This is a very interesting video, see what you make of it.

Oh come on, people who listen to churches deserve whatever else they get.

I certainly don't think one should seek out the church for advice on GID, it's not an area they are expert on.

First of all, screw you, MSNBC, and your dumb pronoun usage. Both these people identify as men, so use male pronouns. I so hate the pronoun-switch cliche.

Josef Kirchner is a peculiar case -- he claims to have XY/XO mosaicism, and that his gender identity has been influenced by the condition. He still seems to assign some blame at others, but who cares? Lots of people don't fully own up to the mistakes they have made; Kirchner seems to have done better at it than most. It would be wrong to use him as a representative example of a trans person, but he seems to be doing fine in his life, so good for him.

As for Michael, yeah, well, BPD is a nasty little demon. It's sad that he seems to regret his de-transition, but he's free to live his own life. If you detransition just because some church you just joined told you to, perhaps your gender identity isn't all that firm. I mean, if my church told me to detransition, I'd leave. It's pretty simple.

Both cases are good warnings that you had better be sure you want to transition before you go ahead with it. I wouldn't deny anyone the right to detransition any more than I'd deny their right to transition in the first place.

I have seen this before, and it comes down to bending to the will of the church.  When will they just let us be.  They give all this BS about how God can change things.  Bulls**t.

Give us support and quit trying to change us.  Where is the damn Christian love.  You talk about it but in the end you just want us to change to fit you.


Janet.

It amazes me that someone can go through all the trouble of making what appeared to be a successful transition just to turn about and give it all up

Faith systems are designed to share experiences of the Almighty - in whatever form you believe.  When the stories ring hollow, then it is time to go somewhere else.

The faith that I was raised in has said, in essence, that being LGBT is a state of mental illness.

Thus, I am moving on.  I know who I am.  No amount of effort to "pray me straight" is going to work because that is not how I was created.

Quote from: Virginia Marie on January 09, 2010, 09:32:28 PM
It amazes me that someone can go through all the trouble of making what appeared to be a successful transition just to turn about and give it all up

It amazes me too. But that's just the thing: It amazes some people that people can go through all the trouble of making what appeared to be a successful life in the sex and gender role assigned at birth just to turn around and give it all up to transition.

I expect to be given the benefit of the doubt regarding my decision to transition, and in turn I extend it to people like the ones profiled here.

Faith systems are designed to share experiences of the Almighty

See, I guess that's what bothers me the most, as I've found life in and of itself not to be about faith, but about reality.  Live has never been about believing, but about doing - or for most people, not doing.  But perhaps I'm a moron and should have given up all that real stuff for some pie in the sky by and by when you die.

I had my own personal experience with Chuck Smith's cult some while ago- it's basically you're "in" and "cool" like the rest of the sheep or else you're out. There is great pressure to conform and garner the approval of the pastor and church elders, who tend to be up in everybody's business to make sure you're fighting the good fight. That kind of social pressure can cause people to make regrettable decisions in order to "fit in". Luckily I had no worse than being reprimanded and finally excommunicated by the pastor and elders for my unfortunate choice of romantic partners, as this was during my "am I really just gay?" phase, living with a man and made the mistake of bringing him to church. Funny thing is I got more sex in that church than anywhere. go figure lol

Quote from: tekla on January 09, 2010, 06:18:39 PM
Oh come on, people who listen to churches deserve whatever else they get.

lol this for me. . .

But I don't want to seem like a church basher so that's why I just quote tekla :p

My brief involvement with evangelical christianity, whilst I was at uni, is one of the few things which I really regret about my life.

To be clear, I don't have any problem with christianity per-se, but I think that many churches are NOT christian, they are modern day Pharisees and every bit as deserving of Jesus' codemnation, as they in his words

Quote from: Mt 23 v4"tie on to people's backs loads that are heavy and hard to carry, yet they aren't willing to lift a finger to help them..."

Personally I have no doubt that had Jesus walked among us today the bible would contain The miracle of the sex change alongside the healing of the blind man! What's more to the condemnation, from the religious authorities, that he ate with sinners and tax collectors they would now add "and he is friends with Transgender people". I think the bibilical Jesus would have been very synpathetic and realised that this was indeed a medical problem which needed help.

As I often say to my zealot friends, "I have no problems being judged by a deity, it's when you lot take it upon yourselves to presume the outcome in advance that I get upset."

Quote from: rejennyrated on January 10, 2010, 03:58:29 AMPersonally I have no doubt that had Jesus walked among us today the bible would contain The miracle of the sex change alongside the healing of the blind man!

lol I love it! Perhaps we should write that one

What is society's obsession with everybody being straight? It's coming to the point that I need to write and post a commentary about this topic.

Gennee

Gennee, I think what Jenny said is part of the answer. People like to be Pharissee's. We're meddlesome. I say, "we," because trans people are hardly immune to it. There are plenty of people around here (and everywhere else in the world) who will tell you the right way to live and the wrong way, and I'm sure guilty of it at times myself. It's a kind of superstition -- the notion that if we can all live a certain way (that way being decided upon by yours truly), all of our problems would be gone. It's basically a crappy way of shifting blame for things that are wrong in the world away from ourselves and giving us false hope that they can improve -- if only it weren't for those people. People of all faiths (and lack thereof), traditions, cultural backgrounds, and stations of life do it.

