ViaMedia

Category: Transgender

  • The ‘Trans’ Body of Jesus and Transgressive Theologies

    The ‘Trans’ Body of Jesus and Transgressive Theologies

    by Penelope Doe, University of Exeter, who has just completed a PhD thesis on Church reports on sexuality and the ‘Queer Art of Failure’ 

    There was a lot of manufactured outrage recently, both in the mainstream press and on social media, about a visiting preacher at Trinity College Cambridge – Dr Joshua Heath – claiming that Jesus was trans, and the Dean then defending the sermon. Spoiler: neither said that Jesus was trans. What really happened, for those who have managed to avoid the brouhaha, is that Dr Heath’s sermon used mediaeval and Renaissance art depicting Christ’s side wound to suggest that His body is simultaneously masculine and feminine, since the wound can be figured as a vaginal tunnel through which the Church (the Body of Christ) is birthed.

    This imagery may be shocking, but it is hardly innovative. The trope of Christ’s wound as both vagina and lactating breast, in theology and art, goes back to the Middle Ages. If you google ’Jesus’s vagina’, you will see some exemplary images, although, as several women were keen to point out after this latest uproar, what is being depicted is a vulva rather than a vagina!

    One thing that struck me about this latest ‘the Church of England is heretical’ scandal is not the unfamiliarity of the media (and of some Christian commentators) with fairly arcane mediaeval art and mysticism, but the horror being expressed that Christ’s body might be trans or non-binary by being neither male nor female, masculine nor feminine. There was a similar backlash when, in a sermon delivered ten years ago, Paul Oestreicher suggested that Jesus might have been gay. Worshippers and secularists alike are habitually repulsed by an unmanned Jesus. For me, all this suggests that the Church – and cultural Christianity – has capitulated not only to white Jesus, but to cis heteronormative Jesus, a straight male saviour rather than a human one, and that in turn raises the question of whether heterosexual and cisgender identities have themselves become idols.

    Why is the concept of a trans or a gay Jesus so offensive to contemporary sensibilities, ostensibly seared by secularism and post modernity? I think there are quite a few answers to this question. One is that Christians have apparently lost the playful and imaginative approach to scripture and tradition that was evident in the early Church and in the Middle Ages. Post-Reformation tradition seems, generally, to be a much sterner and more humourless affair. Another is that, even for secularists and cultural Christians (perhaps especially for these), a transgressive Jesus who disrupts cherished, if unacknowledged, norms is too disturbing a figure. For some theologians and historians, however, gay/bi/trans Jesus is incongruous not because this troubles the mores of contemporary discourse but because it imposes current cultural identities on a first-century Palestinian who was born and died in the Greco-Roman empire. Furthermore, as the theologian Linn Marie Tonstad has argued, this insistence that Jesus must have a sexual and gender identity actually ‘unqueers’ our understanding of Jesus, if the incarnation requires Him to be depicted with ‘healthy’ sexual impulses.

    One way of rescuing the trans/gressive Jesus from the coils of modern identity politics is by adopting a lens which either He or the writer of Matthew’s gospel chose, that of the eunuch: in Matthew 19:12,

    For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.

    In Putting Jesus in His Place, Halvor Moxnes argues that both the Church Fathers and modern commentators have ignored or suppressed the implication that ‘eunuch’ was an insult thrown at Jesus that he himself then appropriated to describe his and his followers’ ‘place’, much as LGBTIQ+ people today have adopted the term queer, formerly used as a slur. In reality, those who were made eunuchs were disadvantaged socially, although many held prominent and confidential positions as servants, as we see in the Ethiopian eunuch who is a court official in Acts 8:27. Occupying both male and female space in the household, eunuchs were the objects of both trust and suspicion. They were useful in that they could not establish their own households, so that they were dependent on their masters; some eunuchs were valued as sexual partners. Reading the eunuch as a figure of chastity and continence is another misstep the Church has made in making Jesus’ words in Matthew 19 into an appeal to an ascetic Christian ideal. While eunuchs were not able to procreate, some were capable of and celebrated for their sexual prowess.

    Moxnes argues that this virile understanding of continence erases that ‘queer space’ that Jesus claims from those who were criticising him for abandoning conventional male space and thereby embracing ambiguity. Why were they ‘eunuchs’? Because, although male, they were no longer ‘men’, since to be a man was a status of honour, a status which could be achieved but which could also be lost. Rather than being seen as a positive ideal – the virile contest for celibacy – Moxnes sees Jesus as identifying with the slander and putting himself and his followers alongside other marginalised and ambiguous groups who are included in the Kingdom, such as tax collectors and prostitutes. He writes:

    Eunuchs were men who were permanently out of place, in a liminal position where there was no possibility of integration into the order of masculinity …  I suggest that the modern term that can best provide a lens for viewing the material and a category of interpretation is that of ‘queer’. This is in contrast to suggestions that Jesus could be understood by means of categories like feminine or gay. These would be categories that once more attempted to view Jesus in terms of a fixed identity, as feminine in contrast to masculine, or gay in contrast to heterosexual. ‘Queer’, on the other hand, does not indicate another category. Rather, it signals a protest against fixed categories. As a protest or opposition to fixed categories of identity, it points out that all categories are historically and socially constructed, and that human experiences are forced into these categories.

