Inclusion, Tradition, and Authority: Gender Ideology in American Paganism in Historical Context

In 2011, a controversy emerged in the American Pagan community after organizers of a gender-exclusive ritual at PantheaCon, an annual Pagan conference held in San Jose, refused to allow transgender women to participate in the ritual. Following the incident, Dianic Wiccan leader Zsuzsanna Budapest enraged some Pagans when she called transgender women “transies” and declared that women-only rituals must be allowed to be open only to biological females. In the ensuing debate ideas about safe spaces, polarity, tradition, and authority collided with the ideologies of inclusion, gender, sexuality, and acceptance.

This debate over transgender inclusion in Pagan rituals is not entirely unexpected. While Paganism acquired a reputation for being feminist and accepting of LGBT members, Paganism itself is not inherently feminist or inclusive; in fact, throughout its short history in the US, feminists and gays had to fight for inclusion. Pagans themselves redefined the ideology, often in defiance of those who claimed authority and the rule of tradition.

More than just a narrative of Pagan ideology, this paper examines the writings of Pagan leaders and adherents, arguing that historians studying Paganism (or any religion) can better understand religious ideology by placing that ideology in its proper historical context. This paper puts the current debate about transgender inclusion in the context of similar discussions about gender and sexuality since the 1960s. By exploring the context in which these discussions emerge, historians can understand how religious participants themselves define and redefine their beliefs and values in response to the world around them.