Hello,
By today's standards it seems that anything other than sex by marital consent is a sin. Yet we are forgiven our sins. It is our sins that enable us to learn, and amend our behavior. Is being transgender just a joy ride. It has been said that our greatest accomplishment is to receive pleasure. Yet, transitioning is a genetic psycho-dynamic that evolves that may, or may not be based on receiving pleasure. Today it seems we restrict our thoughts by believing being transgender is a sin because it is a sexual fetish, however the transition is not a fetish at all, it is a perception, an identification and a direction. Like some sins being transgender is looked on as a mental illness, but how can that be when many find it gives them a self expression they never had before. What is the conclusion can we hate either the sinner who is transgender or even the sin, when within us all we have felt an impulse to come out in this way. Are we sinners who are forgiven since like, and unlike receiving pleasure in some way we achieve self validation. Is it a mental illness, if it is it may also be harmless, but today I choose to see it is a life affirming solution that also may require evaluation and treatment.
Sins in the sense you discuss are a religious construct. Unless you strive to follow some fundamentalist belief system, I'd look for greener pad and fresher air if I were you. Judging yourself by thoroughly subjective standards that don't work for you is futile at best.
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being transgender is not a sin, as sins are constructs of religions, and those religions are only "true" to the followers, for people like me who don't believe in religion, as I have my own spiritual beliefs, the idea of our whole existence being a sin is borderline insulting to me.
I left the church because of the hypocrisy I felt. Love thy fellow man, forgiveness and love, understanding and compassion. Yet to be different is a sin, to be pink or blue, left or right of their center line. None of it makes sense to be condemned for being a loving caring compassionate human being living a clean and proper life in different cloths or company.
Oh and don't get me started on the abusers protected by the church, and not just the Catholic Church. My abuser was a Presbyterian clergy member. So transitioning is the farthest thing from being a sin, I love my wife, I don't mess around on her, I don't harm others and I live a clean and moral life and no church can say I don't. I am asexual so sex doesn't even factor into this. I know sexual fetishes all too well as I used them to hide the true me and practising fetish's disgusted and demeaned me and just makes me sick to my stomach thinking about that period in my life. I'm not aroused or pleasured by transitioning and I'm of clearer mind now than ever before. Now that I'm the new me I'm not self harming, abusing or neglecting me. I'm also now happy in life and not wanting to end it any more. Sorry I rant but that's me.
Hi Wendy,
Nice thoughts on a tough subject for so many people.
For me:
If there is fundamental standard for sinning, it would be an inability to follow the "Golden Rule:"
One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.
When it comes to pleasure, I look at pleasure along the lines of Ethical Hedonism (enjoying pleasurable things) and Epicurean Hedonism(freedom from negative things).
What I think is being talked about here is the mixing of gender with social indoctrination.
In Samoa, and other Polynesian societies, people like the fa'afafine are not considered mentally ill.But in Western societies trans has been considered a mental illness for a long time. How is it that in one society something is considered 'wrong' but in another society, that same 'thing' is business as usual. The problem the West has had with trans, probably has more to do with social indoctrination, rather than trans people themselves.
I think if psychological problems do occur in a trans person, it isn't so much the trans aspect of the persons psyche, it's the persons social indoctrination interfering with their mind.
I don't know is dyslexia a sin
Until I did this..... I lived a life of constant suffering, self hatred, and Suicidal Thoughts. I thought it was my normal, you know the way I was supposed to live. Because it's better to live that way, then to sin. I was worried about burning in hell, but I was already living in it.
I became a lot happier when I Let Go of the social construct known as religion.
( Also I wouldn't go too deep into examining what's a sin and what's not. Man wrote those rules, and they were cultural to the Times hey were written in. Those rules were not written by a sky-lord or some sort of other Supreme Being. )
Quote from: Gertrude on March 23, 2018, 10:01:14 PM
Sins in the sense you discuss are a religious construct. Unless you strive to follow some fundamentalist belief system, I'd look for greener pad and fresher air if I were you. Judging yourself by thoroughly subjective standards that don't work for you is futile at best.
