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The Chalice and the Rainbow: Conflicts Between Women’s Spirituality and Transgender Rights in US Wicca in the 2010s

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Female Leaders in New Religious Movements

Abstract

US Wicca has been the hybrid product of British Traditional Witchcraft and 1970s-era American feminism. The twenty-first-century US Pagan movement has seen changing definitions of gender and the rise of transgender and gender-fluid identity in the public sphere. Philosophies at the heart of the women’s spirituality movement that helped form Wicca and other US contemporary Pagan traditions are now incompatible with many beliefs and needs of transgender contemporary Pagans and their allies. As its members seek to affirm transgender identity , the current Pagan movement is lacking in its ability to adequately analyze the role of sex differences in global gender inequality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA

    Michelle Mueller

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  1. Michelle Mueller
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen

  2. Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden

    Christian Giudice

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Mueller, M. (2017). The Chalice and the Rainbow: Conflicts Between Women’s Spirituality and Transgender Rights in US Wicca in the 2010s. In: Bårdsen Tøllefsen, I., Giudice, C. (eds) Female Leaders in New Religious Movements. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61527-1_13

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