tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58052903359613061352024-03-14T02:06:14.752-04:00There are More Things in Heaven and EarthBilliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.comBlogger156125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-34359060666355762772023-05-09T21:17:00.001-04:002023-05-17T14:45:04.163-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 5: Gender Steriotypes<p><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">This is the seventh installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book </i><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><i>Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say</i>. </b><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Click <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">HERE</a> for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.</i></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white;">Preston Sprinkle is worries about stereotypes. This ought to be a refreshing point of agreement between us and for the first half or so of the chapter, it is. Unfortunately by now, these moments of agreement are starting to be overshadowed by an nagging concern over what Dr. Sprinkle might be about to do </span></span><i style="color: #222222;">with </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">the point of agreement. Even more unfortunately, in this chapter that worry turned out to have been well founded. </span></p><p></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white;">With that said, I don't want to move forward without highlighting our points of agreement. Sprinkle opens the chapter with a charming recounting of the story of King David (whom he "masks" as K.D. in order to make his point) whom he reasonably portrays as flouting many patriarchal gender expectations. Throughout the section Sprinkle uses David and Jesus (as well as several others) as his primary examples of people in the Bible who are both presented as role models and who often violated stereotypical gender expectations. Sprinkle makes a brief but compelling case that, in fact, the vast majority of our gendered expectations of men and women are based not in the Bible but in our own cultural biases. As he puts it:</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZ3gDCRhwbFJnZAp05hMrnxhDGTI6qJvZdUZfQEGoRV0FTvAsRg8pUcCHFYgiMrtOj16mjgh3TrN8aBDX8vbdxdGW31yWMEMipyQhQ0HOr7129eBHDWTWm4GkYcNmJvTnmdghul8ZJKBZgWyz6KYmwBCRfKEMcmiAM0weBq_josp9g1CV1VlsNPV91g/s1024/Candy%20box.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZ3gDCRhwbFJnZAp05hMrnxhDGTI6qJvZdUZfQEGoRV0FTvAsRg8pUcCHFYgiMrtOj16mjgh3TrN8aBDX8vbdxdGW31yWMEMipyQhQ0HOr7129eBHDWTWm4GkYcNmJvTnmdghul8ZJKBZgWyz6KYmwBCRfKEMcmiAM0weBq_josp9g1CV1VlsNPV91g/s320/Candy%20box.png" width="320" /></a></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"></span></p><blockquote><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white;">Many of our beliefs about masculinity and femininity come from culture rather from the Bible, even though we sometimes rubber stamp these cultural norms with the label "biblical"</span></span></blockquote><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">I am right with him there. </span></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">I am not a particularly culturally gender-conforming woman. Rather I lean a lot closer to Dr. Sprinkle's various examples in this chapter of Biblical women who violate cultural gender expectations of their day and of our own. My own style of dress and personal presentation has variously been called "tomboy", "low femme", and "just kinda punk-ish". There are days, particularly when it is a special occasion, when I enjoy putting on a dress and getting done up but my standard wardrobe is jeans or shorts and a t-shirt with the occasional skirt thrown in (at least if I can find one with pockets) for good measure. I like beer or bourbon over wine, and I still have a great time hanging out in groups of guys. At the same time, I also enjoy a number of feminine-coded interests and past times. What I am trying to say is only that I will always appreciate people who take the time to thoughtfully consider and deconstruct gender stereotypes and cultural gender prescriptions. So when Preston Sprinkle says </span></p><blockquote><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The Bible is much more concerned that we be godly, not stereotypically masculine or feminine. While our culture reinforces narrow stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, the Bible doesn't give us narrow mandates for how all men and women must behave.</span></p></blockquote><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> I am cheering him on.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span> STEREOTYPES AND TRANS* EXPERIENCES</span><br /></span></h3><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. As I said above, doing so was, by this point in the book, a struggle but I wanted to do it. And the title for this section isn't <i>necessarily</i> a problem. The fact of the matter is that there is a lot to talk about on the subject of stereotypes and the trans experience. Transgender people as a whole certainly have a complicated relationship with gender stereotypes. Just being trans in the world involves being immediately confronted with what <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/673088" target="_blank">Dr. Talia Mae Bettcher calls the "deceiver-pretender double bind"</a> which she explains as</span></div><div><blockquote><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">passing as nontrans (and hence running the risk of exposure as a deceiver) or else being openly trans (and consequently being relegated to a mere pretender)</span></blockquote><p>so that gender stereotypes can operated as both a shield for us and as a sword against us. Like I mentioned above, most of the time I do not conform to the more well known stereotypes. If I chose to conform more to those cultural stereotypes more by dressing, and speaking in a more "feminine"(1) way or cultivating more typically feminine mannerisms, then I would likely "pass" far more often. "Passing" (the common term for when a trans person is experienced as a cisgender member of our gender category) is a complicated and difficult discussion in the trans community. A lot of binary trans people (trans men and trans women) want to pass, but not all of us do. For decades, "passing" has been held up to us (sometimes by members of our own community but primarily by members of the psychological gatekeepers who got to decide whether or not we would be given access to medical transition) as a the ultimate goal for a trans person, and our community has only had the ability to challenge that and to start talking about what we really want in the last few decades at most. And of course, some trans people just do pass simply because their own authentic expression of who they are, together with their own physical traits happen to "read" as their gender to the general public. Additionally we have to account for the simple safety concern that we are (usually) safer when we pass. Transphobes will leave you alone so long as they don't realize that you are trans. Regardless of whether or not passing is the goal, <i>conforming to gender stereotypes makes passing easier</i>. </p><p>But Bettcher calls this a double bind because, when those of us who pass are "found out" to be trans and not cis, the backlash from people who decide that they have been "deceived" by us (though in fact we are only trying to communicate who we <i>really</i> are) ranges from disgust at best to violent anger at worst.</p><p>On the other side of the double bind are those of us who don't pass; either because we aren't particularly interested in doing so or because passing simply isn't an option for us. Very noticeably, when we don't pass we will inevitably also be violating some gender stereotypes simply because those stereotypes are built from cisgender people's expressions of gender. Existing on this side of the double bind means being regularly recognized as trans and having our gender identities routinely treated as invalid. This can take the form of pity at best (Serano talks about the "pathetic trans" archetype) or violent aggression at worst. And again, that entire set of considerations all exists prior to any question of what relationship to existing cultural gender stereotypes is actually the most authentic to who we are and to how we experience ourselves in the world.</p><p>And all of that only scratches the surface of how trans-ness interacts with gender stereotypes. Further important questions and areas of consideration could include the existence of certain (limited) sub-stereotypes—I violate "typical" femininity but I conform pretty well to quite a few tomboy and lesbian stereotypes—; the way that the existence of gender stereotypes shape trans people's expectation of what a "successful" transition should look like; or the way cis and trans people are harmed by our failure to "measure up" to certain gender stereotypes. And of course none of that takes non-binary trans people into account and they have a <i>lot</i> to contribute to this conversations.</p><p>And all of that is why the title for this section was not <i>necessarily</i> a problem. But it is a problem.</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">STEREOTYPES AND TRANS* EXPERIENCES (TAKE 2)</h3><div><br /></div><div>Dr. Sprinkle begins this section with "Gender stereotypes are an important part o the transgender conversation." So far so good; he continues </div><blockquote><div>Women have been particularly affected by these stereotypes. After all, most women know what it's like to be stuffed into narrow boxes of femininity. Sensual makeup, pink dresses, sexy high heels, and expecting to grow up to become a helpless princess at the top fo a tower waiting for her masculine hero to sweep her away. Images like these are often associated with being a woman. But what if you don't want to wear painful high heels so that your legs will look sexier for men? What if you're not helpless and don't need a man to rescue you? Are you still a woman?</div></blockquote><blockquote><p> Of course you are.</p></blockquote><p>I was with him this far. I mean yes, there was the niggling suspicion that by "women" Sprinkle doesn't actually mean women who are both cis and trans so much as just cis women, and yes he spreads it on a little thick at the outset but charity can read past that. I get his point and so far it isn't a bad one. But here comes the turn. Sprinkle goes on:</p><blockquote><p>And yet some people say that if you are drawn to these stereotypes—pink dresses, high heels, fantasies about being a princess—this means you might be a girl. We see this especially in how some experts advise parents to determine whether their kid is trans*</p></blockquote><p>Oh Preston. He goes on to sketch out three stories of trans kids who cite these sorts of gender stereotypes as part of their explanations of their transness either themselves or they have their attraction to the stereotyped gender material cited by their parents as evidence that they are trans. My broad critique of what Sprinkle is doing here applies to all three.</p><p>How exactly does Sprinkle expect young children to express gender incongruence? When you are five, and you want to express to the world that you are not what the world keeps telling you you are, citing your preference for stereotypical expressions of the other gender is a pretty obvious way to go? Preston has, at this point in the chapter, already admirably pointed out how pervasive and even controlling our social gender stereotypes are; why would he expect a young trans child to somehow discern the line between stereotypes of the gender expression they are drawn to, and the more fundamental gender identity that affinity is likely a result of. Has Preston never asked a cis five year old boy how he knows he is a boy? If he tries it he is going to get an answer in the form of gender stereotypes. To treat it as suspicious or problematic for trans kids to use cultural stereotypes when explaining their gender without expressing the same skepticism if a cis child uses the same stereotypes to explain their gender is sloppy thinking at best and dishonest at worst.</p><p>Having established that transgender talk about their gender in the same way that cisgender children do but that he thinks it suspicious when trans kids do it, Dr. Sprinkle then shares a quote from a father who reported being relieved to find that his daughter is trans because it had been uncomfortable for him to think he had a feminine son. Certainly that father has some work to do and I hope that until he does it, he doesn't have a feminine son but rather than makin a point about bad parenting, Sprinkle uses this anecdote <b>[check out the vimeo vid Sprinkle cites</b>] as justification for his fear "that parents and medical professionals are only reinforcing these stereotypes when they use a preference for pink, disinterest in sports, or 'running like a girl' as the basis for determining whether that child is a boy or a girl". I find it odd for Dr. Sprinkle to be worried about this. Certainly, as a trans person myself I do not want people to misgender children regardless of whether those children are cis or trans, so I don't think it is odd for anyone to worry about misgendering Children. What is odd is for Dr. Sprinkle to worry that this is happening when the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) specifically listed rather stringent diagnostic criteria (2) for children in the edition that was c<a href="https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v7/SOC%20V7_English.pdf" target="_blank">urrent when Dr. Sprinkle wrote and published this book</a>, and that I am sure Dr. Sprinkle knew that because he references WPATH in Chapter 10. In light of the fact that he further fails to provide even a single citation to support this worry, it is hard to think that this line of "worry" is anything other than scaremongering but it could be that the fear involved represents Dr. Sprinkle's own fear of transness as something to be avoided and is therefore more akin to the distortions of hypervigilance. He does acknowledge just prior that "For many children with dysphoria [as close as Dr. Sprinkle is prepared to come to saying that someone is "really" a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth], latching onto stereotypically masculine or stereotypically feminine things can serve as a kind of coping mechanism" which, while rather ham-fisted ("coping mechanism is a rather crude way to talk about being drawn to things that help you feel less alienated from yourself) isn't too far from the point and the fact that, after stating it he never accounts for it in his analysis is disappointing.</p><p>From children, Sprinkle moves on to talk about trans women (he says "trans* adults" but doesn't discuss trans men at all in the section), claiming, rather provocatively, that "Some trans* adults also seem to reinforce gender stereotypes" before talking about two anonymous trans women and Caitlyn Jenner as his case studies. His counter example is Miranda Yardley and her criticism of Jenner. I...I had some feelings about this. Having processed them, here are my thoughts:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The statement "Some trans* adults also seem to reinforce gender stereotypes" is a classic example of an obvious statement being presented so as to seem sinister. <i>Of course</i> <i style="font-weight: bold;">some</i> trans adults reinforce gender stereotypes; some <i style="font-weight: bold;">cis</i> adults reinforce gender stereotypes. Reinforcing gender stereotypes is a problematic thing that some people do. Preston gives us no reason to believe that trans people are any more responsible for it than cis people are. Only he doesn't include the fact that cis people also do it and thereby makes it seem as if trans-ness itself is somehow especially implicated in the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. </li><li>Sprinkle's two anonymous examples are drawn from an infamously transphobic book built around a theory (AGP) which was already thoroughly debunked at the time that Sprinkle was writing <i>Embodied</i>(3)<i>. </i>That doesn't <i>necessarily</i> make the quotes he uses inaccurate to the experience or beliefs of the women who first spoke them but it does make them rather suspect.</li><li>Some people's authentic expression of the gender happens to fall pretty close to our cultural stereotypes. Sprinkle actually acknowledges this earlier in the chapter were he points out that he actually falls pretty close to our social stereotype for masculinity:</li></ul><blockquote>"<i>I'm the stereotype. </i>I love sports, ribs, large trucks, and road maps. [emphasis original]</blockquote></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">so it is a shame that he doesn't recognize that the mirror image of him is entirely possible. It is possible that he is at least aware of this in the case of cis women whose gender expression runs the gamut from butch lesbian cis women to the frilliest and most glamorous of girly girls. At the same time, it is also simply the case that in our patriarchal culture, femininity is seen as artificial by default whereas masculinity is seen as authentic (even when problematic as in the case of toxic masculinities). A woman (cis or trans) who delights in frills, lace, makeup, heels, and "domesticity" is inevitably going to be treated as less authentic (and as more ridiculous) than a man who revels (notice that one delights while the other revels) in beer, trucks, flannel, and sports. One might have hoped that Sprinkle might have clued into the insights of 3rd wave feminism rather than embracing (and maybe exploiting) <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/femmephobia">femmephobia</a>. Instead this section rather perpetuates the misogyny that is already far too common in Christian literature.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>While there are some trans women who enjoy and do authentically embody a high-femme expression I find that most often the critiques on this front that are directed at trans women are usually based, not on experiences with trans women as such but on a misunderstanding of drag</li></ul></div><p>Sprinkle ends this part of the section asking "Are stereotypes <i>causing</i> dysphoria, or is dysphoria <i>causing</i> people to feel drawn towards stereotypes, or are the two simply correlated?" —FWIW my answer would be that stereotypes are neither causing or caused by dysphoria and that, to my knowledge, stereotypes aren't correlated with dysphoria in any particular way either and it would be nice if he would have provided some citation for the suggestion that they are—but then he pivots in the same paragraph to a topic that seems distinct: the degree to which the existence of stereotypes exacerbates dysphoria. He tells the story of a friend of his (he uses they/them pronouns) who was sent into a near panic attack at the prospect of hosting a women's Bible study at their house and was anticipating "oodles of femininity to come pouring through their door. Just the thought of pink dresses, gabby women, and tiny little teacups was enough to make them want to scream". He resolves the story by assuring us that the Bible study was not as hyper-feminine as his friend had feared "Because you can be a <i>woman</i> without being a stereotypically <i>feminine</i> woman [emphasis original]" which is true and makes it strange that he doesn't seem to recognized the corollary that you also <i>can</i> be a woman while being a stereotypically feminine woman. </p><p>Ultimately though, it is true that, especially for those of us who are in the closet (know that we are trans but have not yet told the world at large about that fact) or who are still trying to deny our identities, exposure to what feels like extreme expressions of the gender we are not but are trying to act as can be particularly unpleasant and even fully triggering if only because it means spending extended time being confronted with what you are not while having to pretend to be it.</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">ARE THERE <i>ANY</i> SEX-SPECIFIC MORAL PRESCRIPTIONS?</h3><div><br /></div><div><div>This question is timely since up to this point in the book Dr. Sprinkle has made it clear that he thinks the distinction between "male" and "female" as he puts it is a morally significant one but has not clarified what he thinks the morally significant distinction actually is. Sprinkle surveys a number of passages giving commands specifically to women and to men and then concludes (after dismissing any distinctions that are so controversial as to be inconclusive for his purposes) that the closest he can get is that men and women are commanded to dress in ways that are distinct from one another within a given cultural framework of masculinity and femininity. The principle, he concludes, is that it is "about maintaining male and female distinctions" which is just circular? So far as I can tell Sprinkle's position in this section is that Christians are to maintain the distinctions between men and women (sex-specific moral prescriptions) because it is important to...maintain the distinctions between men and women. </div><div><br /></div><div>With that said, he does conclude with "four considerations to keep in mind as we grapple with this complex question" so if he isn't going to provide answers he at least has some guidelines for thinking through the question and they are:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>"The meaning of clothing is culturally bound" - I would agree.</li><li>"[S]ome cultures have clearer distinctions than others when it comes to male-and-female specific clothing" - again, I agree.</li><li>"[S]ome things even in the West are currently culturally reserved for one sex and not the other" - this, also descriptively accurate.</li><li>"[P]resenting oneself as male or female isn't so much about the fabric or shape of clothing but about the purpose behind it."- yeah no problem here.</li></ol><div>So all four of these considerations would seem to push against the idea that there are particular biblical sex-specific moral differences between men and women. All Sprinkle has been able to come up with in answer to the question is that he thinks it is important to behave (he mostly seems to mean "dress" or "present") in a way that is distinct from the "opposite" sex because that distinction is important but not for any clear reason.</div><div> </div><div>After that he concludes with a reminder that "we need to make sure that we're not arbitrarily creating sex-specific rules and forcing them onto others—especially not rules rooted in unbiblical stereotypes." and then, rather confusingly "The Bible's primary invitation to every Christian is not to act more like a man or to act more like a woman, but to act more like Jesus" which is a final line I could absolutely get behind if Dr. Sprinkle hadn't just spent the last chapter talking about how he thought Jesus' sexed-ness was important, which would seem to suggest that he is saying Christians should "act more like" what he calls "biological males".</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes</h4><p>1. I very much am in favor of breaking down and re-thinking all of what is meant by the terms "feminine" and "masculine" but in the absence of a full trans-valuation of gender culture, I will be using those terms here to represent the dominant social construction of those concepts.</p><p>2. Specifically the WPATH 7 lays out:<br /></p><blockquote><p>1. Mental health professionals should not dismiss or express a negative attitude towards nonconforming gender identities or indications of gender dysphoria. Rather, they should acknowledge
the presenting concerns of children, adolescents, and their families; offer a thorough assessment for gender dysphoria and any co-existing mental health concerns; and educate clients
and their families about therapeutic options, if needed. Acceptance and removal of secrecy can
bring considerable relief to gender dysphoric children/adolescents and their families. </p><p>2. Assessment of gender dysphoria and mental health should explore the nature and characteristics of a child’s or adolescent’s gender identity. A psychodiagnostic and psychiatric assessment
– covering the areas of emotional functioning, peer and other social relationships, and intellectual functioning/school achievement – should be performed. Assessment should include
an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of family functioning. Emotional and behavioral
problems are relatively common, and unresolved issues in a child’s or youth’s environment
may be present</p></blockquote><p>It has been has been updated in the most recent version <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644" target="_blank">(WPATH 8) of the standards of care </a>(published since <i>Embodied) </i>for children to be even more careful and comprehensive.</p><p>3. I have already written about Sprinkle's <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">problematic embrace of AGP in this post in the series</a>. But for a more thorough analysis check out <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf">this paper by Julia Serano</a>.</p><p><br /></p><h2 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Series Index:</h2><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">Intro</a></div><div><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div></div><p></p></div><p></p>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-42065029073565346622023-04-30T15:30:00.017-04:002023-05-17T13:14:28.827-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 4: Male and Female in the Image of God<div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">This is the sixth installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book </i><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><i>Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say</i>. </b><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Click <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">HERE</a> for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.</i></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></i></span></span></div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Preston Sprinkle opens Chapter 4 by asking </span></span><blockquote><div><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7RrYZW_6gBFQ4QHhZn5sI1JAHBNkEMhk47Ml596aiqWktrx1oQZ1OBeBi0ND-l--GzhlcIKgOHFsuEzUkFOklg0p8MGtGyq0IrkT1tMZgnGHXRp-duw7ciUWBOO3gI7JqkzL7EvqGJHsF1C73BRlyCKeKKiL6o-o67WfeQrgwgripM-q0xaW9DjSi3w/s1024/Cany%20Skull%20Bowl.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7RrYZW_6gBFQ4QHhZn5sI1JAHBNkEMhk47Ml596aiqWktrx1oQZ1OBeBi0ND-l--GzhlcIKgOHFsuEzUkFOklg0p8MGtGyq0IrkT1tMZgnGHXRp-duw7ciUWBOO3gI7JqkzL7EvqGJHsF1C73BRlyCKeKKiL6o-o67WfeQrgwgripM-q0xaW9DjSi3w/s320/Cany%20Skull%20Bowl.png" width="320" /></a></div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">If someone experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their gender, which</span></span><br /><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> one determines who they are—and why?</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> What does the Bible say about this question?</span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">so finally it seems as though we are about to get his argument. As a word to my readers, it is going to be important to read some of the </span></span><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">previous installments</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> in this review series before reading this post so that you will be familiar with what I have already said about Dr. Sprinkle's rhetorical approach and the various assertions he has made which depend on either insufficient evidence or outright scientifically inaccurate and/or discredited sources.</span></span></p><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">In this Chapter Dr. Sprinkle wants to link maleness and femaleness to each person's participation in the </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">imago dei</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">—the Image of God. He structures the argument around 8 propositions (or "thesis statements") and the bulk of the chapter is made of of defenses of his propositions. Sprinkle's 8 theses are:</span></span></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The body is essential to our image-bearing status.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Male and Female in Genesis 1 are categories of sex, not gender.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Adam and Eve's bodies are viewed as sacred.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Jesus views Genesis 1-2 as normative.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Paul sees the body as significant for moral behavior and correlates the body with personhood.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Scripture prohibits cross-sex behavior.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The incarnation of Christ affirms the goodness of our sexed embodiment.</span></span></li><li><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Sex difference probably remains after the resurrection.</span></span></li></ol><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle then offers a brief summary of three short paragraphs and two teaser questions for the following chapter. My plan for this installment in the review is to work through each of Dr. Sprinkle's "thesis statements" and to then respond to his summary. So buckle in, this is going to be a long post.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">1. THE BODY IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR IMAGE-BEARING STATUS</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Sprinkle's opening claim in this section is "Whatever the image of God points to, one thing is rather clear: our bodies are essential to bearing God's image." The statement comes at the end of a paragraph recognizing that there is significant scholarly debate as to what it means to bear God's image". He then supports this claim by highlighting interpretations of "image" and "likeness" which derive from the concept and terms for "idol". It is worth noting that at no point does Dr. Sprinkle engage with the multiple theological positions which do not think that our bodies as such are "essential to bearing God's image" though he does reference a text (</span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> by J. Richard Middleton which presumably does so. Regardless there are, as Sprinkle began with, quite a few takes on what is essential to being Image-of-God bearers. </span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_God"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Here is the Wikipedia link</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> but the subject of what constitutes </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Imago Dei</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> endlessly fascinating. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle's primary argument for his claim is based on an analysis</span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">On the one hand it seems more than a little unfair to demand that Dr. Sprinkle adequately address every significant theory of the </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Imago</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> for the purposes of a book in which his use of the question is only one portion. On the other it is worth remembering that Dr. Sprinkle is writing a book with profound implications for how individual Christians will treat actual transgender friends, siblings, children, spouses, and parents and that it also seems more than a little unfair to demand that Dr. Sprinkle be excused from making an adequate case before prescribing some sort of attitude towards, or beliefs about, trans people. If you were to have your parent deny the reality of who you are would you be satisfied if the book they were relying on had cut corners in research or in the complexity and thoroughness of its research or argumentation? </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">What I find even more concerning is that the conclusion of this section (the last two sentences) upon which Sprinkle goes on to base a great deal of his argument, isn't even argued for. As a Christian, a thinker, a trans person, and a theologian I don't have a huge objection to the premise that being embodied (at least at some point in our existence) is an important aspect (I hesitate to say "essential" as I believe that the dead do not lose their status as divine image bearers and only regain it at the resurrection) of our divine image bearing, but I do think that after spending 95% of the words in this section arguing only that embodiment is essential, Sprinkle then just asserts, as though it were the conclusion of the section despite his not having brought it up until this very moment, in a sentence fragment that "not just our embodied nature, but our </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">sexed</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> nature [is highlighted by the most fundamental statement about human nature]. A claim which is </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">highly</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> debated to say the least. He does attach a footnote to the claim in which he cites two texts (</span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> by Phyllis Trible and </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">In His Own Image and Likeness: Humanity, Divinity and Monotheism</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> by Randall Garr) as evidence that "male and female" are "important" to human's relationship to the image of God but he neither summarizes their arguments to that effect, nor provides his own, and it is worth noting (this will become more clearly relevant in my response to the next of Dr. Sprinkle's thesis statements) that Dr. Phyllis Bird, in her paper "</span></span><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057369405000403"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">" argues that </span></span></div><blockquote><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The parallel terms "image" </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(selem)</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> and "likeness" </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(děmût)</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> have a single meaning in combined usage and do not describe distinct attributes. They qualify each other to suggest </span></span><b><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">wholistic but noncorporeal</span></span></b><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> resemblance and representation. [bold emphasis mine, italics original]</span></span></div></blockquote><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion:</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">By the end of this section Dr. Sprinkle has provided some evidence for his claim but has successfully argued </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">at most</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> that maleness and femaleness are important (he doesn't really even argue for "necessary" or "essential") in understanding what it means for humans to be created in the image of God. It is important that he has not argued (much less demonstrated) that the Image of God requires maleness or femaleness.