"You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way the servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of his spies would—well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand."
That is how Frodo justifies his decision to trust Strider in The Fellowship of the Ring. As I was casting about for an opening to this review it struck me that Strider is a near perfect opposite to Preston Sprinkle and his book. Here is a man (and his book) who seems fair and feels foul—obviously whether or not he is a servant of the enemy is beyond what I can know—the book is all honey, sunlight, and a fresh breeze, but it is laced (at least for trans folks and those who love us) with deadly poison.
I recognize this opening leaves me at risk of sounding melodramatic or hyperbolic. I want to assure you that it is not. Cards on the table: my major thesis in this review is that Sprinkle's book, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church & What the Bible Has to Say, grossly misrepresents not just trans people generally but the basic facts of the matter, both scientifically and theologically; and that this misrepresentation amounts to, at the very best, a mortifying example of laziness, question-begging, and confirmation bias, and at worst a deliberate program of misinformation and deceit.
My intention in this series is to work through the book, in roughly(1) the order it is written in, focusing on specific themes and issues in the book. I will attempt to give credit where it is due (the majority of what Sprinkle gets right is not wanting people to be outwardly cruel to trans folk, and in this day and age, even that does count for something), but for the most, part this series is intended as a warning and critique of Embodied. I will be supplementing my analysis of Sprinkle's thought and writing in this book with what I have learned listening to his podcasts and from reading his blogs and debates with other writers, as well as one or two interactions I have had with him on Twitter.
In this introductory post, I want to cover the two main intellectual flaws in the book. But before I do I want to clarify the social location from which I am writing this review series. I am a transgender woman. I am also a Christian. I hold a Master of Arts in the Liberal Arts and, while I have studied gender theory, theology, and trans theory pretty extensively the only one of those that I have had formal education in is theology (I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Bible and focused one portion of my Masters in theology). Throughout this series I do not intend to write as a sort of removed third-party observer but as someone who is in the text I am discussing. Where Dr. Sprinkle discusses transgender folk from the outside and presents himself as a sort of neutral theological arbiter who has processed information about us and is not providing it to the reader, I will be reacting as a transgender christian woman who is confirmed in her gender identity and in her identity in Christ. I do not pretend to objectivity but would suggest that my subjectivity on this subject is more useful in revealing truth on the subject of transgender people.
Preston Sprinkle engages extensively in motivated and shoddy research. This isn't the first time I have called this out, and at this point, it has happened so frequently that I am practically compelled to conclude he is aware of this tendency and doesn't care. There are many examples throughout his book; two here at the outset ought to prove illustrative.
Throughout the text, intentionally or not, Sprinkle employs several rhetorical devices of which the reader had better beware.
The reason there are umbrella terms (like the short-lived trans*) is so that we can effectively discuss diverse things which share a particular commonality. For that reason, those terms should only be deployed when that degree of generalization is necessary. If there is a more accurate term which could apply, it should generally be used instead. Thus I might use the acronym LGBTQ+ if I am referring generally to lesbians, gay folk, bi and pan people, trans people, people who identify as queer, and any other people who aren't generally considered straight and cisgender(3); but if I am only referring to gay men, I will use the term gay, or if I am (for some reason) only referring to cis gay men, cis lesbians, and cis bi/pan folk I might use LGB(4). Rather than following this rule of linguistic clarity, Preston uses trans* (or "trans* identified") throughout the book, even when more specific terms are available. Again this, in itself is excusable in the abstract—we will sometimes switch up our use of terms at the cost of strict accuracy for the sake of linguistic variety, or because the distinctions we might gain from more precise language aren't relevant to the topic at hand—but the way Dr. Sprinkle actually uses the term is misleading in the particular case of this book.
The effect that his usage has has is twofold: first, Sprinkle's repeated use of trans*, even where more specific terms are available and would be more accurate, counteracts the positive strength of "if you've met one trans person you've met one trans person" by lumping us all together linguistically even when such a move is not relevant. This allows Sprinkle to have his cake and eat it too, insofar as he has paid lip service to the fact of trans diversity while simultaneously lumping all of us into a single category that is subject to the critiques he makes of specific members. When it is convenient to him for us to be a monolith, he gets to treat us as one, when it is helpful to him for us to be diverse, he treats us as diverse.
