Paganism, Trans Ideology, and Religion

Shouting people down doesn't 'create reality.'

It’s no news the religion provokes controversy. Religion binds together groups of people, but also tears them apart. That such a given that we hardly need discuss it. Right?

Yet, in the last few years, discussing ‘givens’ is necessary, and at the same time, nearly impossible. Social media has made it easy to insult differing opinions into silence, and public protests have made a business of shouting down legitimate debate.

However, being meaner or louder doesn’t make any argument convincing.

In 2011, Z Budapest, a founder of Dianic Wicca, performed a ritual of healing for female victims of sexual violence at Pantheacon in CA. She deliberately excluded transwomen creating a firestorm of controversy among US Pagans. Z’s reasoning was that transwomen couldn’t understand the feelings of vulnerability that a woman experiences, and thus could not contribute to the feelings of safety necessary for healing from sexual trauma. Her argument was that the presence of transwomen in her ritual was quite the opposite.

Last year, one of my oldest friends went to the Morrigan Retreat in CT. It’s put on at a camp as many such gatherings are. After attending a particularly deep ritual, my friend retreated to the women’s bathroom to decompress, only to find a transwoman in the woman’s bathroom. This experience was horribly triggering for her.

This might be where someone starts shouting about people just needing to urinate, and where’s my compassion?

There are some who claim that the gods and heroes sometimes being gender-fluid means that our ancestors found that state to be sacred. Therefore, we modern people should also do so.

In Between Two Worlds Brianne Raven Wolf cites examples of what Brianne calls ‘accepted gender fluidity’ and ‘People were just human beings, and not judged only on their biological sex.’

Oh, honey. I’m so sorry your education failed you so badly. I’m not being sarcastic.

The attempt sacralize trans ideology by claiming the ancients didn’t judge people by their sex is so patently absurd that some people might dismiss the idea out of hand as not even worthy of discussion. Yet, here we are, with my friend, who experienced real trauma and is genuinely disabled because of it, being affected by people taking this patent nonsense as fact.

Gender wasn’t even a concept until it was popularized by a few twentieth-century doctors with ideas about sex that ran counter to Darwinian thought on sexual selection. So there wasn’t any ‘gender fluidity’ in the ancient world. Achilles was dressed as a woman by his mother to hide him from going to war. Eventually, his essential male nature showed through and off he went to the Trojan War. Hercules wasn’t dressing as a woman for the Amazon queen because he liked it. He did it so he could fulfill his greater mission. The queen’s intent was to degrade him.

Perhaps this PBS production, Fate and Fabled, contributed to Brianne’s confusion. If not, it certainly doesn’t do anything good for mythology or religion, framing ancient stories in ways that are egregiously incorrect. For example the hosts claim that Hapi, god of the flooding Nile was pregnant and had breasts. The image they use is clearly an artistic interpretation. A search on JStor for ‘Hapy’ [The more commonly used spelling] returned no similar images. They also claim, “The Egyptians believed that the man carried the fetus and then transferred it to women.” There’s no evidence in art or the medical texts Ebers Papyrus (circa 1550 BCE) and the Kahun Papyrus (circa 1825 BCE) to indicate this statement is accurate. The Egyptians had spiritual beliefs about the path of the soul, but they understood biology. The hosts also made claims that intersex people were seen as sacred and served in various temples, claims I’ve seen on some Pagan blogs and at festivals.

If you like this then perhaps you could…

Or have a look at the books I write under pen name Sabrina Rosen [On Amazon] or subscribe to my fiction blog.

There is no basis for this claim. There is nothing in ancient art or literature that tells us for sure that people who were intersex were handed over to the priests for religious training. Intersex conditions are rare. Hippocrates classified ‘transsexualism’ as ‘a disease, a natural phenomenon, not a manifestation of divine wrath…’ which suggests that at some point, the condition was viewed as ‘a manifestation of divine wrath.’

While there is a lot of leeway between spiritual practice and one’s experience of the divine, people who run festivals should be very wary of what’s being taught and what policies they have in place. If religious teachers are sharing this sort of tripe, they aren’t doing other Pagans any favors. People who write on platforms like Patheos may be seen as community leaders. However, authority shouldn’t be granted just because someone has a platform. Ideas should be tested, researched, and discussed before the person is seen as such, and that’s true for much more than religion.

Claiming that women being assaulted in bathrooms is rare, so women should suck it up and not be TERFs, is anti-woman. Sex-segregated spaces exist because the vast majority of violent crime is perpetrated by men. Those people with XY chromosomes are more likely to rape, murder, assault, and commit pedophilia. [Don’t believe me? Look it up for yourself.] Humans recognize the opposite sex with 99% accuracy. My friend, who was traumatized by a man, is probably even more accurate, because trauma cranks up survival instincts.

The argument that ‘people just need to pee’ is absurd because it denies the reality that women are more often the victims of sexual assault than men. How would my friend know that transwoman sharing her traditionally female-only space wasn’t dangerous to her? Within her Goth community, a woman was raped by a transwoman. Transwomen aren’t uniformly safe because they put on female clothing and makeup. Transwomen who claim ‘transwomen are women’ clearly have zero understanding of what it is to be a woman.

The argument that ‘people just need to pee’ is especially absurd in the Pagan world where playing dress up is not only accepted but encouraged both for men ans women. Transwomen could use the men’s bathroom with no fear.

I don’t have a problem with people playing dress up. I’m even negotiable on men in women’s clothing using my bathroom, although not when I’m leaving a poo. [That’s embarrassing even to write.] But trauma precludes the ability to negotiate. Trauma means emotions are raging. My friend just wanted to feel safe, and in her case that meant being in a place where men couldn’t go. She wasn’t in a sufficiently coherent state to negotiate. And given the screaming and literal assault that happened recently in the capital over men being in women’s bathrooms, negotiation isn’t even an option for her.

When I recognized I was Pagan at age 14, part of what drew me was that being a woman and a sexual being was cherished and honored. My body, as it was in the world, was good. Feeling desire was good. I didn’ t have to put on pretty clothes, or makeup, or behave in a particular way in order to be female. Starhawk wrote in her 1982 book Dreaming the Dark, "Sexuality was a sacrament in the Old Religion; it was (and is) viewed as a powerful force through which the healing, fructifying love of the immanent Goddess was directly known, and could be drawn down to nourish the world, to quicken fertility in human beings and in nature.”

My issues with Starhawk, and this book in particular aside, trans drugs and surgery destroy fertility and increase the risk of depression. Nor can we celebrate the polarity of male and female if there is no polarity. If male and female are simply the clothes we wear, the behaviors we perform, and our sexual preferences, then those differences aren’t fundamental to the human experience. If religion isn’t addressing that, then ritual is just about getting high on the energy and has no deeper meaning.

For those running festivals or events, for those attending festivals and events: Trans isn’t something to justify religiously, and women need women-only spaces. Z Budapest was correct. She stood up for women when many Pagans shouted her down. Be like Z.

If you’re curious about Paganism/Heathenism/Wicca/Druidry, please feel free to message me and I’ll be happy to answer questions.

Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been Pagan since she was 14 [which was a long time ago] and been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. She has direct communication with her gods and they’ve always given her answers when she asks. [One does have to ask.] Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. Be warned.

Pagan Organizations

Cherry Hill Seminary

Sacred Well Congregation