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">2. MALE AND FEMALE IN GENESIS 1 ARE CATEGORIES OF SEX, NOT GENDER</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle's argument for this thesis statement begins with the argument that "the command to reproduce [in Genesis 1:28] wouldn't make much sense if 'male and female' were highlighting social or psychological aspects of being male and female." Already there is a bit of rhetorical equivocation in the claim since since Preston is reducing what trans people will describe as a fundamental sense of self as a given gender" to "social or psychological" and then merely saying that such an aspect of ourselves isn't being "highlighted". Of course it is entirely possible for something to be included or even integral without it's being "highlighted" so taken strictly, Sprinkle's claim here is rather uncontroversial but also doesn't claim as much as he is later going to suggest (he goes on to behave as though he had proven the statement "the command to reproduce wouldn't make much sense if 'male and female' necessarily included aspects of being male and female". </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle's primary argument in this section consists on a citation of Phyllis Bird's Paper "</span></span><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057369405000403"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Bo</span></span></a><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057369405000403"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">ne of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">" published in </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Theology Today</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> (1994). Sprinkle introduces the quote by noting "For what it's worth, Bird isn't a particularly conservative scholar; she's a feminist and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. She's probably not going to be invited to speak at the Gospel Coalition's national conference anytime soon. Anyway she argues that the creation accounts of Genesis present the categories of </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">male and female</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> as 'indispensable to their understanding of humankind by explicit attention to the sexual differentiation of the species'." and then introduces the quote that forms the center of his argument for this thesis statement:</span></span></div><blockquote><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Sex is the constitutive differentiation, observable at birth and encoded in our genes, essential for the survival of the species, and basic to all systems of socialization. It plays a fundamental role in the identity formation of every individual. It must consequently be regarded as an essential datum in any attempt to define the human being and the nature of humankind—and thus provides a primary test for false notions of generic humanity.</span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Out of curiosity (and, by this point, a little suspicion) I went and found the paper he is citing. It turns out that in the original, Dr. Bird included a footnote (footnote 27) just after the word "genes" in the above text which reads:</span></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Modern biological and psychological understanding of sex reveal a much more complex phenomenon than the dimorphic classification recognized by most societies, with wide variation of expression and disparities between observable and genetic indicators. Theological assessments and "common sense" views of appropriate behavior based on a simple dichotomous view of sex are no longer adequate? See Bird "Genesis I-III, p. 44. Alongside this recognition of grater complexity in the markers and meaning or sex as a human attribute, there is also new attention to the cognitive consequences or correlates of sexual identity. On its implications for faith, see James B. Ashbrook, </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The Brain and Belief: Faith in the Light of Brain Research</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> (Bristol, Indiana: Wyndham Hall, 1988), and "Different Voices, Different Genes: 'Male and Female created God them,' " </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Journal of Pastoral Care </span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">46 (1992), pp. 174-183.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">which would seem to indicate that Dr. Bird is in fact saying almost the opposite of the claim Dr. Sprinkle is defending in his citation of her work. </span></span></p><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">I should further note that Dr. Bird's conclusion in the paper specifically notes (in a gloriously trans affirming way) that </span></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">In a world of multiple "others," I will fail to represent them all or adequately, but this does not lessen the obligation, and the inadequacy of my formulation can only be corrected by the word of the other. We do not need to hear every voice to gain a sense of common opinion or see every exemplar to grasp the essential nature of the species. But we do need every voice and every exemplar to know the fullness of that nature formed in the image of God. Thus our answer is never complete; it is always subject to modification by new experience, and it is the diversity of representatives that testes the adequacy of the statement. </span></span></p></blockquote><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Sprinkle ends this section with a sort of pseudo-feminist celebration of Genesis 1 as affirming the value of women as co-image bearers with men. It is not clear to me how this claim depends in any way on the thesis statement that Genesis 1 is using sex and not gender as its categories. He does say "If sex differentiation is irrelevant here, then the profound elevation of females as distinct from males loses its significance" but the claim is rather confusing. If all humans are created in the image of god then a statement to that effect is just as liberating to marginalized female humans and is also liberating to all other oppressed humans. If Sprinkle is interested in a liberatory reading of Genesis 1: 27, restricting its liberatory implications to "females" would seem to be a backwards move. Further, Sprinkle's choice to use "females" rather than "women" in order to highlight the "sex not gender" point he is trying to make here feels more than a little physically reductive. He promised earlier to address concerns around intersex people in Chapter 7 but having not yet done so, this phrasing would seem to suggest that Sprinkle views God as seeing uterus-people as equal to penis-people which...sure, but there is a lot more to it than that and putting it that way just seems dehumanizing. And that is a point that Dr, Phyllis Bird makes admirably in the paper Preston cites in this section; one wonders, almost, whether Dr. Sprinkle has bothered to read it.</span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion:</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">I am not really </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">that </span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">concerned with this thesis statement per se. I do find Dr. Sprinkle's reasoning and citation choices to be lacking but if I were sitting down to a debate with him I would likely want to point out that insisting on a sex/gender distinction for Genesis is anachronistic but would mostly shrug and grant this point. The problem with it is primarily in what Sprinkle </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">doesn't </span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">say but later acts as though he had. He doesn't ever say that "male and female" in Genesis 1 being about sex rather than gender means that those categories are immutable in individual humans or that said reference amounts to a divine affirmation of those categories, but he will go on to build arguments that act as though he had. And that is a problem since those latter claims are far harder to defend and significantly more problematic.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The most significant issue is Dr. Sprinkle's use of a source which is, in fact, arguing the precise opposite of the claim he cites it to support. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">3. ADAM AND EVE'S BODIES ARE VIEWED AS SACRED</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">This is a strange little section. The argument is only that Genesis 2 shares architectural language with the descriptions of the temple and that therefore human bodies are sacred. I actually agree with Sprinkle's thesis statement as it is given though I found his argument rather weak. Wouldn't it have been better to have merely quoted 1 Corinthians 6:19 and have done with it? Perhaps he was concerned that that would have communicated that only the bodies of Christians are sacred. Regardless the claim itself is benign. </span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Except that, after not arguing for anything regarding sexed-ness in this section, Dr. Sprinkle ends with </span></span></div><blockquote><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Genesis 1-2 speaks about our </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">sexed</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> embodied nature as something significant for human identity. Our </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">sexed</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> bodies are like sacred pieces of architecture. [emphasis mine]</span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> You see what he did? After arguing merely that our bodies are sacred he then slipped in the strong implication that the sexed-ness of our bodies is sacred. Yes, our bodies are variously sexed; yes our bodies are sacred but that </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">does not imply</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> that sexed-ness is necessary to the sacredness of our bodies. Of course Sprinkle hasn't outright said that it does. He doesn't seem to like saying these things outright.</span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion:</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">At this point in the chapter, Sprinkle's project is starting to become clear. He has been making largely inoffensive or generally accepted statements, making arguments in support of them, and then sneaking in specifically anti-trans implications so that the reader leaves each section with the </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">impression</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> that Sprinkle has demonstrated something that undermines the transgender Christian position without his having to actually forward said arguments.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">4. JESUS VIEWS GENESIS 1-2 AS NORMATIVE</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Here it is.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">This claim is the one that seems most often to stand between people who disagree over whether or not God affirms the gender identities of trans people. Sprinkle has set himself squarely on the side of those who claim that God does not affirm our gender identities and it was something of a disappointment to find that his argument for this crucial point consisted entirely of three short paragraphs and a quote from Matthew 19. But I was excited to dive into the argument he would make on this critical point. After all. If, in his citation of Genesis 1 in Matthew, Jesus was claiming that all humans are supposed to conform to the "male and female"-ness of Adam and Eve</span></span><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">1</span></span></span><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">)</span></span></span></b><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">then that would, at a minimum, seem to strike a blow against biblical support for the validity of non-binary gender identities and would lend some validity to the now-exhausting tendency of non-affirming theobrogians to quote "in the beginning God created them male and female" at us though it were some sort of anti-trans incantation. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Strangely Dr. Sprinkle's argument for this thesis is rather...lackluster might be the best word. His support for this thesis consists entirely of quoting Matthew 19:4-5 and then restating the thesis, a citation from a single commentary on Matthew, and then a rhetorical retreat by admitting that it would actually be a mistake to read too much into what Jesus says in Matthew 19 than what He intended which Sprinkle records as "a rather simple point—taken for granted in Judaism at his time—that marriage is a union between two people of different biologicals sexes [Dr. Sprinkle fails to notice the anachronism here], male and female. Embodied sex difference is assumed, </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">but it's not as if Jesus is directly addressing a question about trans* identities"</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> [emphasis mine]. So Sprinkle asserts, cites a single commentary, re-asserts, then backs off to the caveat that actually this isn't the point Jesus was making in this passage and it would be a mistake to read to much into what He did say. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">So far as I can tell, Dr. Sprinkle is once more attempting to have his cake and eat it too. He makes a bold assertion and will use that bold assertion (it is one of his eight thesis statements after all) throughout the rest of the book but his actual defense of it is paper thin (more on that commentary in the paragraph below) and the only position he is actually staking out is one far easier to defend if challenged: that Jesus seems to be taking certain things for granted when answering a question which has </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">nothing to do with the question of trans identities—</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">a rather </span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy#:~:text=The%20motte%2Dand%2Dbailey%20fallacy,(the%20%22bailey%22)."><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">good example of the motte and bailey fallacy</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> but hardly worthy of a text which purports to help Christians think about one of the most contentious cultural/social topics of our day.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">But Dr. Sprinkle's Bailey does come with one citation: page 10 of the third volume in W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison's </span></span><i><a href="https://amzn.to/3H8zUWS"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">. </span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">I was eventually able to track down page 10 of that text. Sprinkle's use of it is first to assert (without citation) that "The idea of "male and female" is not just relevant to the beginning of creation" and then to cite Davies and Allison on for the following sentence to the effect that "Jesus operates with the conviction that "the created order" was expressed in Genesis 1-2 "is a guide for the moral order" and </span></span></div><div><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">technically</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> Dr. Sprinkle is not misquoting his text here. Page 10 of vol. 3 of the </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Critical and Exegetical Commentary </span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">does indeed contain that quote. But... well let me just give you the full paragraph:</span></span></div><blockquote><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Jesus continues by quoting another Scripture, Gen 2.24 (a secondary interpolation which appears to be 'generically antipolygamous and implicitly antidivorce'). Again the created order is a guide for the moral order.</span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">I have two items to note. First the section of Davies and Allison that Dr. Sprinkle is quoting here does not reference "male and female he created them"; that passage is Genesis 1:27. Gen 2:24 is "a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and the two become one flesh", which does indeed seem to have a lot more to do with divorce than it has anything to do with "the idea of 'male and female'" except as accidentals. In particular, the citation for this sentence has nothing to do with the claim Dr. Sprinkle used to set up the sentence. Further Sprinkle very clearly ignored the clarification that his source so helpfully provides, that this reference to the created order is, in fact, a reference specifically to divorce and not to "The idea of 'male and female' as Dr. Sprinkle insinuates. Second, Davies and Allison do in fact address Jesus' reference to "male and female he created them" a page earlier, but there they even more unavoidably insist that Jesus reference to Genesis 1:27 "responds to the question about divorce by raising the question about monogamy"</span></span><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">2</span></span></span><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">)</span></span></span></b><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">. Nowhere in this section of the commentary do Davies and Allison seem to be at all interested in "the idea of 'male and female" as having anything directly to do with the point Jesus was making in Matthew 19.</span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion:</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">In this section Dr. Sprinkle declines to actually support his thesis statement aside from providing a single commentary which itself doesn't even claim to support his statement before retreating to an acknowledgement that his thesis statement is "assumed" (though he provides no evidence in support of this weaker claim either) and not the point of what Jesus was actually saying.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">5. PAUL SEES THE BODY AS SIGNIFICANT FOR MORAL BEHAVIOR AND CORRELATES THE BODY WITH PERSONHOOD</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">I am going to be a bit more brief in my response to this section the chapter. If Sprinkle had ended his thesis statement at "behavior" my only significant complaint would be that he is being a tad rhetorically slippery in his use of "significant" where he will go on to act as though he had said something like "necessary" in its place. His habit of carefully nuanced claims which he later treats as sweeping statements notwithstanding the first clause is generally accurate. In fact trans people (despite ubiquitous Evangelical claims to the contrary) generally also see the body as "significant for moral behavior" and that forms a significant part of the spiritual justification for our transitioning. If the body matters then surely having a body which conforms to our total person is a good thing.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Unfortunately Dr. Sprinkle chose to add a second claim to this thesis: "Paul ... correlates the body with personhood". This could have been salvaged—the claim is debated but not implausible—if he hadn't chosen to treat this debate as something settled. In fact one of the </span></span><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thechristianrevolution/2018/08/the-resurrection-of-the-body-spiritual-physical-both-actually/" target="_blank"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">more rancorous theology debates of the last decade hinged on Paul's view of the body</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">. Here the sources that Dr. Sprinkle cited were better than we have seen from this chapter so far and mostly lacked any serious acknowledgement of the debated-ness of the claim within theological circles. Here again we see Preston's unfortunate habit of presenting debated subjects as settled in his favor while exaggerating fringe objections to well-established positions as representing a "real debate on the topic.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">As to the claim itself, that "Paul...correlates the body with personhood" my own objection is simply to point out that both the Holy Spirit and the First Person of the Trinity are persons who are not embodied; that most Christian understandings of the blessed dead hold that they are still persons even in the period of time prior to the resurrection in which they do not have bodies, and that Paul himself speaks as though the "great cloud of witnesses" are persons despite their having bodies. Which all suggests that while Paul does certainly see bodies as important (both for good and for evil) he does not actually correlate "the body with personhood".</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">This section is relatively innocuous but it does demonstrate a few of Dr. Sprinkle's more unfortunate rhetorical habits.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">6. SCRIPTURE PROHIBITS CROSS-SEX BEHAVIOR</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle spends significantly more words on this thesis statement than on the previous ones. He sets the section up with a bold (if anachronistic) claim:</span></span></div><blockquote><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Scripture doesn't often mention people publicly presenting themselves as the opposite sex. But when it does, it always prohibits such behavior.</span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Footnote 15 is almost as long as this whole section. In it Dr. Sprinkle puts forward an argument that Deuteronomy 22:5 really is about crossdressing, and was "...to safeguard the division between male and female" a claim for which he cites P. J. Harland [check that source!!] before saying that we need to know "whether this command still applies today", observing that the surrounding passages all don't apply today and then rather than concluding that the context would argue against a modern application, concludes "The near context doesn't give us much help in determining modern applications of this verse". He then goes on to address the objection that the verse in question only refers to cultic activity but rejects that on the grounds that "nothing in the near context of Deuteronomy seems particularly concerned with cultic practices" and also that "the generic terms</span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">geber</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> ("man") and </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">ishah</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> ("woman") would be an odd choice if cultic practices were meant. Honestly I find his reasoning somewhat baffling since most of Deuteronomy has in view the separation of the Hebrews from the cultic practices an allegiances of the nations around them, and secondly because there is no particular reason why the use of generic terms for "man" and "woman" should be an odd choice to use in prohibiting cultic practices. </span></span></p><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Finally, Sprinkle concludes with an argument that the same themes are recapitulated in the New Testament and he cites the 1 Cor 11 passage about head coverings and two of the clobber passages to that effect. His conclusion to this footnote is, rather sedate: "we shouldn't just thoughtlessly cite Deuteronomy 22:5 as if it self-evidently applies to the church, we can say that the driving principle of the command very much </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">resonates</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> with how the rest of Scripture celebrates maintaining certain differences between the sexes </span></span><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">3</span></span></span><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">)</span></span></span></b><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> [emphasis mine]". So Sprinkle's long citation for the claim "I see more evidence in favor of X" turns out to be an argument for "X would resonate with my interpretation of other passages". It is worth noting that all of the New Testament passages Sprinkle cited as "resonating" with his preferred interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:5 are themselves highly contested and that Sprinkle is choosing interpretations of them without providing justification or any argumentation for those interpretations. In fact two paragraphs later he is about to admit that 1 Cor 11 "has more interpretive difficulties that Donald Trump has Twitter typos" though acknowledgement of that fact is absent from the footnote. </span></span><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">4</span></span></span><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">)</span></span></span></b></p><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">I hope you see the problem here: Dr. Sprinkle is nodding to the fact that his citations are contested, using further contested passages to support his contested interpretation and then presenting all of this </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">as though</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> he had actually proved the thesis (or at least as though he had supported it with strong evidence and meticulous reasoning) when if fact he hasn't said much beyond "I find this interpretation most compelling".</span></span></p><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Sprinkle does include an additional paragraph on the term </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">malakoi</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> but again he is choosing a highly contested term and the only citation he provides for his assertion is from William Loader. I have already written about the term (I lean towards "morally pliable" as the best translation in context). Loader is a fine scholar but I was again disappointed to see that Sprinkle neither acknowledged the fact that this term is hotly debated nor provided any reason for preferring Loader's argument over, say, </span></span><a href="https://amzn.to/3Lju0nh" target="_blank"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">James Brownson's</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">.</span></span></p><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">The rest of this section consists of a more-than-slightly homophobic reading of Romans 1 without any acknowledgment of the wildly contested scholarship on this passage for which Sprinkle cites a single source (Kyle Harper's </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">From Shame to Sin</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">),</span></span><i> </i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">an acknowledgement that the passages he has used are often used poorly, the sentence "I can't emphasize enough that we shouldn't assume each of these passages speaks directly or definitively to modern questions about transgender identities" which is more than a little strange since that is what Dr. Sprinkle seems to be doing in the book—or at least he is behaving as though his theses rest on more than indirect contested readings—, and an announcement that he will hold off on his interpretation of Galatians 3:28 (the "there is no longer male and female" passage) for Chapter 6 and the questions raised by the existence of intersex people for Chapter 7. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">In response, my own interpretation of Romans 1 can be found <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/4206502907356534662?hl=en#" target="_blank">HERE</a> and I would certainly recommend a thorough reading of multiple biblical interpretations to anyone who is working to understand and apply that passage </span></span><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">(</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">5</span></span></span><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">)</span></span></span></b><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">. I also want to just highlight the fact that, while it is, on the one hand, reasonable for Dr. Sprinkle to postpone a long and complex analysis of a tricky passage to a separate chapter, doing so can create the impression that the objections apparently raised by this won't prove to be of any concern. And because Dr. Sprinkle is going to be building his later arguments on the claims he makes in this chapter the canny reader will have to remember that any conclusions Sprinkle arrives at between now and then will have to be held provisionally with the possibility that, if he fails to make a compelling argument in Chapter 6, this thesis from Chapter 4 will have to be abandoned, and that is a very hard thing to do. Generally best practice for presenting an argument is to begin with premises and build to conclusions. Using a conclusion as a provisional premise while asking the reader to remember throughout that it is provisional is inelegant at best and slippery rhetoric at worst.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle's support for this thesis is, on examination, by his own admission throughout the section, not as strong as he seems to project. A more accurate reading of Dr. Sprinkle's claim here might be something to the effect of "</span></span><i style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Based on limited research, I have provisionally concluded that Scripture can be interpreted to prohibit cross-sex behavior." </span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">though notably, Dr. Sprinkle never seems to define quite what he means by "cross-sex behavior".</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">7. THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST AFFIMRS THE GOODNESS OF OUR SEXED EMBODIMENT</span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">This is a bizarre section and it is really hard not to question Dr. Sprinkle's motives in structuring it the way he did. Certainly the way he "supports" the thesis is bizzare insofar as he never actually argues for it. If the thesis statement had merely been "The Incarnation of Christ Affirms the Goodness of our Embodiment" there really wouldn't be much to say about it in a popular text and Dr. Sprinkle's sources and citations for the claim would be sort of minimally adequate for a generally non-controversial claim, if not comprehensive (He cites Marc Cortez, Stanley Grenz, Rikk E. Watts, and John Stackhouse). But in the second paragraph Dr. Sprinkle puts forward the claim that "If Jesus didn't have a body—a sexed body—he wouldn't have borne God's image" which is just...strange. He doesn't provide really any justification for this second claim, he just asserts it. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Why did Jesus' body have to be sexed in order for Jesus to bear God's image? What is Dr. Sprinkle trying to argue about the hypostatic union here? Does Dr. Sprinkle believe that the Holy Spirit (who does not have a body) does not bear God's image? What would it even mean to say that Jesus (Dr. Sprinkle is orthodox enough that he does affirm the divinity of Jesus) didn't bear the image of God—that the one who is Very God would not bear God's image if that One wasn't sexed? On what basis is Dr. Sprinkle claiming that it was </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">necessary</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> for Jesus to be sexed rather than that sexed-ness was an accident of Jesus' being human (Jesus is both fully God and fully human and humans are generally sexed so Jesus ended up sexed). Would Dr. Sprinkle also say that Jesus being a brunette was necessary for his bearing God's image? </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">There are so many questions and obvious objections that this claim raises which Dr. Sprinkle seems to just ignore. His only other footnote to this section is to the final claim in it that "Jesus' sexed embodiment challenges the notion that biology is irrelevant to identity" and I will address that footnote but before I do I want to point out the claim itself doesn't particularly support the thesis it purports to. Even if it were true that Jesus sexed embodiment challenges the notion that biology is irrelevant to identity, it doesn't follow that the incarnation affirms the goodness of sexed embodiment any more than it would follow from the (odd) claim the Jesus'brunette embodiment challenges the notion that hair color is irrelevant to identity would imply somehow that the incarnation affirms the goodness of haired embodiment. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Now the footnote. Footnote 21 appears at the end of the sentence about Jesus' sexed embodiment challenging the notion that biology is irrelevant to identity, which might give a casual reader the impression that Dr. Sprinkle has provided sources, evidence, or argumentation for this claim. Instead the footnote is entirely taken up with whether or not Jesus' maleness means that women do not bear the image of God. Rather alarmingly Dr. Sprinkle doesn't even reach a conclusion on this question. Instead he goes back and forth on it citing different passages from Pauline epistles before providing a list of readings for people who want to further explore the question. </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">He does not categorically rule out the possibility that only humans of the male sex actually bear the image of God.</span></span></i></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion</span></span></h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">In this section Dr. Sprinkle begins with a strange claim, proceeds not to actually defend the strange part of his claim, makes several further odd claims without support or argument and then ends with a footnote in which is is skeptical towards, but not categorically closed to, the possibility that only male humans bear the image of God. It seems almost as thought Sprinkle hoped that his readers would accept his addition of "sexed" to the thesis statement without really noticing or questioning where it came from and then panicked, waved to general support for the less controversial (and less relevant) part of the claim before very strangely choosing to include a footnote that holds open the possibility of a wildly misogynistic claim which, if true,would totally undermine points he makes elsewhere in the book about the full equality in dignity and image bearer status of men and women. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Beyond that though, I am struck at this point that Dr. Sprinkle is creating here the impression that trans people think that biology or sexed-ness is irrelevant to identity which just isn't true. After all when I call myself a trans woman, the importance of biology it is necessarily implicit in that identity claim. In saying that I am a trans woman I am saying that I am a woman who was assigned male at birth due to my sex being characteristic of males of our species. Sexed-ness and biology are all over that. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">8. SEX DIFFERENCE PROBABLY REMAINS AFTER THE RESURRECTION</span></span></h3><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">This is another of the longer sections of the Chapter. Sprinkle begins by developing the idea that resurrection bodies are important including the claim "What we will be like </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">then</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> provides a moral basis for how we should live </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">now.</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> [emphasis original]" which he defends using the 1 Cor 6 passage about uniting the Body of Christ with a prostitute. In this he seems to assume that the moral argument Paul is making rests on the fact of resurrection (Paul does reference resurrection just prior) rather than the idea that what we do with our bodies is done by Christ's body because we are all members of Christ's body. He concludes the first paragraph with the assertion that "Christian ethics is rooted in bodily resurrection". I don't know that I would say "rooted" but certainly I would agree that resurrection is really important to Christian ethics.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Sprinkle then moves on to address the further contention that resurrection bodies will be sexed. While I am generally inclined to agree with him that they will—they will be sexed or unsexed according to what best aligns with our total person as we have become and will be becoming—I found it a little disappointing that, rather than address those texts which challenge his view, Dr. Sprinkle merely lists a few and then, again, points to Chapter 6, repeating his rhetorical move from the previous section.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Having recognized that there are passages which challenge his claim and then punted on them, Sprinkle proceeds to make his case in four parts only after emphasizing that "there's a good deal of ambiguity in what exactly our resurrected bodies will be like. We </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">don't</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> know far more than we </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">do</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> know. [emphasis original]" which, again ought to emphasize the degree to which any conclusions he will later base on this chapter must be read as tenuous. In fact it seems to me that, if Dr. Sprinkle is so uncertain in his reasoning it may not be appropriate for him to be recommending even a posture of skepticism towards the accounts of the transgender people who have the benefit of first hand experience of gender incongruity.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Regardless, Sprinkle's reasons for thinking that "it's more </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">likely</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> that our bodies will be sexed in the resurrection [emphasis mine]" are: 1. Thesis Statement 2; 2. Thesis Statements 7 and 3; 3.The claim that Jesus' resurrection is a model for our own resurrection; and 4. The claims that our bodies are important to Paul and that (per Thesis Statement 1) the sexed-ness of our bodies is "significant to our embodied existence and our personhood" </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">suggest</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> that "sex differences will be part of our resurrected state". Since reasons 1,2 and 4 recursively depend on previous Thesis statements (go back now and ask yourself how convinced you are that those statements are accurate and what it means that Dr. Sprinkle is not building another premise on them) the only one to address here is reason 3. So while I would agree that Jesus' resurrection is a model for our own, I don't see where Dr. Sprinkle has any grounds to act as though he knows even that Jesus' body was sexed after the resurrection. At least in any way that Dr. Sprinkle seems to mean the term "sexed" (</span></span><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html" target="_blank"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">remember from Chapter 2</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">that he never does quite define the term) the New Testament doesn't give any indication as to Jesus' post resurrection sex, which makes this rather an odd claim for Sprinkle to base his Thesis Statement.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Conclusion</span></span></span></span></h4><div>For my conclusion to this section I want to simply quote Dr. Sprinkle's conclusion and add emphasis (bold and italics) to the ways in which he qualifies his Thesis Statement:</div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><blockquote><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Again I want to hold these four points <i><b>with an open hand, and I recommend that you do too</b></i>. We're trying to fill in several silent gaps with <i><b>assumptions</b></i>—theologically informed assumptions, but assumptions nevertheless. And yet, it does appear <i><b>more likely</b></i> that our future resurrected bodies will be sexed and <i><b>less likely</b></i> that we'll be given androgynous bodies in the resurrection. If our future glorified existence will be in a sexed body, then it would <i><b>seem</b></i> reasonably consistent that we should honor our embodied sex now. This approach does <i><b>at least</b></i> resonate with the dominant way in which Scripture values our sexed embodiment as integral to our humanity.</span></blockquote><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Notice please that the last sentence is merely a re-statement of Thesis Statement 3 and, if you go back and re-read you will remember that Dr. Sprinkle did actually establish the "sexed" part of "Adam and Eve's Bodies are Viewed as Sacred" in that section but is acting here as though he had. </span></span></p><p><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Chapter Conclusion</span></span></span></span></h3><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Dr. Sprinkle ends the chapter with three paragraphs and an additional sentence that he calls a "Summary". In fact the summary is contained in the first paragraph of the section and consists of restating Dr. Sprinkle's oft-stated but never demonstrated claim that "Scripturally, biological sex is a significant aspect of human identity" a claim that is not, in fact, challenging to transgender identities—I don't know of any trans person who views the parts of their physiology that Dr. Sprinkle here is presumably referring to as "biological sex" as being insignificant. If we thought those aspects of our bodies were insignificant then those of us who chose to change them wouldn't really have any reason to do so. The problem of course is that Sprinkle seems to be slipping in the unspoken claim that <i>because</i> they are significant, it is wrong to change them. He will get into this question more directly in later chapters (he sort of has to) but it is worth noting here that none of this chapter has even claimed to support that conclusion. At most Dr. Sprinkle has spent a chapter offering heavily qualified and too-often poorly sourced reasons for believing that "biological sex is a significant aspect of human identity".</span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">After that Dr. Sprinkle acknowledges (to his credit) that "We need to hit the brakes if you think we're ready to say that biological sex <i>and not </i>gender (identity or role) define who we are", reiterates that this isn't something the Bible speaks to directly, and spends several sentences reminding us of the importance of being "thorough and cautious, humbly considering all angles in the discussion" which risks giving the impression that he has done or is going to do anything of the sort, and reiterates his summary statement. He ends with a hook into his next chapter dealing with questions of masculinity and femininity. I will do likewise.</span></span></span></span></div></span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Series Index</h4><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><br /></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">Intro</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes</a></div></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes:</h4><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">1. I am not here commenting on whether Adam and Eve ought to be read as literal or true-mythical figures as I don't see that it makes any difference for the purposes of this topic.</span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">2. I am not here personally commenting on the legitimacy of divorce as that is not the focus of this review series. For what it is worth I do not in fact believe that Matthew 19 constitutes an outright ban on divorce and remarriage.</span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">3. I was disappointed to find that at no point does Dr. Sprinkle ever seem to say precisely </span></span><i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">which</span></span></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> differences he believes God is trying to preserve.</span></span></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">4. I have provided my own, different interpretation of the Romans 1 and 1 Cor 2 texts Dr. Sprinkle cites </span></span><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-couple-of-odd-words-my-christian.html" target="_blank"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Here</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> and </span></span><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/romans-1-my-christian-defense-of-lgb.html"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Here</span></span></a><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> and you can find one of many discussions of the 1 Cor 11 </span></span><a href="https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/how-should-we-interpret-1-corinthians-11-2-16/" target="_blank"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">HERE</span></span></a></div><div><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">5. I particularly recommend Dr. James Brownson's </span></span><i><a href="https://amzn.to/423YuAi" target="_blank"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Bible, Gender, Sexuality</span></span></a></i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"> and Sarah Ruden's </span></span><i><a href="https://amzn.to/3HkHQV1"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">Paul Among the People</span></span></a> </i><span style="vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: inherit;">as counterpoint texts to Dr. Sprinkle's interpretation</span></span></div><p></p>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-43797672293889598632023-04-02T16:53:00.009-04:002023-05-17T10:38:53.083-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans. A Review<p><i>This is the fifth installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book </i><b><i>Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say</i>. </b><i>Click <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">HERE</a> for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.</i></p><blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEihQ0KYekWjLPafbtgUH-Fy-yI0UXwPe7JZcP2Ra2Vj2_GMjKROB17zoZE_eWwqdC30ZNwLDdm8xVoaqajMi-FT1SA9Ot5EulLOqINA2UaloQKLVNMiae7SASo3ckcEjEXh0dZ3IbhDg1sSLIqbSs4wfXFegR1hOLgtuSyCWVRARpUv2U0pDlW4nJ8o5Q" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEihQ0KYekWjLPafbtgUH-Fy-yI0UXwPe7JZcP2Ra2Vj2_GMjKROB17zoZE_eWwqdC30ZNwLDdm8xVoaqajMi-FT1SA9Ot5EulLOqINA2UaloQKLVNMiae7SASo3ckcEjEXh0dZ3IbhDg1sSLIqbSs4wfXFegR1hOLgtuSyCWVRARpUv2U0pDlW4nJ8o5Q=w320-h320" width="320" /></a></div>A transgender person is anyone whose gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.<p></p></blockquote><p>I need to foreground the standard definition of what the term <i>transgender</i> means before we launch into this chapter because this is where all the prep work Preston Sprinkle did in the previous two chapters, introducing the subject and defining a bunch of terms in ways that suit his arguments, really starts to pay off in tragically misleading ways. The definition above doesn't actually conflict with the one Sprinkle provided at the beginning of Chapter 2—<i>an umbrella term for the many ways in which people might experience and/or present and express (or live out) their gender identities differently from people whose sense of gender identity is congruent with their biological sex</i>—but keeping the original front and center will do a lot to show how far Sprinkle wants to drift from it. </p><p>We also need to keep in mind Sprinkle's deployment of <i>trans*</i> with the asterisk which he is using as a sort of larger umbrella than the term <i>transgender</i> above:</p><blockquote><p>...some people put an asterisk after the word <i>trans</i>, styling it as <i>trans*</i>, when they want to use it as a broad umbrella term to include a whole range of identities that aren't strictly <i>transgender, </i>such as <i>nonbinary, genderqueer,</i> and the like. I'll do the same in this book.</p></blockquote><p>As I referenced in the intro to this series, Sprinkle's choice to use <i>trans*</i> with the asterisk is decidedly non-standard and was not standard in 2021 when the book was published. I would love to know who the "some people" from the above definition actually are; unfortunately Sprinkle didn't provide any citation for that portion of Chapter 2. I was able to locate <i>trans*</i> in 2 out of 5 online glossaries of LGBTQ+ related terms and in neither of them was there an indication that <i>trans* </i>indicates identities that don't already fall under the <i>trans</i> or <i>transgender </i>umbrella. The closest thing to that claim was the observation that using <i>trans* </i>rather than <i>trans</i> does a better job of expressing inclusion of certain non-binary identities. That may be where Sprinkle got the idea but if so then he has made a leap from the claim that one term is better at expressing an inclusivity that both are intended to express, to the claim that one expresses a greater degree of inclusivity than the other. In effect he has taken the step of reifying a distinction that is not intended by any original users of the term.</p><p>Sprinkle structures Chapter 3 around brief explanations of his different categories of "trans*" people. So far as I have been able to find this taxonomy is unique to Sprinkle.</p><p>So Let's buckle up dive in to his categories:</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Gender Dysphoric Trans*</h3><div>Sprinkle is, at some level at least, aware of the fact that <i>gender dysphoria</i> is a particular experience, one for which transition is really the only recognized treatment. Sprinkle is perfectly correct to observe that "some trans*-identified people experience gender dysphoria, and some don't" but he goes on to assert that "For those who do, there are two broad categories: early-onset gender dysphoria and "late-onset gender dysphoria" which is technically true since trans people who experience gender dysphoria do begin experiencing it at a variety of ages and the late vs early onset has been used in the past but then there are a lot of ways that people who experience gender dysphoria can be divided into categories (severity of the dysphoria, birth assigned sex, those who do and do not decide to transition etc...) it is worth noticing now that this particular taxonomy happens to serve his purpose later in the chapter.<br /></div><div>Regardless, Sprinkle goes on to focus on early-onset gender dysphoria and immediately spreads some misinformation. His concluding paragraph on the topic claims "And for most kids [gender dysphoria] goes away. According to all available studies done on the persistence rate of dysphoria in kids, 61 to 88 percent of early-onset dysphoria cases end up desisting; that is, the dysphoria goes away over puberty". He does have a footnote for this assertion and in it he admits that "this 'desistance' rate has been the subject of much controversy," (which already calls into question his main text claim about "all available studies") and then cites <a href="https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/psychology/james-cantor/">a paper justifying conversion therapy for trangender kids from his own organization</a> his own organization and a blog post from James Cantor, <a href="https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/psychology/james-cantor/">a notoriously transphobic psychologist</a> whose "work" around transgender people has been critisized by multible mainstream medical associations. Both cite a number of studies but <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690">this 2016 piece by Brynn Tannehill</a> demonstrates just how horribly flawed the assumptions, methods, and processes that went into making up that "61-88%" desistance rate are. To hand wave those serious methodological flaws as "controversy" and to hide even that away in a footnote and away from the main text is, frankly, misleading to the point of being dishonest. Further, since the release of Sprinkle's book, s<a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e2021056082/186992/Gender-Identity-5-Years-After-Social-Transition?autologincheck=redirected">tudies have been released setting the number at a whopping 6%</a> of children who present with gender dysphoria and go on to desist, making the audacity of Sprinkle's claims and the severely biased nature of his "research" rather starkly apparent. I would very much encourage you to <a href="https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/debunked-no-80-of-trans-youth-do" target="_blank">read more about this HERE</a> (<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@erininthemorn/video/7213134282632482091">this video is a nice tl;dr by the author</a>) and decide for yourself whether or not Preston's numbers are accurate and whether the language and certainty he projects in the main text are justified.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Non-Gender Dysphoric Trans* </h3><div>Before we get into what Sprinkle has to say in this section I want to be clear that "experiencing vs. not-experiencing gender dysphoria" is not a way in which trans people categorize ourselves. The fact of the matter is that on the one hand it is true that someone does not have to experience dysphoria to be trans—to be trans is to have a gender identity which doesn't align with the sex you were assigned at birth, whereas gender dysphoria is an experience of distress that is caused by said misalignment, so if you are trans, you don't become less so by not suffering as a result—and on the other hand <a href="https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en">gender dysphoria manifests in many different ways</a> and many people who do experience dysphoria do not recognized that that is what they are experiencing for quite a while.</div><div><br /></div><div>So with that as background, Sprinkle starts this section off in what is becoming typical of his misleading-while-giving-himself-a-technical-out method: he quotes a trans YouTuber claiming to be "1000% transgender" and also to identify 1000% as the gender he was assigned at birth. In the footnote to this strange claim, Sprinkle allows that the YouTuber in question later retracted that statement but Sprinkle apparently didn't think that fact deserved a place in the main text. More troubling, he goes on to use that retracted quote as a jumping off point to start talking about a "'self-ID' perspective" in which "if you say you're trans*, then you're trans*" which itself is a starting point for him to begin discussing trans-medicalism (without naming it). It is unclear what the retracted quote has to do with dysphoria or what purpose Sprinkle thinks it is serving in his book and the Sprinkle's claims about self-ID are, again, a severe misrepresentation of what trans people actually think and say. The claim "if you say you're trans then you're trans*" does not, when spoken by the community, mean that speaking the phrase "I am trans" will magically grant a status of transness. It means that people should not be required to demonstrate or perform misery or suffering in order to be recognized as trans. Some trans people, for instance, do not experience gender dysphoria but they do experience gender euphoria when they are able to live into their actual gender identity. It means that each person is in the best/only position to know whether the sex they were assigned at birth aligns with their gender identity. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle ends the section by misrepresenting Natalie Wynn as saying that performance is all there is to gender, and then citing Blaire White as disagreeing. Sprinkle doesn't provide a citation for either woman so his claim that Natalie Wynn "says that if you live like a woman, then you're a woman" is hard to verify but, as someone who has watched most (all?) of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ContraPoints">her video essays</a> I can very safely say that that quote does not represent anything like <a href="https://i.ytimg.com/an_webp/1pTPuoGjQsI/mqdefault_6s.webp?du=3000&sqp=CKiXh6EG&rs=AOn4CLCs1IN-hwJajp65bpGbJWpzf5Qi8A" target="_blank">the full complexity of Wynn's views on what constitutes womanhood or transness</a>. Meanwhile Blaire White is, for sure, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedicalism">transmedicalist</a> but whose views can't really be said to represent anything close to a consensus or even established position in contemporary transgender discourse (popular or academic). Sprinkle ends by asking (and not answering) "Which one is right? And <i>why</i>? What does it mean to be trans*" an odd question given that he has already provided his definition. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Trans* Experience Vs. Trans* Ontology</h3><div>Sprinkle does...a lot with this section of the chapter. It is worth reiterating that he purports to be descriptive in each of these sections and does not write as though he were making an argument but as though he were reporting on the phenomenon of transness. That mode of writing allows him to wildly over-represent extremely minority accounts as nonetheless representative of trans people. For instance, in this section he spends most of his time talking about two people: Kat and Dan. Kat is a woman who identifies as transgender but also as the sex she was assigned at birth. She identifies as transgender because she experiences gender dysphoria but, for religious reasons, has chosen not to transition or to identify as the man or non-binary person she actually experiences herself to be. (Sprinkle does not provide all of this information but <a href="https://theologyintheraw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/unnamed-530x530.jpg" target="_blank">he interviewed a Kat on his podcast</a> and I am working from that. </div><div>Meanwhile the picture that Preston paints with "Dan" (I was unable to determine who Sprinkle is talking about) is both representative of what people generally actually mean by "transgender" and is also rather wildly revealing of Preston's actual beliefs given that he introduces "Dan" by misgendering her and then switches to she/her only after punting on the question of pronoun usage. </div><div><br /></div><div>We will have to wait for the next chapter before Sprinkle actually weighs in with anything like an argument on this question so before moving on I will note again that, in this section Sprinkle presents as representative, a view that is—at best—such an overwhelmingly minority view that most transgender people would find it baffling—it wouldn't even register as a common mistake or dispute.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">ROGD Trans*</h3><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle takes two paragraphs to introduce this as a concept then punts to Chapter 10 granting, at least, that "Lots of discussions (and heated debates) surround ROGD" (<b>R</b>apid <b>O</b>nset <b>G</b>ender <b>D</b>ysphoria). It is worth noting that he also identifies the derogative term <i>trans trender</i> in this section and objects to it's use not because it "can feel like it's invalidating someone's experience" as such but because that "is never a great way to start a relationship. Sprinkle's concern is evangelistic and propagandistic, rather than person-centered. He also includes the claim that "there does seem to be a good deal of evidence that social influences are one reason some (perhaps many) teenagers and young adults identify as trans*" Which, for any reasonable definition of "a good deal of evidence" is a false claim since the only study which has even purported to support ROGD was so methodologically flawed that the journal which published it chose to take it down for amendments and to moderate its conclusion.</div><div><br /></div><div>I will engage with Sprinkle's actual arguments and debate in my response to Chapter 10 so for now here are several articles pointing out the flaws in the ROGD "theory":</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Julia Serano: <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-1940b8afdeba">Everything You Need To Know About Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria</a></li><li><i>The Journal of Pediatrics</i>: <a href="https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(21)01085-4/fulltext" target="_blank">Do Clinical Data from Transgender Adolescents Suppport the Phenomenon of "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"?</a><br /></li><li><i>Medical News Today</i>: <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-is-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria" target="_blank">What is Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria?</a></li></ul><div>And here is an excellent podcast episode with a case study of the harm caused by ROGD<br /><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/09lyn8zG30bRTlpdUM6meK?go=1&sp_cid=0d338ac1f9def17d78f41a62e43459eb&utm_source=embed_player_p&utm_medium=desktop">Seduction of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria</a></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Trans* Detransitioners </h3><div><br /></div><div>Detransitioners do exist and they absolutely need to be heard. Sprinkle reasonably referrs to detransitioners (people who had transitioned to at least some extent who choose to go back to living as their assigned gender) as "another group of (former?) trans* people" since the degree to which detransitioners identify as trans is significantly varied. After that, though, Sprinkle goes on to list potential reasons for detransition and comes up with: dissatisfaction with "the operation"<span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>1</b></span>, depression and anxiety not going away after transition, and fading ROGD. He provides no citation though so I looked it up. In fact, in 2021 the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8213007/">NIH released a significant study on the reasonons for detransition</a> and found that:<br /></div><blockquote><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Cambria, "Cambria Math", stixgeneral, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;">In this national study, 13.1% of TGD respondents who had ever pursued gender affirmation reported a history of detransition. To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine reasons for detransition in a large national sample of TGD adults. The vast majority of participants reported detransition due at least in part to external factors, such as pressure from family, nonaffirming school environments, and sexual assault. External pressures such as family rejection, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Cambria, "Cambria Math", stixgeneral, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;">school-based harassment, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Cambria, "Cambria Math", stixgeneral, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;">lack of government affirmation, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Cambria, "Cambria Math", stixgeneral, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;">and sexual violence </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Cambria, "Cambria Math", stixgeneral, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;">have previously been associated with increased suicide attempts in TGD populations.</span></div></blockquote><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-otqdxgbGsEmPz7BJmiCbLPUlWuhEN_qWdbtdJQk5JvzS7hXETnutpuWahSLngf_qdK6aaKSGe3B3gm57ct7yMT2J3c9noAAHxsvVL0y6_7Z4AoFbWReDHpwoO01CWzd8FlVLKntDi9paY5XVRVwkgwE0ftU5LSDaNv90sLx4yTRr7DK6rUbojWCScg/s2160/Sophie%20Desistance%20rates.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="2139" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-otqdxgbGsEmPz7BJmiCbLPUlWuhEN_qWdbtdJQk5JvzS7hXETnutpuWahSLngf_qdK6aaKSGe3B3gm57ct7yMT2J3c9noAAHxsvVL0y6_7Z4AoFbWReDHpwoO01CWzd8FlVLKntDi9paY5XVRVwkgwE0ftU5LSDaNv90sLx4yTRr7DK6rUbojWCScg/s320/Sophie%20Desistance%20rates.jpg" width="317" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">credit Sophie Labelle @AssigneeGarcon</td></tr></tbody></table> Note that Sprinkle's three reasons don't appear as any of the major reasons for transition. In fact the reasons Sprinkle highlights account for, at most, 18% of reasons for detransition while a lack of social/medical/familial/financial support (which, I would argue, Sprinkle is contributing to here) account for the "vast majority" of cases. That is not the impression that Dr. Sprinkle conveys in this<br /> short section and it is well worth asking why not. Also, while that study was published after Dr. Sprinkle's book he had access to similar data in one of the <a href="https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf">largest ever surveys of transgender people published by the National Center for Transgender Equality</a> which found that only 9% of respondents had detransitioned for any of the reasons in Sprinkle's list while, again, the vast majority of detransitioners cited a lack of family/social/medical/financial support. <p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Autogynephilic Trans*</h3><div><br /></div><div>This isn't a thing. Sprinkle does allow that "it doesn't exist and you're transphobic if you say it does" is a position that people take on this topic but, as we have seen him do several times already, he uses format and insinuation to give the impression that autogynephilia has far more legitimacy that it. in fact does. First, note that he conjoins "autogynephilia doesn't exist" with "an you're transphobic if you say it does" thereby putting everyone to whom the idea sounds even vaguely plausible on the defensive against any argument against the existence of autogynephilia. In this section Dr. Sprinkle provides a definition of autogynephilia as a term which "describes an experience where a biological male is erotically aroused at the thought of himself as a female" which isn't quite accurate. The term in fact was developed by Ray Blanchard as a category of paraphelia (think kink or fetish) in which a man is turned on at the thought of himself as a woman, thus when people say that "autogynephilia doesn't exist" they do not mean, as Sprinkle assumes, that no man (or trans woman) has ever been turned on by thoughts of being a woman, they mean that autogynephilia is not a paraphilia, nor is it a category of trans woman. You see the problem? Sprinkle uses the weak defition (the experience of being aroused at a particular concept) as his defintion but they goes on to act as though people identifying with that experience (Sprinkle cites two friends of his and two other individuals who identify with autogynephilia) as supporting the claims of people who use the hard definition of autogynephilia as a paraphilia. He is equivocating. </div><div><br /></div><div>Spinkle makes the rather strong statement in this section that "based on everything I've read and the people I've talked to, I believe without a doubt that some trans* people are autogynephilic" which he then supports with reference to the two friends one of whom, he admits, doesn't even experience "autogynephilia" as something erotic—which is rather the whole deal when it comes to any traditional "hard" definition of autogynephilia.