Second, I noticed, about halfway through my reading of the book, that the constant use of the asterisk tends to make the term (and, by extension, the concept) feel dubious. We put an asterisk next to a term when we need to indicate that it should taken with a grain of salt. By the time I reached the end of Embodied, it had become almost impossible to read Sprinkle's “trans*” without a sense of a shrug.
I am aware that the introduction to this review is not winsome. If you go and read through the two part series I wrote back in 2015, responding to his review of Ken Wilson's A Letter to my Congregation, you will see that seven years ago I had a much higher estimation of Sprinkle's intentions. Since that time, I have watched him persist in the sort of habits I identify above. As he gained an interest in writing, speaking, and podcasting about trans people, he was given multiple, earnest entreaties to widen his reading and to engage with the broader scientific consensus on the subject. Throughout this series, I intend to highlight certain places where Sprinkle has either admitted to or demonstrated a shocking degree of ignorance regarding basic trans theory, and of the shape of the conversations that trans people and especially trans Christians are actually having.
For all of that (and it is a lot) I do want to end with a positive comment about Sprinkle's book or, rather, about his project. Preston Sprinkle does seem to sincerely like the trans people he knows and speaks with and he does actively advocate against the sort of culture war vitriol that so many white evangelical Christians are directing at LGBTQ+ people—and that is something. I also want people to be kinder to trans folk and if Sprinkle's book helps to move people in that direction then I will be grateful for that while I remain deeply concerned about his book, his habits, and his work as a whole. And for people who are trans or who may have just begun to wonder whether they might be trans, I am very concerned that this book will cause deep, deep harm to them.
I recognize this opening leaves me at risk of sounding melodramatic or hyperbolic. I want to assure you that it is not. Cards on the table: my major thesis in this review is that Sprinkle's book, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church & What the Bible Has to Say, grossly misrepresents not just trans people generally but the basic facts of the matter, both scientifically and theologically; and that this misrepresentation amounts to, at the very best, a mortifying example of laziness, question-begging, and confirmation bias, and at worst a deliberate program of misinformation and deceit.
My intention in this series is to work through the book, in roughly(1) the order it is written in, focusing on specific themes and issues in the book. I will attempt to give credit where it is due (the majority of what Sprinkle gets right is not wanting people to be outwardly cruel to trans folk, and in this day and age, even that does count for something), but for the most, part this series is intended as a warning and critique of Embodied. I will be supplementing my analysis of Sprinkle's thought and writing in this book with what I have learned listening to his podcasts and from reading his blogs and debates with other writers, as well as one or two interactions I have had with him on Twitter.
In this introductory post, I want to cover the two main intellectual flaws in the book. But before I do I want to clarify the social location from which I am writing this review series. I am a transgender woman. I am also a Christian. I hold a Master of Arts in the Liberal Arts and, while I have studied gender theory, theology, and trans theory pretty extensively the only one of those that I have had formal education in is theology (I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Bible and focused one portion of my Masters in theology). Throughout this series I do not intend to write as a sort of removed third-party observer but as someone who is in the text I am discussing. Where Dr. Sprinkle discusses transgender folk from the outside and presents himself as a sort of neutral theological arbiter who has processed information about us and is not providing it to the reader, I will be reacting as a transgender christian woman who is confirmed in her gender identity and in her identity in Christ. I do not pretend to objectivity but would suggest that my subjectivity on this subject is more useful in revealing truth on the subject of transgender people.
1. Flawed Research
Preston Sprinkle engages extensively in motivated and shoddy research. This isn't the first time I have called this out, and at this point, it has happened so frequently that I am practically compelled to conclude he is aware of this tendency and doesn't care. There are many examples throughout his book; two here at the outset ought to prove illustrative.