    If all identities are historically and socially constructed, as Moxnes claims, then the traditions which the Church (and the secular media) lay claim to are more unstable than is generally admitted. Few ecclesial traditions are unambiguously 2000 years old, and the figure of a transgressive and liminal saviour is deeply rooted in scripture and theology. But these are traditions which the Church seems to have neglected, so that a trans Jesus is now perceived as improperly, rather than properly, shocking. If the Church of England is to have a grown-up conversation about gender and sexuality – a conversation which the Living in Love and Faith resources promised – it seems to me that we need to some smash some modernist cis heteronormative idols, recover some neglected traditions, and lose our squeamishness about sexually transgressive and genderqueer theologies.

     

    References

    Halvor Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).

    Linn Marie Tonstad, “The Limits of Inclusion: Queer Theology and its Others”, Theology and Sexuality, 21, no. 1 (2015).

  • Faith and Generosity in the Church: The Via Media, or Transphobia?

    by Revd Nathanael Hayler, Deacon, serving as Assistant Curate in rural Northumberland 

    Why do you remain faithful to a volatile institution?

    How do you show generosity to a hostile Church?

    These remain some of the pressing questions I am often asked when I share my story of journeying towards ordination in the Church of England as a transgender person. They are questions I grapple with in these early years of ordained ministry and will continue to ask as my sense of vocation grows and flourishes.

    As part of my ordination training, I was able to embark on a course of postgraduate study. I developed a project exploring how the Church of England has engaged with the experiences of trans people, both in the context of the local church and more broadly as an institution. Entitled ‘Thresholds of Faith and Identity: A critical analysis of the Church of England on transgender identities’, the piece aimed to prayerfully and creatively theologically reflect on where the Church is now, how it has reached that place and, importantly, what comes next – ‘towards a distinctively Anglican transgender theology.’

    The study and dialogue addresses topics of liturgy and worship, leadership and representation, and pastoral practice. Using theological language and reflective dialogue might feel dense and complex, but I intentionally grounded all my work in practice, always looking to ministry on the ground and to the experience of transgender Christians. Sometimes work on trans identities can be seen as “woke” or niche but the reality is that most of us, whether we know it or not, will encounter or walk alongside a trans person. This conversation is pressing, it is poignant, it is necessary. My research took place in the context of discussions encouraged by the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) conversations. There is a danger that this valuable LLF work will lose momentum and fizzle out; this conversation must continue in creative, engaging, and accessible ways.

    Understanding the need to remain faithful to Anglican convention felt important if this work was to go anywhere. Pushing towards action whilst working within the categories of scripture, reason and tradition offers an effective yet comfortable way the Church of England might begin to develop a coherent theology rooted in the lived experience of transgender individuals. However, there are immediate barriers that currently prevent such progress being made. Firstly, the ambiguity and contradictions that characterise the Church of England’s current position. For example, it is hard to take seriously sentiments that trans and non-binary people are welcome to explore a vocation to ordained ministry when another document prohibits the ministry of transgender people, believing we are not wholesome examples or stable enough to serve as deacons, priests, and bishops (Some Issues in Human Sexuality, 2013).

    Secondly, the Via Media that characterises the Anglican way is often sorely, even dangerously, misunderstood. Despite via media being seen as a virtuous existence for the Church, it is often misused; today it has fostered a culture of ambivalence and mere tolerance. The Church of England is still “sitting on the fence” in offering two very different views that can be ‘properly held’ by Anglicans on the topic of transgender identities. This gross misuse of the ‘middle way’ condones and even encourages transphobic attitudes and discriminatory behaviours toward trans people. The lack of clear guidelines, of both doctrinal belief and pastoral conduct, allows individuals holding authority to freely discriminate or be complicit in keeping silent in the face of such behaviour.  With gender identity legally (in the UK) understood as a protected characteristic and in seeking to treat trans people with dignity and respect, this current manifestation of transphobia disguised as holding the generous via media must be eradicated immediately.

    Instead of loathing the rich diversity that trans and non-binary people bring to our churches, we have an opportunity to celebrate it. And in this celebration we are invited to reimagine what it means to hold the middle way and re-embrace the Anglican tradition of via media in our time; building on the foundations of what has been handed on and always rooting our practice in the life of Christ. Therefore, instead of threatening our sense of self and our convictions, these differences encountered within the breadth of Anglicanism should move us toward a living embodiment of the ‘Way’. That is, Christ: the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). Christ’s ministry reveals a most beautiful interplay between charity and justice. Rather than seeing the via media as only a charitable gesture, seeking to please both those at the extremities and those at the margins, the via media could be a middle way that seeks to walk the path of both charity and justice – just as Christ himself inspires us to do. If we truly embrace our part in being a living tradition, by faith, we make space for the transformative work of the Holy Spirit, trusting that God will make a way in us and through us.