</div><div><br /></div><div>OK so I had better explain a bit more about what autogynephilia purports to be and why I opened this section declaring that it "isn't a thing". First I need to state that autogynephilia isn't a thing because every major psychological association rejects it both as a legitimate category of trans person and as a diagnosable paraphilia. Generally one runs into autogynephilia being proposed either as a sort of alternative to "real" transness, or as an argument that trans-ness generally is nothing more than an elaborate fetish. The former is rather personally frustrating to me as <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/02/hidden.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">it was my own youthful exposure to the autogynephilia-as-fake-transness idea that persuaded me for over two decades that I was "not actually trans"</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The core problem, in both instances (autogynephilia as a category of trans women and autogynephilia as a paraphilia) is that <i>cis women are also routinely aroused in ways that involve understanding and imagining themselves as women</i>. It is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918360903005212">actually relatively rare to find a cis woman for whom imagining herself as a woman is not at least a part of her erotic fantasy life</a> which means that when a trans woman finds that thinking of herself as a woman is a component of her erotic fantasy life she is just...experiencing the standard fantasy life of a woman. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle has to have been aware of this (prior to the publication of his book I actually shared several resources with him which clarify those problems with the theory) but goes to great lengths (I will examine them below) to give the impression that autogynephilia is somehow nevertheless a live option in the trans community but he somehow never gets around to mentioning the fact that, <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/making-sense-of-autogynephilia-debates-73d9051e88d3">as a theory and as a category</a> it has been <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20582803/">roundly discredited by the psychological community</a>. He does recommend Alice Dreger's book <i>Galileo's Middle Finger</i> (Dreger is a historian) for "a punchy review for some of the controversy surrounding autogynephilia" but fails to mention that Dreger is generally understood in the trans community to be transphobic and a supporter of quack pseudoscience. In fact all four of the people cited in the main text of this section (Alice Dreger, Ray Blanchard, J Michael Bailey, and Anne Lawrence) are all thoroughly anti-transgender partisans whose work has been thoroughly debunked.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Citation & Misrepresentation</h3><div><br /></div><div>I can't end this section without mentioning one last galling choice Dr. Sprinkle makes in this section. In footnote 12 Sprinkle provides citation for the claim that "Trans* people themselves hold a wide range of opinions on autogynephilia" by citing Julia Serano and Miranda Yardley. This is, of course, <i>technically</i> true inasmuch as it is possible to find someone in any category who believes almost anything. Trans people (particularly trans women) who believe that autogynephilia is a legitimate category of transgender person (and/or a real reason that someone might think they are trans without actually being trans) are, however, very much on the fringe. Thus, Dr. Sprinkle's habit of "listing views" without ever(?) distinguishing between mainstream and fringe views ends up subtly misleading the reader. Saying that "American women themselves hold a wide range of opinions on patriarchal polygamy" and then citing that with two specific women who have written on the subject would <i>technically</i> be a true statement but would give the misleading impression that patriarchal polygamy is a live option in the United States when it simply isn't. </div><div><br /></div><div>Dr. Sprinkle's choice of women to list as representative of the spectrum of views on this is itself rather a tell sort of cops to this problem. I have cited Julia Serano frequently in this series and will continue to do so because she is an excellent authority transgender theory in US, particularly among transgender women. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Serano">Serano</a> holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Columbia University, has published in multiple academic scholarly journals, and wrote the seminal book on transgender theory and feminism: <i>Whipping Girl</i> (A text Sprinkle has admitted to not having read prior to the publication of his book despite having been referred to on on multiple occasions)<i>; </i><a href="https://www.transgendermap.com/community/miranda-yardley/">Miranda Yardley</a> holds a bachelors degree in accounting, runs a music magazine, and has written some articles about trans theory on her personal website. These two sources are not equal, but none of that is going to be apparent to a casual reader of <i>Embodied</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>If this sort of misleading mischaracterization were a one off then I could reasonably be accused of nit-picking here. Unfortunately it is representative of Sprinkle's approach throughout the book.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Mental Health Concerns Among Trans*</h3><div><br /></div><div>It might seem a little bit precocious but I want to note that the titles for most of these sections are grammatically incorrect. "transgender" "trans" and even "trans*" are all adjectives. Just as it would be grammatically incorrect to say "Mental Health Concerns Among Short" it is incorrect to say "Mental Health Concerns Among Trans*". This is not, on its own, a serious issue but it does suggest that Dr. Sprinkle is not actually all that familiar with transgender people and transgender discourse. To the average cis person those grammar errors probably don't stand out much, but to a trans person they read like the glaringly bad grammar that they are.</div><div><br /></div><div>As to the content of this section, despite its length, the problems are fairly easy to summarize. Sprinkle notes the well documented correlation between people on the autism spectrum and who have various mental health issues, and people who are trans. He then goes on to speculate rather oddly on the possibility of an autistic person who has OCD who "has an ongoing obsession with the idea of becoming the other sex". He then has a paragraph talking about making sure that people don't think they are trans due to factors actually rooted in a mental health concern or in their being autistic, and a final paragraph reminding his readers that: "It would be untruthful to assume that every biological male who identifies as trans* is autogynephilic or on the autism spectrum of has an underlying mental health issue" which is accurate enough but gives the impression that there is some significant portion of people who think that they are trans but are actually suffering from some mental health condition or are autistic and somehow confuse that for trans-ness. That theory <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/4379767229388959863#" target="_blank">doesn't hold up to the data we have about trans people now</a> and it didn't hold up to the data we had when Sprinkle first published the book.</div><div><br /></div><div>In general the enormous missing piece in Sprinkle's analysis in this chapter is the whole concept of <i>minority stress </i>which has <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-32754-018">already been document</a> (and had well before Dr. Sprinkle wrote this book) to have a significant impact on the physical and mental health of queer people generally and transgender people specifically. In fact is now also well documented that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35212746/" target="_blank">affirming health care</a> and social support can largely to totally mitigate any increase in mental health challenges transgender people might experience in contrast to our cisgender counterparts. The conclusion of <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/137/3/e20153223/81409/Mental-Health-of-Transgender-Children-Who-Are?redirectedFrom=fulltext">this 2016 report</a> (four years before Dr. Sprinkle published <i>Embodied</i>)<i> </i><a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/137/3/e20153223/81409/Mental-Health-of-Transgender-Children-Who-Are?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank">from the American Academy of Pediatrics</a> is worth quoting here:</div><blockquote><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that psychopathology is not inevitable within this group.</span></span></div></blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;"> Trans* As Internal Homophobia or Misogyny</h3><div><br /></div><div>The reasoning in this section is somewhat twisted. Sprinkle's basic thesis is that some people transition, not because they are trans, but because they suffer either from internalized homophobia or (in the case of some cis women) internalized misogyny. It is not clear to me how Dr. Sprinkle justifies calling these people "trans*" given that his definition of "trans*" would seem to preclude any category of people whose gender identity doesn't actually differ from the sex they were assigned at birth. If Preston Sprinkle wants to warn about cis people transitioning for bad reasons, that is one thing (though I would argue that the data I have been citing throughout this piece rather undercuts his idea that this accounts for any significant number of people who choose to transition) but it doesn't justify his categorizing people who <i>don't fit his own definition of "trans*"ness </i>as trans*.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is worth saying the meantime, that the evidence he provides to support his assertion that the "story of [transness as] repressed homophobia is more widespread than you might think" consists entirely of a single cis lesbian who transitioned for a year and a single paywalled article from The Times which Sprinkle summarizes as "<i>Some</i> therapists <i>wonder</i> if certain <i>parents</i> who are highly supportive of their child identifying as transgender could be motivated by a homophobic fear about their child being gay" [emphasis mine]—hardly the sort of evidence that ought to be required for a robustly stated "is more widespread than you might think" from a professional academic. To be fair, Dr. Sprinkle does go on to provide adequate citation for his claim that Iran performs gender transition procedures and outlaws homosexuality but it is not clear to me how that reinforces a claim about what might motivate cis people in countries where homosexuality is legal and where <a href="https://www.glsen.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/GLSEN-2017-National-School-Climate-Survey-NSCS-Full-Report.pdf">trans people are more likely to face both social stigma, violence, and repressive laws </a>than our queer cis counterparts.<br /><br /></div><div>As to the misogyny claim, Sprinkle's evidence consists entirely of a single anecdote and an online non-scientific survey (I was not even able to locate a methodology statement) which seems to have circulated primarily in anti-trans spaces. In fact when I googled the author and survey Sprinkle cites here (footnote 21 of Chapter 3) all I was able to find was a reference to a survey in a t<a href="https://twitter.com/FtMdetransed/status/1027247607880540161" target="_blank">weet from a Twitter account entitled "Detrans Voices" @FtMDetransed</a> which provided two screenshots of a Google Forms survey and a link to request access to the Google Forms Survey. The author Sprinkle cites (Haley Mangelsdorf) seems to be either a ghost or a pen name as a search for that name brings up only a link to a zine which I have not been able to track down, and a reference to the survey on 4thwavenow a notorious anti-trans website and forum. It seems likely that Sprinkle got this source from one or the other of those sources, but it is odd that he would see fit to include this as a citation in his putatively academic text. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Listening Love</h3><div><br /></div><div>This final section in the chapter starts of pretty well. Sprinkle's thesis for the section is that Christians need to be more loving towards trans people and I am all on board with that. Unfortunately he tries to illustrate the importance of that by going back to his story of Kat who detransitioned<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">2</span></b>)</span> after working with a woman at Kat's church who listened and responded with "I'm not sure. But I'd love to explore this with you" after Kat asked her What God thinks about transness and transition. I say "unfortunately" but it is also helpful that this provides a bit of a "mask off" moment in the book. The strong impression you get reading this section is that for Sprinkle, the goal of Christian interactions with trans people is for us to not transition. The second to last paragraph sums it up as:<br /><br /></div><blockquote>Some people might enjoy being instructed by a person who seems to have all the right answers—a two-legged Google with a mouth that never seems to shut. But I think most people are like Kat. They want to know the truth, but they want to find it with a friend.</blockquote><p>Preston Sprinkle wants his cis Christian audience to guide trans people away from transition or even really identifying as the women, non-binary people, and men that we are; he just wants them to be nice while they are doing it. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar after all. </p><div><br /></div><h4 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Series Index</h4><h4><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><br /></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">Intro</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes</a></div></div></h4><h2 style="text-align: left;">Footnote</h2><div>1. I have no idea why Sprinkle focuses on "the surgery" here since plenty of detransitioners detransition after taking HRT without any surgeries, while <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets">the regret rate for gender affirming surgery is only 2%</a>. It seems that Sprinkle may be going more for shock value than for an accurate representation of the state of affairs. He spends some time speculating on the possiblity of and autistic person suffering from OCD</div><div><br /></div><div>2. According to Sprinkle Kat identifies as transgender despite now identifying with the gender Kat was assigned at birth on account of still experiencing gender dysphoria. It is worth noticing that this does actually place Kat outside of Sprinkle's <i>original definition of what it means to be transgender</i>. </div><div><br /></div><p></p>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-87805299320319619362023-03-15T14:50:00.003-04:002023-06-19T14:39:28.239-04:00Bareface Revisited: C.S. Lewis and the Identity Claims of Transgender People<p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iqgD-RSFiGQ/XJVRDm9dJ6I/AAAAAAAAObA/PiIcvYkFQgwoUzOR6nkLMQFma7OkmDLtgCLcBGAs/s1600/Lewis%2BTrans%2BPride%2BFlag.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iqgD-RSFiGQ/XJVRDm9dJ6I/AAAAAAAAObA/PiIcvYkFQgwoUzOR6nkLMQFma7OkmDLtgCLcBGAs/s320/Lewis%2BTrans%2BPride%2BFlag.jpg" width="320" /></a><i></i></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><i>Prologue to the Second Edition</i></h2><i>This is an update to a piece I wrote 4 years ago. Think of it as a second edition. When I wrote the original (which is still available HERE) I knew that I am a trans woman but was not yet out. Writing about this topic under those conditions was always complicated for me. On the one hand it was a topic I felt almost compelled to write about and to weigh in on and at the same time, recognizing my own apparent social location and not wanting to betray truths I was not yet ready to share meant writing with a sort of artificial distance from my subject matter—I had to write as though my first hand knowledge were second or third hand instead and as though those concerns which impact me directly instead applied to "those I care about". Certainly it helped that I had read a lot on the topic (and have read more now) and that I do care a great deal for all of my trans siblings who are affected by this topic, but that distance led me to feel that, as much as I like this essay—and it is one of my personal favorites—it was never as strong as it might have been. </i><p></p><p><i>Recently a friend of mine brought my attention back to this piece mentioning that he had found it helpful in relating to trans people in his life and, on a whim, I re-read it and found that while I still believe the the core argument is strong, I wanted to re-write it so as to fully own its contents and form. Thus I have chosen to edit and re-formulate to my hearts content, in some places bolstering lines or reasoning that some readers found thin and in other places merely updating the language and the phrasing to more accurately represent my own relation to the subject matter. I hope you enjoy it.</i> </p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">On Historical Method</h2>To my best knowledge C.S. Lewis never directly interacted with an out transgender individual or commented on the validity of the identity claims of transgender people. Because he lived and died before much of the current understanding of transgender experiences and identities had been developed it would be anachronistic to claim that he supported (or would have supported) transgender people in our identity claims. And because even the most logical of individuals is likely to be influenced and limited by the prejudices and beliefs of their own context it would be foolish to claim with certainty that Lewis—if he were around today—would affirm transgender people's identities. The "what would this person think of this if they were alive today" game generally not worth playing and I do not intend to take it up here. Instead, what I do think I can demonstrate is that there is ample material in Lewis' work to construct a strong argument in favor of the validity of the gender identities of transgender individuals—an argument which Lewis, if he had been consistent to his own professed assumptions and beliefs—would have been compelled to accept. That is not to say that his thinking is easily compatible with the different models—there are more than one, and for many of us theory only comes after experience and attepts to fit itself to what we already know—which transgender people put forth in defense of our identity claims; in fact Lewis' thinking doesn't quite map on to any one of the dominant models today. What his ideas and methods do establish, however, is a model both for conceptualizing transgender gender identity claims from an orthodox Christian perspective, a structure of reasoning which recommends (demands even) trusting the gender identity claims made by transgender people, and a perspective on the denial of those claims which frames them as a particular sort of sin.<br /><br />It is probably worth stating here that Lewis did comment on homosexuality generally and on lesbian and gay sex specifically in his published and unpublished writing. While he was arguably less condemning than some of his contemporaries, he was not affirming of gay and lesbian sex and (in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2WTR1T5" target="_blank">That Hideous Strength</a></i>) did engage in what can, at best, be described as queer-coding at least two of his villains. <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-funeral-oration-for-cs-lewis.html" target="_blank">As I have written elsewhere</a>, I do not intend any apologetic for this view on Lewis' part—<a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-couple-of-odd-words-my-christian.html" target="_blank">I believe he was wrong</a>—and anyone who might hope to "recruit" Lewis as a post-mortem advocate for LGB acceptance should be aware of his views, though I would be very interested to see an analysis of his overall thought which might contextualize his stated position as contradicting his philosophy and theology as a whole.<br /><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">Vocabulary, Terminology, and Background Theory</h2><div><br /></div><div>This essay makes regular reference to much terminology which is specific to the contemporary (2023) conversation around or about gender, transgender people, and transgender identities. Readers unfamiliar with that conversation, or who just want to review/refresh their understanding of the relevant language will find a helpful glossary <a href="https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/01/a-comprehensive-list-of-lgbtq-term-definitions/https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/01/a-comprehensive-list-of-lgbtq-term-definitions/" target="_blank">HERE</a>. While I will occasionally be nuancing some of the contemporary definitions (particularly the theory behind the word <i>gender</i>) in order to bridge the linguistic gap between Lewis life and our current moment, <a href="https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/01/a-comprehensive-list-of-lgbtq-term-definitions/" target="_blank">these definitions should fit my general usage</a>.<br /><br />To be clear, I do not at all mean to suggest that Lewis was saying the same thing that contemporary transgender theorists, gender theorists, and queer theorists are saying. I am hoping, here, only to develop a particular argument out of what C.S. Lewis can be demonstrated to have thought based on his published work and which arrives at the conclusion that we ought to affirm the gender identity claims of transgender people. While I certainly do hope that this argument will convince those who share many of Lewis' assumptions and beliefs to take that conclusion seriously, I am not suggesting that transgender people <i>need</i> the affirmation of Lewis' thought or argument structures. Transgender theory and philosophy is already being done effectively by transgender academics, theorists, theologians, and advocates. I have provided links to some of their work throughout and at the end of this piece.<br /><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Some Background on The Identities of Transgender People and <i>Reality Enforcement</i></h2><br />In her essay <i><a href="https://philarchive.org/archive/BETTITv1" target="_blank">Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance</a></i> trans philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher identifies an impulse for <i>reality enforcement </i>as the primary motive behind transphobia generally and anti-trans violence in particular. She claims:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">While there are many features associated with reality enforcement, it has four essential ones: identity invalidation, the appearance-reality contrast, the deceiver-pretender double bind, and genital verification. Identity invalidation is the erasure of a trans person's gender identity through an opposing categorization (e.g., a trans person sees herself as a woman, but she is categorized as a man). This invalidation is framed in terms of the appearance-reality contrast (e.g., a trans woman may be represented as "really a man disguised as a woman"). And this contrast is manifested in one of two ways that constitute a double-bind for trans people—namely, passing as nontrans (and hence running the risk of exposure as a deceiver) or else being openly trans (and consequently being relegated to a mere pretender). Genital verification can be a literal exposure (as with Brandon Teena, Gwen Araujo, and Angie Zapata) or else a discursive reveal through euphemistic comments like "was discovered to be anatomically male." These disclosures anchor identity invalidation in the notion of genitalia as a kind of concealed reality.</blockquote>The core problem for trans people here, according to Bettcher, is fairly straightforward and entirely insidious. The on-the-ground fact for trans people is the regular denial of our experiences of themselves, reality as we experience it. Though different trans people articulate it in different ways, the experience of a denied identity is a constant. <i>Reality enforcement</i> as Bettcher explains it is the dynamic by which transgender people experience oppression and opposition in the world. The four ingredients which make up reality enforcement begin with a direct denial of the transgender person's gender identity claim. To use a transgender woman for an example (this would be a woman who was thought to be a boy when she was born and therefore assigned "male" initially): In the face of the transgender woman's claim that she is <i>really </i>a woman, identity invalidation occurs when someone else (the denier) insists on categorizing her as a man—the denier says, in effect, "no you are <i>not really</i> a woman". The denier explains the situation (using Bettcher's "appearance-reality contrast") by claiming that the transgender woman is <i>really only disguised</i> as a woman. The fact of this assertion and explanation means that the transgender woman is always in the double-bind of either being open about being transgender, which results in deniers labeling her as a pretender, or passing as nontrans/cisgender, which risks being "found out", having deniers label her a deceiver. In both of these situations the denier generally references the transgender woman's genitals as "proof" of her "real" status.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XIQ43hQCfao/XJVTvMLjopI/AAAAAAAAObM/FrOZYurp2mEWF2wvmDm_l1x_1bnBJyF6wCLcBGAs/s1600/policeman-30600_1280.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="863" data-original-width="1280" height="134" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XIQ43hQCfao/XJVTvMLjopI/AAAAAAAAObM/FrOZYurp2mEWF2wvmDm_l1x_1bnBJyF6wCLcBGAs/s200/policeman-30600_1280.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Pixabay</td></tr></tbody></table>Of course there is a danger here that in referring to this dynamic as "reality enforcement" we might give the impression that those who engage in it genuinely are on the side of reality and that the complaint is only that they are being unkind in enforcing it on the affected trans person. But that would be a total misunderstanding of Bettcher's work and of the case of transgender people overall. In <i><a href="https://philarchive.org/archive/BETTITv1" target="_blank">Trapped in the Wrong Theory</a></i> Bettcher begins by acknowledging that <i>reality</i> is fundamentally contested in the interaction between a transgender person and someone who denies the trans person's gender identity. Thus the term <i>reality enforcement </i>does not refer to someone enforcing reality <i>as it is</i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>(1)</b></span> but to someone enforcing <i>what they believe</i> reality to be.<br /><br />One implication of this for any third party observer is that, like it or not, they are shunted into the position of referee or judge in the case of the transgender person. Short of ignoring the conversation entirely—a choice which comes with its own, fraught, consequences—the observer, cisgender<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>(2)</b></span> or not, is left having to choose first which version of reality to endorse and only second whether or not they will enforce it.<br /><br /><h3>C.S. Lewis and Obligation to Reality</h3><br />Now it is clear to me that C.S. Lewis would have recognized a preeminent duty obligation to Reality insofar as he was able to know it. In his essay <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2U7QoY0" target="_blank">Man or Rabbit</a></i> he reflects:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The question [Can't you lead a good life without believing in Christianity] sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself 'I don't care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I'm not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more like what the Christians say than what the Materialists say. All I'm interested in is leading a good life. I'm going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I find them helpful.' Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind. <i>One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing </i>[emphasis mine].</blockquote>Given that Lewis thought that the drive to know reality is one of the things which distinguishes humans from animals we must conclude that he would have applied this drive to the question of the contested reality between the transgender person and the denier. Thus we can safely conclude that he would have rejected the possibility of simply walking away from, ignoring, or refusing the question. He would also have refused to side with one reality-claim or the other based only on what would have made one or another party most comfortable or even safest. Lewis would have insisted on confronting the question straight on: Is the transgender person who claims to be a woman <i>really</i> a woman or <i>really </i>not a woman? Is the transgender man who claims to be a man <i>really </i>a man or <i>really</i> not a man? Only after answering that question, or deciding that it is finally un-answerable, can we approach the further question of whether or not reality ought to be enforced.<div><br /></div><div>And I want to comment that as a trans woman and a fan of C.S. Lewis I find this remarkably comforting. A little too often I find that we end up consigned to a sort of "second class womanhood" by people who shy away from rigorous exploration of the claims of transgender people in favor of sort of provisionally accepting that the polite/pc/nice thing to do is to "treat us like" women without ever recognizing the ontological weight of our claims. <br /><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Core Question</h2><br />Let us, then, look at the claim through as Lewis-ian a lens as possible: A person (the transgender person) is claiming to be a woman. A second person has denied the claim. When a transgender person makes a claim to a particular gender identity we generally cite our own experience of ourselves in relationship to the world. The evidence that the trans person cites (our own experience of the world) is subjective insofar as we are the only person with direct access to it but it is also a claim to an objective reality (we are claiming that we <i>really are</i> a particular gender). Against that the denier, depending on their background and inclination, will generally cite the transgender person's body as evidence against us. The irony here is that a transgender person's body is an objective reality which both the transgender person and the denier likely agree on. Our disagreement has all to do with the meaning of the transgender person's body as it relates to their claim, a fact which is worth at least commenting on to observe that this is all very awkward for trans people for the same reason that is is awkward for anyone to engage in significant discourse with someone over the contested meaning of our own body—we are talking about what is intimately ours while they are not talking about what is intimately theirs.<br /><br />In any case, Lewis clearly outlined his process for thinking through apparently unlikely claims (claims which entail what Bettcher calls the "appearance-reality contrast") in the opening passage of <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Cta6mX" target="_blank">Miracles</a></i>:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">If immediate experience cannot prove or disprove the miraculous, still less can history do so. Many people think one can decide whether a miracle occurred in the past by examining the evidence "according to the ordinary rules of historical inquiry." <i>But the ordinary rules cannot be worked until we have decided whether miracles are possible, and if so, how probable they are</i> [emphasis mine]. For if they are impossible then no amount of historical evidence will convince us. If they are possible but immensely improbable, then only mathematically demonstrative evidence will convince us: and since history never provides that degree of evidence for any event, history can never convince us that a miracle occurred. If, on the other hand, miracles are not intrinsically improbable, then the existing evidence will be sufficient to convince us that quite a number of miracles have occurred.</blockquote>Following this outline, Lewis would first want to know is whether the gender identity claims of transgender people are intrinsically possible. If he believed that they were, indeed, possible he would then have gone on to ask how probable those claims are.