Navigating the world of Witchcraft as a Solitary Secular Witch is daunting enough, but as a Solitary Secular trans Witch, it's a scary world!
I've already talked a little bit about my connections around some of these concepts and as I move along, even in this short time, I find myself really drifting from Wicca in a formal sense. This is not to say that I can't take a lot of learnings from that faith, but I don't subscribe to Deity, I subscribe to energy and connectedness. As I noted, some will not agree with me, but then I no more require another's permission to engage my spirtuality as do to engage my womanhood. My labels are mine own.
One of the challenges in some of these circles is the inherent assumption that womanhood is equated with motherhood, and the ability to bear children, and that has a very inherent exclusion built into it and not just towards trans women. There are also Wiccan groups that explicitly exclude trans women through transphobia, fortunately a collection that appears to be shrinking with the shrinking Boomer and Gen X population. Younger witches seem to mirror the larger Millenial and Gen Z opinion in being trans inclusive.
Still, I am very much a feminist and I love being able to marry these two aspects of my life together. That has landmines, to be very sure, but fortunately, I've been starting to find inclusive and intersectional Witches who are sharing knowledge and engaging feminist and witchy thought through podcasts.
Pam Grossman has a podcast called The Witch Wave in which she starts of each episode talking about aspects of witchcraft that applies to the upcoming guest for the show. It's very informative, very feminist, and her guests include members of the LGBTQ+ community, including trans women. Earlier episodes predate the bigot author dropping her fascist mask, so some careful treading there, but eventually you get through it. Remember, nobody really saw that coming in 2017! Anyways, her podcast is available on all the usual platforms and she seems to be very consistent in her timing.
Next up is Paige Vandenbeck with her podcast The Fat Feminist Witch, which is a very new one to me. She has been going longer than Pam Grossman, but not quite as regular on her show output. She covers quite a range and I came across her reading reviews on a book about secular witchcraft and she was quite positive about it (5 stars on Goodread). The I came across another review she made on Amazon for a "feminist" spiritual book where she wrote a very detailed review and called out the trans exclusionary language. That gets an instant podcast follow right there, but a read through of what she is talking about on her show says, "go listen to what she has to say!"
Anyways, those are two that I am aware of now, but if you know of others then drop a comment. As I find more, I'll probably collect into future posts.
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