Unbalanced ROGD Research
One of Sprinkle’s interests is an etiology of transness (a theory of what causes some people to be trans) often referred to as "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" (ROGD). Sprinkle is so taken with this theory that he devotes a full chapter of his book to it. The idea, in short, is that transness has become a "social contagion" by gaining so much currency among school-aged children (especially those assigned female at birth) that theyare developing gender dysphoria as a result of interacting with the idea of trans-ness. The theory—which has, by the way, been thoroughly debunked and discredited—is rather more complicated than that, and since Sprinkle gives it a full chapter I will address the substance of the idea in my review of that chapter; the point here is only to observe Sprinkle's research methodology. In the chapter in question, Sprinkle provides 31 footnotes in support of ROGD, citing 17 unique sources by 16 different authors. He does also recognize that there are critiques of the theory, and provides 4 citations of 3 authors for reference. Out of curiosity, I looked up the Wikipedia entry on ROGD: at that time, Wikipedia provided 16 unique sources in favor of ROGD, and 21 unique sources critiquing the theory. In other words, Sprinkle's chapter on ROGD is more fully sourced than Wikipedia in favor of the theory, yet contains less than a third of Wikipedia's sources against it.
Now, it is possible that Sprinkle read more extensively than those four sources critiquing the theory, and simply chose not to identify organizations like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's (WPATH) statement on the problems with ROGD, or any of the multitude of scholarly journal articles critiquing the theory on basic methodological and scientific grounds. But if so, that fact itself betrays an almost criminal choice to misrepresent the state of the debate to his readers. It seems easier to believe that Sprinkle invested real time and effort in reading only texts and papers which supported the theory he found convenient to the picture of trans folk that he wanted to paint in this book.
Now, it is possible that Sprinkle read more extensively than those four sources critiquing the theory, and simply chose not to identify organizations like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's (WPATH) statement on the problems with ROGD, or any of the multitude of scholarly journal articles critiquing the theory on basic methodological and scientific grounds. But if so, that fact itself betrays an almost criminal choice to misrepresent the state of the debate to his readers. It seems easier to believe that Sprinkle invested real time and effort in reading only texts and papers which supported the theory he found convenient to the picture of trans folk that he wanted to paint in this book.
Sprinkle's Whipping Girl Problem
As of September 30th 2021 Preston Sprinkle had not read Julia Serano's Whipping Girl: A Transexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Of course that in itself is no great crime—the overwhelming majority of people have never read Whipping Girl—and if Sprinkle had not published a book all about transgender people on February 1st of 2021 his oversight wouldn't be a big deal. But he did publish his book before reading it and so it is a big deal. Let me try to explain.
In the trans community we often use the term "cracking the egg" to reference the moment at which one of us realizes that they are transgender. "My egg cracked when I..." is the sort of form this generally takes and I can't think of any one book that is responsible for cracking as many eggs as Whipping Girl is. I can say with near total confidence that if you were to assemble any random collection of 10 transgender anglophone women, the majority of any gathering will have at least interacted with the content of Whipping Girl if they haven't read it fully, likely more than once. If there were a central text for trans women, that text would be Whipping Girl. And yes, I like it, it made a significant difference in my life, but that is not the point. The point is that the idea of an author writing a book about transgender people without reading Whipping Girl is as academically ridiculous as someone trying to write an academic treatise on the history of English literature without having read any Shakespeare.
In any discipline there are central texts which are foundational and necessary as entry into the "conversation", and there are peripheral texts which might be helpful or useful to a researcher. Often there are far too many texts for any researcher to reasonably read. In this case, the problem isn't that Sprinkle hasn't read a text that I happen to find useful/helpful, the problem is that Dr. Sprinkle hasn't read a basic, foundational text in the discipline. In contrast Dr. Sprinkle did take the time to read multiple texts (central and peripheral) opposing the mainline trans position, and supporting his argument. My concern isn't exactly that Dr. Sprinkle doesn't do his homework before writing, it's that his only rigorous reading appears to be of texts that support the argument he wanted to make while missing central texts which would counter his position.
