I think, therefore I exist
Nov. 19th, 2015 21:23![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI was just reading about the division in the Wiccan community over trans folk (the links are probably the place to start, there) and thinking about how I used to identify as Wiccan. I don't, anymore, but I have some points in common with Tantra these days. Both of them share the issue of trying to define what a woman is, what a man is, and how those fit in with rituals and energies. It's not a question which will be settled anytime soon.
I don't really have a dog in this fight, being a solitary practitioner of whatever you want to call my spirituality... but the discussion itself gives me a profound feeling of being an outsider. I've seen a couple of genderqueer people weigh in, but they don't say much more than "we hope to be included someday". In traditional Tantra, segregation by gender would leave me sitting by myself, an uncomfortable reminder of the days when teams were picked for sports and I'd always be the last one left. There are a few leaders out there, in both Wicca and Tantra, who teach that each of us can channel masculine or feminine, but traditionalists look very much askance at that. There is shared experience, they argue. There is blood mystery and the power of the phallus. And the whole damned tradition -- both of them -- feels like it's set up to exclude those who can't fit into the binary.
This same hyperfocus on binary gender is one reason why I didn't go back to learning Spanish after I lapsed this summer. There's nothing that makes you feel less welcome than a language which erases your existence.
I consciously chose to opt out of my assigned gender, but it's only amplified the discomfort I've always felt in women's spaces. Now I can't ignore it, even as it gives me an explanation for why I feel that way. The hostility in this Wiccan fight is mostly directed toward trans women, but I think that's mostly because women have the loudest voice and tightest sense of community in Wicca; like most other places, trans men are ignored, or treated like an afterthought. Enbys are only noted when we speak up, and sometimes not even then.
I knew that I was cutting myself off from the sisterhood when I declared my gender identity. I hadn't realized I was also cutting myself off from so many old traditions steeped in the gender binary (like Spanish, Russian, and most other languages I might want to learn). I hadn't realized I would become even more invisible than women are in most spaces. I hadn't realized I would be erased.
We hear so much about how women are marginalized that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that even being a woman carries a certain level of privilege. Easy recognition and community, if nothing else. I have rarely felt the loss so keenly as I do around issues like this.
I don't really have a dog in this fight, being a solitary practitioner of whatever you want to call my spirituality... but the discussion itself gives me a profound feeling of being an outsider. I've seen a couple of genderqueer people weigh in, but they don't say much more than "we hope to be included someday". In traditional Tantra, segregation by gender would leave me sitting by myself, an uncomfortable reminder of the days when teams were picked for sports and I'd always be the last one left. There are a few leaders out there, in both Wicca and Tantra, who teach that each of us can channel masculine or feminine, but traditionalists look very much askance at that. There is shared experience, they argue. There is blood mystery and the power of the phallus. And the whole damned tradition -- both of them -- feels like it's set up to exclude those who can't fit into the binary.
This same hyperfocus on binary gender is one reason why I didn't go back to learning Spanish after I lapsed this summer. There's nothing that makes you feel less welcome than a language which erases your existence.
I consciously chose to opt out of my assigned gender, but it's only amplified the discomfort I've always felt in women's spaces. Now I can't ignore it, even as it gives me an explanation for why I feel that way. The hostility in this Wiccan fight is mostly directed toward trans women, but I think that's mostly because women have the loudest voice and tightest sense of community in Wicca; like most other places, trans men are ignored, or treated like an afterthought. Enbys are only noted when we speak up, and sometimes not even then.
I knew that I was cutting myself off from the sisterhood when I declared my gender identity. I hadn't realized I was also cutting myself off from so many old traditions steeped in the gender binary (like Spanish, Russian, and most other languages I might want to learn). I hadn't realized I would become even more invisible than women are in most spaces. I hadn't realized I would be erased.
We hear so much about how women are marginalized that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that even being a woman carries a certain level of privilege. Easy recognition and community, if nothing else. I have rarely felt the loss so keenly as I do around issues like this.