Much of Jesus' preaching was against that tendency to be meddlesome, including all his complaints about Pharisees, casting the first stone, not judging lest ye be judged, removing logs from your own eye before you worry about specks in other people's eyes, etc. Reinhold Niebuhr's serenity prayer touches on the same notions.

Of course there's a lot more to it.

Quote from: tekla on January 09, 2010, 06:18:39 PM
Oh come on, people who listen to churches deserve whatever else they get.

What she said.

Quote from: Fer on January 11, 2010, 12:22:17 AM
What she said.

Amen. I used to be identified as Jewish... That was many years ago, and I always had my doubts in religion. I lost my faith in religion by the time I was 14, when I began to wonder why people devote themselves to some type of invisible master. I began to think that religious people we're delusional, and mentally deviant, since believing in something you can't see/prove seems like it would be a ticket to a mental hospital. (okay, that's being somewhat unfair to the religious amongst us). I don't say this lightly, since I think people can believe what they want (within reason of course). I used to say I was an atheist when I was 15, and realized that in synagogue, when Israel was mentioned, and we were 'highly encouraged' to support. My real break was realizing the atrocities of the Gaza and West Bank blockades (I realize both sides are doing things in a bad way), yet people never questioned only because they were Jewish, and believed the had a god-given right (a higher power does not exist, so it is morally wrong). Most Jews in Israel are of Eastern European descent, meaning their ancestors never lived/had a significant relation in Israel. Why confiscate someone else' homeland in the name of religion? That's not right. I now see myself as a 'militant' atheist-anti-war-libertarian-green-conservative with a dash of liberal (really quite complicated).

Sorry for the rant, but I will not allow a religious ideology dictate the life I lead. I hope someday to enter into politics, and eliminate religion-based laws... I'm sorry, I just seem to have a grudge. My parents would always tell me when I had a wife (I only recently told them of my transition), she should be Jewish... F**K THAT! I have freedoms and rights guaranteed to me, and I choose not to listen to words from a pulpit. Plus, I want to be able to choose my partner. When I die, I want to be unceremoniously dropped from a plane, helicopter, or even just carried, into the woods of northern Ontario, and be left to decompose. I want no plaque commemorating me, I want only to return to nature.

Essentially, do what feels right to you. Attachment and peer pressure (yes, religion counts as peer pressure too) were the greatest barriers to me... now that I have shed my 'obligation' to continuing my Jewish heritage, I put all my energy into advancing my life in the name of being happy, freedom, and humanitarianism. I never signed any contracts making me religious, so I have had no qualms about renouncing/discarding it.

Once again, religion is a very sensitive issue to me... Sorry for offending anyone. This is merely the way I see things, and I don't judge people by religion, heritage, origin, or race. I only judge by the ways they act towards others, and their personality. The only real anger (I mean fury) I have with religion is when it infiltrates the law in a supposedly modern secular society, and freedom is pushed to the side.

I am so sorry for what that church did to her.  It is so very ludicrous to think a person can be cured of all of their psych problems by reverting back to what was an uncomfortable life in the first place.  Yet, I know these people actually sincerely believe this.  They have no idea what is really going on inside our heads, nor of the genetic reasons behind a person with GID.  Ignorance can be a very dangerous thing.  And for some, it might appear to work.  Who knows?  That is for them to answer, not us.  But the most difficult thing for me, as a Christian, to watch is to see stuff like this and then see the broad leaps that are made to judgments against all of the church.  That is not quite fair either, though understandable.

I thought it would be interesting to see what some inside the church are saying about just these kinds of things.  There are those of us who really are in the church, and really are trying to get both sides to truly listen to one another, and to dialog.  Hopeful work is being done, but it is not very publicized.  Here is a quote from a book I am working with right now:

"Today, Christians are known as scary, angry, judgmental, right-wing finger-pointers with political agendas...While some Christians fit those categories most of us don't!  Sadly, the most vocal and aggressive voices that people are familiar with do.  I can't blame them - I wouldn't like Christianity either.  This may sound odd, but quite honestly, I don't blame people in our emerging culture for what they think about us.  If I weren't a church leader or if I weren't friends with Christians who are following Jesus in a loving and balanced way, I would probably judge Christians and Christianity based on what I see from the outside.  And it isn't a pretty picture.  Based on outside observations of Christians, there's no way I would want to become one of them...  I would simply conclude that from observations and from not wanting to change into something I wouldn't want to be like.  The Good news: most pastors and Christians aren't creepy or out to condemn everyone they run into who believers differently than they do.  The Bad news: Most people don't see or meet the average Christian...  I think at the core of a lot of the confusion is the fact that most people are making conclusions about Christians and Christianity based on a few bad experiences.  But they are bad enough and reinforced enough to give the impression that this is true of all Christians...How quickly some Christians make generalizations about the gay community or liberals or whatever terms we throw around.  We need to be careful that we don't do the same thing and make assumptions about others based on a few bad experiences."
- Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus But Not The Church

Peace, All!
Kristi

I always wondered what happened to Michael. Such a sad story in his case. There are 6 parts to this on the youtube channel. Going to watch them all this week.

Thanks for posting!

BTW, I am happy to be an Atheist! The church needs to stay out of things like this. I know someone who started out their journey talking with church counselors and I was terrified! They have no business in GID.

Quote from: shanetastic on January 10, 2010, 03:23:50 AM
lol this for me. . .

But I don't want to seem like a church basher so that's why I just quote tekla :p

Yes... We can watch by beaming our white teeth, as Tekla does the bashing... With the mallet from super smash bros...