In the trans community we often use the term "cracking the egg" to reference the moment at which one of us realizes that they are transgender. "My egg cracked when I..." is the sort of form this generally takes and I can't think of any one book that is responsible for cracking as many eggs as Whipping Girl is. I can say with near total confidence that if you were to assemble any random collection of 10 transgender anglophone women, the majority of any gathering will have at least interacted with the content of Whipping Girl if they haven't read it fully, likely more than once. If there were a central text for trans women, that text would be Whipping Girl. And yes, I like it, it made a significant difference in my life, but that is not the point. The point is that the idea of an author writing a book about transgender people without reading Whipping Girl is as academically ridiculous as someone trying to write an academic treatise on the history of English literature without having read any Shakespeare.
In any discipline there are central texts which are foundational and necessary as entry into the "conversation", and there are peripheral texts which might be helpful or useful to a researcher. Often there are far too many texts for any researcher to reasonably read. In this case, the problem isn't that Sprinkle hasn't read a text that I happen to find useful/helpful, the problem is that Dr. Sprinkle hasn't read a basic, foundational text in the discipline. In contrast Dr. Sprinkle did take the time to read multiple texts (central and peripheral) opposing the mainline trans position, and supporting his argument. My concern isn't exactly that Dr. Sprinkle doesn't do his homework before writing, it's that his only rigorous reading appears to be of texts that support the argument he wanted to make while missing central texts which would counter his position.
2. Slippery Rhetoric
"If you've met one trans person you've met one trans person"
This quote (which Preston Sprinkle attributes to Mark Yarhouse) is technically accurate and, depending on context, can be not just true but vitally important. Certainly it is common among trans and trans-affirming folk to hear that there is no one way to be trans, and that trans people are highly varied: what we have in common, by definition, is simply that we identify as a gender other than what we were assigned at birth. Beyond that, there is great and glorious diversity in the trans community. Sprinkle's phrase (which he returns to often) is thus, on a certain level, both welcome and accurate. The problem is what Sprinkle does with it.
First, I should note that his focus in the book (and, by the way, also in his podcast and in his general speaking about us) is on trans people who do not fit what might be called the "norm" among transgender Christians; or to be more objective about it, he appears to go out of his way to avoid talking to or about Christians who are transgender, who affirm the goodness of gender transition (living as who we are rather than as the gender we were assigned), and who are happy with that decision. Sprinkle devotes the majority of his anecdotes, case studies, and interviews to people who either do not even identify as trans (they self ID as "gender dysphoric"), or who do identify as trans but have significant reservations about any kind of transition (for example, those who feel that it was an unfortunate necessity for themselves due to the severity of their dysphoria and that other trans people would do better to avoid it). Given that affirmation of the goodness of transition and of being trans is the position with which Dr. Sprinkle has the most disagreement, on this subject this "oversight" is rather stunning.
What Sprinkle does with the phrase "if you've met one trans person, you've met one trans person" is to focus on cases of trans arguments and identities which he feels more able to fit into his overall argument. He reminds us that they too are trans and thus, by "debunking" their experience of transness (often with the help of their own affidavits and quotes), he is able to give the impression that he has significantly weakened the case for trans affirmation in general. His unstated working assumption is that if all trans identities are unique, then all claims to transness are equally valid. Again, there is a level on which is an important claim that much of the trans community upholds, myself included: you do not need to experience dysphoria or pursue transition to be “really” trans. But Sprinkle's usage of the phrase implies that the basis on which any given trans person claims to be trans can equally apply to all trans people—even when he goes on to cite people do not even claim to be trans but whom he includes due to factors which both trans people in general and the scientific community have concluded are not legitimate constructs, namely Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) and Autogynephillia (AGP)(2). By implication, then, Sprinkle is saying that someone who claims to be trans on the basis of autogynephilia (i.e., sexual arousal at the thought of being or becoming a woman) is making just as legitimate a claim to the meaning of transness as, say, Laverne Cox. In contrast, trans folk, the medical establishment, and the scientific establishment all maintain that AGP is not a legitimate diagnosis, and that while the trans people who are put into that category really are trans, they are not made trans by the experience Sprinkle is referring to as autogynephilia. Sprinkle's unstated reasoning runs something like: all trans experiences are unique and therefore, since trans people are nonetheless a group, undermining any one trans experience amounts to undermining transness as a whole. (In logicians’ terms, this is a delicate combination of the strawman fallacy and the fallacy of composition.) This is augmented in his book by a complementary bit of slippery rhetoric: his use of "trans*."
