lot less about a person’s star sign and birth chart compared to their personality, but I can’t help asking the men I talk to on dating apps what their thoughts are on astrology. It usually ends up with a huge rant about how dumb, unhinged and naive people who believe or practice astrology are, which is my immediate cue to ghost.
It’s not shocking to me that a lot of straight cis men seem to have this opinion regarding astrology. According to a study by Pew Research, 37% of women believe in astrology compared to just 20% of men, and it shows in the conversations I have when I just playfully ask for someone’s star signs.
Psychologist and sex therapist Barbara Santini attributes this behavior to the feminization of astrology. Astrology has definitely become something that belongs to the girls and the gays, with the target audience for most Instagram posts and Tik Tok videos about astrology being women and queer folks. This results in men shying away from the practice, in an attempt to guard their masculinity and steer away from something they consider too feminine.
“To most men, astrology is too girly or immature, which explains why they disagree with it or deny its validity,” Santini says to PopSugar. “This creates a negative perception of astrology and the women who like it. For some men, the refusal of astrology is linked to toxic masculinity, which does not allow them to enjoy the same things as women.”
To a lot of straight men, astrology also seems like a lot of fluff simply based on our star signs. Their minds instantly go to the astrology section in a magazine like Cosmopolitan, dismissing the whole field as merely nonsense. However, there is so much more to astrology than just the star sign based on your date of birth. The study of astrology involves interpreting the stars, Sun, Moon, and all the planets as well as their placements in the sky. Our birth charts are much more complex than just our star signs, and I think we need to acknowledge that before bringing the whole concept of astrology down simply because we don’t understand it enough.
There is also the notion that astrology is this nonsensical belief without any scientific proof or evidence, which men love to pull out during arguments. I hate to break it to you, but astrology has long been a scientific study until people (and you guessed it, mostly straight men) decided that it wasn’t and stopped funding it. I’m not claiming that astrology is scientific at all, but I also wish that there is funding for astrology, simply because we have not explored it enough as a science to truly understand the field in its entirety. Interestingly, there have actually been more niche studies that have proved some kind of correlation between developments in the sky and human behavior, like studies that show that there are more ER admissions during the full moon. Spooky? I think so too.
I’m not saying believe everything the newspaper column on your star sign tells you or listen to the tarot reader on Tik Tok telling you the love of your life is right around the corner (because she’s been telling me that for 6 months). I’m not even denying the fact that astrology is oftentimes inaccurate and nonsensical. I’m just saying you should let loose and just have fun with astrology. Even if you don’t believe in it, there’s no harm in just seeing what the stars are telling you and if you don’t like it, then you don’t have to be a bummer about it. Stop making something that’s supposed to be fun and lighthearted more than it actually is. Maybe you’re just mad cause you’re a Capricorn.