    As a transgender person, I don’t believe the Church currently recognises the sacredness of trans narratives as part of the living Christian story. I hope, one day, that hearing the experiences of transgender individuals will be understood as a transformative gift. As an ordained person, which very often feels like a scary and vulnerable public ministry, I want to encourage the Church not to neglect this important topic, because of we do that then we neglect our duty of care for the many lives touched by this. There is much work for the Church of England to do if it genuinely desires to welcome and encourage ‘the unconditional affirmation of trans people, within the body of Christ’ and rejoice in that diversity.

    So, I return to those first questions.

    Why do you remain faithful to a volatile institution?

    How do you show generosity to a hostile Church?

    Why? Because I believe in the transforming work of God in the Church of England, and I want to be part of that work. How? By the grace of God alone. Let’s not forget to pray. Pray for the work of the Spirit in the Church, so that one day God’s love will be shared freely and lavishly amongst all people.

    I’m currently exploring options for publishing my research, in the hope that it will be built upon and used to further conversation and provoke change.

  • Arguing with a Madman? Cranks, Trolls, Consistency, and ‘Come off it’

    by Sophie Grace Chappell, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University. Her two most recent books are Songs For Winter Rain, a poetry collection, and Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience.

    (in view of the House of Bishops apparently pushing on with yet another working party on trans people and gender identity, here is a further extract from Professor Chappell’s forthcoming book, Trans Figured; original posting here)

    This no-debate demand is often misunderstood as a refusal to engage in philosophical argument. That is a misunderstanding, and the reasons why it is a misunderstanding go rather deep. G.K.Chesterton says this (Orthodoxy p.32 (New York: Lane, 1909)):

    If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgement. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

    There is a scene in the fine 2016 film Denial that makes a rather similar point to Chesterton’s. Deborah Lipstadt and her lawyers are constructing their defence against a libel action brought by the Holocaust denier David Irving. To show, against Irving, that there was (alas) nothing fake about the Nazis’ mass murders in 1941-1945, Lipstadt wants to go into the witness box herself, and she wants Holocaust survivors to testify too.

    Her lawyers dissuade her. It is not that she and the survivors do not have a convincing story, and one that any decent interlocutor would be ashamed and embarrassed to deny, dispute, or question. The point is that Irving will not be convinced—nor ashamed, nor embarrassed—to carry on with an aggressive and sceptical cross-examination of old-age pensioners who have lived out the rest of their lives in the shadow of the hellish nightmare of Auschwitz. In Wittgenstein’s famous phrase, “See how much stage-setting” must already be in place before a “rational debate” can even begin. It is very difficult to discuss proofs of the reality of the Holocaust with people who will not accept the same standards of proof as any reasonable person accepts in any other debate, and who are not ashamed to browbeat, jeer, and heckle old and frail survivors of the worst genocide in human history.

    Just this lack of epistemic responsibility—and of shame—is all too evident in all too many people who come at transgender people and their allies waving the much-misused banner of “free and open debate”; as for example when those campaigners complain that they themselves are being “silenced” by harassment and mockery and intimidation, but are entirely happy to harass and mock and intimidate anyone who tries even to run a conference that they don’t like the look of; or when their immediate response to the harrowing statistics for transgender suicide and transgender assault is not to express sympathy and solidarity, but to cast doubt on the reliability of those statistics; or as when supposedly respectable journalists and academics are perfectly happy to promulgate bizarre myths about “transgenderism being bankrolled by Jewish billionaires”—myths that strikingly close the gap between transphobia and anti-semitism, and sometimes between both of those and conspiracy theories like Q-Anon as well.

    Such claims get us into the territory of what Rai Gaita calls “the crank”:

    “Cranks” is an interesting word… it is not just a term of abuse. It refers to someone who has so radically lost his capacity for judgement that his views are not even worth considering. Like those who are severely mentally ill, the most interesting thing about cranks—about what makes someone a crank—does not show itself when they declaim what they believe. It does so when they do not rule certain things out of consideration. They suffer from something far more serious than ignorance. Knowledge and understanding—and therefore, all serious radical critique—depend upon the exercise of sound judgement about what counts as evidence, about when authorities can be relied upon, when they are justifiably discredited, and so on… Reason is not what determines what it is to be “in touch with reality”. Rather, being in touch with reality is a condition for the sober exercise of those critical concepts which mark our sense of what it is to think well or badly, concepts whose proper application is what we call the exercise of “reason”.[1]

    Among other things, Gaita is writing here about how we should do philosophy—a question on which I have myself learned a great deal from him. I am almost echoing Gaita when I say that I think philosophy should not be a bureaucratic pigeonhole within a university’s administrative structure, kept “pure” of “non-philosophical” material by vigilant gatekeeping (and outgrouping). Rather philosophy should be a loose-bordered range of inquiries that are kept rigorous, maybe even a little bit austere, by the rather different but very much complementary requirements of two things: first of logic, and secondly of a grown-up, and open-minded, and kind, and humane, and humorous, and inquisitive, and un-fanatical, and tolerant, and mature—and sensible—sensibility.

