One of the ways that the right and the centre tries to shut down discussion and debate is by dismissing it as “identity politics” and “the bickering of the left”. But what they fail to say is that there wouldn’t be “identity politics” if they were not constantly trying to remove the rights of marginalized people such as trans people and sex workers.

This is not just an argument about a lifestyle choice. Bickering about lifestyle choices is arguing about whether feminists should wear makeup. Including trans women in feminism is not a “lifestyle choice”, it’s a matter of necessity.

Many radical feminists want to exclude trans women from feminism and from the status of being women. If women are oppressed “as a class” as radical feminism claims, then trans women are oppressed AS WOMEN, & should therefore count as women within that paradigm.

I agree women are oppressed obviously, just not “as a class” because other factors come into play (class, racialized status, sexuality, disability, religion, age, gender expression etc). That’s why I’m an intersectional feminist. Being female doesn’t override all other factors that come into play. Black women have a very different experience of oppression than white women, for example.

As a nonbinary person who is AFAB, I’m still read as a woman by most people, who refer to me as “she” and address me as “ma’am” in shops, unless informed otherwise. So that means I am still affected by sexism and misogyny. Unless there’s an all-gender toilet facility, I use the ladies’ loo. And I’m still a feminist.

Because trans women are women, they also experience misogyny, violence, and other forms of oppression. So obviously they should be included in feminism and feminist spaces.

And trans men should also be included in feminist analysis because they are still affected by issues such as reproductive health care.

I don’t go to women-only Pagan rituals but I definitely think trans women should be included in those, too. Thankfully, most such rituals seem to include trans women nowadays.

Gardnerian Wicca is currently afflicted by a small minority of very loud transphobes. We all wish they would go away and stop calling themselves “traditional”. There’s nothing traditional about their views. There have been many transgender initiates of Gardnerian Wicca; I’m aware of one who was initiated in the early 1990s, and I’m sure there are others. There have also been many lesbian, gay, and bisexual initiates of Gardnerian Wicca, at least as far back as the 1980s, and probably earlier.

As The Charge of the Goddess states, “All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals”.

It doesn’t say only heterosexual acts of love and pleasure between cisgender people. It says ALL acts of love and pleasure.

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