When witches are tranzfobik
A practising witch claims she was thrown off a druid training course over accusations by a member of the UK Pagan Federation that she was “transphobic” in a row about women’s rights.
When even the Druids believe it you know it’s gone mainstream.
Angela Howard said she became involved with paganism and joined the British Druid Order (BDO) in 2020 to find “spiritual healing” after being sexually assaulted.
Somebody needs to set up a British Terf Order.
However, Howard said the solace she sought in druidry and paganism was shattered when she was banned in April from continuing her training because of her support of the exclusion of trans women — males who identify as female — from single-sex spaces for women.
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The dispute began, she said, three days after the landmark Supreme Court judgment that ruled the definition of a woman under equality laws related to biological sex, rather than “certificated gender” acquired by trans people.
She said the Pagan Federation put up a post on its official Facebook page entitled: “Statement of Support for Trans People from the Pagan Federation”.
According to Howard, 48, in contradiction of the Supreme Court ruling, it asserted that trans women should be regarded to be exactly the same as biological females and that this position was “not up for debate”.
Well not exactly in contradiction of the ruling, because the ruling doesn’t tell people how we should or should not “regard” things. The ruling leaves us free to “regard” men as women if we want to. The law is about actions, not thoughts. Laws about thoughts are extremely hard to police, so legislatures and courts generally avoid them.
Howard said she responded to this statement by commenting that there were situations in which women needed single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms, women’s refuges and prisons. She illustrated the point by citing her own experience of being sexually assaulted by a trans person, a man who identified as a woman, and being unable to access a rape crisis service because it was “mixed-sex”.
And so they punished her because of course they did.
Four days later, the British Druid Order also banned her from their Facebook page when she criticised an article posted there that described the Supreme Court ruling as a “victory for bigotry”, she said, adding that her response included only one line of criticism, an expression of sympathy for trans women in prison. She also asked the article’s author whether he had read the judgment.
However, she said she was expelled from the site by its administrators after a member of the Pagan Federation support team claimed she had been “more unequivocally transphobic” in her comments.
Of course. This is how you win points in The Great Global Who Is Most Transphilic contest. You keep your eyes and ears open for the tiniest deviation from Transphilic Law and then you pounce before someone else does. Ding ding ding! You get to move forward ten steps.
In a written complaint to the BDO this week, Howard pointed out that women and girls were the “largest and most consistently oppressed group worldwide”, adding: “Even here in the UK, I cannot safely wear a witch’s hat in public without receiving threatening or fearful looks.”
Well…I hate to spoil the fun, but you also can’t wear a chicken on your head in public without receiving threatening or fearful looks. Funny clothes are going to get funny looks, because people expect the expected. That is after all the whole point of wearing a witch’s hat or a chicken when out in public.
Good grief. Druids‽
Why on Earth would they get embroiled in ‘gender’ – unless, of course, it’s just another excuse to undermine women and take away any chance of them having the tiniest smidgen of autonomy?
As for hats, wear whatever you like and enjoy the looks. Mine’s not a witch’s hat; more like a stetson. But it’s black; painted with silver skulls and crossbones; has a ‘scream’-mask head torch mounted to the front of the crown; and alphabet beads, sewn around the brim and the top of the crown, spelling out the names of my nine grandchildren. Oh, and additionally it has veils of black material, also covered in silver skulls and crossbones, sewn to the underside of the brim, so I can cut out the light if it becomes too painful. Over my eyes, I wear polarised sunglasses, with a pair of UV-blocking ski goggles over them.
Of course people stare! I grin and wave. ¯\(◉‿◉)__
I’ve read somewhere that the head druid or whatever has a trans-identified child – of course.
There’s been a lot of news stories recently about young people in the West embracing conservative Christianity (the ‘Tradcath’ young.women in Dimes Square in New York, 20-something men joining the Orthodox Churches).
If the neopagan and secular humanist movements are both captured by gender woo and other fashionable nonsense, embracing a strict monotheism that nevertheless rejects gender woo might be appealing to some young people.
Not that I’m saying such beliefs are good, mind…
This is so…I don’t know. People do things, or wear things, so they will be looked at, then get upset when someone looks at them.
The trans do this all the time. They just want to live quietly as their authentic selves, they say. Then they go out in public in horrible wigs, wearing clothes that are often inappropriate for the occasion, great big fake breasts, or whatever…and pretend they aren’t enjoying the attention. Of course they are. That’s why they do it. That’s also why they have trans days of visibility ever few days. They want to be looked at. Of course, they also want to control how they are looked at. They want admiration, not loathing.
Well, sorry. If someone looks at you with loathing, get over it. I’m used to it; most of us are. There will be something about us that causes someone to detest us. Maybe we’re too conformist. Maybe we wear hats when hats aren’t in fashion. Maybe we are wearing worn out, thrift store clothes that don’t fit us. Maybe we aren’t smiling. Women are used to being criticized for how we look, and we aren’t always going out there asking people to ‘look at me! look at me!….not that way, you Nazi!’.
If you don’t want to be looked at, then dress like everyone else. Deviation in outfit will cause looks. That isn’t always bad; you might be stretching the boundaries of the acceptable in a good way. But don’t pretend you don’t want to be looked at when you obviously DO want to be looked at.
I’m seeing a lot of teenage/early 20s boys around here pretending to be girls and they always look ready to pick a fight at an instant’s notice. “I dare you to look the slightest bit disdainful or amused. Just try it, bitch.”
OB, they sound to me like Eshays. They’re classed as a hyper-masculine group, but so many of them look effeminate.
https://www.thetrendspotter.net/what-is-an-eshay/