Creatures and creatxres, welcome! There are few enough queer Catholics who speak publicly about trying to be obedient to the magisterium that all of us basically get all the questions, even the ones we are ill-equipped to answer. So in this newsletter I’ll set out sort of broad question groupings about gender identity, where I would like readers’ recommendations, especially readers with personal experience. Sometimes the way we ask questions can shape the kind of answers we get, so a) feel free to challenge or suggest alternative question “shapes,” but also b) I’m hoping some of these questions help us go to new and better places. If I’m making too many creepy outsider assumptions, I hope one of you all will say so….
And I know a fair number of my readers disagree with some of the stuff I’ve said about these things here, and I hope you all will read to the end. The final item is both the most urgent, and the one where I am, by far, the most confident in my own position.
But I’ll start with theological or ontological questions—especially the ones I haven’t already heard discussed in depth. What are possible orthodox Catholic ways of understanding the sexed body, and how do these ways of understanding illuminate or fail to illuminate the experiences we group together as “gender incongruence” or “gender dysphoria”?
I am not sure Catholics can accept anything that would force a division between body and soul, as if there is a “real person” trapped in your body, or as if a soul could somehow get dumped into the “wrong body” by mistake. But there are a whole lot of ways of understanding gender incongruence without disregarding, downplaying, or, idk, stigmatizing the body. I tried to gesture at one possibility here, but who cares, what is more important is that trans perspectives that honor the body already exist in ordinary people’s narratives and in artists’ work—and I’d love to encounter more of them. Jay Prosser’s Second Skins is a relatively early study of the many ways trans autobiographical narratives can treat the body, and I got a lot from that book but would appreciate more recent and/or more Christian work. Things I haven’t seen, and would love, include:
# an account of sex difference that treats manhood and womanhood as realities without collapsing into Procrustean “if you have this physical structure it must mean X no matter what else is going on” mechanics on the one hand, or gender stereotypes on the other. Catholics often fall into the latter trap in, like, “feminine genius” discourse; Chris Roberts’s Creation and Covenant offers some interesting and imho accurate criticism of St. JPII’s reliance on gender stereotypes in Mulieris dignitatem, as vs. the more mysterious and existential account of sex difference in the Theology of the Body addresses. What if our sexed bodies are icons rather than instruments? Does that mean anything? I don’t know, but maybe it should!
# reflections on where people experience their bodies or bodily sex as witness, as kenosis, as silence, as… other ways to experience God that I don’t even think to ask about.
# reflections on art and the lives of the saints. Where do you see some of your own experience of gender and/or sex difference? Whose intercession is precious to you here?
Second, there are questions of diagnosis/discernment and treatment/vocation. How do we know what to do, in our bodies? My general sense is that we need medical and psychological studies, and the best judgments of seasoned professionals, but we also need to gather narratives. This is important work for its own sake, but also because we may discern patterns of experience, approaches that tend to go better or worse for people.
I’d like to (and I’m trying to) hear people’s stories, across a really wide range of experience: trans people who sought medical, inc. surgical, transition, with all the widely-varied reasons people make that choice, and trans people who have decided that medical transition isn’t the best path for them; people who experience gender dysphoria but do not have a deep desire to be any other sex either, and people who are trans but don’t experience dysphoria; people who have made decisions for and against transition for social, medical, and religious reasons. People who have detransitioned, temporarily or permanently, because they couldn’t afford treatment; because they wanted biological children; because they no longer believe that they personally were ever trans; because they no longer believe that anybody is trans.
It would be tense and difficult to get people from all these backgrounds in a room together, but all of them have had to do some hard thinking and painful discernment, and the judgments that they’ve come to as a result of that discernment deserve my respect. Right now it seems like most cisgendered Catholics are either just not hearing these voices at all, or listening only to the voices that reinforce their preexisting beliefs and affiliations. This seems disrespectful and even dehumanizing.
Are there good anthologies or films or what have you, that put many stories in conversation with one another—or that you, my readers with experience in the gender identity mines, have found personally helpful in reflecting on the decisions you’ve made, the advice you’ve received over the years, and the ways your perspective on those decisions and that advice has shifted? What has helped you articulate the things you wish you’d known ten years ago, or twenty years ago? What has helped you negotiate doubt and ambivalence, or tell the difference between epistemological humility and culturally-induced self-hatred?
Third, there are canon-law questions. This is hilariously above my pay grade, but we do have sex-linked sacraments (priesthood and marriage) and I expect there are at least some precedents to scrutinize here, which people who aren’t me can either build on or maybe correct. I also have questions of obedience, like, I literally don’t know what it means for transgender Americans who might want to be obedient Catholics that a subcommittee of the USCCB has issued a doctrinal note barring all forms of medical transition.
And fourth, there are political and moral questions. Per a newly-signed law, in Florida someone entering a public bathroom that doesn’t match their gametes can be charged with trespassing if they refuse to leave. So people will be arrested, and I think you know something about what that experience will be like for them. They will be jailed and I think you know something about what kinds of violence they will be vulnerable to. This law is based on gametes and not on e.g. driver’s license. If somebody thinks your license is fake or you had it legally changed, I don’t think we know how you’re examined for sex fraud. This would still be a frightening law if it were only going to affect trans people, but for the record, a friend of mine was harassed for being in “the wrong bathroom” when she is a cis lesbian who was using the ladies’.
