Actually, I found this to be one of the more intelligent articles I've read about the issue of faith as it regards transgender people. Unlike nearly every other article on this topic which immediately condemns us and labels us as an abomination this is actually thoughtful and questioning. There's hope for this guy.
That he expresses these points as questions and not as statements is encouraging. But the real question is what is it that makes one male or female?
And this is not arbitrary. As a trans person (or more specifically, as a trans person who is comfortable living in a gender binary) I believe that I AM created female. It's just that the essence of my creation is not in my physical body but rather in my soul (or in my psyche, for those who, like Jung, prefer a more therapeutic term).
And this is the crux of the religious issue! As long as we equate gender with physical sex this will continue to confound people. But science and medicine have revealed that these two things are separate. Acknowledging this is the first step towards reconciling the validity of the transgender experience.
QuoteBut we don't believe this alienation can be solved by pretending as though we have Pharaoh-like dominion over our maleness or femaleness.
In a way, we do. Religious conservatives tend to believe that gender is divinely ordained and the evidence is found between a baby's legs. While I agree that a divine plan has determined my gender it's in a place where human eyes can't find it.
And this ironclad bond between sex and gender remains the fundamental problem. And like it or not, we as humans have, in fact, taken the power of determining gender from God and given it to human doctors, who perform this important task with no more thought and attention beyond a quick search for a penis or lack thereof and a defacto pronouncement of gender.
And while I deplore the tendency of conservatives to accept orthodoxy that contradicts reality I can accept that this is the nature of religion. Some faith communities have transcended this limitation, others have not. I'm encouraged that he understands that this limitation is man-made and not spiritual.
As a trans Christian I DO understand that discipleship means an acceptance of who we are as men and women! And it took me many years to finally accept my gender despite the contradictions of my body. Once I did accept that my faith became a much stronger and more productive part of my life.
In one sense, our sense of self (which resides in the soul) IS separate from the body, a fact alluded to in various biblical passages. But in another sense our gender identity is inextricably linked to our bodies, and this is why we work so hard to achieve congruence between our bodies and our souls.
The issue here is the question - "what defines what?". The conventional thought is that it is body that defines [soul] gender, which is contrary to Christian theology. We, as trans folks, know that it is the soul which defines all.
We are not surgically altering our genders. Our genders are enduring and immutable. What we are altering is our bodies' physical sex.