    So there are two kinds of quality-controlling challenge in particular that philosophers should push each other hard with. One is “That is logically inconsistent”, the other is “Come off it”. In the academy today, partly because of the bureaucratic pressure to mark research territory, we hear plenty about inconsistency, but rather less about “Come off it”. In an age of perversely brilliant research programmes, for example about whether we’re living in a computer simulation—and also, in an age of conspiracy theories, many of which are, among other things, transphobic—“Come off it” is an important challenge too.

    “Come off it” matters both within and beyond philosophy. In both cases, another way to put it is, quite often, “Do not feed the trolls.” And that is, unfortunately, something we very often have good reason to say in the case of “debates” about transgender.

     

    [1] Gaita, A Common Humanity pp.160, 165-6. Gaita too quotes Chesterton. For my review of Gaita’s fine book, see Mind 2002, 411-413.

  • Trans Figured: Experience Trumps Theory

    by Sophie Grace Chappell, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University. Her two most recent books are Songs For Winter Rain, a poetry collection, and Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience.

     

    (an extract from her forthcoming book, Trans Figured)

    I hope to get a wider audience with this book than a philosophy professor might normally expect for most of her writings. But who knows: you yourself, dear reader, might have read some of my more conventional writings in philosophical ethics. (My much more conventional writings in philosophical ethics.) And if you have, you may know this about me as a philosopher: that I think experience trumps theory almost everywhere. Let me say a little bit about why.

    One of my favourite philosophers is Bernard Williams.[1] At the outset of his writing career, Williams took for his own “a phrase of D.H. Lawrence’s in his splendid commentary on the complacent moral utterances of Benjamin Franklin: ‘Find your deepest impulse, and follow that’” (1972: 93). Thirty years later he added, when looking back over his career, “If there’s one theme in all my work it’s about authenticity and self-expression… It’s the idea that some things are in some real sense really you, or express what you and others aren’t…. The whole thing has been about spelling out the notion of inner necessity.”

    Yes, that; very much that, about me and transgender. “I just want to,” but in capitals. An inner necessity, a need to be authentically and above all openly who I actually am, and to be known as who I am by those around me, and accepted and, yes, loved, even so. That is exactly what it’s all been about.

    However, that doesn’t mean that I have a theory of transgender to offer. I tend to steer away from philosophical theories of anything, at least in those parts of philosophy that aren’t best understood as handmaids of science. But even in science, I think the real truth of things often resists systematisation. (And what is being transgender but resisting systematisation?)

    I am never quite sure what a theory of anything outside strict science is supposed to do. Ever since Plato’s Meno philosophers have been saying, and rightly so of course, that the point of philosophy is to change right belief into knowledge: into a state where you don’t just think true things, but also understand, deeply, why they are true. Fine. But is it obvious that constructing a philosophical theory always helps with this? Can we really not have a deep understanding, and an explanatory understanding, that (for example) murder is at least typically and maybe always wrong, or that love is usually a good thing, or that flowers are generally beautiful, or that paedophilia is profoundly wrong, until we have a philosophical theory’s kind of explanation of why this is so? Why is some set of words, arranged in propositions with inferential relations between them, the sole kind of explanation that we need to understand the goodness of love or the badness of murder? For most ethical cases, that seems to me an oddly inappropriate picture of understanding and explanation. In ethical matters understanding can be verbal and articulate, but quite often it isn’t at all; oftener still, the propositional bit isn’t the only bit—and not the most important bit, either. And likewise for explanation: explanations don’t have to be verbal, and often are better if they’re not. (Think of explaining how to do something—by doing it.)

    Science limns the structure of reality, as Quine says in Word and Object. Sure it does, at least if it’s any good. But so does poetry, if it’s any good. There isn’t just one correct way to grasp the deep structure of things. There are lots, because there are lots of things that we might call “the deep structure of things”. Propositional structures are great for the understanding, but experience matters too, and experience is no less cognitive for being, sometimes, non-discursive and not expressible in propositions. All these general considerations about theorising apply in the particular case of transgender: here too it should be experience first, theory later—if at all. In Nietzsche’s famous words, “the will to system betrays a lack of integrity”.

    In any case, and also with particular reference to transgender: trans people don’t owe cis people, or anyone else, an explanation of why they’re who they are. No more than gay people do, for instance, or black people or Jewish people, or any other historically stigmatised minority. Our right to exist as transgender people is not conditional on our being able to prove it, by demonstrating the truth of something called “gender ideology” (our gender ideology, that is, not the rest of society’s). The onus of proof is not on us transgender people at all. It is on those who want to exclude us. By what right do they discriminate against us? By what right do they demonise us, marginalise us, gaslight us, ridicule us, patronise us, in ways that no one would accept for a minute of any other minority?

    We shouldn’t be refused admission to society until we’ve won some abstract rhetorical cage-fight, or arrived at a philosophical theory of transgender that is “satisfactory” (to whom?). Our right to be ourselves, without apology and without explanation, is simply not up for discussion, any more than anyone else’s. We don’t get kindly admitted to equal status once we have satisfied our critics. Like everyone else, we have equal status from the start.

