At a chapel service this week for Transgender Remembrance Day, I will once again listen as the name of this year's transgender people whose lives were cut short by hateful violence are read aloud.
There will be too many of them. I know this already. Only one or two is too many, of course, but the actual list is always gruesomely long. I know that, again, we will be reminded that there are many more whose deaths we don't know about. Many of those killed will have been people of color. Many will have been young. Inside my body, I will feel grief's vague boundarilessnes. I will be grateful to be held by a community of people I trust. Inside my heart, I will taste the ache of longing to inhabit another world, not this cruel one. Inside my throat, I will feel the welling up of what could be rage, wailing, keening, but will, again, be quiet, respectful, listening. We will all sit dazed and grieving together.
I will do this soon, and I will do it again next November, too, because I believe in honoring the dead. But I find myself wishing that, along with honoring the dead, we might also this week have a service where we honor the living, where we give thanks for those living transgender people known and unknown to us, and how they enhance our lives.
In my spiritual practice, everything begins with gratitude. This is how I continue to be committed to this world, not wishing to be in another one. So how do we stand on the side of love with our transgender friends and family members? I begin by calling up with gratitude the gifts that transgender people have brought into my life.
First and foremost, transgender people model embodied courage to me. Their very bodies carry their commitment to themselves, to their own truth, costs be damned. They can't board a plane, fill out most forms or go to the bathroom without diminishing their complexity. Still, in the face of all of that diminishment, they own their complexity daily. They hold their heads up and walk with dignity on a path which only their feet create -- no one in the world has made it for them. So, for their courage and for how that en-courages me in its turn to be my whole and complex self, I am profoundly grateful.
Second, shaking up my dualistic polarities around gender sharpens up my mind. A friend recounted hearing a white transgender man say, in a seminary class, while thoughtfully scratching his beard, "It wasn't until I gave birth to children of color that I truly understood racism." WHAT!?!?!?! Such a mind twist can only be good for the synapses. For shaking up my easy assumptions, making me take a second and third look right with my first one after being surprised so many times, I give thanks.
Third, speaking of synapses, transgender people elicit from me much wondering about nature and nurture, oppression and identity. They have a unique opportunity to know life's wisdom from two different directions. I am so interested in this.
One gender-bending teen, born female but sometimes passing as male, told me, "You don't know! When people think I'm a boy, it's like every female of every age wants to be my wife! They want to help me. They support me. It's like a club you will never be in!" Weeks later, I am still thinking about this. Such unique perspective makes me wonder what else I don't know or see -- what other clubs I am in, or not in, relative to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, culture, ability and every other manifestation of human difference.
If we could stop being scared, those of us who aren't transgender could learn so much about gender from people who have walked a creative and courageous path between two superhighways. I have learned a great deal already from reading and talking to people, and I deeply appreciate the generous sharing of this wisdom. Thanks for that.
Finally, transgender people lift up the ultimate mystery of life before my eyes, and cause me to be grateful for the diversity and complexity of the universe. Perhaps they are closest to living out the Biblical description of God's creating people "neither male nor female." Perhaps, as some cultures say, there are 5 genders, not 2. Life begins to open up, the universe begins to expand, when I look around with fresh appreciation and enjoy the beauty of the dance, rather than categorizing in binary mode. Transgender people inspire me to look at a bigger horizon, to know an ever-bigger universal love, or God. This is my ultimate task on the planet, and for their help in my accomplishing it, I am profoundly grateful.
So, today I will honor and remember the dead. But this week and every week, l also want to know the living transgender people, learn from them, model my courage on theirs. May these thanks be a step on my path to creating a world where the list of the murders shortens and the list of joys, equalities and sources of ease for transgender people grows ever longer.
Dr. Jon LaPook: A Pro Bono Transgender Primer
Transgender - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ask About Transgender Issues - NYTimes.com
Transgender Issues | Gay Rights Articles & Issues | Change.org
Meg, you want to do something beyond reading the names of the dead once a year? Do something about housing homeless street girls and giving them the tools to get off the streets because the vast majority of the names you read once a year are these girls. I did it for years on my SSI physical disability income. No one ever stepped forward to help us do it either. Words, not deeds
Oh, even though the words of Genesis are clear: male AND female they were created, the obvious never seems to be noted. Hermaphrodites were the first humans and closest to the Divine. Paul's words are not sacred ones. All the avatars of the Great Mother Goddess began in prehistory as female identified hermaphrodites such as myself. Something to chew on while reading Isaiah 56 which talks about eunuchs having a better place in heaven.