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I have never accepted the idea of sin as "statutory evil" - that something is classified as evil just because there is a rule against it. Rules have to make sense. For a sin to truly be a sin, it has to cause harm. Otherwise, it is just a bunch of white old farts on a power trip.
Being transgender is not a sin. We are born transgender, and that makes it part of God's work. God doesn't make mistakes: he makes us transgender because that's what he wants for us.
As long as I was trying not to be transgender, I was going against God's plan for me, and I was miserable. Now that I have recognized that I am trans, and I am taking steps to live accordingly, my life is going according to God's plan, and I am much happier.
Quote from: Wendyway2 on March 23, 2018, 06:13:10 PM
Hello,
By today's standards it seems that anything other than sex by marital consent is a sin. Yet we are forgiven our sins. It is our sins that enable us to learn, and amend our behavior. Is being transgender just a joy ride. It has been said that our greatest accomplishment is to receive pleasure. Yet, transitioning is a genetic psycho-dynamic that evolves that may, or may not be based on receiving pleasure. Today it seems we restrict our thoughts by believing being transgender is a sin because it is a sexual fetish, however the transition is not a fetish at all, it is a perception, an identification and a direction. Like some sins being transgender is looked on as a mental illness, but how can that be when many find it gives them a self expression they never had before. What is the conclusion can we hate either the sinner who is transgender or even the sin, when within us all we have felt an impulse to come out in this way. Are we sinners who are forgiven since like, and unlike receiving pleasure in some way we achieve self validation. Is it a mental illness, if it is it may also be harmless, but today I choose to see it is a life affirming solution that also may require evaluation and treatment.
Sin does not exist, and something is wrong only if it hurts another person. Thus, sin can never be forgiven: it does not exist.
Is the mild discomfort non-passing transsexuals cause to the untamed, as much as the psychological pain the transsexual must endure. Thus it can be argued that coming out of the closet is more moral than not, as it can be argued the overall pain to the Christ Consciousness is decreased.
Fetish does not exist, and is only wrong if it severely traumatizes another person. Whether or not something is a fetish is solely decided by its popularity level with the public.
If a man lusts for vaginas, it is not considered a fetish, simply because such a thing is popular in the public.
If a man craves and lusts for a food, it is not considered a fetish, simply because lust for food is popular in the public.
Quote from: stephaniec on March 24, 2018, 12:44:24 AM
I don't know is dyslexia a sin
Good point.
A sin can only be something that you do, not something that you are.
The bottom line is that sin and religion is an invention of humans, often used as a tribal tool to acquire power and wealth and control people. Participating in such activities has its risks at best, at worst, crushes individuals. If there's any sin, it's the musterbation of the collective against people that don't fit in to their world view, with disastrous results. IMO it's the core problem causing adjustment and addiction problems in society. Yet, the simpletons think facile pre and proscription of behavior will magically solve these problems. War on drugs, war on guns, war on poverty, focus on the family/family values. Doesn't work, never has. The problem is that most people don't really understand what they believe and why and the consequences of those beliefs. They don't understand their own motivations but want to control others. It's a recipe for lots of problems.
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As a child in the Evangelical church, I knew a lot of youth ministers who preached against both homosexuality and divorce... but several of them later got divorced, so I don't know where they got off on wanting gay marriage to be banned while wanting their divorces to not only be legal, but also expecting not to be excised from their churches or removed from their positions for divorcing.
My point being, if a religious person is claiming that transition is a sin and is getting on your case about it, they better be %100 consistent that they aren't committing any acts themselves that they'd consider a sin, and I can practically guarantee they aren't. Make up your own mind about what is or isn't a sin, and don't worry about what other people have to say about it. Unless they're truly paragons of total religious consistency, they don't have the right to condemn you.
Being trans does not cause harm to anyone; and transitioning is a path to peace and happiness for many, so how is it a a bad thing?
Quote from: Lucca on August 24, 2018, 08:38:38 AM
As a child in the Evangelical church, I knew a lot of youth ministers who preached against both homosexuality and divorce... but several of them later got divorced, so I don't know where they got off on wanting gay marriage to be banned while wanting their divorces to not only be legal, but also expecting not to be excised from their churches or removed from their positions for divorcing.