     

    [1] For more from me on Bernard Williams, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/.

  • Is the Conversion Therapy Ban a Muddle? A Response to Angela Tilby

    by Vicky Brett,  a member of the House of Laity at General Synod and a Lay Pioneer with the Church of England serving the LGBTQIA+ community in Peterborough

     

    In the Church Times (8 April 2022), Angela Tilby reacted to the recent U-turns by the government on conversion therapy with regard to trans people. Here, Vicky Brett, the mother of a transgender child, responds to some of Angela Tilby’s statements.

    “The conversion therapy sometimes urged on gay people by conservative Christians is a very different matter from the kind of listening and exploratory counselling that should surely be the norm for pre-pubescents wanting to change gender”

    Angela Tilby’s article stokes people’s fears with misinformation. Here, she tries to criticise conversion therapy for gay and lesbian people while defending it for young trans people. But those attending a gender clinic already receive counselling from trained, experienced clinical psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists!

    Having experienced both this and ‘conversion’ therapy, I can say the two could not be further apart. A trained therapist does not tell you what to think or what to do or who you are – they allow you the freedom to explore and question and understand yourself and your situation. They do not force or coerce you to transition or to not transition. In contrast, the ‘Christian’ conversion practices we experienced held not one jot of freedom or exploration – we were told repeatedly that we were evil and going to hell, that being transgender or supporting someone was wrong, that my child was a sexual pervert, that we were bad parents, subjected to yelling and prayer to remove demons. Pressure was applied by removing our ability to work or serve in the church, and eventually we were asked to leave. During this time my child took an overdose, but by God’s grace they were resuscitated in A & E. The church’s response to the overdose was complete silence: no apology, no concern, not even an offer to pray – as far as they were concerned, we got what we deserved. Conversion ‘therapy’ is not therapy, it is abuse.

    “among American adolescents, trans services are being accessed far more often by teenage girls than boys, because of … ‘peer’ or ‘social’ contagion”

    Leaving aside that the American and UK situations may not be the same, blaming peer pressure may not explain everything. Girls may find puberty more difficult, not least because of society’s negative attitudes to menstruation. But in a gender clinic, this will all be addressed. Alternatively, remarks like Tilby’s may be just plain old sexism, the idea that girls need protecting because they are weak and vulnerable and don’t know their own minds and can’t think for themselves. We could look at this the other way round. Under the age of 24 only one-third of transitions are male to female and two thirds female to male. Over 24, it’s four out of five male to female and only one in five female to male (ignoring non-binary). Why are trans women only transitioning so much later in life? Is it the extra dose of hatred and hassle they seem to be subjected to by society?

    “things were very different in my childhood; I was a tomboy … But nobody thought this particularly odd”

    But being a tomboy has nothing to do with being transgender! Playing with a particular toy, having particular interests is gender expression – who you are on the outside, how you fit with gender stereotypes. Being transgender is about who you are on the inside. A girl might refuse to wear skirts – but still know she is a girl.

    A transgender child would say ‘I am a boy’ not ‘I want to play with boys’ things’. They might still want to play with dolls’ houses and wear pink (gender stereotypes), as some boys also do. But they would insistently, persistently and consistently reject the notion that they are a girl and get annoyed, upset or distressed when people ‘get it wrong’ or when their body does not match their internal view of what it should look like.

    Tilby implies that it was easier to be free to experiment in her day; maybe this was true for girls like Enid Blyton’s ‘George’, but it was certainly not for boys! A boy would never go to school or a pub wearing a dress when I was young: he would be beaten up! Nowadays some boys feel safer to dress in a non-conforming way and wear make-up – in safe spaces.

    Children can recognise their gender by ages two to three. Transgender adults often report their first public acknowledgment of who they are was before the age of seven. Gender Clinic waiting lists are measured in terms of years, not weeks. Puberty blockers are only given to some children, and only after extensive counselling, to allow the child additional time to think and process before the potentially traumatic experience of puberty kicks in. Cross-sex hormones are given only to a select few over-16s, and no surgery is done pre-adulthood. If a child first voiced their trans identity at seven, this means they would have to be insistent, persistent and consistent for nine years before even hormones would be prescribed.

    “Keira Bell … recently detransitioned and sued the Tavistock on the grounds that she was too young, at 16, to give consent to the hormones that would lead to a double mastectomy”

    12 mothers sadly died while giving birth at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust; medical mistakes do happen, but we need to work to fix them rather than insist that the 5,000 women who need their services each year should just stop having babies.

    The Keira Bell case was tragic; a young, troubled girl who mistakenly believed that transitioning would solve all her underlying problems. The case led to a temporary pause on work at the clinic. To me, this was completely wrong. Gender clinics need a lot more funding and staff to enable them to handle the case load, and pausing services just increased waiting times. There is already a four-year waiting list and 11% of trans people go abroad for treatment or buy their hormones over the internet because they cannot access treatment here. We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water!

    Trans people deserve healthcare too, and healthcare decided between them and their doctors, not by uninformed politicians and Christians.

