Pagan Weekly News #30 - Monday, 20 February 2012

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The weekend of February 18th was this year's PantheaCon in California. One of the world's largest indoor Pagan festivals. This week we talked about one of the key issues that arose during the event. Namely, Z. Budapest's CisWomen only ritual for honoring the Sacred Body. At last year's PantheaCon she conducted a similar ritual and excluded transgender women from the Circle. Unfortunately, last year she did not make it clear in the ritual's program description that transgender women would be excluded. This year she made it clear in the program.

Zaracon, KaliSara and RevKess all chimed in with a number of thoughts and comments on the topic as well as referencing various blogs and articles that covered the event. The following is a list of those blogs and articles, at least as far as RevKess has been able to find them:

• Gender and Transgender in Modern Paganism, a free ebook published by the Circle of Cerridwen including a selection of articles and letters written by a variety of people after the 2011 PantheaCon.
• A rather hate-filled blog post by Z. Budapest claiming that all men hate women and that any man who favors anal intercourse is a latent homosexual.
• Rowan Pendragon's blog article calling the PantheaCon theme of Unity in Diversity a fail.
• Jason Pitzl-Waters, who attended PantheaCon, covers some of the ongoing commentary regarding the issue at this year's event. Posted to the Wild Hunt on Monday the 20th.
• Some of Jason's coverage of last year's incident, provided as background. Posted in March of 2011 on the Wild Hunt.
• Lupa, author and blogger on Other Kin issues, chimes in with some thoughts.
• Robert, the Holy Idiot, makes his own comments on Doing Magick blog.
• WitchDoctorJoe on RattleBone adds his comments.
• Fyre Lite of Inciting a Riot posts his own coverage of Gender Exclusivity at PantheaCon.
• Yeshe Rabbit posts her reactions and further comments on Way of the Rabbit.
• Z Budapest further exacerbates the issue on Facebook.
• David Salisbury calls the Unity in Diversity theme a joke.
• T Thorn Coyle invokes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and the concept of holding Beloved Community as she makes her own statement regarding the CisWomen only ritual and the uproar that has resulted.
• An anonymous letter to the editor of the PNC-Minnesota Bureau detail her pain and disappoint.
• The PNC-Bay Area Bureau covers PantheaCon and the controversy in their own recap article.
• The Provocation blog, a non-Pagan blog, addresses the issue comparing Z Budapest to Republican Rick Santorum.
• KaliSara of Pagan-Musings Podcast writes her reactions to Z Budapest's man-hating blog post on her own blog, Kali-Ma: The Darker Side of Parenting.

After last year's PantheaCon incident, as it became known on PMPC, the hosts of the parent program did a two part series on Transgender Pagan Issues. You can find those shows and others listed below:

• Sun Goddess-Moon God: Gender Bending Spirituality
• Transgender Pagans Revisited
• Intolerance, Harassment and Bullying: Children and Adults
• Sun & Moon Magick, Religious Intolerance, Intro to Tarot

The topic of African Witch Children and African Pentacostal pastor Helen Ukpabio was brought up towards the bottom of the second hour, but Zaracon had to bow out of the show due to some emotional responses he was holding back about that issue and the PantheaCon incident. Thought we did not cover the topic we wanted to share some of the links we had prepared in case anyone else wishes to pursue the topic on their own.

• End of the Wicked, a short film by Ukpabio that spreads lies and propaganda. Just one of many films she has produced to that effect.
• Styling herself a Witch-Hunter from Nigeria, Helen Ukpabio explains herself in an article published in the New York Times.

On much lighter note, we wished the authors M.R. Sellars and Diana L. Paxson a very happy birthday! Sellars is the author of the Rowan Gant Investigations and Diana has written, among other things, Taking Up the Runes and parts of the Mists of Avalon series with the late Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Our music play list for the show:

1. Heartbeat - Warrior Within
2. Wendy Rule - Shine - Deity
3. Leigh Anne Hussey - I Used to be a Powerful Priestess - Homebrew
4. Bone Poets Orchestra - Pleasure of the Sky - Belladonna Smiles

Pagan Weekly News is a proud part of the Pagan-Musings Podcast Channel, airing live every Monday at 7pm. Hosted by Zaracon and RevKess with KaliSara filling in or joining in from time to time. The hosts bring news, views, interviews, and opinions from the Pagan Community and cover news from mainstream and Pagan media sources. The Pagan-Musings Podcast series can be found via BTR and on iTunes. Remember to like Pagan Weekly News and Pagan-Musings Podcast on Facebook. Questions, comments, suggestions, etc can be emailed to the hosts at paganmusings@gmail.com.