<br /><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">Possibility and the Sex-Gender Distinction</h2><br />Would Lewis, then, have thought that the transgender person's claim is <i>possible?</i> A person who is claiming that they are five foot eleven inches tall and also that they are forty seven feet three inches tall must be wrong—not because I have never encountered a forty seven foot human before—but because being two different heights at the same time and in the same sense is a contradiction in terms. The transgender person, however, is not making a contradictory claim (here we head off one ridiculous accusation which is routinely directed towards the trans community). The transgender woman acknowledges (though she likely finds it more than a little rude for people to keep harping on it) the fact that, in some aspects and depending on whether or not/to what extent she has medically transitioned, her body aligns more with what most people expect from men than with what people expect from women. Read carefully, the transgender woman's claim is that she is a woman <i>in spite of</i> the fact that her body was identified as typically male back when she was born. Her appeal is to something (her gender) over and above her prominent sex markers. Therefore, so long as Lewis was willing to grant a distinction between sex and gender, we must conclude that he would have found the claims of transgender people at least possible.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uTjW4VWmPXw/XJjZQbGtfSI/AAAAAAAAOgs/X3bcGt8_m0cgMKEB1S6Vq6MZkC6EGN-9gCLcBGAs/s1600/Perelandra.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="643" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uTjW4VWmPXw/XJjZQbGtfSI/AAAAAAAAOgs/X3bcGt8_m0cgMKEB1S6Vq6MZkC6EGN-9gCLcBGAs/s200/Perelandra.jpg" width="125" /></a>As it turns out, Lewis not only recognized the sex-gender distinction, he positively <i>endorsed </i>it. In his novel <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2U2YzF0" target="_blank">Perelandra</a> </i>Lewis explores, among other things, the possible nature of angels. In that context he concludes that angels have a gender but not a sex, and he goes on to theorize about the relationship between the two.<br /><br />When Ransom, the protagonist of <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2U2YzF0" target="_blank">Perelandra</a>,</i> encounters the angelic Archons (referred to in the text as <i>Oyarsa</i>) of Mars and Venus, Lewis describes those spirits (he is very clear that they do not have physical bodies but that "when creatures of the hypersomatic kind choose to 'appear' to us, they are not in fact affecting our retina at all, but directly manipulating the relevant parts of our brain") in a way which reveals much of what Lewis understood about sex and gender. It is worth noting that Lewis published <i>Perelandra</i> in 1944, well before the contemporary distinction between sex and gender gained any popular currency<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(3)</span></b>.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Both the bodies [of the Oyarsas] were naked, and both were free from any sexual characteristics, either primary or secondary. That, one would have expected. But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try—Ransom has tried a hundred times—to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra [the archon of Mars] was like rhythm and Perelandra [the archon of Venus] like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don't know that any of these attempts helped me much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. <i>Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender; there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless. Masculine is not attenuated male, nor feminine attenuated female. On the contrary, the male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine</i> [emphasis mine]. Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size, partly exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity... he of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female). </blockquote>There is a lot here so let me break it down in to three specific observations:<br /><br /><b>First</b>, Lewis clearly thought that there is a meaningful difference between <i>sex</i> and <i>gender</i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>(4)</b></span><i>. </i>The legitimacy of this distinction forms the core thesis of this passage. While Lewis seems to define sex in nearly the same way that contemporary sex and gender theorists do (as a physical phenomenon linked to reproduction, body morphology, etc...) his definition of gender is noticeably different—so much so that his definition is the subject of my third observation. Still it is clear from this passage that Lewis would have granted the fundamental plausibility of a claim which relied on distinguishing sex from gender.<br /><br /><b>Second</b>, Lewis insists that gender, rather than sex, is the more fundamental property. Notice towards the end of the passage that he refers to gender as "as reality" whereas he calls [biological] sex "merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity [gender] which divides all created beings". For Lewis gender is a metaphysical property whereas sex is a physical property. Lewis understood humans to be composed of both a material and immaterial/spiritual/metaphysical part. As he says in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2U7Z5S8" target="_blank">The Screwtape Letters</a>:</i><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change.</span> </blockquote>The distinction between "spirit" (which Lewis understood to be, among other things, the location of <i>gender</i>) and "animal" implies the possibility that a given individual in a world of imperfect and changeable bodies might very well find that the aspect of them which is body does not correspond, or in Lewis' words "properly reflect" the gender of their immaterial aspect. In an attempt at rectifying that incongruity, Lewis would necessarily have privileged the immaterial gender as determinative and recommended correction of the body. Further, since Lewis locates spirit in "the eternal world" he would not have seen gender-corrective therapy as a real possibility for anyone. Sex, as an aspect of body, is potentially subject to change. Gender is not<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(5)</span></b>. </div><div>To anticipate an objection that has become all too common among Christians over the last decade, yes this is all rather platonic. That is because Lewis was, in addition to being first and foremost a "mere Christian", rather an ardent Platonist who was eager to accept what Platonism had to offer philosophically so long as it did not contradict his Christianity. While there are certainly worthwhile conversations to be had about the place of platonic philosophy in Christian theology it should be accepted across the board that some degree of Platonism has never been understood to be disqualifying to orthodox Christianity. Further for any Evangelical reader it will be important to recognized the the much loved Lewis/Tolkien understanding of Christianity as "myth become fact" is an equally (and relatedly) platonic concept, one which Lewis enunciates most famously only a few pages from this selection on gender in <i>Perelandra</i>.<br /><br /><b>Third</b>, Lewis' understanding of gender was unusual both in his own time and today. In broad strokes <a href="https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-brief-history-of-gender/" target="_blank">contemporary gender theory attaches two distinct meanings to the term <i>gender</i></a> and those two meanings are, in some cases, both affirmed by individual theorists. In the first meaning <i>gender </i>references a socially constructed set of conventions. Here <i>gender</i> (often disambiguated as <i>gender expression</i>)<i> </i>means the set of social expectations and roles which a society attaches to women, men (and potential third + genders as well). The whole concept of gender as a performance is rooted in this view and has its origins in second wave feminism. In the second meaning <i>gender</i> is as an identity (in this usage <i>gender</i> is often paired with the term <i>identity</i> forming the two-word term <i>gender identity</i>) or a deep seated sense of self. Here <i>gender</i> or <i>gender identity</i> is something that each person has or possesses and which is rooted in the experience of the self. This meaning is a later development, associated more with queer theory and third wave feminism. Lewis' usage is distinguishable from both of these. He understands gender to to be a metaphysical reality which pre-exists sex and is, in fact, something which biological sex must reference in order to find meaning. In Lewis' view, Masculine and Feminine gender are the realities which male and female<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(6)</span></b> sex are images of. There is much that could be said about this and it is probably not quite a comfortable stance for any of the major participants in the contemporary discussion over transgender identities. His usage and understanding probably gets closer to Julia Serano's <i><a href="http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html" target="_blank">Intrinsic Inclinations</a> </i>model though, unlike Lewis, Serano locates the property in question (Serano's closest equivalent to Lewis' <i>gender</i> is her coinage <i><a href="http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html" target="_blank">subconscious sex</a></i>) in the psyche or subconscious rather than in any clearly metaphysical or spiritual part of the human person<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(7)</span></b>. For our purposes the key implication of this is that Lewis clearly believed that a person's <i>gender</i> was something more true, more lasting, and more definitive of that person that their biological sex (organs, hormone levels, body shape, etc...). </div><div><br /></div><div>In this usage I am still trying to work out whether or not Lewis can properly be called a pioneer. J.R.R. Tolkien (who shared a writing society and informal philosophy club with Lewis) seems to reference a similar view of gender in <i>The Silmarillion</i> where, speaking of angelic beings he says</div><div><blockquote>the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for
that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied
forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and
female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby</blockquote>and I have found some intimations of the same view in Owen Barfield and Charles Williams but I have not yet worked out whether this was something that they collectively arrived at, one convinced the others of, or something they all received from their shared love of medieval and romantic literature and theology.<br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">From <i>Possibility</i> to <i>Probability</i></h2><br />So Lewis would certainly have seen the transgender person's claim—to be <i>really</i> a woman in the face of the denier's claim that that the transgender person is <i>really</i> not a woman—as possible. The next logical question then is: given that the claim is <i>possible,</i> is it <i>probable?</i> Just because a person makes a claim which is possible does not mean that we are under any obligation to accept the claim as true. If someone tells me that it is snowing in June, I can accept that snow is a possibility without having to believe that it is actually snowing in my vicinity at the moment. If I am told that someone has graduated from Yale, I can believe that Yale exists and that people do graduate from that institution without accepting that this particular person has really earned a diploma.<br /><br />What should stand out almost immediately when we imagine how C.S. Lewis might approach the question of probability is the fact that Lewis was remarkably clear headed when it came to assessing relative probabilities of events insofar as he had a keen grasp on the distinction between something which is <i>uncommon</i> and something which is <i>improbable</i>. It is <i>improbable </i>that a given individual, chosen at random, will be or become the president of the United States of America specifically because there are very particular requirements one has to meet in order to achieve that status; that is to say that being the president of the United States of America is an exceptionally <i>uncommon</i> experience. However, it is not at all<i> improbable</i> that, at any given time, there will be some person who is the president of the Unites States, quite the contrary. Since transgender people generally claim that our experience of our own gender is a minority experience, Lewis would not have seen the fact that transgender claims are <i>uncommon</i> as an indication that they are, in any way, <i>improbable</i>. Again from <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Cta6mX" target="_blank">Miracles</a>:</i><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">How could they [miracles] be surprising unless they were seen to be exceptions to the rules? And how can anything be seen to be an exception till the rules are known? If there ever were men who did not know the laws of nature <i>at all, </i>they would have no idea of a miracle and feel no particular interest in one if it were performed before them. Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.</blockquote>The overall probability of a particular person being in a situation which runs contrary to the way things commonly occur in nature would, for Lewis, depend on the particularities of the exceptional situation. Here things become a little more difficult for us. Transgender people do not claim a gender identity on the basis of the miraculous. Rather the claim of a transgender person is that of the minority report. Transgender people specifically claim that the experience of gender incongruity (having a gender identity which is at odds with the sex they are assigned by others on the basis of anatomy) is a natural but relatively uncommon phenomenon. The only way to test this claim would be to have objective third-party access to each transgender person's gender identity. But gender identity, as Lewis understands it, is not available to this sort of empirical observation. As Bettcher and other transgender theorists (notably <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/">Julia Serano</a>) have pointed out, the major obstacle/double bind that transgender people face in the realm of reality enforcement is that those who successfully alter their bodies to align more closely with the gender identity they claim are discounted as "deceivers" whereas those whose bodies do not reflect the social-construct expectations of the gender identity they claim (or who claim a gender identity which is not familiar to the popular imagination) are discounted as "mere pretenders". From Bettcher's <i><a href="https://www.academia.edu/2593151/Appearance_reality_and_gender_deception_Reflections_on_transphobic_violence_and_the_politics_of_pretence?auto=download" target="_blank">Appearance, Reality, and Gender Deception: Reflections on Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Pretense</a></i><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">To the extent that it is within the power of a transperson to generate a convincing appearance, then, they will be confronted bu the no-win option of trying to pass (and running the risk of being exposed as a fraud) or else revealing themselves (and coming out as a masquerader or deceiver). And to the extent that it is not within the power of a transperson to generate a convincing appearance or, if it is to control the information that is circulated and available about their status, they may still find themselves represented as a pretender. In effect, because gender presentation and sexed body are viewed in this way (namely as correlated appearance and reality), in all possible permutations, they will have their identity relegated to a mere appearance and find themselves either open to charges of wrongdoing or relegated to somebody who plays at make-believe</blockquote>Thus both Lewis—who sees gender as a metaphysical reality—and contemporary transgender theorists—who mostly see gender as either a social construct or as a personal identity—end up categorizing gender identity as something objectively real but ultimately only subjectively knowable<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>(8)</b></span> and therefore un-testable given the current state of our technology<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>(9)</b></span>.<br /><br /><h3>From <i>Probability </i>to <i>Credibility</i></h3><br />To recap then, Lewis would likely have seen the reality claim of a transgender person—to be <i>really</i> their identified gender—as <i>possible</i> but he would have been unable to determine whether the claim was <i>probable</i>. This, though, does not imply a dead end to the question. In fact, some of Lewis' most famous material demonstrates the approach he took to claims wherein there was no way for external observers to objectively examine the evidence. He would look to the <i>credibility </i>of the source: In his most famous novel <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2OiZfAU" target="_blank">The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe</a></i> Lewis deploys a piece of reasoning (the logical tri-lemma) which mirrors one he uses to argue for the divinity of Jesus in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Oj0d00" target="_blank">Mere Christianity</a> </i>. In the novel the older Pevensie children (Peter and Susan) approach the professor in whose house they are staying because their little sister, Lucy, has been making claims which run contrary to their own experience and expectation of the world and which they have been unable to objectively verify. Specifically, she has been claiming—accurately as it turns out—that a particular wardrobe in the house is, under some conditions, a portal to another world. To further complicate matters, their brother Edmund has specifically claimed that Lucy was "only making it up" after she asks him to corroborate her claim.</div><div><br />The degree to which this scenario parallels the reality enforcement scenario described in Bettcher's essay is really astounding. Lucy, like the transgender person, has made a claim which, at face value, seems to be contradicted by general experience. Edmund, like Bettcher's denier, has specifically contradicted Lucy's claim. Peter and Susan, standing in for society at large, find themselves engaged in reality enforcement and are initially inclined to enforce Edmund's claim against Lucy<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(10)</span></b>. In this analysis, we should understand the professor to be a mouthpiece for Lewis' own analysis of the situation. When the children bring their questions to the professor, he asks them which of their two siblings is usually more trustworthy and they respond that they would generally trust Lucy and that the only reason they don't now is due to the apparent implausibility of her claim and their subsequent inability to independently verify her experience. The professor responds as follows:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Logic!’ said the Professor half to himself. ‘Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. <i>For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.’</i> [emphasis mine]</span></span></blockquote>Or in Mere Christianity Lewis uses this structure of reasoning to argue that, contrary to popular expectation, Jesus of Nazareth was really God:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this mans was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.</blockquote>Again we have a situation where someone is making a claim which, at first blush, flies in the face of popular expectation, which is not (at least not anymore) subject to external verification, and which is roundly denied by people who cite popular experiences of the world in defense of their denial. We are, therefore, perfectly justified in concluding that Lewis would have applied this specific logic tool to the question of transgender gender identities and reality enforcement. Specifically he would have told us that there are really only three possibilities: the transgender person is either lying, insane, or telling the truth.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qGRVXYVft0I/XJVVljDS2kI/AAAAAAAAObY/ofyT1JjDsywze8qaLAdDwUo4qjNyFFzuACLcBGAs/s1600/Professor%2B2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qGRVXYVft0I/XJVVljDS2kI/AAAAAAAAObY/ofyT1JjDsywze8qaLAdDwUo4qjNyFFzuACLcBGAs/s320/Professor%2B2.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What <i>do </i>they teach them in these schools?</td></tr></tbody></table>Before I apply Lewis' trilemma to the question though I want to head off one further suggestion that the transgender person may actually be mistaken. I do not think that Lewis would have granted this possibility on the grounds that we are specifically asking about something (gender identity) which Lewis believed people have and which he thought could be perceived directly. Still, even if the possibility is granted (expanding the trilemma into a tetralemma), the fact remains that the transgender person in question—being the person with the most data regarding their own gender—is in a better position to know their own gender than any outside individual. If they are mistaken, then they are more able to know that than anyone else and must therefore be treated as the authority on the subject.<br /><br />The idea that transgender people are lying about our identities is not one that I think Lewis would have entertained for long. The simple fact of the difficulties trans people face and the suffering we endure in order to live into our gender identities ought to undermine any serious suggestion that we are lying about it. People rarely—if ever—lie consistently, insistently, and persistently when the consequences of being believed is increased suffering on their part. In the instance of transgender identity claims, the claim only benefits the person making it if it is true since the concomitant suffering is only worthwhile if it purchases a deeper, more fundamental, satisfaction.<br /><br />The suggestion that transgender people are simply insane is suggested more frequently, most often by conservative pundits who most often latch on to the fact that <i><a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria" target="_blank">gender dysphoria</a></i> is often (though not universally) experienced by transgender people, and is a listing in the current version of the <i><a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm" target="_blank">Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders</a></i> (DSM 5). However, the association of gender dysphoria with insanity—and specifically a form of insanity which would prevent a person from accurately experiencing reality—is misleading, sloppy thinking at best and a deliberate misrepresentation at worst. A person who experiences gender dysphoria is not delusional<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(11)</span></b> they merely experience discomfort (sometimes to the point of anguish) based on the incongruity between their gender and the sex they were assigned at birth. As the professor says of Lucy "ten minutes conversation will tell you she is not mad".</div><div><br /></div><div>It is worth pausing before moving on to the third option (that transgender people are telling the truth about who we are) to notice that in fact those most prone to engage in programmes of reality enforcement against transgender people seem forever trying to have it both ways. They want to accuse us of being insane ("deluded" is form of the charge with the most currency today) while treating us as though we are liars. The hate and vitriol with which anti-trans pundits ranging from TERFS to white Christian Nationalists attack and condemn transgender people would be entirely out of place when dealing with someone who was deluded or insane; they make accusations of insanity but behave as though we were liars.<br /><br />Having ruled out the possibilities of lying and insanity, the inevitable conclusion, given Lewis' beliefs and methods of reasoning would have to have been <b>"</b><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-weight: bold;">For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that [the transgender person] is telling the truth"</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">. Regardless of how difficult it might be to believe the gender identity claims of trans people (we cannot really control what we believe after all) Lewis' methods and metaphysics require that we <i>trust</i> transgender people who, after all, are the only ones with any access to our individual gender status. </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">This gets us most of the way towards an understanding of how C.S. Lewis would have engaged with the reality claims of transgender people but I think there is value in pushing it one step further. Thus far I have been treating the whole business as a purely intellectual question. To leave it at that—as a mere proof in an intellectual "ivory tower"—would be a tremendous disservice to the transgender population who (as Bettcher pointed out) face serious and even life-threatening consequences as a result of popular perceived reality enforcement. I think that Lewis's writing has a little more to tell us about the ethical and moral nature of reality enforcement when it is used to oppress people whom we have an obligation to trust rather than mistrust. </span><br /><br /><h3>The Implications (for Lewis) of Mistrusting Transgender People</h3><br />Lewis cared about the core of who a person is—the <i>real</i> person—,and believed that that core is almost always hidden. In fact "becoming who you really are" is very much a theme in much of Lewis writings —think back to his language about the <i>true</i> Narnia in <i>The Last Battle</i>. It is seen best in the transformations he has various characters undergo when they enter (usually through bodily death) into the place where "all the sad things come untrue" and "for which they found they had been longing their whole lives without knowing it"; the place "for which they were really made". In fact Lewis suggests that one important outcome of the Christian life was to become fully what a person, in one sense, already was. He puts this most succinctly in <a href="https://amzn.to/2U7Z5S8" target="_blank">The Screwtape Letters</a> when he has the senior demon Screwtape admit:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever</span></span></blockquote>Another example would be the man tempted/tormented by lust in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2DofcTJ" target="_blank">The Great Divorce</a></i>. Lewis describes the man (and his lust) both passing through a process of spiritual death only to be resurrected as beings which are described in near demi-god like terms:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Next moment the Ghost gave a scream of agony such as I never heard on Earth. The Burning One closed his crimson grip on the reptile: twisted it, while it bit and writhed, and then flung it, broken-backed on the turf.</span></span> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">'Ow! That's done for me,' gasped the Ghost reeling backwards.</span></span> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">For a moment I could make out nothing distinctly. Then I saw, between me and the nearest bush, unmistakably solid but growing every moment solider, the upper arm and the shoulder of a man. Then, brighter still, and stronger, the legs and hands. The neck and golden head materialized while I watched, and if my attention had not wavered I should have seen the actual completing of a man—an immense man, naked, not much smaller than the Angel. What distracted me was the fact that at the same moment something seemed to be happening to the Lizard. At first I thought the operation had failed. So far from dying, the creature was still struggling and even growing bigger as it struggled. And as it grew it changed. It's hinder parts grew rounder, the tail, still flickering, became a tail of hair that flickered between huge and glossy buttocks. Suddenly I started back, rubbing my eyes. What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold. It was smooth and shining, rippling with swells of flesh and muscle, whinnying and stamping with its hoofs. At each stamp the land shook and the trees dindled.</span></span> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The new-made man turned and clapped the new horse's neck. In nosed his bright body. Horse and master breathed each into the other's nostrils. The man turned form it, flung himself at the feet of the Burning One, and embraced them. When he rose I thought his face shone with tears, but it may have been only the liquid love and brightness...which flowed from him. I had not long to think about it. In joyous haste the young man leaped upon the horse's back. Turning in his seat he waved a farewell, then nudged the stallion with his heels. They were off before I knew well what was happening.</span></span></blockquote>Thus the transgender person who abandoned identification with the sex they were assigned at birth in favor of their real gender identity would have been moving in the direction of sanctification. The transgender woman who insists "I <i>am</i> a woman" evidences a spiritual breakthrough and spiritual health. It is vital that we not forget that the temptations of security and acceptance all push the transgender person to accept (or at least acquiesce to) the denier's declaimed reality; nobody familiar with their situation ever accused a transgender individual of cowardice for identifying as transgender. Just as important, Lewis would have understood the person who works to prevent someone recognizing and affirming their own real selves (in this case a transgender person living into their gender identity) to be doing the work of the devils—preventing another's spiritual and holistic growth. Bettcher's <i>reality enforcement</i> enacted against transgender people is something Lewis's thinking would decry not only as sinful but as a particularly virulent form of sin; one which he found important enough to devote an entire novel to exploring.<br /><br /><h3>Reality Enforcement as the Sin of False-Love</h3><i><br /></i><i>Bareface</i> (a reference to being one's true self, denying any mask or veil) was the working title of <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2XV2jHT" target="_blank">Till We Have Faces</a></i> the novel C.S. Lewis considered his best<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(12)</span></b>. The book is a re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche told from the perspective of one of Psyche's two older sisters. In the original myth, the beautiful Psyche is sacrificed to the gods but ends up being rescued by the West Wind and carried away to a mansion where she is then married to the god Cupid. The one condition that is placed on her is that she is not permitted to look at her husband (whose identity she does not know). He leaves before she wakes each morning and only returns in the dark of night. Psyche is immensely happy with this arrangement until she is visited by her two sisters who convince her to violate the one rule by waiting until her husband falls asleep and bringing out a candle to look at him. Psyche follows her sisters instructions and is initially delighted to discover that her husband is the beautiful god of love. But in her excitement she spills some hot wax on him waking him up. Immediately he flees and leaves Pscyhe alone in a field. Psyche then undergoes a series of trials and suffering in order to eventually be reunited with her love.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bBfaS9FECmc/XJVWQUNU9yI/AAAAAAAAObg/ZCR8Y_mQXj46hZAoqF4w29HTVhXnNpmXACLcBGAs/s1600/cupid%2Band%2Bpsyche.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1024" height="267" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bBfaS9FECmc/XJVWQUNU9yI/AAAAAAAAObg/ZCR8Y_mQXj46hZAoqF4w29HTVhXnNpmXACLcBGAs/s400/cupid%2Band%2Bpsyche.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Cupid and Psyche</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Lewis' retelling of the myth centers on Orual, the older of Psyche's two sisters. In <i>Till We Have Faces</i> Orual is ugly and lonely as a child. She finds comfort in her tutor (a man she calls "the Fox") and in her little sister Psyche (who calls Orual "Maia") as well as a few other characters whom she loves and who love her in return. At the point in the story where Orual finds Psyche (whom she had thought dead—sacrificed to the God of the Mountain). Lewis introduces a poignant example of <i>reality enforcement</i>. Psyche experiences herself to be living in a palace, but Orual sees only an empty field. In the following, you will want to note Lewis' return to the formula of the trilemma we have already encountered in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2OiZfAU" target="_blank">The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</a></i>, and <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2Oj0d00" target="_blank">Mere Christianity</a></i>:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">For some strange reason, fury—my father's own fury—fell upon me when she said that. I found myself screaming (I am sure I had not meant to scream), "Stop it! Stop it at once! There's nothing there!"</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Her face flushed. For once, and for the moment only, she [Psyche] too was angry. "Well, feel it, feel it, if you can't see," she cried. "Touch it. slap it. Beat your head against it. Here—" she made to grab my hands. I wrenched them free.