More Animus Dreams

I'm taking two weeks to work through the Magician/Magus card in my in-depth tarot work, mostly because I didn't have the time last week to sit down and spend hours writing like I did for the week before when exploring the Fool. One of the reasons I didn't have time was because I have been struggling with writer's block for my next SageWoman column, which is due at the end of this week. Last night over dinner, I talked with Jeff about some ideas for where to go with it, since the original idea I had is clearly not working out no matter how much I try to push forward. That brought us back around to the idea of the animus again, since writing about that would be in keeping with the issue's theme in a kind of abstract/psychological way. And since I'm working with the Magician these two weeks, I might as well ride that energy. I had half a notion to set an intention for my dreams for last night, to try to get in touch with my animus again in that context, but I didn't. Apparently, though, a half-thought intention was enough.

After some random action-adventure dreams that involved flying cars and an evil villain dumping huge vats of first salsa and then sour cream into the local river...

I dreamt that I was a man (I looked somewhat like David Boreanaz, more from these days than from his moody/brooding/dreamy days on Buffy), and I was out with my wife in a kind of touristy downtown type of place poking around in shops before going to dinner. I glanced across the street to see myself in drag — dressed as a woman, wearing a skirt and a wig, though in a way that was much more akin to Monty Python than RuPaul — and I was confused about what "I" was doing over there. I had the impression that this version of me had been off doing things without my knowing about it, and it became really important to me to track her down and see what was going on.

I must have woken up briefly at that point and fallen back asleep again, because then the dream switched over and I was once again female, my usual real-life self, but this time back in high school. The girl who was my best friend in the dream was egging me on to find this alternate-me, but we had the sense that we couldn't get out of school to play hooky without somebody noticing we were gone. So she devised a plan that involved us agreeing to be tour guides for new students, and we had a pass to get out of class in order to attend the introductory meeting. After that, we found some excuse to get outside and walk the grounds, including the woods that were out behind the school. From there, we were able to slip away and catch a plane to fly across the country. We arrived in a place that seemed to be some kind of national park, that was in some ways very much like some of the parks in Utah and New Mexico, all rocky desert landscapes, but also had places that were more like Acadia, with rocky shorelines and rivers running out into the ocean among mist and tall fir trees. We spent some time walking around these amazing places, joining up with various tour groups who were exploring the different overlooks. We had the impression that, because we couldn't find the alternate-me among the tour groups, we must have missed him. For some reason, we had the impression he was also looking for me, though again, I had the sense that this task was less important to him than it was to me, something that he was fitting in among his other obligations. We thought that he must have been flying across the country in the other direction at the same time we were, and so we'd crossed in mid-air. Somebody from the tour group asked me if I was meeting someone, and I told them this (making a hand gesture to show what I meant), but when I looked up at the person asking, it was him. He looked somewhat Arabic/Middle Eastern this time, with a long thin nose, very dark eyes and shoulder-length hair. He had a somewhat thick accent (though the accent itself didn't sound Middle Eastern). But it was definitely him, and there was a recognition between us. After that point, the dream basically involved wandering through the park with the tour group, listening to a ranger as she talked about the history of the place, while trying to stay near (but not too near) him. At one point, there was a visitor's center type of place where they were playing a short film, and while we sat watching that, he reached over briefly and held my hand.

The gender reversals in this dream are really interesting, though I'm not sure I have any interpretation for them beyond the pretty straightforward stuff about gender fluidity and the animus/anima as being the inner man/woman within each person. I think it's interesting that I start out the dream as a David Boreanaz-like figure, who (especially as his character in Bones) strikes me a bit as a kind of meathead/muscle-man type (more so than the tortured-romantic nature of Angel in Buffy)... but the eventual encounter with the animus himself has him as much more of a mysterious/mystical kind of person, even down to the dark eyes and the hard-to-place accent.

Whether or not any of this will actually help me write my column remains to be seen.

Gender Identity Issues in Dianic Ritual

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:57am - 6:09pm
Moon: waning crescent, capricorn (earth/cardinal)
Earth: warmer today and sunny for the most part, and now a thunderstorm has moved in (complete with lightning) and it's supposed to rain all night


I need to go to bed, and this will not be a proper diary post, but I wanted to record a post I made to Facebook today regarding an issue reported on The Wild Hunt about a Dianic ritual held at PantheaCon that excluded transgender women from participating, and the protest-ritual and open discussion forum held in response.

Today's Wild Hunt post was the first time I heard anything about the transgender-exclusionary Dianic ritual held at PantheaCon and the controversy and conversation it stirred up. I wonder if friends here on FB would care to weigh in with the ideas and opinions?

