#wicce

Wiccegender

(pronounced witch-eh gender)

Wiccegender is a noungender that encapsulates a gender identity with a significant connection to identifying as a witch, practicing witchcraft, and concepts like the witch archetype within literature and pop culture while also simultaneously encapsulating a gender identity with a significant connection to concepts like womenhood or femmeness. You don't have to blanketly identify as a woman to identify as wiccegender, though. A wiccegender person may identify with womenhood but not explicitly call themselves a woman or may not identify as a woman or with womanhood, but does identify as a femme and with femmeness. A wiccegender person may also feel that being a lesbian or sapphic is a significant part of their gender identity. A significant part of wiccegender is recognizing how the patriarchy has used the word witch and the witch archetype as a weapon and reclaiming that. Wiccegender doesn't exclude people who express themselves/dress in a way that's stereotypically masculine, but as an identity does decenter men and manhood. Wicce is actually the Old English term for a woman who practiced magic. Though to re-clarify, you don't need to in any way identify as a woman to identify as wiccegender. For me, a big appeal of xenogenders is reconstructing gender identity in a way that decenters the language of the gender binary.

I sometimes see people make claims about where the word came from, or what it really means, but here's the thing — literally no one knows for sure where it came from.

The one thing we know is that "witch" came from the Middle English "wicche," which in turn came from the Old English "wicca" (masculine) and "wicce" (feminine). That's it.

We don't know back any further.

Scholars literally disagree about where wicca and wicce come from. The roots have been lost, a lot of different ideas have been proposed, but none are certain. Like we know it's related to the Old English verb "wiccian," but that just means "to bewitch" and no one know where that came from either. The OED just says it's of "obscure origin" and just fucking gave up. Some scholars say it comes from the roots for "wise person." Others say it comes from words meaning "to bend" or "to weave." Another theory is that it just came from roots meaning "to gesture mysteriously."

Literally almost no one agrees.

So when someone tries to explain where the words wicce and wicca came from with any certainty, take a minute because one of two things is happening:

Either this person didn't do their research or they have an agenda.

Or both.