Target has removed some Pride-themed gear because people were knocking over the displays and “angrily approach[ing] workers” and customers. In Montana a trans lawmaker was silenced for using, let me just say, incredibly normal rhetoric. You can think she is wrong about the law and still protest this use of the idea of “civil discourse” to stigmatize and punish. The Archdiocese of Denver requires teachers in its school system to inform parents if their child “begin[s] to assert an identity at odds with their biological sex,” regardless of the child’s reasons for telling a friend or a trusted teacher before their parents. This is putting the children of the Church at risk of violence, rejection, and homelessness; and it’s also just a betrayal of trust, since even kids from very accepting homes often prefer to “practice” coming out with a friend or trusted adult before they come out at home, and regardless of what you think about how they’re understanding their experience, if you out them to their parents they will listen to you and your Jesus less not more.
Right now, trans people are being used as political scapegoats and targets; they’re being spoken about and legislated against in ways which are obviously intended not to protect but to degrade. So I have to ask how I can protect people. Friends have had really good experiences with the suicide-prevention Trevor Project, and I’ve donated to them, but I want to know what more I can do.
And I guess I’m also saying that if you disagree with my judgments about the theological stuff, okay, but draw a line in the sand. What kind of treatment of trans people is unacceptable to you? I guarantee kids on the playground, legislators, and police are already crossing it. How are you acting to defend actual real trans people from violence and cruelty?
How can we create the conditions under which all our questions will receive loving answers?
When Adam delft and Eve span, who was then under a Creative Commons license? Both of them! Durer print via Wikimedia Commons.
As a gender dysphoric Catholic who's still working on figuring out what to do with gender and has been grappling with this for two years now-- thank you so much for this. As a lesbian I've loved all of your writing and it comforted me when I was afraid there was no place for me in the Church, and I've been searching for similar thoughts on gender identity--there's so, so little of it compared to the amount of side b writing on sexual orientation (which, given the amount of side b writing on sexual orientation, is saying something...). Before I converted I used they/them pronouns and was considering T, top surgery, etc.... now I'm back in the closet and have no idea what's right. I hope these sorts of conversations are able to bloom and grow in the light of Christ. I have Christian and trans friends dealing with similar dilemmas and while I'm often able to point them towards resources for sexual orientation it's harder to do so for gender. If you want to get in contact with me or them I'd love to have more in-depth conversation about this.
As far as the saints go-- I get a lot out of the stories of Saint Marina the Monk, who concealed her sex to join a monastic order as a man, and Saint Joan of Arc, as a woman who was persecuted for crossdressing. Even "just" as a butch woman I tend to get judged by Catholic communities (and lavishly complimented whenever I cave to social pressure and/or Florida heat and wear a dress/skirt instead of a suit, lol--even when the dress/skirt is more revealing than the suit!) and it's comforting to know that there have been saints who, at the very least, rejected that social pressure.
Also, I don't think you mentioned this, but I think that a lot of the drama over names is kind of strange from a Christian/Catholic perspective-- it's weird to me to see Christians getting offended and passionate about people's "biological names" (yes, I have actually heard that phrasing) of the names given at birth by parents being their only real names, given how much of the Bible and Christian history involves people taking on new names and the deep symbolic power of that!
Eve, I love your writing. With that said, while I understand your concern for gender-questioning children and the fear they may have of their parents (which is a serious issue), the solution here cannot possibly be what is already happening at many (mostly public, but some private) schools. As a parent who tries so hard to accompany my children but who knows that at some point I won't be their go-to person 100% of the time (hello adolescence!), it is crazy to think that they can be counseled to seek pretty big, life changing actions without me even knowing about it. Whether that's being put on birth control or seeking an abortion or adopting a new identity... this is big stuff. Again, I hope I have laid the foundation for my children to come to me, but as a former youth worker and teacher, I know kids with the most awesome parents sometimes just don't. I know of kids who had begun to be referred to by their chosen name and used different bathrooms and a whole range of measures at school without their parents ever knowing. This is insane. When shit hits the fan, and my child develops a blood clot due to being on the pill (I have a history of embolisms so hormonal stuff is out of question), is the school going to be in the hospital with my kid? If the pandemic has shown us anything, it's that at the end of the day, parents are the ones left to pick up the pieces. If God forbid there is another pandemic, as a teacher I am not expected to go shelter with any of my students or care for any of my students. When shit hits the fan, I'm responsible for my own kids and no other teacher is going to come to my house to take care of them for me. So while I understand your very real concern, the answer here cannot possibly be the parental alienation going on at public schools. As a young youth worker and teacher I spent a lot of time with teens and had this illusion that as the cool grown up they came to with problems, I was doing some good, but do have some serious regrets. I now try really hard to be a bridge between kids and parents, not the cool adult who knows better than their prudish parents. Again, prudence in all things. I'm not saying if a kid even mentions gender discomfort I should out them, but we have to be so careful here. At the end of the day, I'm not the one picking up the pieces.