Why Pagans Need to Make Better Distinctions About Trans
We don't want to invite scorpions into the garden
It looks like I got in trouble.
After I expressed some concerns about trans ideology on FB, and interacted with the leadership of a local pagan group on the matter, the group promptly put out a DEI statement about the festival where I’m scheduled to vend.
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.
At Rites of Spring, in Western Massachusetts, I was highly charmed and amused by the occasional guy in a dress. My husband was wearing a tie-dye skirt when I met him, as was his weightlifting friend. Another man - I’ll call him Simon - ran around in tight sheathes, his head adorned with a hard hat spouting daisies. [I’m afraid the symbolism escaped me at the time. lol.] One of my cherished memories of Rites is Simon asking for help to zip up a dress before the feast. It took both myself and one of the most masculine guys at Rites to get the job done. Simon sucked in his breath while the other guy held the zipper, and I worked it upward. Simon thanked us profusely and headed off to the evening’s festivities. He didn’t describe himself as female, and we didn’t worry about pronouns then. Simon was gay - proudly so - and liked to dress up.
Pagans are happily, perhaps fiercely, creative. We walk boundaries and play with the unseen world. We cherish our lives on earth as our ancestors did, and while most of us believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, we appreciate the things that make life here good: food, play, art, performance, music, humor, and sex. Paganism in its many forms is often a haven for people who are creative, wounded, or - like Simon - just like to put on a guise sometimes.
I think it was 2009 when I attended Ecumenicon in Delaware, and met Raven Kaldera, a transman shaman who was born intersex and raised female. [His story is complicated and he’s open about it.] Ultimately, I asked for his help with dealing with my life-long insomnia. He and his assistant literally drove to my ancestral family home in Maine from Massachusetts to do a ritual, and then turned around and went back home again.
At Rites, I sometimes came across Simon putting on makeup in the woman’s bathroom. He always asked immediately if I minded. I didn’t because his tone made it abundantly clear that if I’d said ‘yes,’ he would have left at once. Simon was respectful of women’s spaces and only entered if invited. In fact, if a man who was just there to oogle had shown up, I have no doubt Simon would have punched him if necessary.
It’s only since 2020 that we’re expected to accept what we’re told without questioning it or making finer distinctions. Even before the MSM and the president told us that ‘transwomen were women,’ feminist witch Z Budapest didn’t agree. In 2011, at Pantheacon, she denied a transwoman access to a ritual celebrating women’s menstruation. There was a protest, but Z [Zusanna] was firm in her stance.
I was tolerant of her position. It was her ritual and she got to say who was there. At the time, I didn’t know how I would have decided the matter if it had been me. But it didn't look easy. I put the whole thing aside.
In my experience, Pagan spaces are very safe. However, the tolerance for which we tend to pride ourselves puts us at risk. We need to make distinctions about what ‘trans’ means and what we find acceptable.
Trans ideology says that if someone says they are a woman, then that’s what they are, even if they have a beard and are built like a linebacker. Even if they give you the creeps. Women are sharply attuned to danger. [It comes with having the XX chromosomes. Humans wouldn’t have survived as a species if we didn’t.] I’m a survivor of domestic abuse. 1 in 6 women will be victims of rape or attempted rape. Bathrooms and shower areas are places where we legitimately feel more vulnerable.
Here’s my problem with the DEI rules. Not all men who say they are transgender are really transgendered. Some of them like to play dress up for the purpose of indulging in rape, pedophilia, and grooming children for pedophilia. Some men who dress up like women are genuine predators. For those who don’t think this actually happens, here are some examples.
[The first one is creepy as hell, skip if you get nightmares.]
Wyoming Sorority Members Forced to Admit Trans-Identifying Male as Court Rejects Suit
Prominent trans LGBTQ+ activist charged with rape of minors in Philadelphia
This list is not exhaustive.
Even some in the lesbian, and gay communities are beginning to object to this behavior. Click the links to see why.
The men who do this are taking advantage of the broad ‘trans’ brush. I have to wonder if that’s what Z saw at her ritual: a man in a dress who, not asked, but demanded to hang out with women who were sacralizing something he could never experience. For what? Autogynephilia? Maybe it is as her critics say, and she was just being an old-school lesbian. But maybe she got a bad feeling from this person and wanted to protect the women who were going to be vulnerable in a nude circle.
The people running Pantheacon respected her choice. I don’t think they’d do that today. While some Pagan groups value consent [as does the group that runs Rites,] others insist that women ignore any discomfort they feel so someone else can feel included.
This isn’t what religion is supposed to be about, especially one that honors women. One of the reasons I was drawn to Paganism was that it was a safe space to learn what it meant to be female. Now it seems I’m supposed to act like the things that make me female are so trivial and meaningless that someone with no womb or hormonal fluctuations can put on a dress and… what? Pretend?
I’m all for play. But play is consensual and mutually negotiated.
If those running the festival I’ll be attending hadn’t rushed to make sure the bathrooms were co-ed, I’d not feel so anxious. But now it’s not a matter of consent. If I didn’t live close enough to the event that I couldn’t run home and shower, I’d consider canceling. Maybe I’ll just take my husband in the bathroom with me. <sarcasm>He can declare himself a woman for the duration of the bathroom visit. It will be fine I’m sure. He has long hair, and I’m sure I can get him to wear that tie-dye skirt again. [Never mind the beard.] I’m sure all the other women will feel fine about that.</sarcasm> [eyeroll]
Men who dress up as women so they can be in women’s spaces are scorpions in the garden and we have to make it clear they aren’t welcome.
People like Simon aren’t one of the scorpions. In his mundane life, Simon worked in an ER. A high-stress job that demanded focus and precision. He volunteered at the festival for emergencies. He was definitely and openly gay, and he would no more harm a child or a woman than he would hurt a patient in his care. In the more than fifteen years I attended that festival, I never heard one bad thing said about him.
Genuine Transsexual [adult] Pagans are, and should be included in Pagan culture. We almost certainly have a higher percentage of them in our communities than exist in the general population. But to do that well, they need to be honest and respectful about the very real threat that men can pose to women,* and the rest of us need to make clear distinctions about what aspects of Trans are and are not acceptable.
Pagan space has always felt safe to me. It was always about consent. Now it’s about coercion.
*The issues with transmen are entirely different. Which should be obvious.
Earthspirit statement on sexuality
Circle Sanctuary inclusiveness statement
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.