#deconstructing

Matthias is an explicitly clear example of how a traumatized and hurt person (especially an impressionable and extra vulnerable child) can be manipulated into a hateful being. But he also demonstrates that bigots are not beyond hope, people are capable of rejecting hate.

Note this doesn't mean every hateful person is capable of change nor saying it's marginalized people's responsibility to facilitate that change. Nina doesn't do the work for him like some people like to imply. She was the push he needed and the thing that kept him going in moments of doubt. His deconstructing is difficult and often miserable. The extremes he feels caught between tear him apart.

do you have any advice for someone who doesn't have much background knowledge on how to get started? e.g. how to work with Mary, how to find Saints that resonate? thank you!! -- seashellspirit / garden-goth

Well hi! I'm so pleased to hear from you!

You are lucky in that there are more resources nowadays for getting started, especially when you don't have much of a background in Christian culture and beliefs. I know that it is daunting to see centuries of material and wonder "where do I even begin!?", especially when there's so much venom coming from far-right sources from their supposed Christian lens.

For me, even as I was raised in a Catholic but not very religious household, I had to teach myself too. Sources like Sara Raztresen's book Discovering Christian Witchcraft is a great starting point! It talks about working with Mary in a Christian context, angels, demons, the liturgical calendar, and it especially breaks down and re-explains how Scripture was and is used to demonize witchcraft, when in fact, we can definitely do a personal Christian practice that includes it. She's coming out with a book "Discerning Christian Witchcraft" in December 2025 and I'm counting down the days! For my prayers to Mary, there's online resources for praying the rosary. As long as you're comfortable with the prayers (even making your own prayers), you can call Mary with it. It's like holding her hand. AND! I recommend Sara's books because she has a super well-researched and comprehensive bibliography in that book that can help you explore even more things, like books from theologians and scholars who critically read Scripture and aim to dismantle the centuries of harm other interpreters have caused! Not many spiritual books have that. She also has a Youtube channel.

For saints, if you find a book on Saints A-Z, or any encyclopedia on them, read through it. See if there's saints in there that through their struggles, lives and patronages, you can resonate with a few.

Saints, Angels & Demons: An A-to-Z Guide to the Holy and the Damned by Gary Jansen is excellent, beyond gorgeous, and comprehensive! I found Judika Illes's book Encyclopedia of Mystics, Saints & Sages is also a good book if you still need to make your search non-suspicious to your folks. I find some of the information in it to be not that elaborated on, sometimes with too much of a New Age interpretation for my taste.

Are Transwomen Women?

“I don’t identify as a woman,” my spouse said. “I literally am one.”

“There are different types of women,” my spouse said, “and I am one of them.”

Later: “Transwomen are a subset of women.”

Actually, though, transwomen are not a subset of women. Transwomen are a subset of a superset that contains transwomen and natal women. The superset is new and has been named the same as its older subset (women), in order to be intentionally confusing.

The old set “women” had an objective definition (let’s not waste time hashing out what we already know about chromosomes and reproductive organs). The superset does not have an objective definition, except, “A set that happens to contain these other two sets.” You could similarly invent a set that contains apples and Siberian huskies. That’s semantically possible, if not very applicable to reality.

When a group of activists redefines a word, or more accurately, creates a new word by the same name that serves to supercede and erase the old word, does that act redefine the underlying reality? It does not. There are still some people who were born with female reproductive organs and some other people who were not.

“Transwomen are women” is a semantic trick. I get that it’s an important one for transwomen, but it is a trick nonetheless. My spouse, a MtF whose primary “womanly” quality is the application of makeup and feminine clothing, has nothing in common with, for example, a particular butch lesbian friend of mine. I’ve asked my spouse, and others, for the traits that overlap in that venn diagram, but they can’t be produced because they don’t exist. It is logically nonsensical to say that these two types of people are both part of the same “woman” set, however politically expedient that may be.

There are objective realities that apply to one set and not the other, as with our apples and Siberian huskies.

Radical feminists are not excluding transwomen from the set of women. Reality is excluding transwomen from the set of women. Math and logic are excluding transwomen from the set of women.

If I decided I was a dolphin, it would not be the dolphin community that kept me from being a dolphin. It would be my lack of dolphin chromosomes, flippers and tail fin. I could redefine the word dolphin to include dolphins and humans who feel like dolphins, or even dolphins and apples, but that would neither reflect nor change reality.

Everyone knows this. Those who have chosen to call transwomen women are being nice. And hey, it’s great to be nice, and I get that. Sometimes being nice is more important than being accurate. Often it is.

But saying transwomen are women is a denial of reality. It’s a political, semantic move to make transwomen feel better about themselves.

What difference does it make whether we deny reality? That’s a topic for many other posts.