My point being, if a religious person is claiming that transition is a sin and is getting on your case about it, they better be %100 consistent that they aren't committing any acts themselves that they'd consider a sin, and I can practically guarantee they aren't. Make up your own mind about what is or isn't a sin, and don't worry about what other people have to say about it. Unless they're truly paragons of total religious consistency, they don't have the right to condemn you.
Well, Yeshua never touched on homosexuality or transgender in any form and further, the ancient jews had 6 different gender categories to describe people, not just male and female. They look into to scripture to support their agenda. It's a form of abrogation. Other religions do the same thing.
Quote from: MissyMay2.0 on August 24, 2018, 12:08:06 PM
Being trans does not cause harm to anyone; and transitioning is a path to peace and happiness for many, so how is it a a bad thing?
Look up musterbation. Albert Ellis had a lot to say about stuff like this. It's how these people were raised and that environment. They need certainty in this world and to belong to a tribe that thinks as they do. Basically, musterbation is I must behave a certain way to be acceptable to others, others must behave a certain way to be acceptable to me and the world must be a certain way to be acceptable to me and my tribe. This has led to a lot of problems in our world.
Quote from: Gertrude on August 24, 2018, 12:43:13 PM
Well, Yeshua never touched on homosexuality or transgender in any form and further, the ancient jews had 6 different gender categories to describe people, not just male and female. They look into to scripture to support their agenda. It's a form of abrogation. Other religions do the same thing.
Well, I've read enough conflicting scholarly interpretations of the Bible that I just don't care to make any appeals about what it does or doesn't say anymore. The reality is that people will believe whatever they want about it, and will usually only change their minds in response to non-biblical arguments and events. I've known people who changed their minds about homosexuality or young-Earth creationism because they saw the destructive results that their beliefs about those things caused; I've never known anyone who changed their minds primarily on Biblical study and interpretation.
God is both a creator and a destroyer. Creation is associated with women and destruction with men. If anything God sounds bi-gender.
The bible and other documents were established to guide mankind into a society containing social norms. Those times needed those beliefs and they did what was needed back then. We are no longer primitive and have evolved. Now we have enough science, knowledge, experience being civilized to move on.
Not everything in the book(s) is bad or good and some still have relevance today.
I am spiritual and do believe in a higher power.
From what I understand ->-bleeped-<- begins in the womb.
Which Christianity tells us is because God created you.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM IV) (1994) is at least in part, the result of insufficient or inappropriate androgenization of the brain at a critical stage of embryonic development. As a result, the affected individual may be left with somewhere between a partial and a full sense of having a cross-sexed gender identity. Essentially creating a not-male, not-female but otherwise permanent gender variant condition. Even though there apparently are some individuals who fall very close to or dead-center on the gender identity spectrum, most gender variant people can easily identify with being closer to one end of the spectrum then the other.
Quote from: DawnOday on August 24, 2018, 03:03:00 PM
From what I understand ->-bleeped-<- begins in the womb.
Which Christianity tells us is because God created you.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM IV) (1994) is at least in part, the result of insufficient or inappropriate androgenization of the brain at a critical stage of embryonic development. As a result, the affected individual may be left with somewhere between a partial and a full sense of having a cross-sexed gender identity. Essentially creating a not-male, not-female but otherwise permanent gender variant condition. Even though there apparently are some individuals who fall very close to or dead-center on the gender identity spectrum, most gender variant people can easily identify with being closer to one end of the spectrum then the other.
I believe that being gender variant makes us special and not in a bad way. It provides us with unique challenged but strengths as well. We all heard the stories about how men can't relate to women and vise versa. Personally, I've really never had this problem. I get it. This has to be a strength that very few people have. We are special and God knows it even if mankind does not.
Quote from: Lucca on August 24, 2018, 02:41:09 PM
Well, I've read enough conflicting scholarly interpretations of the Bible that I just don't care to make any appeals about what it does or doesn't say anymore. The reality is that people will believe whatever they want about it, and will usually only change their minds in response to non-biblical arguments and events. I've known people who changed their minds about homosexuality or young-Earth creationism because they saw the destructive results that their beliefs about those things caused; I've never known anyone who changed their minds primarily on Biblical study and interpretation.
