Pagans don't need to tolerate everything

We've been misled about Trans

It’s fair to say that Pagans have the tolerance thing down. It’s built into the DNA of the religion.

“Who do you work with?” [Only rarely do I hear Pagans of any kind use the word ‘worship,’ although I have heard ‘venerate.’]

“Dionysus. How about you?”

“The Great Mother.”

“Very cool.”

In the ancient world, which gods anyone venerated varied by city. When Paganism re-emerged in the 20th century, a variety of different gods began manifesting to a small number of people. While our numbers have been growing slowly, we’re still a small community. We have spats, and the Discordians mock the hard traditionalists but we don’t argue about which god is valid.

Paganism is accepting of all manner of things that were looked down on by the mainstream, such as homosexuality. While I don’t have statistics handy [there hasn’t been much study on Paganism, and I hope to do some in the future,] we have a much higher number of gays and lesbians than in the general population.

We also have people who are trans who are part of our communities.

This acceptance of variation can put us at odds with the monotheistic religions that may equate such differences with evil and Paganism with excess hedonic pleasure. Our numbers may be going up, but in the last couple of years, Christianity is blooming anew, partly [not solely] in response to Trans ideology. If we don’t want to be big fat targets, then we need to be clear about the values we hold in this area and articulate them early and often. That means we need to talk about what is acceptable and what isn’t. Blanket acceptance doesn’t serve Pagans and it doesn’t serve legitimate trans people who just want to fit in.

I’m not sure when Jaz Jennings came to my attention. My reaction to a child being on a reality TV show was immediate and visceral. Given the train wreck that childhood stars often become, putting a child in the public eye in this way felt wrong. No matter how articulate Jaz was on camera, the kid’s response had to be coached. What kind of parent puts a child on reality TV? [Narcissists, that’s what.]

I wasn’t comfortable with the idea that a child could recognize they were the opposite sex either. Children are shapable. They can be damaged [I was] and manipulated by adults.

But what if I was wrong? Barbara Walters, an icon of journalism, interviewed Jaz and was sympathetic, and rather gushy.

Then I began to hear the negatives of transition. [If I’d been listening to only the MSM, I wouldn’t have seen it.] While everyone who had an opinion on the matter was proclaiming loudly how we had to support transness because people were dying [or would die], I had questions.

Certainly, no one should be beaten up or killed because of how they present. But how many trans people was this happening to? It wasn’t a moral question of whether or not such incidents could ever [ever] be acceptable. Why was child transition, in particular, being proclaimed now, and not before?

Another issue was that I’ve been wary of drugs most of my life. What effects did taking the hormones have? Did trans people have to take them forever? Then there was the surgery. I studied anatomy and physiology while in massage school. The skin on an arm isn’t the same as the skin on a penis, or the lining of a vagina. If a young woman’s breasts are cut off, she can’t ever nurse a child. If her uterus is cut out, she can’t ever carry a child. If you cut off a young man’s penis and scrotum, there is no fertilizing an egg.

If this seems far from Paganism, bear with me.

I’ve recently become clear that advocating for trans ideology without making distinctions is a serious wrong. It is a lie that does terrible harm. I wrote about it, and put the essay on FB [suitably buried in the comments with a teaser on top because FB hates outside links] and got both pushback and support. My stance also seems to be getting me in some trouble.

I was set to vend at a local Pagan festival and interacted on this subject with one of the leaders [It was polite. No name-calling.] Soon thereafter, that group issued a DEI statement.

we would like to create and provide information to clarify and highlight what we will be doing for the trans and gender-nonconforming community at [name redacted for now].

Our restrooms and facilities are all-gender restrooms. Name and pronoun tags will be available for anyone to use, it is not a requirement, everyone including allies are encouraged to participate and share their pronouns. Hate speech, symbols, and words that are menacing, threatening, harassing, or discriminatory against a marginalized individual or group distress are already banned as per all participation guidelines. Violation of these guidelines will be brought before our Conflict Council, consequences include expulsion from the event, revocation of membership, or may require a participant to take further counsel or education on the matter. Purposeful mis-gendering of another at [name redacted] will be considered harassment by the council. 