Great article and I deeply appreciate the four spiritual things that you as a non-Trans person are learning from us Trans folk.
But I think you missed the most important spiritual aspect of being Trans. Let me explain. ::smile::
"Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have stewardship over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in God's image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them." Genesis 1:26-27
The main idea about human nature in this passage is that we are created in the image of God. There are two ideas in this passage about what that means.
The first is overt; it is spelled out in the passage. It means having a conscious relationship with the rest of creation that is based on compassion but realizing that we have power to change things so we must act with responsibility; that is being stewards.
continued
The second is covert. It is implied in the passage in that the passage itself, like the broader story it is within, understands that part of God's nature is that God CREATES. Therefore, human beings, being made in the Creator's image, are also Creators. The more we are creative, the more we live like children of God and are spiritual.
We Transgender folk have been especially blessed by our Creator in that our Creator made us partners in creating our gender reality. We are Co-Creators. All humans are actually Co-Creators with God in creating our True Selves, but we Trans folk are blessed with the task or consciously co-creating as aspect of ourselves that most in society don't have to worry about. The reality is that we all do co-create our gender reality, but most non-Trans folk are unaware of their work in this area, they assume they are just the way they are.
We Trans folk, though, are the Shamans who lead the way in this co-creation. It is obvious that we couldn't just be who we are. We had to embrace our True Selves and then work, sometimes painfully, to transform our temporal selves in the here and now to better conform to our True Selves.
But we all have to do this as we all move towards the full image of Sophia-Christ. We Trans folk are a living symbol of this journey.
This is a description of whether or not people will marry in Heaven. They are like the angels, "neither male nor female." Please don't misuse the Word of God to fit a lifestyle or fashion.
"Neither male nor female" is NOT from the passage about no marrying in Heaven. The passage is Galatians 3:26-28:
"In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
This passage is clearly about our identity NOW. It tells us that the divisions in identity that the world thinks are important, gender/sex, ethnicity, or class, do not matter to God and shouldn't matter to us. This clearly deconstructs the idea that our gender/sex is an immutable aspect of our identity in THIS life.
Also in solidarity with the family of Gwen Araujo, a young trans woman who had been brutally murdered. The defendants in the case using panic as a defense because they found out she was "really" a he. As if gay were catching. And no, she IS a she! Regardless of whatever external traits there may or may not be.
I've had discussions with religious people who simply did not understand. They saw us in terms of violating the body as created. I explain that we in effect claim that the soul (psyche in Greek) is for us the more important factor. Asserting biological determinism is thus to do harm to the soul.
However, many people appreciated the sign I carried. Using a cross for the "T" it read: Transfiguration.
The universe is not simply an either/or. In addition to an Aristotelean dichotomy such as male/female or black/white, there is that excluded middle. Where there are shades of grey. Or appropriately to a Pride parade, as well as to the luscious and vibrant diversity of the earth's biosphere, all the colors of the rainbow.
We're here, we're... well, whatever. Bless us all.
But the hardest part of being who I am is finding companionship and love. Something even your article did not hit upon. To be loved and accepted not by many, though that would be nice, but by ONE special soul. Now that, to me, would be heaven.
The love of my life is a beautiful brilliant transsexual woman. What people need to realize, and what the article does elude to, is that transsexuality is an enhancement, not a deficiency. And I don't just mean a physical enhancement- it can be and often is a spiritual and emotional enhancement as well. I would not have fallen in love with my girl had she been born cisgendered. She simply would not have become the precious woman I love.
That being said, I did not want to fall in love with a transsexual woman. I wanted to be "normal." I told myself I could love her just as a friend, but guess who ended up making the first move? If I had waited for her, I'd still be waiting.
Many cisgendered people are afraid to fall in love with transsexuals. It's unknown territory.The more visible transsexual people become, the less fear there will be. And people like myself will be less likely to run away from the best thing that's ever happened to them.
Get out there, stay out there, and never give up. There is someone out there who needs to be found. Trust me. I know.
http://helenhill.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/would-that-you-could-feel-what-i-feel/