Caitlyn Jenner as the Goddess? Seriously?

Once again I check out Patheos Pagan channel and read yet another entry that simply has me going “what the fuck?”

Alone In Her Presence: Caitlyn Jenner and Still Knowing Goddess written by someone named Erick DuPree does a reasonably decent job of explaining the concept of Divine immanence but then steps off immediately into the ozone. Erick defends his teaching women the women's mysteries using the Goddess within us as an excuse for doing so. Let's look a bit into this and how it is almost impossible not to see this as sexists as all hell. A man, and one into trantric practice at that (sexual magic/yoga) presumes to teach women about mysteries that have been the exclusive providence of women since the dawn of history and then hangs this whole thing on a brand spanking newly transitioned celebrity transsexual with literally only days of “experience” living as a woman and one totally sheltered from the reality most women deal with on a daily basis at that by virtue of being a celebrity!

Gee, who could possibly see anything wrong with this?

Just like another author from this site, the Allergic Pagan, I've mentioned before, Erick apparently likes to take perfectly good words with well established meanings and just redefine them to suit himself. In this case it is matriarchy. In trying to parse his using this term it is clear he is not using the established meaning but hanging some internal sense of worshiping women on it instead. The word means a society ruled by women, something that never actually existed in the real world throughout human history. What some people called matriarchies in the ancient world were in fact egalitarian societies which admittedly, viewed from the patriarchy of today can be seen as matriarchy simply by virtue of difficulty in most people of actually grasping societies where men and women are actually equal.

Erick is blown away by the image of Caitlyn Jenner, America's latest three day wonder. Of course he is! The image is overly sexualized and photoshopped to turn a 65 year old newly transitioned transsexual into a masculine wet dream image. In other words, the very sexist patriarchal worst of reducing women's worth to whether or not some man gets a hardon or not, to be blunt as hell.

And let's not even go further into exactly how creepy it is for a man into trantric sexual practices to be teaching women about the women's mysteries, something he cannot have any personal knowledge about but does put him in a position of authority over a group of unsuspecting women. Gee, what could possibly go wrong here?

I am not going to attack Caitlyn Jenner. The journey she is about to start is a long and difficult one I actually know quite a bit about having lived roughly half of my adult life first as a nominal male and then a woman just as the ancient transsexual priestesses of the Goddess before me. But Erick, my dear, there are damn good reasons why male bodied people were not among the priestesses of the ancient world and it has nothing to do with the fact that the Divine is part of you as it is myself. Your heart might be in a good place but please take a step back and see that women need to address the patriarchy as empowered women and having a man “show them the way” doesn't cut it in a world where men telling women who they are and passing judgment on their worth is the problem.

There is no paradox with immanence btw. It is simply a concept that humankind understood the Divine by until the Abrahamic religions screwed it up with Poppa god. Paganism today, in a true paradox, has turned from the Poppa God to mostly the ancient concept of the Divine Feminine principle, not completely, but in that the majority of Pagans now refer to the Goddess rather than God and Goddess from Wicca, even those who define themselves as Wiccan. But sexism is still the order of the day among Pagans who will forgive a child molesting sexual predator male “leader” but vilify any Crone who dares to speak out against it.

Sexism, pure and simple. And I am getting really sick and tired of seeing in in Pagan venues that should know better.