Members of the DEI committee will be available and identifiable if you have questions or need support.

So now, like it or not, this is a religious issue. Technically, this isn’t a religious organization, but a social group for Pagans. However, rituals are performed at events, and there will be a number of rituals at this one. What Pagan moral code says I should shut up about the truth? What constitutes ‘hate speech?’ Or discrimination? If the shadowbanning and account shutdowns on social media in the last few years are any indication, then I must say nothing.

Trans ideology says

• That children know what sex they ‘should’ be.

• That a woman can become a man, and vice versa.

• That women should be forced to be vulnerable to predatory men who declare themselves women.

I’ll address the first one here, I’ve already written about the last one here. [This started as a single post and got long.] This is why I’m opposed to minors transitioning. I’ve included study links so the reader can see my sources.

Gender dysphoria is real. But true dysphoria is rare. The rising numbers in the last few years suggest something other than evolution at work. If this has something to do with evolution, why would the sharpest graph on the linked page be in CA, while MA only had a small rise? It’s not uncommon for children to want to wear the clothes of the opposite sex. By the time I was born, girls wearing pants was fine. I was a tomboy and my mother had been one as well, so she saw nothing unusual in my enjoyment of being physical in the world long after I hit puberty.

Now, if a girl is a tomboy, it might be suggested [most often at school] that she really IS a boy.

Children may explore playing with being the other sex, and that’s good. How else understand the other sex but to put one’s self in another’s shoes? But children usually grow out of it. This study linked followed 2772 participants for 15 years. Only 2% of the participants showed an increase in ‘gender discontentedness’ over that time. The entire study is in the link and worth reading. The 2% of children who persisted in gender dysphoria were statistically likely to be gay.

My friend’s son wore a pink nightie to bed and around the house for several years. His parents and brother didn’t care. However, when he wanted to pack it for a sleepover, his mother explained that the other boys wouldn’t understand and might make fun of him. He [at seven] thought this over and packed Batman jammies instead. Eventually, the charm of the pink nightie wore off, and he stopped wearing it. As an adult, he’s a man of impeccable taste and a fine fashion sense, but he’s a male heterosexual.

This study also indicates that the desire to transition is often transitory, [It’s in German so I’ve linked where I found it. You could apply a translation app to the original.] It also notes that kids with gender dysphoria often have other mental health problems, including autism. Girls with autism are vastly under-diagnosed. [My stepdaughter got an autism diagnosis at age 21.] De-transitioner Chloe Cole [she’s on YouTube] is autistic. If gender dysphoria occurs with other mental health problems, why would we assume that dysphoria is the cause? It could easily be the other way around. It’s much safer for the child to treat the co-problems first.

There are even consequences for children to ‘try out’ transitioning. Puberty blockers aren’t without consequence. They aren’t a ‘pause button,’ but [as I suspected] a medication with side effects.

Females on testosterone, and having had a hysterectomy, are more likely to have pelvic floor dysfunction and bleeding in the vagina, and the psychological benefits of taking testosterone are overrated.

It is unknown if the children on opposite sex hormones for any length of time will have problems having children of their own. If they have bottom surgery, that is a certainty. And yes this happens. Jaz Jennings is a tragic and public example. Recently, a Texas hospital was forced to stop such procedures. The effects of the surgery may or may not be discussed as a real possibility beforehand. Many de-transitioners - including Chloe Cole - say there was zero discussion from therapists or doctors about the risks. [De-transitioners are easy to find on YouTube] There is only a 60% chance that men transitioning to women won’t experience narrowing of the urethra. Those aren’t good odds. That narrowing [meatal stenosis] can be fixed with another surgical intervention, but 15% had the problem return again. [The authors of this particular study still felt this was a ‘safe procedure.’ I’m not sure that word means what they think it means.] A third are likely to have some wound healing disorders or infection complications. Rectal injury in both surgeries is a real risk.