I am not a christian scholar at all. Just been through 8 years of Episcopal parochial school and a lifetime of observing useful idiots of a lot of different kinds of beliefs. The older I get, the less tribal I have become. It's a pox on us. My point was that people participate in confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, often to convince or reinforce they are right and in an effort to get or make everyone else agree with them. There are people like this in all political and religious stripes as well as stuff that shouldn't even be a belief system, but gets turned into one.
Quote from: Gertrude on August 24, 2018, 04:35:44 PM
I am not a christian scholar at all. Just been through 8 years of Episcopal parochial school and a lifetime of observing useful idiots of a lot of different kinds of beliefs. The older I get, the less tribal I have become. It's a pox on us. My point was that people participate in confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, often to convince or reinforce they are right and in an effort to get or make everyone else agree with them. There are people like this in all political and religious stripes as well as stuff that shouldn't even be a belief system, but gets turned into one.
Yup to control others.
Quote from: Wendyway2 on March 23, 2018, 06:13:10 PM
Hello,
By today's standards it seems that anything other than sex by marital consent is a sin. Yet we are forgiven our sins. It is our sins that enable us to learn, and amend our behavior. Is being transgender just a joy ride. It has been said that our greatest accomplishment is to receive pleasure. Yet, transitioning is a genetic psycho-dynamic that evolves that may, or may not be based on receiving pleasure. Today it seems we restrict our thoughts by believing being transgender is a sin because it is a sexual fetish, however the transition is not a fetish at all, it is a perception, an identification and a direction. Like some sins being transgender is looked on as a mental illness, but how can that be when many find it gives them a self expression they never had before. What is the conclusion can we hate either the sinner who is transgender or even the sin, when within us all we have felt an impulse to come out in this way. Are we sinners who are forgiven since like, and unlike receiving pleasure in some way we achieve self validation. Is it a mental illness, if it is it may also be harmless, but today I choose to see it is a life affirming solution that also may require evaluation and treatment.
By today's standards?
By today's standards I consider the christian faith a dangerous, aggressive cult that severely degrades mental health of its followers. Here's why:
First, historical crimes against humanity commited by the catholic church such as witch hunts and total suppression of so called heretics, especially during the medieval.
More present crimes such as sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by catholic priests. Frequently in the press.
Check out which peoples and societies are primarily responsible for environmental pollution and extinction of species. It's the christians, of course, crucifying Earth.
Check out which peoples and societies were responsible for colonialism and so called "crusades"... The christians of course, wiping out native indigenous peoples and their native spirituality, replacing it with christian doctrine.
Yikes. Wanna check out more? It's all there in the history books. Enroll at your local universities.
No need to continue any discriminatory discussions on trans levied by christians. Nope. No need at all. If anything, I understand the persecution of christians and its necessity. So, preferably we'd discuss that. And we should discuss the ignorance of institutionalised faith and, in this regard, the innocence of Christ who is definately not responsible for the idiocy of those abusing his teachings for their political purposes and economical profits.
Cheers
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Quote from: Gertrude on August 24, 2018, 12:43:13 PM
Well, Yeshua never touched on homosexuality or transgender in any form and further, the ancient jews had 6 different gender categories to describe people, not just male and female. They look into to scripture to support their agenda. It's a form of abrogation. Other religions do the same thing.
Do you have more information on the 6 different gender categories ancient jews had to describe people, e. g. literature references, links? I'm highly interested in information on culturally different conceptualisations of trans.
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Quote from: Mumei on March 24, 2018, 12:28:09 AM
Hi Wendy,
Nice thoughts on a tough subject for so many people.
For me:
If there is fundamental standard for sinning, it would be an inability to follow the "Golden Rule:"
One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.
When it comes to pleasure, I look at pleasure along the lines of Ethical Hedonism (enjoying pleasurable things) and Epicurean Hedonism(freedom from negative things).
What I think is being talked about here is the mixing of gender with social indoctrination.