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Stop it, Stop it I tell you! There's no such thing. You're pretending. You're trying to make yourself believe it." But I was lying. How did I know whether she really saw invisible things or spoke in madness? Either way, something hateful and strange had begun. As if I could thrust it back by brute force, I fell upon Psyche. Before I knew what I was doing I had her by the shoulders and was shaking her.</blockquote>the scene continues with Orual trying to dissuade Psyche and eventually comes to a head when they begin to discuss Psyche's husband<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Oh I can't bear it," said I, leaping up. Those last words of hers, spoken softly and with trembling, set me on fire. I could feel my rage coming back. Then (like a great light, a hope of deliverance, it came to me) I asked myself why I'd forgotten that first notion of being mad. Madness; of course. The whole thing must be madness. I had been nearly as mad as she to think otherwise. At the very name <i>madness</i> the air of that valley seemed more breathable, seemed emptied of a little of its holiness and horror.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Have done with it, Psyche," I said sharply. "Where is this god? Where the palace is? Nowhere—in your fancy. Where is he? Show him to me? What is he like?</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">She looked a little aside and spoke, lower than ever but very clear and as if all that had yet passed between us were of no account beside the gravity of what she was now saying. "Oh, Orual," she said, "not even I have seen him—yet. He comes to me only in the holy darkness. He says I mustn't—not yet—see his face or know his name. I'm forbidden to bring any light into his—our—chamber."</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Then she looked up, and as our eyes met for a moment I saw in hers unspeakable joy.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">"There's no such thing," I said, loud and stern. "Never say such things again. Get up. It's time—"</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Orual," said she, now at her queenliest, "I have never told you a lie in my life"</blockquote>In the end Orual resorts to threatening Psyche's life and her own suicide in order to compel Psyche to accede to her (Orual's) understanding of reality<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">(13)</span></b>. The result in Lewis' version as in the original, is that Psyche loses everything she had been given and is set a series of impossible seeming tasks in order to get back what she lost. Orual, ultimately separated from Psyche and, eventually, everyone whom she loves and who loves her in return, lives out most of her life as the ruling queen of her country. She writes out the account we read in the novel as her complaint against the gods and her primary charge against them is that, by not allowing her to experience reality as Psyche had—that is by keeping the palace invisible to her eyes—the gods are responsible for Psyche's tragedy as well as her own. The novel ends at the end of Orual's life when she is granted a sort of mystical vision or spirit journey to the mountain of the gods where she is given the opportunity to "bring her complaint against" them. But when she begins to speak she finds that the words she speaks against the gods are not what she had originally intended—the story we have read thus far—but a different speech which she acknowledges to be truer than what she had intended. As part of that accusation-which-is-really-confession, Lewis has Orual declaim the following:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">But to steal her love from me, to make her see things I couldn't see... oh, you'll say (you've been whispering it to me these forty years) that I'd signs enough her palace was real, could have known the truth if I'd wanted. But how could I want to know it? Tell me that. The girl was mine. What right had you to steal her away into your dreadful heights? You'll say I was jealous. Jealous of Psyche? Not while she was mine. If you'd gone the other way to work—if it was my eyes you had opened—you'd soon have seen how I would have shown her and told her and taught her and led her up to my level. But to hear a chit of a girl who had (or ought to have had) no thought in her head that I'd not put there, setting up for a seer and a prophetess and next thing to a goddess... how could anyone endure it? ... Oh, you'll say you took her away into bliss and joy such as I could never have given her, and I ought to have been glad for her sake. Why? What should I care for some horrible, new happiness which I hadn't given her and which separated her from me? Do you think I wanted her to be happy, that way?</blockquote>Notice that the bitterness of Orual is directed, among other things, at the fact that her vision of reality was not the one which would ultimately allow Psyche's happiness (and before this point can be brushed away remember that Lewis understood happiness in Aristotelian terms as ultimate fulfillment of a self—<i>eudaimonia</i>). How closely that parallels and makes sense of the anger and fear we find in the transphobia which is daily hurled against transgender people. The sin here is great and terrible specifically because it is the sin of a twisted love. It is the love which refuses to love another on any but its own terms. Because the denier cannot (or will not) make the move to empathy for the transgender person, cannot (or will not) recognize the validity of the trans person's account of reality; they must make every effort to destroy that which they cannot give and will not share. In fact those last haunting lines "What should I care for some horrible, new happiness which I hadn't given her and which separated her from me? Do you think I wanted her to be happy, that way?" would fit perfectly into the mouths of every parent, partner, or family member who rejects a trans person for coming out as who we are.<br /><br />The final title comes from a passage near the end of the book where Orual asks "How can [the Gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?". Orual is redeemed in the end only after she sees herself for what she has really been, both truly loving and beautiful and truly ugly and hateful. Lewis ends his last novel reminding us that health, happiness, flourishing are only possible when we know our true selves.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.4285; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FP_0s5EXE0c/XJjZ_8WEh7I/AAAAAAAAOg0/RBUM6ZFHhQIQMCl2QmzUpx1mO1MhtVABACLcBGAs/s1600/visitation-from-bl-harley-2969-f-50v-076089-1024.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="694" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FP_0s5EXE0c/XJjZ_8WEh7I/AAAAAAAAOg0/RBUM6ZFHhQIQMCl2QmzUpx1mO1MhtVABACLcBGAs/s200/visitation-from-bl-harley-2969-f-50v-076089-1024.jpg" width="134" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” my friend said. “I don’t see why there shouldn’t be books in Heaven. But you will find that your library in Heaven contains only some of the books you had on earth.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.4285; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Which?” I asked.</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.4285; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The ones you gave away or lent.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.4285; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">“</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">I hope the lent ones won’t still have all the borrowers’ dirty thumb marks,” said I.</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.4285; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh yes they will,” said he. “But just as the wounds of the martyrs will have turned into beauties, so you will find that the thumb-marks have turned into beautiful illuminated capitals or exquisite marginal woodcuts.”</span></blockquote><div style="text-align: right;">- From the essay <i>Scraps</i> in the collection <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2U7QoY0" target="_blank">God in the Dock</a></i></div><div><br /></div><br /><br /><h3>Footnotes</h3><br />(1) I suspect, but am not sure, that Dr. Bettcher holds reality to be finally unknowable. Thus she occupies herself in <i><a href="https://philarchive.org/archive/BETTITv1" target="_blank">Trapped in the Wrong Theory</a></i> with an exploration of the power dynamics which are created and exploited against transgender people who operate out of two specific models of trans identity.<br />(2) <i>Cisgender</i> means only "a person whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth" or more simply "a person who is not transgender".<br />(3) It really is vital to keep in mind that this was written in 1944. One hopes to avoid anachronistic criticism of an enunciation of gender theory years ahead of its time.<br />(4) It is possible that Lewis is one of the first modern authors to have publicly made this distinction. Whereas Perelandra was published in 1944, the research I have encountered to date locates the earliest examples of this distinction in either the 1950's or the 1970's. Here are a few links to that effect but more research needs to be done on this topic. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-9932-5" target="_blank">Muehlenhard and Peterson in <i>Sex Roles </i>2011</a><i>, </i><a href="https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-brief-history-of-gender/" target="_blank">Debbie Cameron on the Philology of <i>Gender</i> 2016</a>, <a href="https://amzn.to/2HCohKI" target="_blank">Joanne Meyerowitz <i>How Sex Changed</i> Chapter 3</a><br />(5) an exception to this rule (that spirits do not change) might have involved the process of sanctification or glorification (though to my knowledge Lewis used neither of these terms). However, Lewis closely followed Boethius in his understanding of time and the mutability of soul so it is entirely possible that he would have denied even this exception.<br />(6) and, I suspect, Lewis would have included intersex bodies as well.<br />(7) Julia Serano coined the term <i><a href="http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#intrinsicinclinations" target="_blank">subconscious sex</a> </i>for her first book <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2OrqhpN" target="_blank">Whipping Girl</a>. </i>The concept is at the core of her proposed <i><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intrinsic_Inclinations_Model" target="_blank">Intrinsic Inclinations</a> </i>model.<br />(8) with the exception that Lewis would have claimed that the gender of individuals is objectively known by God and possibly by any other being which is able to perceive simple spirit.<br />(9) The current brain-sex hypothesis, if it turns out to be valid, would suggest that sufficiently high powered and accurate brain-state and brain-structure analysis and observation might eventually give us a method to empirically verify gender identity claims.<br />(10) the fact that, in the story, Edmund knows that he is lying is ultimately irrelevant to this analysis. Peter or Susan could just as well be stand-ins for the denier.<br />(11) Check out <a href="https://debunkingdenialism.com/2013/12/06/being-transgender-is-nothing-like-having-a-psychotic-napoleon-delusion/" target="_blank">this piece at <i>Debunking Denialism</i></a> for a thorough run-down on the difference between gender dysphoria and delusion.<br />(12) Lewis is said to have worked with his wife Joy Davidman Lewis on this book to the extent that some of his friends at the time have suggested that she was almost a co-author of the novel.<br />(13) Threats transgender people are all too familiar with.<br /><br /><br /><h3>Transgender Resource Recommendations:</h3><div><ol><li>Julia Serano: <a href="https://amzn.to/2FDkxFh" target="_blank">Books</a> and <a href="http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Blog</a></li><li>Austen Hartke <a href="https://amzn.to/2YFy8oy" target="_blank">Book</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwWfCs7vnwdC1wbIAmH3_kIm0fE7oN9tE" target="_blank">Youtube channel</a></li><li>Talia Mae Bettcher: <a href="https://learningtrans.org/contributors/bettcher-talia/" target="_blank">Learningtrans resources and class</a> </li><li>Susan Stryker <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2YzuigL" target="_blank">Transgender History</a></i></li></ol></div><div><br /></div></div>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-61759661867077145932023-03-06T15:26:00.002-05:002023-03-06T17:34:04.239-05:00Jesus Revolution is a Good Story that Needs an Honest Frame.<p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_YT2PcyDiTcwSF7qJ-2-sL_WzboQ0zR4mfjOzeiI3kyO-cxrK8Of-AgrV97M-iZq60j4JOTZYTz5zQd1E8E75dIUHuzLfSRHs9j7FU3YLgVNiNFE_HOnp1Q8w40NF8XhyQLSqD2aFLcWo4MH8kH0o6t91HY1bDxyZdDqOhNuJTb7bIrIYEDcEQqEaYw" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_YT2PcyDiTcwSF7qJ-2-sL_WzboQ0zR4mfjOzeiI3kyO-cxrK8Of-AgrV97M-iZq60j4JOTZYTz5zQd1E8E75dIUHuzLfSRHs9j7FU3YLgVNiNFE_HOnp1Q8w40NF8XhyQLSqD2aFLcWo4MH8kH0o6t91HY1bDxyZdDqOhNuJTb7bIrIYEDcEQqEaYw=w427-h640" width="427" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;">It has to be said that Lonnie Frisbee was a gay man who died of AIDS in 1993. </span> <p></p><p>Lonnie was also one of three major protagonists (together with Chuck Smith and Greg Laurie) in the recent religious/historical drama <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10098448/fullcredits">Jesus Revolution</a> </i>about the Southern California originis and beginning of the Jesus People movement. The movie faithfully and, sometimes humorously sometimes tenderly, portrays Lonnie as a the goofy, prophetic, hippie preacher who was instrumental in convincing Chuck Smith to give the hippies a chance at god and who moved his Calvary Chapel church into an era of love and inclusion that marked the beginning of the Southern California Jesus People movement. In the movie Lonnie is played compellingly by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0745751/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t2">Jonathan Roumie</a> who, based on the accounts I have read and footage I have watched of Frisbee, ably captures his trippy-hippie demeanor and his intense passion for Jesus and for "his people". And in <i>Jesus Revolution</i> there is no mention of the fact that Lonnie Frisby was gay and died of AIDS, not even in the final summary of his life at the end of the film. They tell us he died in 93, they don't say how. That is why it <i>has</i> to be said that Lonnie Frisbee was a gay man who died of AIDS in 1993.</p><p>I wanted to foreground that fact because watching <i>Jesus Revolution</i> was, for me, an agony of conflicting emotions, informed by what I already knew about Lonnie Frisbee. Part of my own spiritual jouney includes <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-and-why-i-left-my-vineyard-church.html">seven or so formative years in the Vineyard movement</a> and the story told in this movie and Lonnie's part in it were already very much on my radar. Because of my experience with the Vineyard I have been reading through the <a href="https://amzn.to/3yyxUmp">t</a><a href="https://amzn.to/3yyxUmp">hree part co-authored autobiography of Lonnie Frisbee</a> and<br /> appreciated the <a href="https://amzn.to/3ygdTAU">2005 documentary on his life</a>. I have also managed to get several conversations with people (all within the Vineyard movement) who knew Lonnie and, as a queer Christian it has been hard not to see Lonnie and his story as a bit of a portent for other LGBTQ+ christians vis-a-vis the Vineyard.*</p><p>Going into the movie I told my wife that I was intrigued to watch it particularly because so many of the people I know have been divided in their response to the film and that the division doesn't seem to fall along any predictable lines. Some progressive Christians like it, while others very much don't; some Vineyard people who were there either for the events of the film or for the Vineyard centered version a decade later involving many of the same people and ground liked it while others didn't. I wanted to understand why. </p><p>It makes sense to me now. At its heart the surface message of the film is that Jesus is for everyone, that trying to gatekeep access to Church and to the Holy Spirit is wrong, that the Holy Spirit moves in ways we wouldn't predict among people we wouldn't predict and that loving and including the socially marginalized and alienated is central to the call of the church. While there might be a few theological quibbles (the salvation narrative in the movie is rather notably individualistic but that is accurate to the theology of Calvary Chapel) by and large that message is absolutely one that progressive and affirming Christians can get behind. At one dramatic moment about halfway through they include a powerful (if slightly on-the-nose) scene in which two out of three of Chuck Smith's stodgy "square" original attenders march out of the church in protest after Smith (magnificently played phenomenally by Kelsey Grammer) overcomes some of his own prejudices as declares that the doors to Calvary Chapel are open to any who want to enter and to all who want to leave. The third attender stands up as if to leave and then re-seats himself among the hippies. I started to weep. </p><p>But I wept at that scene for two reasons. All throught the scene, the camera keeps panning over to Lonnie, smiling at Chuck, affirming and blessing his decision. For those of you have have also been watching <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9471404/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Chosen</a></i> it is worth noting here that Jonathan Roumie is the same actor who plays Jesus in that series and I found it almost impossible in that scene not to see Frisbee through the sort of double vision linked both to the character's role in the movie and the actor's portrayal of Jesus in a separate series. The scene <i>feels </i>like Jesus is blessing Chuck Smith and welcoming him deeper into God's beutiful kin-dom as Chuck chooses inclusion over comfort and "clean carpets". Under any circumstances that scene would have moved me. But it was deeper than that.</p><p>In storytelling we often encounter the mechanic of a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095832133;jsessionid=3BD3860FBAEFFB520C7159E59CC3CCDD">frame narrative</a> in which the central story is presented as a story within a larger story (the frame). In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien presents himself not as the author (though of course he is) but as the translator and compiler of <i>The Red Book of Westmarch</i> and other fictional material. In <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> the stories are are presented as travelling tales told by a diverse party who are all on pilgrimage together. You get the picture. In <i>Jesus Revolution</i> the strory-wthin-the-story is all about people coming together to find that God is Love and that the mission of the Church necessarily involves the inclusion of the marginalized, outcast, and alienated. But the frame of the story is heartbreaking. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgO8glFge-XQWbgFlyBdsdf1xDBcTdxwrW3jH-3lyG-ADn7D7ghmQnoxqpWSTqldPQ_ql7MNL2iC1njkV_pjlrh55h6uEryeaykLgeM_45F-urDu0XwVvNLJpUZHCca9tHs8o50wP6apyBIXmS_sncRpwtqRLvJfu5JCmV4LEZ0ti1NGuraDh2MRSpUrQ" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="193" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgO8glFge-XQWbgFlyBdsdf1xDBcTdxwrW3jH-3lyG-ADn7D7ghmQnoxqpWSTqldPQ_ql7MNL2iC1njkV_pjlrh55h6uEryeaykLgeM_45F-urDu0XwVvNLJpUZHCca9tHs8o50wP6apyBIXmS_sncRpwtqRLvJfu5JCmV4LEZ0ti1NGuraDh2MRSpUrQ" width="167" /></a></div><p></p><p>Chuck Smith, and John Wimber after him, both used Lonnie as a powerful vessel of the Holy Spirit (Lonnie was, for the record, a really strange man with some bad tendencies who rubbed some good people the wrong way—he wasn't an angel) and who both then effectively wrote him out of the history of the movements they used him to start once they had rejected him. In Chuck Smith's case my understanding is that he rejected Lonnie based on some personality conflicts (which are showcased in the film) and some theological differences which the film barely nods to. John Wimber rejected and erased Lonnie Frisbee from vineyard history for being gay and for all that came with being an honest but closeted Christian gay man in the early to mid 80s. When Chuck Smith <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcFe3x777h8&t=16s">gave a eulogy at Lonnie's funeral</a>, the most he could manage was that Lonnie had been "like Sampson", full of potential, too much of which was squandered. </p><p>The frame around the beautiful story the film tells is a different story. That frame is a story of rejection; a story of limited inclusion sold as full inclusion; a story of spiritual abuse, of hiding who you are. The story-within-the-story of <i>Jesus Revolution</i> is one that is all to familiar to queer Christians. Far too often we have been invited in with gospels of inclusion, radical love, deep community, and full belonging only to find that, when we inevitably failed to be "cured" of the holy queerness that was never a sin to begin with, that love, inclusion, welcome, and acceptance are inevitably revoked. <i>Jesus Revolution</i> is the story of boomer hippie Christians finding God's radical love and acceptance framed within an ultimate rejection of queer Christians. For Gen Xers and Millennials, that story played out during the emergent, welcoming, and missional church movements of the early-mid 2000s. The Vineyard Movement in the US <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FmppM7NPW_672Lg9db1X3WJBQFnXVmZ7&usp=drive_copy" target="_blank">didn't officially restrict the full participation of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Christians until 2014</a>** though they had been running/sponsoring "soft" conversion therapy programs for a long while before that. The pain of rejection by those who claim to follow the God who loves and accepts queer people, who affirms us as we are, is very deep and very real. And so is the history of erasing that.</p><p>In some ways then, <i>Jesus Revolution,</i> when taken together with its frame, tells a deeply true and honest story. It is the story of a church who has used queer Christians so long as our queerness remained invisible, has damaged us in the process, and has ultimately worked to wall us off from any work of inclusion the Holy Spirit may perform among them—even works that the Spirit uses us to initiate. The true and honest story of how the church also shamefully tries to erase us and to hide the evidence both of its dependence on us (who sings <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicky_Beeching">Vicky Beeching</a> songs anymore?) and of its rejection. Our cries outside of the church doors give lie to their acceptance of the Gospel of peace; when Chuck Smith invited the hippies in, he also shut a part of Lonnie out. </p><p>Before I went to the movie, knowing what it was about, a friend of mine asked on social media, what the story meant to different people. I said that to me, the story of Lonnie Frisbee represents a heartbreaking lost opportunity. I invited those in that conversation to imagine how things today might have been different if Chuck Smith or John Wimber had stopped to wonder what it could mean that the Holy Spirit chose to work so powerfully though a gay man while he was in a relationship with another man. To wonder why the Holy Spirit who had miraculously healed people through Lonnie and delivered them from addictions and oppression, never "healed" Lonnie of his homosexuality and had realized that God does not fix what was never broken. I asked them to think about a world where Lonnie's death of AIDS drove the Vineyard to sponsor a chaper of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_UP">ACT UP</a> in every Vineyard Church. To me this is a heartbreaking story of a lost opportunity and what might have been.</p><p>Ultimately <i>Jesus Revolution</i> without its historical frame is a mostly beautiful and compelling picture of what the Church is called to be; with it's frame it is a deeply troubling picture of what the church actually is: messy, harmful, healing, broken, and growing whole. I am encouraged by what is there and I hope in Christ that the Spirit will make up in Her power what the Church has not yet learned to do.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes</h4><p>*For a fuller account of Lonnie's story I really recommend Matt Nightingale's piece <a href="https://mattnightingale.com/the-gay-man-who-launched-the-jesus-movement/">HERE</a> </p><p>** In its <i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/6175966186707714593?hl=en#">Position Paper 7: Pastoring LGBT Persons</a></i> Vineyard USA prohibits the ordination of anyone in a same-sex marriage and forbids pastors from performing same-sex marriages in their capacity as Vineyard pastors. In keeping with the theme of this review, VUSA has elected to remove Position Paper 7 from its website but has not recinded it.</p>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-649864357161609132022-10-28T15:02:00.014-04:002023-05-16T15:35:25.974-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 2B Sex and Gender. A Review<p><i>This is the fourth installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book </i><b><i>Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say</i>. </b><i>Click <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" style="color: #249fa3; text-decoration-line: none;">HERE</a> for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In the second half of Chapter 2 Preston Sprinkle focuses in on defining and briefly exploring <i>Sex</i> and <i>Gender</i>. So let's do this.</div><h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Sex</h2><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheEFSH0VK64ypPPlvgdhQXjbT3PFvwasqBq8hGtWNMk0wmYM7Iy-4ggH0K2oAdnfx906MoGicgKXp9Ci3LvqBKwkZ5WiBbkKmmxNCVDE_Dpi75PcGcaM-fDrvGiS6HQK3dhi9pKlAPAbhZ2uKZLdGhINoS6Lrebl-ukme3fWVODue4XkOstRW4omDegA/s1024/Lollipop.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheEFSH0VK64ypPPlvgdhQXjbT3PFvwasqBq8hGtWNMk0wmYM7Iy-4ggH0K2oAdnfx906MoGicgKXp9Ci3LvqBKwkZ5WiBbkKmmxNCVDE_Dpi75PcGcaM-fDrvGiS6HQK3dhi9pKlAPAbhZ2uKZLdGhINoS6Lrebl-ukme3fWVODue4XkOstRW4omDegA/s320/Lollipop.png" width="320" /></a></div><div>Sprinkle has a lot to say about sex and, to quote him, "Not <i>having</i> sex, but <i>biological</i> sex" and that's fair enough. The thing that is often referred to as <i>biological sex </i><b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(1)</span></b> is a really important concept in this conversation. He starts by saying that humans are sexually dimorphic and that that means that our species reproduces when the gametes of two different "kinds" of humans fuse. He then offers the first in a long list of varied definitions he provides, and seems to endorse, for "male" and/or "female" throughout this section. Here is the full list as best I can compile it (the following list are all direct quotes; italics + bold are my emphases):</div><div><ol><li>The <b><i>categories</i></b> used to classify the respective <i><b>roles</b></i> humans play in reproduction are "male" and "female".</li><li>Females are distinguished from males based on their different reproductive <i><b>structures</b></i>.</li><li>Males and females also have different levels of hormones.</li><li>Genetically, the presence of a Y chromosome distinguishes males from females.</li><li>To sum it up, a person is biologically either male or female based on four things:</li><ul><li>Presence or absence of a Y chromosome</li><li>Internal reproductive organs</li><li>External sexual anatomy</li><li>Endocrine systems that produce secondary sex characteristics</li></ul><li>Feminist philosopher Rebecca Reilly-Cooper describes "female" and "male" as "<i><b>general</b></i> biological categories that apply to all species that reproduce sexually.</li><li>The American Psychological Association says, "Sex refers to a person's biological <b><i>status</i></b> and is <b><i>typically</i></b> categorizes as male, female, <b><i>or intersex</i></b>. There are a number of <b><i>indicators</i></b> of biological sex, including sex chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive organs and external genitalia."</li><li>[A]n organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction," and "[t]here is no other widely accepted biological classification for the sexes."<span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>(2)</b></span></li><li>Male and Female are <b><i>categories</i></b> of biological sex based on <b><i>structures </i></b>of reproduction.</li></ol><div>After a number of read throughs of this section and the rest of the book, it remains unclear to me whether Dr. Sprinkle thinks that person's sex is based on a role or on certain physical characteristics. He is fairly clear later on that he doesn't think a person's sex can change even when some, or even a majority, of those characteristic change and typically people who hold that view want to reduce sex to the size of gamete a person produces—yes it is very strange to suggest that we can't know whether a person is <i>male, female, </i>or another sex category without measuring that person's gametes—and get a little vague on the topic of people who produce differently sized gametes or none at all. On the other hand the definition Sprinkle Provided—implying that he agreed—from the APA is probably the closest to what you would hear from trans and intersex people: sex references someone's status and that status is <i>typically</i> (not universally or necessarily) categorized as male, female, or intersex, and that those categories are indicated by a variety of physical factors. Honestly when I read it, Sprinkle providing that definition seemed out of place as it seems to undermine his repeated assertions that 1. Sex is binary and 2. Sex is clear (except for intersex people). I almost wonder whether he somehow glosses over terms like <i>typically</i> and <i>variety of factors</i>. </div><br /></div><div>For the record, I am inclined to accept and use <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html" target="_blank">Julia Serano's defintion</a> based on it's similarity with the APA definition cited by Sprinkle and her qualifications as a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics together with her own history of research and writing on this subject:</div><blockquote>[W]ith regards to bodies, [sex] refers to a suite of sexually dimorphic traits that may include chromosomes, gonads, external genitals, other reproductive organs, ratio of sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics...</blockquote><p>For the purposes of making sense of the book, I would suggest that Sprinkle most frequently means by <i>sex</i> and the related terms <i>male </i>and <i>female</i>, the definition he cites from Paul McHugh: </p><blockquote><p>[A]n organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction</p></blockquote><p>but let the canny reader beware: he will not be consistent and that definition is subject to change in places where Sprinkle needs a more expansive definition to make his argument work. </p></div><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Sprinkle's Bracketed Intersex People.</h3><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Much of the reasons for Sprinkle's inconsistent definitions of sex may be attributable to the approach he takes in this book to the existence of intersex people—he brackets them. To be fair, I think he wants to be nice about it. He says:</div><blockquote><div>The topic of intersex [sic] has its own set of questions and assumptions. It'll be better to discuss intersex [sic] head-on rather than weaving intersex [sic] in and out of conversations about non-intersex people. So, for the next several chapters, <b>I want to focus on humans who don't have an intersex condition</b><i style="font-weight: bold;">. </i>My motivation for doing so is to honor my intersex friends, not to sideline them. It's common for non-intersex people to invoke "intersex" as some faceless concept in service of an argument. But I find this practice rather dehumanizing to actual intersex people, and many intersex people do as well. I'd much rather talk about (and with) intersex people extensively in a separate chapter before considering how intersex [sic] relates to our conversation. </div></blockquote><p>Let's start by recognizing and appreciating that Sprinkle is (I will assume sincerely) attempting to prioritize and center the humanity and dignity of intersex people. That is a good impulse and something that is important to keep in mind. I have done some writing of my own on the subject and have been engaging with Sprinkle about it every since <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theologyintheraw/2015/10/intersex-and-christian-theology/">his review series</a> of Megan DeFranza's <i>Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God. </i>The problem in this case is that Sprinkle's decision to defer questions about how the existence of intersex people impacts the definitions of of terms like <i>sex, female,</i> and <i>male</i> has the <b>effect</b> of distorting the conversation. Intersex people obviously complicate simplistic, binary, and reductive accounts of sex in the human population. Sprinkle tacitly admits as much with constant caveats that he is talking about non-intersex people and with his announcement in this chapter that he is postponing any discussion of intersex people for Chapter 7. Trying to define <i>sex, female, </i>and <i>male</i> while bracketing intersex conditions and then concluding that "[A]n organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction" is bit like trying to define all <i>animals</i> as "mammals, birds, amphibians, and fish" while bracketing platypuses<b style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: x-small;">(3)</b>. When real beings don't fit the categories, we don't get to bracket them, we have to admit that our categories are imperfect and, if we want to have accurate and comprehensive categories we then re-do, or at least soften the boundaries of, our categories. You see this boundary softening in the APA and Serano's usage of qualifiers like <i>suite of</i>, <i>typically</i>, and <i>variety of factors</i>. <br /><br />By bracketing any incorporation of intersex people from his definition of <i>sex, male, </i>and <i>female, </i>Sprinkle erases those persons from having an impact on his argument at this point in the book, thereby justifying an over-simplified definition of key terms in the conversation. He is, in effect, cherry picking his human data and justifying it by deferring discussion of counter examples for a future Chapter. In principle that could be sort of technically acceptable if Chapter 7 itself were to somehow demonstrate conclusively that the existence of intersex people in no way impacts his conclusions here. But first Chapter 7 does not actually accomplish that, and second the effect is to leave the trusting reader with the <i>impression</i> that Sprinkle has made that case without actually exposing them to the argument. By the time the reader gets to Chapter 7 (I do wonder why it wasn't Chapter 3) Sprinkle's definitions of these terms are likely to have lodged in their mind as solid rather than as "provisional provided he successfully makes the case in Chapter 7" which would be the logically rigorous, and also psychologically difficult, way to read the text.