Nor are the long-term outcomes for such surgeries good. This study from the early 2000s in Sweden found that people who had had transexual surgery had a considerably higher risk for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity.

These are not risks that a child should be allowed to take. As one de-transitioner [on YouTube] said, “Kids don’t know what they want for dinner.” We wouldn’t let them cut off an arm or leg if they decided they didn’t think it was theirs. Trans surgery is no less consequential.

I have no statistics on Pagans letting their children ‘transition.’ But I do know a Pagan father who, five or six years ago, announced on social media that he now had a son. I don’t know the current status of his offspring. I hope for the child’s sake, that they never did hormones, or gods forbid, surgery. I pray that she either outgrew it [as the study I linked above showed] or that she recognized she was a lesbian and has a nice girlfriend. I’ve watched too many de-transition videos now to think there’s a good chance this person would be happy as a male.

I hope for such an outcome if he fully transitioned.

But what would I do if I saw a parent at a pagan festival with a child clearly in transition? [There’s also a statistical likelihood I wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.]

Duh. I’d smile, say hi, and treat the kid with grace. No child deserves to be harassed. I wouldn’t say a word to the child’s parents. Either the parents thought they were doing the right thing, or they’re psychologically troubled themselves. Some stranger at a festival isn’t going to change anything or help them or their child. If at some point they realize they’ve made a horrible mistake, I want them to feel safe coming to a coven leader for counseling.

I hope to sit down with the president of the organization in the coming weeks and get some clarity about the meaning of ‘hate speech’ and perhaps reassure him that I’m not out to make anyone miserable. So far, he hasn’t answered my email.

The call demanding Trans people be accepted for who they are isn’t a bad thing. The problem is that people with real sex dysphoria are rare, perhaps 2% of the general population. Men who want to dress up as women, hang out in women’s spaces, and sometimes rape them, don’t have dysphoria. Children who have vivid imaginations, trauma, or a mental disturbance don't have dysphoria. The former are predators and we let them into our spaces at our own risk. The latter should be getting treatment that doesn’t include lifespan shortening, pleasure-depleting treatments that cannot be reversed.

There is nothing moral about demanding that others tolerate allowing potential predatory males into women’s spaces, or allowing children to believe they can have a different body than the one they were born with. As Pagans, we are supposed to be deeply connected to nature. There is nothing natural about taking the hormones of the opposite sex. Even if trans was far more prevalent in nature than we previously thought [an argument that I find highly questionable] animals don’t get other animals to bite off parts they don’t like so they can ‘be the other sex,’ and they certainly don’t take hormones.

Does that last statement sound stupid to you? Good. It sounded stupid to me too. But no more stupid than believing that a boy can become a girl or vice versa. It’s not that our [male] ancestors didn’t castrate boys and then bum fuck them. But that isn’t dysphoria, it’s pedophilia, or maybe just a desire to have complete control over a partner [either way, creepy and unacceptable.] We object to female genital mutilation [which we should be doing more] and some people object to the removal of the the male foreskin. Yet surgery that cuts off a girl’s breasts, and mauls children’s genital areas gets a big thumbs up?

Sexual pleasure is something we cherish. During puberty, there’s a complex interaction of hormones that causes the genitalia to mature. Puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones interfere with that. When a child’s genitals don’t have the chance to develop normally, what are the chances of them having a normal orgasm as an adult?

I’m not going to be unkind to a child whose parents foolishly encouraged transition. I don’t know the situation. In some states, parents don’t get a say. Or they were told their child would kill themselves [a lie] and they felt they had no choice.

Pagan organizations should not be playing into this nightmare of fake medical treatment. Real trans people are those who have never felt right in their bodies and medically transition as adults after a long period of therapy. They don’t pretend their surgically altered genitals should be acceptable to everyone. It’s good to welcome those who are genuinely Trans. But we shouldn’t be tolerating, let alone encouraging, predatory behavior or inappropriate medical interventions.

Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has 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. 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.

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