In Samoa, and other Polynesian societies, people like the fa'afafine are not considered mentally ill.But in Western societies trans has been considered a mental illness for a long time. How is it that in one society something is considered 'wrong' but in another society, that same 'thing' is business as usual. The problem the West has had with trans, probably has more to do with social indoctrination, rather than trans people themselves.
I think if psychological problems do occur in a trans person, it isn't so much the trans aspect of the persons psyche, it's the persons social indoctrination interfering with their mind.
Western psychiatry is massively backwards and, like western religious faiths (christianity that is), abused for the purpose of those in power and their economical interests. Western psychiatry has hardly anything to do with healing. Though it's got a lot to do with control and exerting power over people. Western psychiatry is, of course, heavily influenced by christian faith, the backbone of western culture. Western culture is totally degenerate in many aspects. That explains many issues trans people have in western societies. It's the misfit of western culture.
I totally agree with your assumption that on the inside its the social indoctrination that interferes with their free individuation. They fall victim to their conditioning.
On the outside, frictions arise from the conditioning of the others who cannot accept free, awoken individuals.
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Quote from: chrisalex on January 06, 2019, 05:45:35 PM
Do you have more information on the 6 different gender categories ancient jews had to describe people, e. g. literature references, links? I'm highly interested in information on culturally different conceptualisations of trans.
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Google is your friend:
http://www.sojourngsd.org/blog/sixgenders
https://www.jta.org/jewniverse/2015/the-6-genders-of-the-talmud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_Judaism
https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/37225?lang=bi
https://jwa.org/Encyclopedia/Article/Gender-Identity-In-Halakhic-Discourse
I wonder if SoCons will appreciate digging into the Old Testament on this one...
It's really very simple as to why they had those. How did they deal with a child who was born intersexed under the law?
12 The Lord said to Moses, 2 "Say to the Israelites: 'A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.
6 "'When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.[a] 7 He shall offer them before the Lord to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood.
"'These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl. 8 But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.'"
Notice there are different lengths of time that a woman was "unclean" if the child was a boy of if the child was a girl. But the child is born and how does one determine whether the time of being unclean is the shorter time for a boy or the longer time for a girl?
What's to forgive. My Doctor Lewis, that prescribed DES to my mother because he feared she may have another miscarriage. Or my failure to hold my wedding vows because the desire to exist as my predetermined self overwhelmed my perceived perfect hetero marriage. Or are we to forgive me for after 64 years living as a male out of fear that I might offend somebody. I have married for a second time. Thirty five years now. I told my wife prior to our marriage and she never mentioned it again. Two and a years ago I told her and our children that I was suffering severe depression pretty much my whole life. DES did not just affect my gender. Due to DES I had a deformed aortic heart valve, depression, congestive heart failure, diabetes. A deformed micro penis and late descending testicles. The question I get at support meetings is why would anyone want to be transgender? Why would one put themselves on drugs and under a knife. The mind is a complex organ that is formed in the second trimester, after the body is formed. Based on a half century of information the formation of the brain takes two trimesters. I am this way because around week eight or nine, Dr. Lewis started administering DES at volumes 3000 - 5000 times that of a single birth control pill. Here are some things you may want to read that show, God has nothing to do with it. . Just a little information. My grandparents helped Aimee Simple McPherson develop the Foursquare church known as Angeles Temple. My grandmother an ordained minister was the most hateful racist person I know. I watched people stand and deliver conversations with God in tongues. I could never figure out how they could always get the timing down to when the minister had a little break in their sermon. The last straw was when they discussed dress code rather than the reason for the day. Easter and the resurrection of Christ. https://desaction.org/des-sons/ https://www.functionalneurology.com/materiale_cic/389_XXIV_1/3373_sexual/index.html
http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm
If such a thing as "sin" actually existed, the sin would be not living authentically and being true to self and sharing your gifts with others. If such a thing as a god that punished people existed, it would punish people who didn't honor the way they were made by selling out to a messed up world's idea of what's normal and what isn't. I consider being transgender a gift from the cosmos, God or whatever. I honor that power by living the life I was meant to live in spectacular fashion. I therefore glorify this "maker" by living in its image, a very wonderful. loving and diverse image!