Transgender Awareness

Yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance.  I decided not to post yesterday, since I haven't known anyone killed because of their transgender status.  I was struck by how many clergy folk I know either in person or by way of social media took part in some sort of service or ritual.

Until recently, I believed that we lived in a world of increasing tolerance, a live and let live kind of world, at least in industrialized nations of the northern hemispheres--by which I really mean Europe and the U.S. and Canada.  But now, we see this tolerance being swept out into seas of hate.

Our transgender friends would likely tell us that they've never experienced this golden time of increasing tolerance.  There's something about the idea of gender fluidity that the mass of humans have found truly threatening.

There are researchers that would tell us that the younger generations are more likely to be tolerant, but when it comes to transgender humans, I'm not sure.  I only have anecdotal evidence.  Last week, I was part of a conversation about past colleagues who may or may not have been transgendered--the flimsiest of evidence was offered (that person was taller than most women so that person must have been trans--really?).  From the conversation, it was clear to me that these younger people were not at all comfortable with any difference at all.

And yet, that's not exactly true either.  We have some colleagues who are not heterosexual, and they seem accepting of these colleagues. 

I tried to be a voice of tolerance, but it became clear to me that perhaps we should have done more during Transgender Awareness Week, the week that lead up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance.  Perhaps attitudes won't change until we have a transgender colleague or two.

I think of my own journey.  Once I'd have said that I didn't know any transgender people, but that's simply not true.  I've had students who were making transitions of some sort, and some of them were open about their transgender status.  One of those students went on to grad school, and I was happy to be part of her dissertation writing process.  We've had a transgender person at our church who was early in the transition process, and I was happy to see how accepting our congregation was.

Now I'm old enough that I have had at least one friend who has a transgender child who came out as transgender when he was finishing high school.  That friend loaned me a book by Austen Harke, Transforming:  The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians.  It didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, but it would be a good resource for those who are new to this topic and who are desperate for some open-hearted approaches.

Once I would not have predicted that the nation would make the kind of progress that it has on other social justice issues--like the possibility of having an African-American president or the legalizing of same gender marriage.  That progress seemed to go nowhere and then we seemed to make changes at a much quicker pace.

Let it be so with these issues that affect the transgender population too.