HELLENIC TERFS MAKE NO DAMM SENSE HERE'S WHY
My references: I live on terf island. Currently transitioning.
Throughout my time spent in Hellenic spaces I was not able to avoid transphobia. There are an uncomfortable number of transphobic practitioners who claim authority as high priestesses and powerful sorcerers who line their TikToks and Tumblr posts with the cultural appropriation and gender essentialist rhetoric. In Hellenic spaces many of them also claim to worship goddesses like Artemis and Aphrodite. Like all of TERFism it doesn’t make sense.
Artemis I can somewhat understand. If a TERF wanted a “women only” space, Artemis would be an appropriate option. Artemis was a goddess of chastity and was very protective of it much like how many of us were taught to protect our virginity as children and teens, she was also very supportive to women, particularly to midwives and those who were pregnant but even in her mythology Artemis also had men as followers including Daphnis and Scamandrius. The hero Siporites of Crete was even turned into a woman by Artemis which can be interpreted idyllically as the hero transitioning with the help of Artemis. If Artemis in her mythology wasn’t exclusive to women then it shouldn’t be now.
Aphrodite is a bit of a different case. Aphrodite is worshipped more as an archetype of beauty or “divine femininity”. TERFS believe Aphrodite to be the “perfect woman” “so how can anyone understand but women?” This ignores the fact that Aphrodite herself had a male presenting form Aphroditus. In whatever form Aphrodite takes, she is a deity of beauty and love. Ancient Greece had many different words for love: Agape (love for all), Eros (romantic/sexual), Philia (deep friendship), Ludus (playful love), Pragma (longstanding love/devotion), Philautia (self love), Storge (familial love), and Mania (obsession). Aphrodite today represents an all-encompassing love including all of these possibilities. It's just common sense to know that love in it’s many forms is not exclusive to cisgender women so neither is Aphrodite. Using her likeness to promote premeditated hate goes against who Aphrodite is at her core.
Many pagan TERFs have their own version of a persecution complex. They recognise how they themselves are a part of a marginalised community both religious and gender based and that history and personal experience fuels their overly defensive behaviour. When other marginalised communities mix with theirs it feels like an attack on their safe spaces. They use their personal experiences and community history to justify their bigoted attacks on other marginalised people. All the while pushing up a facade of spiritual authority so their ideals can’t be questioned.