Virginity, Schmirginity

I've been trying to get a straight answer from folks over on TC regarding the theological implications of virginity for goddesses like Athena, Artemis, Hekate, etc. So far, the only direct statement I seem to be able to get from anyone is: "the ancient Greeks thought about virginity differently than we think about it today" and every once in a while the slight expansion, "for the ancient Greeks, being a virgin just meant 'unmarried'."

Which is all very well and good, if I were a middle schooler who didn't know how to use Wikipedia. But since this is pretty much the first and most obvious information I was able to find on my own with the very limited resources I have (Wikipedia aside, a bit of Googling brings up some reliable academic sources and a few articles by modern Pagans as well)... it is kind of frustrating. Sometimes it seems that these kinds of general all-purpose responses triggered by key words (virginity? I know I have my pre-formulated reply about virginity in here somewhere...) are used by modern Pagans to prop up a semblance of expertise while covering a multitude of inconsistencies and downright contradictions.

In my short time looking into this, I've found "hard" polytheists who insist on interpretations of the virginity of Greek goddesses to mean everything from "since women in patriarchal ancient Greece were not allowed to have sex outside of marriage, virginity today means you literally have to abstain from sex" all the way to "virginity was about female empowerment, and therefore today it means you should have tons of sex because sexual liberation is how we express our female power." Since I happen to think both of these extremes are poor excuses for feminism and female empowerment, I'm baffled that somehow this whole debate has been carefully managed by resorting to the same basic response, "ancient Greeks thought about virginity differently than we do today." That response leaves me asking, And.....? It's a masterpiece of social cohesion in the face of mind-boggling diversity. It's basically a way of avoiding confronting the fact that your theology says you worship distinct, separate deities, and yet these same deities seem to manifest to you (plural) in such incredibly different ways that from an outside perspective it seems odd to claim that Greek-Virgin-Goddess-X-let's-have-sex is really the same as Greek-Virgin-Goddess-X-no-seriously-cut-it-out, but Goddess-Y-let's-have-sex-oh-by-the-way-I'm-Norse just simply can't be the same deity at all, no way, no how. What I'm saying is, as someone who is not a hard polytheist in any way, the lines that get drawn seem pretty arbitrary.

Hard polytheists crack me up sometimes.

Since I'm not a hard polytheist, I don't have much of a problem is there's a huge diversity in how people relate to and interpret deities that they call by the same name. But it's seems to be that intellectual integrity could be better served by asking hard questions and laying bare that diversity in a way that can give us insights and spark new ways of relating to deity, instead of trying to act the expert. I used to buy the line that Hellenic Recons had so many more sources and resources available to them for their efforts at reconstruction than those interested in CR. But now I'm starting to think that's a load of bull and HR folks are just as deep in the process of cobbling things together from half-understood academic sources as CRs are.

In any case, here are some of my remaining questions about virginity in ancient Greek society (keeping in mind the answer could be and most likely is, "ancient Greek society was diverse and evolving, so the answer to your question is going to be complex"):

• Why would a goddess choose to be virginal? (Is the act of choosing significant, or only the state of being virginal itself? Is there a connection between the two?)
• What is the spiritual or theological significance of virginity in both goddesses and human worshippers?
• If the ancient Greeks merely equated virginity to "being unmarried," then why do so many of the myths involve women who lose their virginity through rape or trysts outside of the context of marriage?
• Why did the Greeks use the same word (nymphe) to describe both "nature spirits" of a local landscape and its features, and a "bride," i.e. a woman who is married but has not yet had children?
• In light of the answer to that question, what is the theological and/or ritual significance of descriptions of Artemis as having nymphs as companions and priestesses?
• How do modern Pagans approach and understand stories of Artemis punishing not only rapists but also the victims of rape and sexual assault?

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?