  • Good News From Via Media: on Transgender Day of Visibility

    by Chrissie Chevasutt, author of Heaven Come Down – The Story of a Transgender Disciple, who has been advocating on behalf of transgender youth and vulnerable people within the conservative evangelical church for the last seven years

    Then… The Holy Spirit commanded Philip down the road to Samaria; Acts Chapter 8.

    I imagine this road trip left Philip with something of a headache? As he trudged back to Jerusalem, he must have been pondering many things, and not just what the future looked like for the black Ethiopian eunuch he had just baptised into fellowship and the body of Christ; because, in doing so, he had violated The Law that forbade anyone emasculated by crushing or cutting from entering the assembly of God’s people.

    The largely Jewish church in Jerusalem was struggling to understand just how they might reconcile their newfound faith in Jesus and the outrageous nature of his grace with the thorny issue of The Law. This meant arguments between those who clung to The Law, and those who dispensed with The Law as a means of setting boundaries for the new church; disputes on who was out and who was in, about food sacrificed to idols, unclean foods and circumcision. And now, Philip would have to explain how a eunuch was welcome in their midst.

    It seemed that some had not yet fully worked out what faith in Jesus delivered them from.

    Philip probably dreaded having to wade into yet another long conflict with the religious legalists within the church. ‘You’ve whaaat?!?! You’ve baptised a eunuch into the fellowship of God’s people?!?! – they are not even allowed to enter the temple!’

    On the long road home, Philip was no doubt preparing his theology, to justify his actions.

    The church has often struggled with issues of race and diversity, gender and sexuality, legalism and judgement. Tradition and The Law is a mother of a burden to lay down in order to embrace grace, grace for everyone. The Holy Spirit’s desire, and Philip’s desire, was to demonstrate that faith and grace triumph over Law, every time.

    The Ethiopian’s baptism had been God’s will, and the proof of heaven’s overflowing grace.

    And now… Reverend Helen Garton, the Minister at St Columba’s United Reformed Church, Oxford, had been watching, hearing, and praying with transgender members of the congregation, and trans and non-binary ordained URC Ministers whom she knew as friends, in the pain and struggles they were facing in their daily lives and ministries. Out of this a vision was born for an ‘Outreach and Development Worker with Transgender, Intersex and non-binary people: a full-time, three-year salaried post at St Columba’s, funded by sacrificial giving from St Columba’s members and further funds from the Wessex Synod and URC centrally.

    I have now been appointed to this post. My work will be developed by listening to those who are already working very effectively in serving the transgender, intersex and non-binary community. This first year is all about research, networking, relationship-building, making connections with those who have already been working for many years in serving the community. Bringing people together, strengthening and encouraging, building cooperation and cooperatives is necessary in a grass roots up, rather than ‘top down’ culture.

    What is already clear is that this new role has two distinct, but balanced, aims: first, the local, urgent and immediate pastoral needs of transgender, intersex and non-binary people in Oxford and surrounding areas, and second, to advocate and work for lasting change and improvement at a national level in every arena that we can influence, including education, health care, law, politics, arts, the media and of course the wider church. One of the first fruits will be an annual national Theology Conference for Transgender, Intersex and non-binary people in Oxford this summer.

    Much of my work will be in ‘digging the foundations’ for a role that will work for the long-term future and betterment of transgender, intersex and non-binary people’s human rights, equality, provision and care. Part of my work will be raising support and funding, because we want this role to be long-haul and sustainable. The work is urgent and extremely demanding; already this year we have had two trans teen suicides local to me.

    And beyond… Our detractors and oppressors argue strongly against bringing the Ethiopian eunuch into their discussion about whether God accepts transgender and non-binary people. ‘Eunuch’ had a range of meanings in ancient times, and even within ancient Jewish culture its usage was broad, just as today the label ‘transgender’ is a vast umbrella term. The eunuch in the Bible represents an oppressed and marginalised people group which transgressed and blurred the strict Jewish vision of binary sex and gender. God’s heart to the eunuchs is beautifully expressed in Isaiah 56, a prophesy of radical inclusion towards a people condemned by The Law.

    The intersection of eunuch, intersex, transgender and non-binary identities is too deep, wide, vast, overlapping and obvious to ignore or dismiss.

    The role with which I have been entrusted, like the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, is a prophetic act, a ministry of social justice and an expression of God’s outrageous love for the marginalised and oppressed. As such I pray that it marks a sea-change, a turning of the tide, in the wider church’s acceptance of us as transgender, intersex and non-binary people.

  • Collateral Damage – Do Church Leaders Care?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Director of the Ozanne Foundation, Chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition and Editor of ViaMedia.News

    This week saw the publication of the 2021 LGBT+ Christians Safeguarding Survey Report, which has shone a bright spotlight on the cost many of us LGBT+ Christians are paying for being caught in the crossfire of the “debates” over our future.

    The results are very disturbing – with only a third (36.9%) of the LGBT+ Christians surveyed feeling safe enough ‘to be out to everyone’ in their local church.  Perhaps even more worryingly is that over one in six (17.4%) said that “church” was a place where they used to be able to be out, but now no longer feel safe enough to be so.  We appear to be regressing.