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Conclusions on <i>Sex</i></h3><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Beyond the above, Sprinkle meanders a bit (he briefly explores his best understanding of Judith Butler's claim that sex (and not just gender) is socially constructed but he ultimately rejects it on the basis of the "cold hard fact <i>that </i>sexual dimorphism exists in humans" a claim, depending on what he means by "sexual dimorphism"—he seems to be thinking of hermetically sealed categories rather than heavily populated poles along a dimorphic spectrum—, that can only work so long as he continues to bracket the existence of intersex people. His conclusion is fairly straightforward: "Our interpretations of sex and sexed bodies might be socially constructed, but sex itself is not socially constructed". Honestly I suspect he simply doesn't actually understand the philosophy involved and what it means to "assign meaning" to a phenomenon. At any rate he then moves on to gender.<br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;">Gender</h2><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle opens this section first by saying that the distinction between <i>sex</i> and <i>gender</i> only goes back as far as the 1960s—a claim I would like to see some evidence for since <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/03/bareface-cs-lewis-and-identity-claims.html" target="_blank">C.S. Lewis made the distinction in 1946</a> and it may well pre-date that significantly we we recognized that the concepts themselves may have been expressed in different terms—which transition him to what he calls "the most basic and widely agreed upon definition of gender" which he takes from Mark Yarhouse:</div><blockquote><div>The psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female</div></blockquote><p>In a footnote he claims that this is widely accepted by scholars. I don't love it but he is probably correct about it's general acceptance. He then breaks the definition down into what he says are "two different (yet overlapping) categories": g<i>ender identity</i> and <i>gender role. </i></p><p>Before I get to an analysis of his reflection on those terms though, I want to quote Serano's definitions both since they are closer to what I would use and so you can hold them in apposition to what Sprinkle has to say.</p><blockquote><p><b>Gender Role:</b> a term that has been used in psychology to describe the various roles that one is expected to fulfill in society or within relationships based upon their gender status; this might include specific behaviors (e.g., acting masculine, feminine) or more formal interpersonal roles (e.g., father, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend). This phrase is used less frequently today, and has been largely replaced by (or subsumed under) the term <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#genderexpression">gender expression</a>.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p><b>Gender Identity:</b> the <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#gender" target="_blank">gender</a> that one <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#identity" target="_blank">identifies</a> as. The term originated in teh field of psychology where it is generally understood to be distinct frm an individual's sex (i.e. their physical body), as well as their <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#genderrole" target="_blank">gender role</a>/<a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#genderexpression">gender expression</a> (i.e., outwardly-directed gender-related behaviors). While most people in our culture identify as either a boy/man or girl/woman, others come to adopt <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#nonbinary">non-binary</a> gender identities. In <i><a href="http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html">Whipping Girl</a></i> (pp. 77-93) I introduced the term <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#subconscioussex">subconscious sex</a> in order to distinguish between the conscious and deliberate act of idenitfying with a particular gender, and the more unconscious and inexplicable self-understanding of what sex/gender one should be (the latter of which many trans people experience prior to explicitly claiming that gender identity).</p></blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Gender Role</h3><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle's treatment of this term, which he describes (he doesn't really define it) saying:</div><blockquote><div>Gender roles have to do with how males and females are expected to act in any given culture.</div></blockquote><p>I don't really take significant issue with his description so rather than a point-by-point analysis of his reflection on it I want to offer a few top-line observations and one critique of his sourcing for this section. </p><p>First, I am not at all clear on why Sprinkle decided to use the term "Gender Role" rather than "Gender Expression". It may have some ideological basis (he doesn't really refer to the latter term), perhaps based in a desire not to present the concept as emerging from, or being rooted in, a person's gender identity, or because he is getting ready to talk about John Money who is thought to have coined the term; it may be as simple as the fact that his research and reading seems to have been disproportionately weighted towards TERF and trans-denying accounts which are potentially more likely to have used the term, but it isn't clear. It is odd for him to have chosen the less common, and largely outdated term though.</p><p>Second, throughout this section, Sprinkle plays pretty fast and loose with a sort of impression that trans people's concerns are significantly formed by "Gender Role" expectations. Now it is absolutely the case that navigating and working out how we relate to existing cultural expectations regarding our gender expressions (the way we live out our gender) is a significant subject for trans folk. My concern is that Sprinkle is overplaying it to the point that one might expect after reading this section to hear that trans-ness at least can consist only in wanting to have a non-standard gender expression while still having a cisgender identity. And in as much as there may be some people who identify cis-ly but feel drawn to non-standard gender expressions and identify as trans on that basis, those folks just kinda aren't what the conversation generally and in this book is actually about—remember that Sprinkle says the central question for the book is <span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"If someone experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their internal sense of self, which one determines who they are—and why?</span>" and that "internal sense of self" references not gender expression but gender identity. I have to notice, then, that the time Sprinkle spends on this topic and on decrying oppressive gender stereotypes and establishing himself as affirming a far wider-than-is-common-for-Christians vision of expansive gender expressions (I would agree with him on those points) will end up serving as a serious foundation for his regurgitation of harmful <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#TERF">TERF</a> talking points later in the text when he makes the move to question whether gender identity may not actually just me a desire for serotyped gender roles. In short it isnt' that I particularly disagree with him in most of this section—I would quibble with a few phrases—it is that I am, by now, suspicious of what he is doing with it.</p><p>Finally it stood out to me, and not in a positive way that Sprinkle devotes a significant part of this section to <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mudbloodcatholic/2021/12/with-my-body-i-thee-worship-part-two/" target="_blank">the story of David Reimer</a>. On the one hand, that seems almost inevitable. The rather tragic story of David Reimer is a sort of touchstone for nearly everyone who wants to talk about trans people. The appeal is, is suppose, obvious. David was a twin who suffered an accidental injury to his genitals as an infant. Dr. John Money—about whom everyone has a lot to say—convinced David's parents to try raising David "as a girl" on the theory that gender is entirely a social construct and that children who are raised "as girls" will adopt that understanding of themselves. It went horribly wrong, David quickly and early on asserted himself as a boy and at 14 he detransitioned from a forced "role" into his own gender identity—that of a boy. He then continued to live his life in his gender identity until his tragic suicide which is generally attributed to his complicated childhood. </p><p>Everyone wants to draw conclusions from the David Reimer case. It is s a sort of obvious go-to for Nature/Nurture debates (which is how Sprinkle deploys it) but it is often cited by trans affirming folk as evidence that gender identity persists regardless of how a child is raised (thereby challenging various claims made by people who think trans-ness can be treated out of us) and it is sometimes rather ham-fistedly deployed by anti-trans people as a sort of "any transition type treatments of youth are bad". Sprinkles use is mostly just to sort of point to it and observe that neither nature or nurture seem to give the whole story on the subject of gender. What I find concerning is first that he put it in this section (geneer role) rather than the next (gender identity) and second that he seems to have made a point of portraying Dr. Money as a sort of pro-trans researcher. Money was complicated <a href="https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/psychology/john-money/">but is in no way broadly accepted or celebrated in the trans community</a> and it isn't great seeing Sprinkle hanging him around our necks.</p><div>But it is after all of that that we get to the heart of this chapter. Preston Sprinkle's reflections on <i>gender identity</i>.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br />Gender Identity</h3><div><br /></div><div>Buckle up.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle starts off relatively well. His immediate definition of the term is "one's internal sense of self as male, female, both, or neither" and he cites (for once) solid sources (name the Human Rights Campaign an Austen Hartke. He pretty much goes off the rails from there. </div><div><br /></div><div>More than any part of the book to date, I think this section highlights the paucity of Sprinkle's research into what mainstream trans folk are actually saying and the distortions in reporting that result from that. As I have remarked elsewhere, I don't have any clear way of determining whether Sprinkle was just lazy/unconsciously motivated in his research or was aware of the broader conversation, perspectives, and accounts that his book ignores and simply chose to suppress them. Either way the effect is a read that probably makes sense to cis people who don't have a lot of trans people in their lives but comes across as alternately confused and alarming to actual trans people.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle organizes his reflections into four questions.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Does Gender Identity Exist?</h4><div>He concludes the two paragraphs he devotes to this section by tabling it as requiring more exploration to answer. The rest of the two paragraphs are almost entirely devoted to highlighting the voices and positions of people who say that gender identity is not real and expressing his concerns. He does follow that with an acknowledgement that "there are some biblical and scientific arguments for gender identity being a more ontologically robust aspect of human nature" but instead of even listing them—much less explaining them with the detail he used for the anti-trans arguments—he just tables the discussion.</div><div><br /></div><div>The effect is to leave the reader dubious about even the reality of gender identity without giving them even a representative experience of "the debate", hardly an open minded position from which to evaluate the rest of what he says about the topic.</div><div><br /></div><div>In fact, if Sprinkle had done his reading he would have encountered the works of trans theorists who enunciate (in the vein of Serano above, but <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/" target="_blank">Talia Bettcher</a>, <a href="https://sandystone.com/empire-strikes-back.pdf">Sandy Stone</a>, <a href="https://www.unitedseminary.edu/about-us/faculty/justin-sabia-tanis/">Justin Sabia-Tanis</a>, even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czRFLs5JQo" target="_blank">Contrapoints</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITRzvm0Xtg" target="_blank">Abigail Thorn</a> would have clarified it as well) an explanation that <i>gender identity</i> designates an experience that we largely hold to be very much real while recognizing that (at least for the time being) the experience of a person's gender identity is available only to that person. It is just a fact of human existence (consult your own) that there are some experiences which we have but which we cannot grant outside observers access to. For instance, if I were to take Sprinkle's approach in this section but apply it to the concept "being a Christian" I would observe that many Evangelicals mean by <i>being a Christian</i> that they have accepted Jesus into their heart or that they will sometimes use the phrase <i>believing in Jesus</i>. "But" I would argue, "there is no caridographic instrument that will show us Jesus in a heart and there is no brain scan that can demonstrate that a person believes in Jesus—we can't really even know what they mean by 'Jesus' there: a historical figure they have only read about? a person they have only spoken to or experienced as an inner feeling? Honestly there seem to be as many versions of Jesus floating around as there are Evangelicals who say they believe in him." The irritated Evangelical would likely respond that the experience of believing in Jesus—having him in their heart—is very real even if it can only be known subjectively. </div><div><br /></div><div>The fact of the matter is that there just are a certain set of experiences which are only available to the person who has them and, as many trans people and philosophers have pointed out, a lack of external verifiability does not indicate that a claim is false.</div><div><br /></div><div>In any case and for the record, my response to the question is that, yes, gender identity does exist, that it is a thing we all can know subjectively and which has very real and verifiable impacts on each person. I would add that cisgender people, those whose gender identity easily or comfortably aligns with the sex they were assigned when (or before) they were born, have a hard time "locating" it for the same reason that we are less likely to constantly notice comfortable, well fitting, clothes but are constantly aware of pinching, ill fitting clothes: unless something seems to not fit, the whole thing is processed in the back ground at a pretty deeply subconscious level. </div><div> </div><div>But having cast a significant shadow over the concept as a whole, Sprinkle moves on to:</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">How Many Gender Identities are There?</h4><div><br /></div><div>I don't see why Sprinkle thinks this is an important question to ask at this point. Rather, I can't think of a compelling good faith reason why he would. The effect that this section has—Sprinkle spends it first positing that there may be as many as ten thousand gender identities and then rather ironically reminding the reader that we need to make sure we know what people mean by the terms they use—is to give the impression of a sort of arbitrary gender chaos without giving any real consideration to what is meant by people who talk amount a multiplicity of gender identities and why they make those claims. What is so difficult to explain away is the clear contingency of this question: What does it matter how many gender identities there are before we have established whether or not genders identities are real in the first place? Even then, Sprinkle doesn't <i>really</i> explore the particularities of different gender identities anywhere in the book, so why should it matter to him how many there are if the answer has no bearing on what he has to say? <br /><br />The answer that springs to mind isn't charitable so please take it with a grain of salt. The only reason I can see for Sprinkle including this question at this point is to give himself an opportunity to portray gender identity as vague and a bit ridiculous in in the mind of his readers.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">How do you determine a person's gender identity?</h4><div><br /></div><div>On this question Sprinkle only responds that there are a range of views and he locates self-id at one side of that range and transmedicalism at the other side. From <a href="https://theologyintheraw.com/podcast/906-getting-to-know-my-new-transwoman-friend-seda-collier/" target="_blank">various</a> <a href="https://theologyintheraw.com/podcast/994-a-transwoman-seda-interviews-preston-about-his-views-on-trans-identities/">podcasts</a> (and somewhat in line with <a href="https://amzn.to/3f8soAP" target="_blank">Mark Yarhouse's "Least Invasive Treatment"</a> approach) I know that Sprinkle takes a sort of begrudging transmedicalist-as-last-resort-and-if-nothing-else-will-work position on the question of transition and that likely has a bearing on the way he thinks about that range of views. </div><div><br /></div><div>I will note before moving on that Sprinkles' "If you identify as a woman, then you're a woman. There is no objective criteria that need to be met" line when describing the self-id position is rather dismissive. </div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Is gender identity malleable?</h4><div><br /></div><div>This comes right at the end of the chapter, is very brief (81 words) and contains no citations whatsoever so I don't really have any insight into the justification for Sprinkle's claim in it that: </div><blockquote><div>The fact is—and it is a fact—for some people gender identity changes, and for other it doesn't. This shouldn't be surprising. After all, we're dealing with "one's internal sense of self."</div></blockquote><div>Sprinkle is on the record as still believing that conversion therapy (though he doesn't like it being called that in this instance) is a real and positive option for "people who experience gender dysphoria" and beyond holding open room for that heinous view I don't know that Sprinkle is accomplishing, or trying to accomplish much here. </div><div><br /></div><div>As for the claim itself, the truth is significantly less cut and dried than Sprinkle seems willing to admit. Put another way, the word "some" is doing a <b>lot</b> of heaving lifting in his claim. Sprinkle sums up the section and chapter by promising to revisit each of these questions in more depth later in the book, once more effectively giving himself a sort of permission to have done a sloppy job with them here while also establishing a degree of doubt in his readers minds about the claims of trans people. </div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h4 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Series Index</h4><h4><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><br /></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">Intro</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes</a></div></div></h4><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><h3 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes:</h3><div><br /></div><div>(1) There isn't really a perfect term for the thing he is trying to get at and hopefully the reason for that will become clear over the course of this series. <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/03/bareface-cs-lewis-and-identity-claims.html" target="_blank">I would argue that sex is only the physical manifestation of gender</a> but my take on that is not mainstream in even transgender Christian discourse.</div><div><br /></div><div>(2) He cites <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-problems-with-citing-dr-paul-mchugh.html">Dr. Paul McHugh</a> for this claim and that is more than a little problematic for several reasons. First because Dr. McHugh is a really problematic source, and second because in t<a href="https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/unbelievable-transgender-people-and-the-church-preston-sprinkle-and-christina-beardsley/11696.article" target="_blank">his interview conversation he had with Christina Beardsley on the <i>Unbelievable?</i> podcast</a>, he takes offence and pushes back when she lists Dr. McHugh among his sources, she apologizes and qualifies that other in Sprinkle's camp cite McHugh and he sort of harumphs back something to the effect of "others but not me". Meanwhile in the book they are talking about he had specifically cited McHugh to define a term he identifies as crucial to understanding the topic.</div><div><br /></div><div>(3) Platypus as a word is in a class of English words (along with octopus and a few others) with Latin sounding Greek roots. The result has been considerable misinformation about the proper pluralization of these words in English. If the word were derived from Latin, the correct plural would be Platypii or something of the sort, but when English incorporates words from non-Latinate languages the practice is to either keep the original pluralization (the classical Greek knowers in my life tell me this gives us something like Platipodes) or to use the standard Germanic English pluralization. Hence, Platypuses.</div>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-56590103897203435832022-10-27T07:32:00.009-04:002023-05-09T21:19:04.344-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 2A Definitions. A Review<p> <i>This is the third installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book </i><b><i>Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say</i>. </b><i>Click <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">HERE</a> for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>In Chapter 2 of <i>Embodied </i>Preston Sprinkle defines his terms. Or, at least, he defines some of them. He opens with a reasonable caveat that there are <i>lots</i> of terms and he recommends "the internet" for the ones he doesn't include in this chapter. To that end, <a href="https://www.glaad.org/reference/trans-terms" target="_blank">here is a link to GLAAD's media reference guide for trans related terms</a>, and <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms" target="_blank">here is a link to the HRC's glossary</a>. He also makes it clear that these are going to be substantial definitions and that the terms <i>sex </i>and<i> gender </i>will take up a half of the chapter. Chapter 2 is really both definitions and Sprinkle's initial reflection on those terms and their definitions. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiypu0BYfoke58kjxzc6O2OhnazswxQ7oWbsbIpuvloq_5U9IZ0_Q32QVZy1TD-hgWYo5Epup0CQCNKGo-lecPZ6kLSSbNwgZzrO0GF1AsbhsW-IBB-wAxwBABOeKYxSsgZNitXbN4QZuDtt41W1_aQ0cSOr7d5Tr-8Wy8l3IxSfNmA3S_jmXjDOpGdGA/s1664/Ice%20Cream%20Cone.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1664" data-original-width="1664" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiypu0BYfoke58kjxzc6O2OhnazswxQ7oWbsbIpuvloq_5U9IZ0_Q32QVZy1TD-hgWYo5Epup0CQCNKGo-lecPZ6kLSSbNwgZzrO0GF1AsbhsW-IBB-wAxwBABOeKYxSsgZNitXbN4QZuDtt41W1_aQ0cSOr7d5Tr-8Wy8l3IxSfNmA3S_jmXjDOpGdGA/s320/Ice%20Cream%20Cone.png" width="320" /></a></div>Before I launch into an analysis of Sprinkle's take on these terms, I want to recognized that many <br />debates and arguments are won or lost on the basis of definitions. An argument or position built on a definition of key terms will often fall or stand depending on the careful definition of those terms and, for that reason, in a good faith discussion it is important to agree with your interlocutor up front about what the key terms mean and how you will be using them. A small difference in the definition of a few key terms may be minor at the outset but as the lines of argument built on them extend, the distance between what is said and what is heard can grow significantly. Thus it is important to be clear about terms as we dive into the book.<p></p><p>For those reasons, this installment is only going to respond to the first half of Chapter 2. Sprinkle's definitions and statements are...let's say problematic... and it is going to require a good deal of space to respond.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Most of the Terms</h3><div>As I hope will be clear by the end of this section, Preston Sprinkle is either sloppy in his research or a disturbingly motivated reporter throughout the text and no less in this chapter. Sprinkle provides a total of 5 footnotes to the first half of this chapter and only one (for "transgender" where he cites Mark Yarhouse) cites or uses a definitional source for the terms he uses. Instead Sprinkle provides his own definitions. The effect of this is to allow Sprinkle to present himself in this chapter as a teacher, helping the reader familiarize themselves with the technical jargon of this subject. But that mode of writing disguises (and Sprinkle only alludes to this when he absolutely has to) the extremely contested nature of a lot of these terms. Specifically because arguments and then positions are built on the definition of words, trans people are extremely careful in our usages of relevant vocabulary. Every single one of the terms Sprinkle lists and reflects on is presented in a way that differs from <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5659010389720343583#" target="_blank">the definition and/or explication of it that you would encounter reading a text by a transgender person</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>And that leads me to my second top level observation of this chapter, one that will resurface again and again as we work through the book: Sprinkle uses "debated-ness" in an almost entirely one sided way. When he encounters scholarship or terminology that he doesn't like he is quick to highlight any debates or contention about it before stating his position. He will sometimes provide a citation for the debate but even when he does his sources is nearly always wildly unbalanced in favor of his position. In contrast whenever possible he seems to have avoided mentioning debates or contentions that would tend to challenge his position or the usage of his terms. His bias for a particular set of conclusions is hidden by his tone and the unbalanced nature of his citations which has the alarming potential of leading the reader to misapprehend the state of the discussion by and about trans people. </div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br />Transgender</h3><div>Sprinkle actually chooses to defer any in-depth discussion of this term for Chapter 3. For the purposes of this chapter he provides Mark Yarhouse's definition: <i>An umbrella term for the many ways in which people might experience and/or present and express (or live out) their gender identities differently from people whose sense of gender identity is congruent with their biological sex</i>. Beyond that he really wants to stress the "umbrella" nature of this term. And on one level, that's fair—"transgender" is indeed importantly an umbrella term—but on another level, he is setting up to engage in the sort of slippery rhetoric that <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" target="_blank">I identified in my introduction to this series</a> and which I will have a good deal more to discuss as he explains some of his thinking when we get to Chapter 3.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Nonbinary</h4><div>Here again, Sprinkle highlights that the terms is an umbrella term and provides a fully adequate explanation of what <i>binary</i> entails and that <i>nonbinary </i>designates trans identities which are not binary. He then rather dismissively lists <i>genderqueer</i>, <i>genderfluid</i>, and <i>pangender</i> as sub-categories of non-binary identities. He doesn't offer any clarity into the difference between those three identities.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then he digresses: </div><blockquote><div>To be clear, all non-intersex<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(1)</span></b> persons (and most intersex persons, as we'll see) are biologically male or female, regardless of how they identify.</div></blockquote><p>He goes on to say that the various non-binary identities designate something about the person's relationship to the categories "masculinity and femininity" or it indicates "that they experience some level of incongruence between their bodies and their minds". He then suggests that all of this well be less confusing when he unpacks <i>sex</i> and <i>gender</i>. But I have a little more to say at this point.</p><p>What Sprinkle is doing, with a light touch here, is setting up a critique he will be leveling at trans folk later on. It is a critique based primarily in TERF allegations against trans women (though it is used against trans men and non-binary people as well) and boils down to the idea that we reinforce harmful gender stereotypes. This is a wildly off base accusation based, usually, in not having interacted with more than a handful of trans people. I will respond to it when he finally makes the accusation but for the time being let us just note his decision to highlight the "don't fit into strict categories of masculinity and femininity" bit. Here he seems to be widening the umbrella a little farther than trans people actually do. I don't know that I have ever encountered a trans person who rejected the possibility of a tomboy or a feminine guy as fully cisgender identities, but by Sprinkle's definition here those folk (who may be more or less varied in the expression of their gender identities based in cultural gender assumptions) would seem to be categorized as non-binary and therefore trans.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Trans*</h4><div>Sprinkle's justification for using <i>trans* </i>with the * is brief:</div><blockquote><div>Since so many gender identity terms can overlap with each other, some people put an asterisk after the word <i>trans, </i>styling it as <i>trans*</i>, when they want to us it as a broad umbrella term to include a whole range of identities that aren't strictly <i>transgender, </i>such as <i>nonbinary, genderqueer, </i>and the like. I'll do the same in this book. [emphasis original]</div></blockquote><p>I don't know who these people are (and Sprinkle declines to cite the claim so I have no way of knowing whom he has in mind here). In my experience, <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" target="_blank">and as I discussed in the intro to this series</a>, people who want to use <i>trans</i> as an umbrella term just do, they don't add an *. More strange to me was Sprinkle's suggestion that non-binary and gender queer folk aren't strictly transgender. I am of the impression that there is some variation in which people with those identities choose to identify, or not, as trans but simple declaring them not "strictly <i>transgender</i>" isn't anything I have seen in mainstream trans discourse. As one non-binary friend of mine responded, "Sprinkle would have done far better to have simply observed that some non-binary people identify as trans while other don't"</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Gender dysphoria</h4><div>Sprinkle's definition of this term is great:</div><blockquote><div><i>Gender dysphoria</i> is a psychological term for the distress some people feel when their internal sense of self doesn't match their biological sex.</div></blockquote><p>For sure, he doesn't cite that definition from any particular source but it is fairly standard. And after this paragraph Sprinkle proceeds to give us three heart wrenching descriptions, all first hand accounts, of the experience of gender dysphoria. Again this is perfectly reasonable in a text of this sort. </p><p>Unfortunately between the definition and the examples, Sprinkle sneaks in this little false claim which I will have to respond to:</p><blockquote><p>As a diagnosis, <i>Gender Dysphoria</i> used to be called <i>Gender Identity Disorder</i>, but the name was changed to <i>Gender Dysphoria </i>in the latest edition of the <i>Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders</i> (5th edition) in 2013.