Embracing Transgender Equality, Inside and Outside Religious Communities

[Natasha]

Embracing Transgender Equality, Inside and Outside Religious Communities

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kayley-whalen/transgender-equality-religion_b_3486606.html
6/23/13
Kayley Whalen

While I was marching in DC's Capital Pride this year, a trans ally watching the parade tried handing me a sticker that said "God Made Me Trans." As an atheist transgender woman, the gracious gesture simultaneously warmed my heart and stirred up a sense of outrage at the assumption that I needed a higher power to validate my gender identity. I told them, no, I can't take the sticker, and yet they kept thrusting it at me, trying to stick it on me like a game of pin the tail on the donkey. But the parade was moving forward, and rather than engaging them in a more productive dialogue about how their religious values mirrored many of my humanist values, I took the easy way out and quickly ducked away back into my contingent in the parade.

[Michelle-G]

" . . . and stirred up a sense of outrage at the assumption that I needed a higher power to validate my gender identity. "

Really?  Is her ego so fragile that this is how she interprets such a gesture?  I don't need anyone to validate my gender identity, and that's not what this was about.  It was about support, not validation.

Whether she values the well-meant show of support from an ally with religious beliefs or not is her business.  I don't much care what people believe as long as it doesn't hurt others.  But is she really in any position to discount support from any ally?  Or is she just being crass?

Apparently she hasn't considered herself atheist for very long.  Whatever happened to "No, thanks, I'm an atheist."  and just moving on?