    The fact that over three quarters (75.3%) chose the indicator ‘I’m not worried about what might be said in the sermon’ to show that they could feel safe to be themselves in their local church should be a wakeup call to church leaders about the hidden toll that this is all taking.

    The question is, will it?

    For years LGBT+ people have spoken out about the trauma and pain that they have endured, just for being “different” to the perceived heterosexual cis-gendered ‘norm’.  Many from across the medical professions have added their voices too, clearly highlighting the psychological damage being done to those trying to reconcile their faith with their sexuality and/or gender identity.  Then has come a raft of evidence about the evils of so-called ‘conversion therapy’, including harrowing testimonies from survivors.

    Has it made any difference?

    I must admit that one of the things that has shocked me most in these recent years of speaking out about the harm inflicted on LGBT+ people has been the callousness of the response from those hell-bent on continuing with this spiritual abuse.

    They know, but they just do not care.

    And it is that cold indifference and lack of pastoral concern that proves to me, beyond any shadow of a doubt, just how un-Christian their dogmatic stance is.  They may think that they are ‘standing firm for the Gospel’, but the fruit of their teaching is so rotten and bad that it gives off a stench that few wish to be associated with (and those that do just hold their noses and try to put up with it!).

    This was brought home to me in my recent interview with Peter Lynas for Justin Brierley’s show on Premier Radio, Unbelievable.  Time and time again I confronted him with the harm that the Evangelical Alliance was inflicting on LGBT+ people through their promotion of the ironically named ‘Biblical and Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality’ – the ten ‘affirmations’ that set out how church leaders should treat LGBT+ people and their allies in their congregations.  Time and time again he deflected, obfuscated and refused to engage with the evidence.   It didn’t go unnoticed.

    There is nothing loving about ignoring the cries of people you are harming.

    There is nothing loving about turning your back on those who are asking for help.

    There is nothing loving about doggedly pursuing a course of action that is clearly abusive.

    The most upsetting thing is that few in positions of power, who have the ability and indeed the duty to safeguard against this abuse, choose to use their position of power to intervene.  Most stay silent.

    Why? Because they just see LGBT+ people as collateral damage.

    For some reason – which has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with fear – they just don’t appear to care.  And it is that which makes me so angry – and I believe makes Jesus really angry too.

    Jesus always dealt with the real-life situation of the person in front of him.  He always responded with love and compassion, whilst the religious leaders around him stuck to ideologies and principles.  He called them on it.  He chastised them for it.  He was crucified because of it.

    Not much has changed, sadly.

    The only thing we do know, is that they will be judged because of it.  One day.

    In the meantime, I know that God is watching and waiting to see who will protect His sheep from harm.  Fortunately, there are many wonderful Samaritans, even if many of the religious leaders walk right on by.  They at least want to help heal and protect the wounded.

    So what can be done?

    Well the first step is to break the silence, gather the evidence and call out the abuse – which is why we did the survey and why I eventually agreed to do the interview with Peter.  The second is to take that evidence to people who have both the pastoral heart and the positions of power to do something about it.

    Watch this space…it’s coming!

  • Kate’s Story

    by Kate, a transgender woman from the north of England, who bravely shares her horrific experience of being prayed for in three different evangelical churches.

     

    This is spiritual abuse, and shows clearly why a ban on conversion therapy must include religious practices, including prayer.

  • Yve’s Story – “I Felt Set Up To Fail”

    by Yve, who has experienced both the very worst and the very best of the Church of England.

    I first knew something was different about me when I was six, and first started wearing my mum’s clothes. From that moment onward, what could have been a potentially idyllic seaside childhood became characterised by bullying, acute discomfort with my birth gender identity, and a love that seemed strictly conditional.

    Craving acceptance and security, I entered what quickly became a dysfunctional marriage. As always, I was too scared to talk about my feelings, feared the negative responses which occurred when I did, and never felt truly loved. I underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2012, but even afterwards, the loneliness and rejection remained.

    This was all to change – or so I thought – in 2016.

    Having been engaging with a notoriously conservative cathedral parish for 8 years and being largely ignored by the congregation, I was surprised when I was suddenly encouraged to get more involved in its activities. Feeling hopeful and included, I took up several volunteer and secretarial roles, joined a worship team, and accepted an employment offer as floor manager. It felt like God had placed me here to learn and grow as if finally in preparation for ordination, to which I’d felt called since 1994. For the first time in my life, I began to believe it was possible that my gender could be valued and accepted by a church.

    I was soon to be disillusioned. Indeed, it wasn’t until later that I found that I’d be given this faux acceptance because of an edict that the cathedral community needed to be ‘more representative of the whole city.’

    In reality, nothing changed. In my new roles, I felt continually measured against a heteronormative standard (e.g. my shirts and shoes weren’t considered ‘masculine enough’), and I was often the target of verbal abuse. When this had become a typical pattern of behaviour towards me I reported it, but nobody took my complaints seriously.

