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Paper short abstract

Women and queer individuals disproportionately engage with astrology, especially online. Using ethnographic and netnographic research, this paper explores how gender identities and relations are negotiated in astrological content, revealing plural rationalities in the alternative spiritual milieu.

Paper long abstract

Astrology is ubiquitous in “Western” popular culture and occupies a central position in contemporary alternative spiritual milieus, especially in digitally mediated spaces where it circulates simultaneously as self-help, identity language, and political commentary. Notably, astrology is disproportionately engaged by women and queer people, with Pew’s 2025 data indicating that queer adults consult astrology at nearly double the rate of the general U.S. population. This is paradoxical given astrology’s foundational gender polarity – planets and zodiac signs are gendered. This paper examines how gender identities and relations are constructed, contested, and negotiated through contemporary astrology, moving beyond simple categorizations of the practice as either gender-essentialist or progressive.

Drawing on ethnographic and netnographic research in English-speaking astrological communities, I analyze how binary cosmological idioms are challenged, queered, and strategically redeployed across apps, social media, and activist-oriented astrology. Engaging Alexa Winstanley-Smith’s work on queer political astrology and Christopher Joseph Lee’s analysis of queer astrology’s entanglements with capitalism, I show how astrology functions simultaneously as a resource for empowerment and a site of ongoing tension.

Situating astrology within Descola’s framework of analogism, I argue that astrological practice reflects epistemic and ontological pluralism, wherein multiple rationalities coexist. Gender thus emerges as a contested symbolic terrain shaped by neoliberal consumer culture, digital mediation, political anxiety, and contemporary spiritual transformations. Through case studies of queer and feminist astrologers alongside purportedly “neutral” commentary, this paper demonstrates how astrology operates as a gendered technology of meaning-making – mediating identity, authority, and belonging in a moment of heightened cultural polarization.