There’s two new books going around about The Transgender Issue from a Christian Perspective which have book blurbs that frame themselves as being rooted and grounded and centered on compassion and empathy and understanding and seem to imply that they contain trans 101 allyship stuff like what pronouns to use and that sort of thing.
One of them is called “Embodied” the other is “God and the Transgended Debate.”
The thing is, neither of these are about welcoming trans people in the Christian religion. They have trans pride flag colors on the cover. Everything about the marketing would make you think they are pro-trans. But they are actually books about convincing your trans relatives not to transition “with compassion.”
The argument made by both books is that the social constructs of biological sex and the gender binary are divinely designed, since in Genesis it says “God created them man and woman.” They instruct that if god made you biologically male or biologically female than living a male or female gender role in society is god’s intended plan for you and your struggle with gender dysphoria is wrestling with god’s plan in the same way that you might struggle with losing a loved one or wondering why god gave you an illness. You’re just supposed to accept it as all a part of god’s plan and live life according to it “in submission to Christ.”
So the logic is that if you were born with a penis, god designed you that way because he wants you to be a strong masculine protector in charge of a family dominating others etc. and if you were born with a vulva then god designed you that way because he wants you to be a submissive feminine nurturing mother who manages a home and puts others first.
And like, you know, fuck that, and it’s gross that this is in books basically disguised as “how to accept your trans kid” books. To the point that they ended up on my library’s selection list because nobody read reviews written by actual trans people who read the books.
But I also want to engage with this premise theologically for a bit. As a Jew, I believe G—d wants me to participate in the act of creation. As Julian Jarboe puts it, to be transsexual is like G—d making you like wheat and not bread, grapes and not wine. You get to participate in the divine act of creating yourself.
But what of this Christian logic? That the circumstances of your birth reflect the plan their jesus has set out for you? If we can use one’s genitals to divine one’s intended future life path, what else can we soothsay from the circumstances you were born into?
I was born in a Jewish inner suburb of Boston, so was it Jesus’s plan that I return to Judaism after my mother was ostracized for birthing me? Or was it his plan that being bullied for being “half and half” would drive me away from Judaism and towards Catholicism? Was it his plan that I live in the Boston area and did I rebel against that plan by moving to Philly?
I was born to parents who were semi-professional self-made New Age Gurus who grifted the rich selling self-seminars about “manifesting wealth” through positive thinking and “quantum meditation to align with Spirit.” So was Jesus’s plan for me that I become a self-help guru or spiritual leader or some sort? If the circumstances of my birth reflect Jesus’s Design then why place me in such a household unless I was supposed to be writing books about ancient aliens planting humans in Egypt? Is the son of a carpenter meant to be a carpenter as well? Is the son of a banker meant to become a banker? This is caste logic, it’s only more obviously absurd when you consider my own absurd life. But when we take normal lives it’s plainly a way of telling the poor they were meant to be poor and should accept themselves as not meant to do great things like the children of politicians and kings and military generals.
Unless, the Christian would argue I was born into a new age guru family in order to have it demonstrated to me what is wrong with that practice and religion so that I could rebel against it and become a Christian who effectively converts hippies.
But once you introduce the possibility that god might place you in unideal circumstances so that you will rebel, it renders the entire original argument moot. It negates it.
For what if I was born with a penis so that I could experience everything that is wrong with how it is to be gendered as a boy, so that I would rebel and transition and shed toxic masculine traits that do not suit me? What if transitioning is meant to bring me closer to god and only through being given the struggle of an undesirable birth assignment could I know the appeal in the experience of transition and seek it out?
Which ultimately just brings us back to the idea that G—d made me trans so that I might create myself. The person I was being raised to be is not who I am now. The person I am now is beautiful and beloved by myself and others. I truly love the person I have made of myself and it is contrary to what “god’s design” would imply if you were to look at the circumstances of my birth to derive how I am supposed to live.
This logic that you are given a vulva to destine you to be submissive is horrifying. What of those born into slavery? Is that god’s plan? Should slaves have never struggled to liberate themselves? At the time, the position of the church was often that a passage about Noah’s sons was an explanation for why some are meant to be slaves to others. That too is a passage from Genesis.
I cannot understand the Christian worldview as not being one deeply intertwined with justifying oppressive systems. I know that all religions can be used for liberation or oppression but it’s just such a struggle to me when I have to engage with their theology for work as part of buying books for them and every book just terrifies me and come across as deeply evil in a way none of the other religions do.
Simply preposterous logic. Your biology is not your fate. You can change your body. You can create yourself. You can be the person who you want to become. And to fail to see the beauty and joy and pleasure and wonder in that possibility, to me, is a failure to “empathize” with the transsexual as these books claim to do. They will not be making it onto my library’s shelves that’s for certain
Quote source: Julian K. Jarboe, as quoted in Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery
Every time I think about anti-trans rhetoric framed as christian, I think of this quote. The first time I saw it there was art associated with it of someone with top surgery bandages holding wheat, bread, fruit, and wine.