This quote (which Preston Sprinkle attributes to Mark Yarhouse) is technically accurate and, depending on context, can be not just true but vitally important. Certainly it is common among trans and trans-affirming folk to hear that there is no one way to be trans, and that trans people are highly varied: what we have in common, by definition, is simply that we identify as a gender other than what we were assigned at birth. Beyond that, there is great and glorious diversity in the trans community. Sprinkle's phrase (which he returns to often) is thus, on a certain level, both welcome and accurate. The problem is what Sprinkle does with it.
First, I should note that his focus in the book (and, by the way, also in his podcast and in his general speaking about us) is on trans people who do not fit what might be called the "norm" among transgender Christians; or to be more objective about it, he appears to go out of his way to avoid talking to or about Christians who are transgender, who affirm the goodness of gender transition (living as who we are rather than as the gender we were assigned), and who are happy with that decision. Sprinkle devotes the majority of his anecdotes, case studies, and interviews to people who either do not even identify as trans (they self ID as "gender dysphoric"), or who do identify as trans but have significant reservations about any kind of transition (for example, those who feel that it was an unfortunate necessity for themselves due to the severity of their dysphoria and that other trans people would do better to avoid it). Given that affirmation of the goodness of transition and of being trans is the position with which Dr. Sprinkle has the most disagreement, on this subject this "oversight" is rather stunning.
What Sprinkle does with the phrase "if you've met one trans person, you've met one trans person" is to focus on cases of trans arguments and identities which he feels more able to fit into his overall argument. He reminds us that they too are trans and thus, by "debunking" their experience of transness (often with the help of their own affidavits and quotes), he is able to give the impression that he has significantly weakened the case for trans affirmation in general. His unstated working assumption is that if all trans identities are unique, then all claims to transness are equally valid. Again, there is a level on which is an important claim that much of the trans community upholds, myself included: you do not need to experience dysphoria or pursue transition to be “really” trans. But Sprinkle's usage of the phrase implies that the basis on which any given trans person claims to be trans can equally apply to all trans people—even when he goes on to cite people do not even claim to be trans but whom he includes due to factors which both trans people in general and the scientific community have concluded are not legitimate constructs, namely Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) and Autogynephillia (AGP)(2). By implication, then, Sprinkle is saying that someone who claims to be trans on the basis of autogynephilia (i.e., sexual arousal at the thought of being or becoming a woman) is making just as legitimate a claim to the meaning of transness as, say, Laverne Cox. In contrast, trans folk, the medical establishment, and the scientific establishment all maintain that AGP is not a legitimate diagnosis, and that while the trans people who are put into that category really are trans, they are not made trans by the experience Sprinkle is referring to as autogynephilia. Sprinkle's unstated reasoning runs something like: all trans experiences are unique and therefore, since trans people are nonetheless a group, undermining any one trans experience amounts to undermining transness as a whole. (In logicians’ terms, this is a delicate combination of the strawman fallacy and the fallacy of composition.) This is augmented in his book by a complementary bit of slippery rhetoric: his use of "trans*."