I've been reading an on-going conversation on one of the Pagan forums I belong to, and the main issue seems to be the lack of communication, that the ritual wasn't marked as "cisgender-women only" beforehand and, when it was specified (by turning people away at the door), the phrase "women born women" was used, which has derogatory connotations. There's been a lot of debate about the nature of religious freedom/discrimination at a public convention, the pros and cons of allowing Mystery traditions to hold rituals that may exclude or offend others, whether or not Dianic traditions are inherently bigoted or discriminatory, etc.

So here's where I'm coming from: I am (if I'm understanding the terms right) a cissexual female with no particular feelings one way or another about my gender. I believe in a kind of non-literalish reincarnation and, for that reason, I have worked during this particular lifetime to appreciate being embodied in a way that is biologically female, approaching it as a sacred thing with lessons to teach me (even when those lessons are sucky "you're going to be too ill and in pain to move for two or three days every month" kinds of lessons). But still, when I indulge in more typically "feminine" behavior and dress, it often feels somewhat like a playful engagement in identity-creation that I (and I alone) can step into and out of if/when I like, but that no one else has a right to impose on me. Since I kind of shrug my shoulders about gender, I've never been remotely drawn to "women's Mysteries" and find myself uncomfortable around groups that have that focus because they don't speak to me (kind of like being the only person who doesn't speak fluent French in a Parisian café) - but I don't begrudge them their right to explore such mysteries in a private ritual space or within a tradition with less fluid gender boundaries than what I'm comfortable with. All of that is my background....

These are the points where I'm finding myself a bit stuck about this PantheaCon situation, though:

(a) Even though I consider myself a feminist, and I feel relaxed about sexual- and gender-identity fluidity, and I try my best to be compassionate and supportive of people's right to self-identity definition and creation.... I haven't spent much time formally studying feminism and feminist philosophy. I did not know until even a few months ago that such a word as "cisgender" even existed, and I find that I'm still uncertain in some contexts what it's being used to mean. There seems to be an almost endless vocabulary for speaking about sexuality and gender-identity, and often it's difficult to know which words are currently acceptable, and which have become taboo, and which are in the process of being reclaimed. I did not know that "woman born woman" was derogatory, and in fact, I'd never even heard it - but I know I've probably used similar phrasings (such as the long-winded, clinical-sounding: "someone born biologically female who identifies as female") when I was unsure if there was an appropriate word for that concept or what that word might be. (Although I understand the desire to create gender-neutral pronouns, when I hear people using "ze" and "zir," I still flinch (on a visceral, auditory level) at how similar it sounds to racist, stereotyped imitations of non-native English speakers' "dialect" (eg. a racist stereotype of an Italian saying, "Ze Pope-a! Ze is so-a nice-a!").) People in the forums have complained about the "dogwhistle" use of the Dianic group's name ("Amazon").... but to someone outside of the world of formal feminist studies, many of these specialized terms feel very similar. Often, the language being cultivated and utilized among those who care most deeply about these issues seems to be evolving and changing so rapidly, that a person like myself who is unfamiliar with all the "lingo" feels excluded from the conversation simply because I am so uncertain what to say or how my words will be interpretted. I have had best friends stop speaking to me for making missteps in terminology that I was unaware of even having made. For me, this brings up the real heart of this issue: wanting to be an accepting, open-minded person (heck, even *actually being* an accepting, open-minded person), doesn't guarantee that someone will be familiar with specialized language. So how do we overcome that gap, especially in large public settings? How can we strive for inclusive language that doesn't, by the very nature of its specialization, grow increasingly exclusive in nature? I'd love to hear people (especially those more familiar with these language issues) weigh in on this.

(b) As a Pagan, I strive to move away from spirit/body dualities and to grapple with the Mystery of embodied spirit or soul, i.e. spirit that arises or emerges from physical existence, rather than merely being a "ghost in the machine" that happens to reside in it. On the other hand, as human beings I also think our experience of physical reality is shaped overwhelmingly by our self-awareness and by our creativity, meaning that physical reality is fluid and responsive and can be shaped by the very awareness/soul that arises from it. I'm wondering how this factors into this conversation on Dianic tradition and those who object to it. A lot of the conversation I've seen on the forums rejecting Dianic tradition as bigoted or discriminatory utilizes language about how a transgendered person can feel "born into the wrong body" - but this language seems to take for granted some kind of idea that the spirit/soul/mind is separate from the body and can get stuck in a "machine" that doesn't feel right. While I totally support people in choosing how to describe their own experiences and wouldn't want to say such a description is "wrong," it doesn't make much sense to me trying to work with a worldview that does not rely on spirit/body dualism. Since Pagans are a small minority of the overall population, I would guess that Pagans are also probably a minority of those who identify as transgender, which means descriptions of the transgender experience might be shaped by Abrahamic/monotheistic assumptions..... Are there Pagans out there who have found ways to talk about the transgender experience that do not rely on this kind of dualism? Or does it seem that the transgender experience itself actually appears to confirm this kind of dualism between spirit/mind and body? Or am I totally misunderstanding these explanations?