    It became clear that despite all the training delivered to everyone and their desire to be ‘representative’, the dean and chapter didn’t take their safeguarding responsibilities seriously, or have any real interest in a truly inclusive community.

    By late 2018, things came to a head. A new dean arrived who seemed uneasy about my continued involvement. Suddenly, once supportive colleagues became reluctant to swap shifts with me so I could fulfil voluntary roles. Then, a new and unprompted ruling that Chapter clergy shouldn’t interact socially with or give pastoral care to employees, effectively brought all voluntary roles to an abrupt and sudden end. I felt as if I was being slowly pushed out. Then, one day, I arrived at a meeting to discover someone else had been appointed secretary in my place, without any warning or prior consultation. I resigned from all my other roles with immediate effect.  I felt set up to fail and distraught.

    In early 2019, the cathedral had an S.C.I.E. inspection. I’ve seen less panic in a school pre-Ofsted inspection! Staff and volunteers were told what to say if spoken to by an inspector, and members of congregations carefully selected for interview by inspectors who ensured they wouldn’t say anything controversial. A banner installed by the entrance affirmed the dean’s commitment to providing ‘a safe environment for everyone.’ Knowing what I did, I found this laughable. So did the inspectors, but for a different reason: they perceived its message as unnecessary and ordered its removal. I felt deliberately blocked in my attempts to speak with an inspector. I was saddened, but not surprised, when the outcome for the cathedral turned out to be largely favourable. By now, I was numbed and deadened to the fact that people like me often had their voices silenced.

    I suffered a complete physical, nervous and emotional breakdown. Although technically furloughed, I couldn’t face returning to an environment which showed such disregard for people’s safety, health and well being. Even the diocesan safeguarding officer wouldn’t help me. I’ve been made to feel that I can’t trust anyone there. I felt I received more love and support from a secular community trust than I did from my supposed spiritual home.

    If this is the worst of the Church of England, during lockdown I unexpectedly encountered the very best. I’ve received an unconditional welcome through online worship, quizzes and study groups offered by certain truly inclusive churches in Liverpool and London. I still feel frozen out of life and pay for ongoing therapy but I thank God for what I’ve found among them. “A broken and contrite heart O God you will not despise” (Ps.51:17).

     

  • Lisa’s Story

    by Lisa (a pseudonym), who is a trans woman from the North of England.

    When I agreed to tell this story, I was reluctant because this happened 20 year ago and I was unsure how much relevance it would have now. It is very sad that it appears to still be so; if anything, the Government’s views on conversion therapy (along with trans rights in general) appears to have become even less supportive than it was.

    I was a very active member of an Evangelical, Pentecostal church. I had been to Bible college, was on the leadership team, regularly preached in my own church and others, led worship and was in charge of outreach for the church.  No one suspected that I was anything different than what I appeared to them to be. Not the church members, or my family; no one. I am now so sorry for the hurt that hiding truths about myself caused, especially to my wife and my daughter.

    I had been struggling with my gender identity all of my life, and now knew, after much counselling (secular) that I was trans. I didn’t want to be, but I was. I cannot start to explain the difficulty I had accepting this, but somehow I had kept it totally secret.

    This was until one particular night when something changed.

    I sat in my car and considering driving it very fast into a wall. The question was clear in my mind: “Do I go through with this thing and live as the woman I knew I was meant to be, or do I die?” The one thing that was impossible for me to do was just carry on pretending.

    I decided to tell my wife, and her world and mine fell apart.

    Once she knew that I was going to go through with this she immediately said that I could not transition and stay with her. Nor could I transition and see my daughter who I idolised. My wife rang the Pastor of our church, who was fully in agreement with her. He then wrote me a letter. It was 20 years ago and I can’t remember the exact wording of it, but it offered me two options: either receive counselling in order that I may repent, or leave.

    Of course I knew full well that all the “repenting” in the world was not going to change me. Neither would exorcism, which I knew they would then try.  So many times in the preceding years I had rebuked the Devil, I had begged on bended knee to be different, I had prayed and prayed, and failed. I could not try any more. I felt that I had let God down, the church down, my wife and daughter down. I thought that if being a Christian meant not transitioning, then I couldn’t be a Christian.

    I left the church, I left my wife, and, hardest of all, I left my daughter. I also thought I had left my faith. I had no one and nothing. All my friends were in the church; all my life had been there.

    A position came up with the company I was working for in a different part of the UK. I took it and a few months later changed my name and legally transitioned.

    My wife was true to her word and I had a battle to be allowed to even see my little girl. After 12 months I was allowed supervised visits (my daughter is now 26 and after many years we have a good relationship).

    In time I met a wonderful man. We fell in love, got married, got a dog (she is gorgeous!) and it has taken me the best part of that twenty years to realise that God made me this way and accepts me as I am. To realise that if Jesus died for anyone, he died for everyone: gay, straight, cis, trans, black, white. My faith has changed; I’m certainly not as bigoted as I once was. I think I’m a better person, but that’s the thing – even if I’m not I am certain that God loves me.