Affirming a Transgender Spirit

Transgender and gender identity.  Some people find the terms confusing. Others have made them political issues based on misconceptions. Spiritual values that affirm life call us to affirm the lives of transgender individuals.  Let’s explore this important topic together.  This video is a great first step.

The following is a text version of this blog.

It’s confusing to many people.  Some think that this is something new.  That’s not correct.  We know that many indigenous cultures embraced such differences long before they were introduced to Euro-American values.  Rather than trying to understand why something is the way it is, perhaps it’s best to accept that it just is.  In this case, I’m talking about transgender identity. 

I am not a transgender person.  I’m what’s known as a CIS gender male.  That means that my gender identity, how I think of myself, and my physical body are aligned.  Transgender people experience themselves as someone different from the sexual characteristics of their bodies. 

We commonly think of gender as male and female.  That’s our cultural understanding. But not all cultures have shared this understanding of gender. Cultural anthropologists have explained that in many cultures, there were multiple genders including some Native American tribes as well as indigenous people in Mexico and the Philippines.  But my topic isn’t cultural anthropology. I’m a psychologist. In psychology, gender is understood as a social set of roles assigned by a culture. 

We know that cultural roles change.  When I was in grade school, my mother was like all the other mothers I knew:  she stayed home during the day, took care of the home, and my father had a job, a career. I can’t remember any of my classmates who had mothers who had regular jobs or careers.  It’s not that way any longer. Both parents in a family typically work.  That’s a cultural role change.  Women are doctors, lawyers, elected officials, construction workers, and truck drivers.  It wasn’t that way when I was a child.  While you may not understand what it means for someone to have a trans-identity, keep in mind that our cultural roles about gender have changed.  They’ve not only changed for women but also for men who are expected today to know how to clean the house, cook, and be involved with childcare. 

I want you to use your imagination and consider that you find yourself to be someone you aren’t. All of your life, you’ve been told to be one thing.  Then you come to understand that you’re not that person.  Further, everything in society says that you being the person you’ve come to understand yourself to be is wrong.  Why is it wrong?  It just is.  There’s no real reason.  Or maybe the reason is that other people can’t understand your experience.

I think that’s a key issue:  because most people don’t understand it, it’s viewed as wrong.  It reminds me of when I was a kid and was getting a haircut at a barbershop. The Beatles had just appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  The men in the barbershop were complaining about their rock and roll music as not being music at all.  But most offensive to these men was the way the Beatles wore their hair.  They complained that men shouldn’t have long hair.  Why?  Because they shouldn’t.  One man was yelling and said he wanted to take a lawn mower and give the Beatles a haircut.  How absurd was that?  The reason I tell this story is because it helps to illustrate the crazy ways in which we hold fast to gender stereotypes.

Here’s what I think is important to know about trans-identity.  People have come to understand that they don’t fit into the body they were born with.  That’s a difficult and often frightening conclusion to come to.  I can’t understand what that’s like, but I can be supportive enough to say, “If this is who you have come to understand yourself to be, I accept and support that.” 

Where does spirituality fit in?  What I know about life is this:  our planet and the cosmos are filled with diversity.  Just look around at all the different trees, flowers, birds, and animals.  Look at the different planets and various kinds of stars. In a cosmos filled with diversity, why should we think that there would ever be just one way to be a human being?  I’ve come to understand that gender is just another one of those things that reflect the wonder and diversity of life.

As a follower of the teaching of Jesus, I also understand that no matter who a person is or how we define ourselves, who we are most deeply is profoundly good and a reflection of the Divine.  Yes, people do bad things.  But that doesn’t change who we are at heart.  When someone sorts through it all and says, “This is who I have come to understand myself to be,” than I believe that they are taking a step closer to the reflection of the Divine deep within them.

There’s a lot more that could be said about gender identity, but what I want to say today is that no matter whether or not you understand gender identity and the experience of a particular person, remember that people are due respect and compassion.  In the end, each of us is a reflection of the Divine.  When we encounter something new in another human being, we encounter something we haven’t yet experienced of the Divine.