Trans*
Since so many gender identity terms can overlap with each other, some people put an asterisk after the word trans, stylizing it as trans*, when thye want to use it as a broad umbrella term to inculde a whole range of identities that aren't strictly transgender, such as nonbinary, genderqueer, and the like. I'll do the same in this book [italics original]
-Chapter 2There are a lot of problems with this little passage, and I intend to address them specifically when I review Chapter 2. Here, I want to focus only only the fact that he chose to use "trans*," with the asterisk, throughout his book. His claim (that "some people" use the asterisk version of trans) is probably, technically, true—I am not about to make a universal negative claim; but I have hardly if ever seen a trans person use it "in the wild," and I am a trans woman who is reasonably active in multiple secular and Christian trans social circles. So Sprinkle is using a term which saw some popularity in the early 2010s—Serano documented its rise and the beginning of its decline in 2015—but had already faded before he sat down to write the book (Embodied was published in 2021). Trying to be extra PC or inclusive and getting something like that wrong, wouldn't be a significant problem and a cis person, even one who has researched and published a book on trans people might be excused for using dated language if only Sprinkle had made a point of using the term well; he doesn't.
The reason there are umbrella terms (like the short-lived trans*) is so that we can effectively discuss diverse things which share a particular commonality. For that reason, those terms should only be deployed when that degree of generalization is necessary. If there is a more accurate term which could apply, it should generally be used instead. Thus I might use the acronym LGBTQ+ if I am referring generally to lesbians, gay folk, bi and pan people, trans people, people who identify as queer, and any other people who aren't generally considered straight and cisgender(3); but if I am only referring to gay men, I will use the term gay, or if I am (for some reason) only referring to cis gay men, cis lesbians, and cis bi/pan folk I might use LGB(4). Rather than following this rule of linguistic clarity, Preston uses trans* (or "trans* identified") throughout the book, even when more specific terms are available. Again this, in itself is excusable in the abstract—we will sometimes switch up our use of terms at the cost of strict accuracy for the sake of linguistic variety, or because the distinctions we might gain from more precise language aren't relevant to the topic at hand—but the way Dr. Sprinkle actually uses the term is misleading in the particular case of this book.
The effect that his usage has has is twofold: first, Sprinkle's repeated use of trans*, even where more specific terms are available and would be more accurate, counteracts the positive strength of "if you've met one trans person you've met one trans person" by lumping us all together linguistically even when such a move is not relevant. This allows Sprinkle to have his cake and eat it too, insofar as he has paid lip service to the fact of trans diversity while simultaneously lumping all of us into a single category that is subject to the critiques he makes of specific members. When it is convenient to him for us to be a monolith, he gets to treat us as one, when it is helpful to him for us to be diverse, he treats us as diverse.
Second, I noticed, about halfway through my reading of the book, that the constant use of the asterisk tends to make the term (and, by extension, the concept) feel dubious. We put an asterisk next to a term when we need to indicate that it should taken with a grain of salt. By the time I reached the end of Embodied, it had become almost impossible to read Sprinkle's “trans*” without a sense of a shrug.
Conclusion to the Intro
For all of that (and it is a lot) I do want to end with a positive comment about Sprinkle's book or, rather, about his project. Preston Sprinkle does seem to sincerely like the trans people he knows and speaks with and he does actively advocate against the sort of culture war vitriol that so many white evangelical Christians are directing at LGBTQ+ people—and that is something. I also want people to be kinder to trans folk and if Sprinkle's book helps to move people in that direction then I will be grateful for that while I remain deeply concerned about his book, his habits, and his work as a whole. And for people who are trans or who may have just begun to wonder whether they might be trans, I am very concerned that this book will cause deep, deep harm to them.
Footnotes
(1) for reasons that will become clear over the course of the series, I will have to jump around somewhat.(2) The complications and difficulties in talking about ROGD and AGP are manifold and I will explore and explain them in detail in my reviews of the relevant portions of the book. For now the most concise way I can explain it is that both terms refer to constructs which both the medical and psychological communities and the vast majority of trans people consider bunk. There are people whose experiences can be imperfectly described by these terms but the categorization itself forces false premises onto the experiences of trans people.
(3) I absolutely will have something to say about Sprinkle's decision to not use the term "cisgender" in my review of chapter 2.
(4) though these days I probably wouldn't given the use certain hate groups in England are making of that shortened version of the acronym.
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