Thread by @reclaimingtrans

Some of the most traumatic conversion practices I experienced were religious rituals performed by transphobic Dianic witches. They really messed my head up and had a lasting negative impact. I've wanted to write about them for a while now but I'm still too raw to go into details.

There was actually a very strong religious aspect to the early radical feminist detrans community, drawing mostly on lesbian feminist paganism and goddess worship, focused especially on myths about Amazons and more aggressive or monstrous goddesses, not the soft motherly ones.

We actually weren't particularly attached to Artemis but we made connections with Dianic witches all the same because of their transphobia and female separatism. And some of us participated in some their rituals, including one meant to "heal" us from our transness/transition...

...and help us "reclaim being female". Such mixed messages, being welcomed as "sisters" and "Amazon daughters" and told we're just like them & then being offered rituals to get rid of our transness, what made us different from other lesbians, so we could become part of the group.

I have old writing where I talk about those rituals and their impact on me at the time and when I reread it now I see how I was really messed up by them. At the time, I thought they were helpful and I was honored to take part but now I'm deeply disturbed by the whole experience.

Someday I want to write the whole story out, how I met these transphobic Dianic witches and the rituals I took part in and so on, but right now it's still too intense. I'm still processing what happened and how it impacted me. It's one of the most horrifying things I experienced.

Using rituals and religious ceremonies as a form of conversion practice can create long-lasting damage. Turning people's hunger for meaning, healing, transcendence, connection with a spiritual community & so on against them, to try to destroy a part of themselves, it's horrific.

It makes no sense at all to try to end conversion practices and exempt religious groups or practices. I'm not sure whether legal bans are the best way to stop that kind of religious abuse but it should be stopped because it's destructive, dangerous & causes lasting harm.

My concern with legal bans would be that they'd be selectively enforced & tend to target religious minorities & people of color & that they could just drive groups underground. I can't see how a legal ban would be enough to end them, that would require larger cultural change.

I have no problem making it easier to hold religious groups accountable for conversion practices but I think religious communities themselves would do better at that than the state. If the religious communities don't change, conversion practices will just go on in secret.

I'd rather the pagan and lesbian communities hold those Dianic witches accountable, rather than turning to the state. Much of the pagan community already has turned against these particular Dianic pagans because of prior transphobia and kicked them out of events and spaces.

I think conversion practices survivors should be able to sue religious groups for damages but I don't think I'd pursue that route even if it was an option because it would be re-traumatizing and the people who hurt me would try to spin it to make themselves look like matyrs.

I'm much more interested in making connections with members of pagan & lesbian communities to make it even harder for this group to participate in pagan & lesbian events, make it harder for them to get a platform, etc. Work on creating more community accountability.

Using religious practices to try to "heal" someone from being trans or gay is abuse. No one is entitled to abuse anyone like that. Religious freedom doesn't include using religion as a justification to abuse people and those who do so must be held accountable, one way or another.