</p></blockquote><p>This is a common enough misconception but it is decidedly wrong and a text on the subject of transgender people absolutely ought to know better. With even a little bit of research, Dr. Sprinkle would have found that</p><blockquote><p>With the publication of <i>DSM-5</i> in 2013, "gender identity disorder" was eliminated and replaced with "gender dysphoria." This change further focused the diagnosis on the gender identity-related distress that some transgender people experience (and for which they may seek psychiatric, medical, and surgical treatments) <i><b>rather than on transgender individuals or identities themselves. </b></i>[emphasis mine]</p></blockquote><p>That is from the <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/transgender-and-gender-nonconforming-patients/gender-dysphoria-diagnosis#:~:text=With%20the%20publication%20of%20DSM%E2%80%935%20in%202013%2C%20%E2%80%9Cgender,%2C%20medical%2C%20and%20surgical%20treatments)" rel="nofollow">American Psychiatric Assocaition's Guide for Working With Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Patients</a> it took me all of 2 minutes to google. The difference between reality and Sprinkle's claim should be clear but in case it isn't, the shift from Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria as the "core" diagnosis for trans people who seek therapy designates a shift from seeing the <i>identity or the person</i> as the problem in need of treatment to the distress generated by the experience of gender incongruence. With the old diagnosis the person or their identity was the problem; with the update, it is the distress that is the problem. That is not at all insignificant. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Transition</h4><div>Sprinkle opens this section by saying that <i>transition</i> "is the term most trans*[sic] people prefer for what is sometimes called "sex change." In fact <i>transition </i>is a larger category (and Sprinkle is about to acknowledge the range of the the term) than "sex change" ever was. Again it isn't a huge thing but I want us to notice that by locating the distinction between the two terms in what trans people prefer rather than in a technical difference, Sprinkle is adding one more little bit to his argument (intentional or not) that trans people and trans identities are all about feelings and that we are not making defensible truth claims. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle then goes on to accurately identify social transition, hormonal transition, and surgical transition as three categories of transitioning. It is more common in my experience to see these categorized as social transition and medical transition but I see no need to quibble. </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Social Transition</i> Sprinkle describes as typically dressing and acting as the sex with which a trans person identifies. This is a little weird as he is about to set himself against the idea that there are forms of dress and behavior <i>of</i> a given sex, but overall it is not egregious. He also mentions new names and pronouns as included in this form of transition</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Hormonal Transition</i> in Sprinkle's view "means taking high levels of hormones typically produced by the opposite [sic] biological sex: those transitioning to male take testosterone, and those transitioning to female take estrogen<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(2)</span></b>. I don't really know why Sprinkle insisted on <i>"high</i> levels of hormones" other than to make Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) seem more dangerous than it is. The general goal for binary trans people who are on HRT is to have hormone levels that mirror those of their cis counterparts. If I were to find that my estrogen levels were significantly higher than the standard range for cisgender women I would be alarmed. </li></ul></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">Sprinkle then goes on to say that this intervention "is called 'cross-sex hormone therapy' (CHT) or 'hormone replacement therapy' (HRT or HT). I don't know a single trans person who calls it CHT or HT, we pretty much universally (to my knowledge and in my experience) refer to it as HRT. And yet Sprinkle will refer to it as CHT for the rest of the book and I can't help noticing that this serves to emphasize the "cross-sex" element rather than the therapeutic element of this medical procedure. He doesn't justify the choice but by now I can't help being suspicious.</div></blockquote><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Surgical Transition</i> is one Sprinkle gets wrong right off the bat. He says that it "goes by various names: 'gender confirmation surgery' (GCS), 'sex reassignment surgery' (SRS), and a few others." In fact, and he halfway alludes to this further into the paragraph, surgical transition designates all the surgical procedures that a trans person might undergo as part of their transition including but not limited to GCS. He instead tries to lump some of those other surgeries—top surgery, ffs, etc—under the rubric of GCS/SRS after acknowledging that each term has ideological justifications. He makes a hash of it, and his reference to facial feminization surgery and top surgery as "cosmetic" is just inaccurate—those surgeries are medically necessary (when prescribed) therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria; they are not <i>cosmetic.</i></li></ul><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Transman and Transwoman</h4><div>These are terms where what I am going to call Sprinkle's "reporting bias" really comes into play. Sprinkle gives two paragraphs to state that<i> transman</i> is "a biological female [sic] who identifies as male" and that <i>transwoman </i>is "a biological male [sic] who identifies as female". And he adds that <i>these</i> terms are sometimes "shortened as FtM (female to male) for transmen [sic] and MtF (male to female) for transwomen". </div><div><br /></div><div>All of that is...wrong? Or rather it is wildly distorted specifically because it omits a lot of relevant information. In fact the terms <i>transman</i> and <i>transwoman</i> written in that way are deeply controversial and have been rejected by the mainstream of transgender discourse. The correct expression of these terms are, respectively, trans man and trans woman (or transgender man and transgender woman) separated into the distinct terms "trans" and "man/woman"<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(3)</span></b>. This may seem like a minor distinction from the outside but, in fact, the distinction holds significant ideological value. </div><div><br /></div><div>In English "transgender/trans" is an adjective. Placing it as a word before "man" or "woman" indicates the <i>sort</i> of man or woman we happen to be talking about so that "trans man" indicates a man who is trans, and "trans woman" indicates a woman who is trans just as "short man" indicates a man who is a short and "short woman" indicates a woman who is short. In contrast the terms transman and transwoman are neologisms which seem to designate not types of men and women but novel categories. It would be odd to encounter a text in which there are men and then also there are shortmen and I imagine that short men would be inclined to take ideological umbrage with such a text arguing that they are men and not some novel new category. The same argument is made by trans people. I am a trans woman because I am a woman and "trans" designates the type of woman I am. I am not a transwoman because I am a woman just as I am not a christianwoman because I am a woman who is a Christian. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now it will become clear to any reader that this ideological divide is what actually forces Dr. Sprinkle into the <i>transman/transwoman</i> formulation. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EVrTsyH_o1b6I9284tNnqRoDvo8LY05o/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">He does not believe or grant that trans women are women, that trans men are men or that non-binary poeple are non-binary</a>. Thus for him to use "trans woman" would be to impute a status to me (womanhood) that he does not believe I possess. </div><div><br /></div><div>On one level, then, Sprinkle's choice to use <i>transman/transwoman</i> makes sense. It allows him to use terminology which communicates the object of his writing without granting a premise he will not allow. And if he had only acknowledged as much this critique would have been little more than a footnote. Instead Sprinkle doesn't even mention the controversy or justify his choice despite using what are clearly non-standard forms. There are two explanations I can think of and neither is especially reassuring: on the one hand Sprinkle may have chosen these terms and neglected to mention the distinction because he was unaware of the controversy and it's meaning. The research citations in his book evidence far more reading in the trans-denying corpus where the versions Sprinkle uses are routinely deployed and thus he may simply have not done enough research to be aware of a basic terminological distinctive; or Sprinkle may have known about the controversy but chosen to ignore it in an effort to suppress contrary views to his own in this text. </div><div><br /></div><div>On a final note it does also need to be said (referring back to Sprinkle's initial explanation of these terms) that "MtF" and "FtM" are, not at all "shortened" versions of the terms he claims to be defining. They are specialized terms used only as necessary (and generally frowned on even then—I am not "an MtF" I am a woman who is trans) to designate both the gender that a given trans person was assigned and the gender they actually are. I can't think of a reason beyond either sloppy research or sloppy writing for Sprinkle to have suggested that they are.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Cisgender</h4><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle's bit on this term is both short and important enough to justify quoting in full:</div><blockquote><div><i>Cisgender</i> is a recent term that refers to those who identify (and are comfortable) with their biological sex. (<i>Cis</i> means "on the side of.") Basically, <i>cisgender</i> refers to everyone who doesn't identify as trans*[sic].</div></blockquote><blockquote><p>Since the term sometimes comes with ideological assumptions and connotations, I'll avoid it in this book unless the context or quote demands it. Instead, I'll use the more neutral term <i>non-trans*</i> to refer to people who don't identify as trans*</p></blockquote><p>I have... a <b>lot</b> to say. First, of course, it has to be noted that when Sprinkle feels the need to justify avoiding a term, he is quick to highlight that it "comes with ideological assumptions and connotations"—<i>trransman/transwoman</i> do too but he didn't bother saying anything there, just smuggled in the "ideological assumptions and connotations" that happen to <i>support</i> his position. Second, beyond that (hypocrisy? academic sloppiness? motivated reporting?) I want to highlight Sprinkle's claim that <i>cisgender</i> refers to... "everyone who doesn't identify as trans*". He will, in fact, go on to include all sorts of people who <i>by his own account here</i> would otherwise fall under the category <i>cisgender </i>or <i>non-trans*</i>.<span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>(4)</b></span> Third, I think we see here one (there will be more) weakness of Sprinkle's not having read Julia Serano's <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3S6P5ml" target="_blank">Whipping Girl</a>.</i><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>(5)</b></span><i> </i>The book was first published in 2007 and in it, Serano discusses uses of the term extensively. She identifies the terms as one that was coined in 1995 and was in the course of gaining currency between 2005 and 2007. She also provides significant discussion of the term, none of which Sprinkle shows evidence of understanding.<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(6)</span></b> Of course "recent" is a relative term so Sprinkle's use of it here can, of course, be justified. With that said, by all accounts transgender studies is a rapidly developing field such that a term that has been in mainstream use within our community for more than fifteen years now, is hardly a "recent term"; in any case many of the terms Sprinkle uses throughout this book are far more recent.</p><p>But most importantly, while Sprinkle did identify the fact that the term <i>cisgender</i> "comes with ideological assumptions and connotations" he declined to identify them and I suppose that means it falls to me. </p><p>Much of this analysis is taken from <i>Whipping Girl </i>and from <a href="http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/12/julia-seranos-compendium-on-cisgender.html" target="_blank">Serano's subsequent work on the subject</a>. in essence <i>cisgender, </i>by providing a complimentary term to <i>transgender,</i> gives all of us the capacity to talk about ways in which cis-ness impacts the way people experience and process reality. It makes cis-ness a thing and in so doing situates it as one potential option describing ways in which people related to the gender they were assigned at birth. Serano <a href="http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2011/08/whipping-girl-faq-on-cissexual.html" target="_blank">provides the following Koyama quote</a> which nicely summarizes the utility of the terms <i>cisgender, cissexual, </i>and<i> cissexism</i>: </p><blockquote><p>...they de-centralize the dominant group, exposing it as merely one possible alternative rather than the "norm" against which trans people are defined. ... I felt it was an interesting concept - a feminist one, in fact - which is why I am using it.</p></blockquote><p>In sum, <i>cisgender</i> "comes with ideological assumptions and connotations" because it implies that trans people are not freaks but one variation in the human experience and that cisgender people are likewise another variation. Those are the assumptions and connotations that Sprinkle wants to avoid. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Intersex</h4><div>Sprinkle defines <i>Intersex </i> as "a term used to describe the sixteen or so medical conditions where a person is born with one or more atypical features in their sexual anatomy or sex chromosomes". It is not clear to my why Dr. Sprinkle sees a difference between "sexual anatomy" and "sex chromosomes". He then identifies "differences/disorders of sex development" as "the medical term for intersex conditions". His reflection on the term largely punts to Chapter 7 which is devoted exclusively to the topic, but thinks it is "important to know two things" now:</div><blockquote><div>(1) <i>Intersex </i>is different from <i>transgender</i>. (2) Ninety-nine percent of people with an intersex condition are biologically male or female (and the other 1 percent are both). In other words, <i>intersex </i>does not mean "neither male nor female".</div></blockquote><p>He then moves on to <i>sex</i> and <i>gender</i> which I will cover in the next part of this series, but before I can move on from this topic (I will address his stance on intersex people fully in my own review of chapter 7) I need to very clearly state that both (1) and (2) there are complicated and much discussed topics in the intersex and trans communities (the existence of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence#Brain_structure" target="_blank">brain sex theory really complicates</a> (1), and (2) is <a href="https://lgbtq.unc.edu/resources/exploring-identities/intersex/#:~:text=Are%20people%20with%20intersex%20conditions,member%20of%20an%20alternative%20gender." target="_blank">an ongoing discussion within the intersex community</a>, various intersex individual understand themselves and their relationship to sex/gender in a significant variety of ways.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h4 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Series Index</h4><h4><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><br /></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">Intro</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes</a></div></div></h4><h4><br /></h4><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><h4 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes:</h4><div>(1) I find it rather peculiar that Sprinkle chooses to use the - in "non-intersex" but declines to do so in non-binary where he uses the formulation nonbinary. If there is some discussion about this in non-binary circles please let me know.</div><div><br /></div><div>(2) In point of fact, while trans men do typically take testosterone, trans women will typically take a testosterone blocker, estrogen and often progesterone until and if the blocker becomes...unnecessary.</div><div><br /></div><div>(3)GLAAD maintains <a href="https://www.glaad.org/reference/trans-terms" target="_blank">a media reference guide for publishing about trans people</a> and, notably, it includes the separated form of the terms, and notes that "trans woman" rather than <i>transwoman</i> is the correct form</div><div><br /></div><div>(4) The question of whether or not a person who chooses not to identify as trans but who bears certain distinctives of trans people (such as a person who identifies as <i>gender dysphoric</i> but rejects the label <i>trans</i>) are, or should be referred to as, trans is a complicated one and I am not in a place to suggest an answer. It is very much still being discussed. My <i>inclination</i> is to try to use the terms for people that they choose and I would be personally loathe to, in any serious way, assert that someone who rejects the term <i>is </i>trans.</div><div><br /></div><div>(5) For the record, Serano also supplies us with <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html" target="_blank">an extensive glossary of trans related terms</a>—one that Sprinkle would have done well to have consulted for this chapter so that, even when he deviates from the terms or definitions she supplies, he would at least have written the chapter with an awareness of how these terms and ideas are more frequently expressed and used among trans people. </div><div><br /></div><div>(6) Notably, Serano cites <a href="https://eminism.org/interchange/2002/20020607-wmstl.html" target="_blank">Emi Koyama as the source</a> from which she first encountered the word and Koyama's citation is the one that identifies a 1995 coinage by trans man Carl Buijs. Sprinkle has interacted with Koyama's work as some level (he cites Koyama's work in his Chapter 7: "What about Intersex"—Koyama is an intersex feminist activist) but seems to be ignorant on this count.</div><div><br /></div>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-70242717594028039222022-10-24T13:23:00.007-04:002023-05-16T15:04:21.663-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle's "Embodied" Chapter 1 People. A Review<p><i>This is the second installment in my series reviewing Preston Sprinkle's book </i><b><i>Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, & What the Bible has to Say</i>. </b><i>Click <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">HERE</a> for the Intro to this series where I discuss my thematic concerns with the book and for an index for the full series.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><br /></div>Chapter 1 of <i>Embodied</i> starts with three stories of variously gender diverse people and a paragraph listing off six more people with one sentence introductions to their relationship to trans-ness accompanying four of them. It is notable that none of the stories he tells are of transgender Christians who affirm the goodness of their own trans-ness, who affirm transition for all those who want it, and who are confident in their own identities. <div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8NghRdMAsQReNETHD_JVe-8tjfYqDznfPn-UzLaue0esnh54kMq2KdHyqubGj3L6jRM5ydChgkxNAbcmwH3qXSuppn44g8w5vFFPxvRrqS6rleiz9Yotl16Cc0EY8jk1fAzJXhUAMa2esnx2sXOsHjC0QensgKlZiwBFZ9IjGV4su62suOxEChQneg/s1024/Cupcake.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ8NghRdMAsQReNETHD_JVe-8tjfYqDznfPn-UzLaue0esnh54kMq2KdHyqubGj3L6jRM5ydChgkxNAbcmwH3qXSuppn44g8w5vFFPxvRrqS6rleiz9Yotl16Cc0EY8jk1fAzJXhUAMa2esnx2sXOsHjC0QensgKlZiwBFZ9IjGV4su62suOxEChQneg/s320/Cupcake.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />Instead Sprinkle gives us the stories of someone "struggling with gender dysphoria", someone whom he claims <span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>(1)</b></span> was browbeaten by the medical establishment into facilitating a transition<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(2)</span></b> for her child that Sprinkle implied was inappropriate to the child's gender, and someone who identifies as a cisgender man who struggles with "an unchosen desire to dress, act, and behave like a woman"<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(3)</span></b>. Then he briefly mentions a detransitioner, another person who identifies as a man "who has wrestled with gender dysphoria his whole life", then "fathers whose daughters are now sons, and <a href="https://youtu.be/2gZLl1Y0BVg" target="_blank">sons whose fathers are now mothers</a>" followed by someone "whose struggles with anxiety only seem to diminish when he wears women's underwear" and finally one named person "who also transitioned from male to female three years ago". <p></p><p>It may be worth re-reading that list, the only mention of what is, by all accounts, the mainstream of transgender Christian people, is a single sentence snapshot right at the end. This sets a pattern that will continue throughout <i>Embodied</i>: Sprinkle routinely distorts the overall picture of trans folk (often under the justification that he wants to demonstrate "the diversity of trans*") so that the actual center position and identity set of our community is minimized while the positions, attitudes, and approaches to "trans*"-ness that support his overall narrative and conclusions are magnified.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">People and Concepts</h3><div><br /></div><div>Having recounted the stories he has chosen to foreground, Sprinkle outlines the tension that he senses behind the "conversation" around transgender people in the context of churches and Christianity. In Sprinkle's view (and I think it has merit) the tension is between recognizing that there are real people who are affected by Christian thinking, speaking, and acting on the basis of their ideas about trans-ness, and a concern for the truth value of the concepts we use to think about and evaluate trans people. I need to say that I think that when looking at this framing, we see Sprinkles greatest strengths (or at least his greatest potential strengths). Sprinkle is...nice. More than that his niceness is, by all accounts, genuine and seems to stem from an unfortunately rare capacity to keep the personhood of the subject centered throughout his engagement in a given topic—this one included.<br /><br /></div><div>And I don't think Preston's identification of this tension is false. Certainly I have, far too often, encountered Christians who reduce LGBTQ+ people generally and especially trans people to enemy tokens in a culture war. Sprinkle puts it quite aptly when he says, positing a hypothetical person who "struggles with his [her] gender identity": "He experiences church not as a hospital for saints but as a graveyard fro the marginalized—and so many Christians are whistling through it". </div><div><br /></div><div>And yet...</div><div><br /></div><div>Already Sprinkle's views on who trans people <i>really</i> are is shining through a bit in the background. We are, for him, people to be healed, while so many of us are shouting to him that we are not ill aside from the poison we have been given by so many who are determined to cure us.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mark Yarhouse (one of Sprinkle's favorite Christian Sources for this topic—their views and approaches align fairly closely) in his book <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3CSp58n" target="_blank">Understanding Gender Dysphoria</a> </i>proposed three contrasting frameworks to categorize the ways in which Christians tend to think about trans folk: the <i>Integrity Framework</i>, the <i>Disability Framework</i>, and the <i>Diversity Framework</i>. The <i>Integrity Framework</i> prioritizes preserving binary and cisgender understandings of gender and is generally willing to ignore or discount the experiences of transgender people. The <i>Disability Framework</i> focuses on the wellbeing of trans people but identifies trans-ness as a product of the fall and sees it something to be healed or, if healing isn't possible in this life, then at least treated. The <i>Diversity Framework</i> recognizes the legitimacy and validity of transgender identities and seeks to celebrate the diversity and perspectives we bring to both the Church and the world.<br /><br />Preston Sprinkle is a functional champion of the Disability Framework (I can't imagine that he would deny this though he might want to pad it with nuance about "good pastoral approaches to people who need to be loved") and it shows. It shows through a thousand little cracks in <i>Embodied</i> where, in the same sentences that he insists we be treated with dignity, respect, and love, he alos implies or says that we need to be cured. That our trans-ness is not a blessing but an unfortunate curse; a "product of the fall". His smiles are laced with pity </div><div><br /></div><div>And I want to talk for a moment about why this is dangerous for trans people and why it is a problem:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: white;">Being transgender in this world is not easy, it is hard. It is hard to be <a href="https://twitter.com/Billieiswriting/status/1563995515640877056?s=20&t=Ta-pbZ_G6i7bRrL7YPM-HQ">the target of right wing attacks</a> and to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/29/trans-people-shouldnt-have-hide-help-democrats-win/" target="_blank">have your "allies" debate the strategic merit of standing up for your as opposed to ignoring those attacks so they can focus on "kitchen table issues"</a>—have they forgotten that I too have a kitchen table? It is hard to be a member of a community that <a href="https://www.glaad.org/tdor" target="_blank">yearly stops to remember those of our community who were killed for being what we are</a>. It is hard to have <a href="https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Executive-Summary-Dec17.pdf" target="_blank">your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, your classmates, your friends reject you</a> when you tell them who you actually are. It is hard to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texas-families-trans-kids-plan-flee-state-rcna23633" target="_blank">watch the children in your community reduced to talking points while their healthcare is criminalized</a> and their <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/-dont-say-gay-bill-passed-lgbtq-online-hate-surged-400-rcna42617" target="_blank">basic existence is sexualized</a>. It just isn't easy to be trans.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>And in a world where it isn't easy to be trans, it is really really hard to resist the lure of someone who wants to pity you. I don't know that anyone really wants to be pitied but I do know that pity is orders of magnitude better than rejection and hostility. And in a world where it is hard to be trans it is so so terribly easy to think that the problem is not the hate, the bigotry, the small-mindedness, and the fear, the problem is your own transness. I don't think Preston Sprinkle sets out to prey on that insecurity, but regardless of his intention, this book and his approach absolutely do prey on it. All a trans person has to do is reject a beautiful God-given part of who they are—call it a struggle, a temptation, evil—and Sprinkle will reward them with kind words, with encouragement, with praise for their courage and the depth of their faith. The poison is well candied.</div><div><br /></div><div>Preston finishes out this section not by insisting in good evangelical idiom that both truth and love need to be celebrated. He depicts Jesus' "upside-down" Kindom as a place "Where truth is upheld, celebrated, and proclaimed. Where those who fall short of that truth are loved." I also want both truth and love to be celebrated. I also affirm that both are central in the Kindom of God. I just don't think that they are in any tension when it comes to the identities of transgender people.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a final reflection on this section of the chapter, my impression on reading this was that Sprinkle intends his position on trans people to be a sort of "<a href="https://www.lifeonsideb.com/thefoursides" target="_blank">Side B</a> but for transness" type position—Preston Sprinkle serves on the<a href="https://revoice.us/our-leadership/" target="_blank"> Advisor Council for Revoice</a>, one of the largest Side B organizations in the country—and that he sees Yarhouse's <i>Disability Framework</i> as providing the basis of a <a href="https://www.lifeonsideb.com/thefoursides" target="_blank">Side B</a> equivalent, while the <i>Integrity Framework</i> would stand in the place of <a href="https://www.lifeonsideb.com/thefoursides" target="_blank">Side X</a>, and the <i>Diversity Framework</i> would work for <a href="https://www.lifeonsideb.com/thefoursides" target="_blank">Side A</a>. I would posit that this attempt simply doesn't work and I will have more to say on it later in this series. For the time being, if a Side B trans or cis person wants to reach out to me to talk about this idea I would welcome your input.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Question of Incongruence</h3><div><br /></div><div>In the next section of the chapter, Sprinkle identifies the central question of his book </div><div><blockquote>"If someone experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their internal sense of self, which one determines who they are—and why?"</blockquote><p>Sprinkle presents this question<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(4)</span></b> as the critical factor in determining what a Christian ought to think about trans-ness in general. There are worse questions to center and it is clear that Sprinkle has worked hard to find as neutral as possible a phrasing for the question. I will say though that, if I were to run across that phrasing "in the wild" I would almost certainly move on satisfied that it got close enough without doing any specific harm. In any case Sprinkle then sketches the barest outline of the questions he promises to tackle in chapters 8 and 9 and then moves to the close of the chapter. His sketch continues to use language (e.g. "biological male", "ontology") for which he has somewhat odd or questionable definitions<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(5)</span></b> but I will hold my response for the parts of the book where he makes his argument more fully.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">We would be honored to</h3></div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle ends the chapter in good irenic fashion by returning to a story emphasizing the fundamental humanity of one of the gender diverse people whose story he opened with. He tells a story of being welcomed and loved through tragedy by a church and the way that the church's love brought his subject back into Christianity. The story is heartwarming, the moral a little more infernalist than I am comfortable with, but centered in mainstream evangelical soteriology. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Some final thoughts about how Sprinkle genders those he talks about in his book</h3><div><br /></div><div>Throughout the book Sprinkle is careful to always gender (in terms of pronouns and names) the people he talks about in the way that they want him to gender them. He defends this practise as <i>hospitable</i> rather than as <i>reflecting reality</i> in Chapter 12 and I will have a good deal more to say about it at that time, but he has a different practice when he uses stories of hypothetical people and I think it is really telling.</div><div><br /></div><div>Chapter 1 ends with a question:</div><blockquote><div>As we continue to think through questions related to trans* identities, just remember: there might be a fourteen-year-old girl [boy/non-binary person] in your youth group on the verge of suicide because she [he/they] doesn't feel like a girl and has no one to talk to. She [He/They] was created in God's image and is beloved by Jesus.</div></blockquote><blockquote><p>Will she [he/they] be loved by you?</p></blockquote><p>and it is such a representative question. I hope that my use of corrective "[]" demostrate the failure of Sprinke's approach. While I believe he was honestly hoping and trying to still be "neutral" on the question of the validity/reality of trans identities at this point in the book, his actual view shines through. And because he hasn't yet stated it, his approach (gendering the hypothetical child according to the sex they were presumably assigned at birth) actually serves to reinforce in the readers mind the idea that trans people are <i>really </i>the sex and gender we were assigned at birth. My hope is that this is unintentional on Sprinkles part—another case of a cis author failing to recognize where his cisnormativity manifests—my fear is that he knows that by stating neutrality in a form that his cis readers will grant and then allowing his text to be shaped by one conclusion rather than another without recognizing that his violates his stated neutrality, he is insidiously influencing his readership to see these case studies, these people the way he does. </p><h4 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Series Index</h4><h4><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><br /></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">Intro</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes</a></div></div></h4><h4><br /></h4><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><h4 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes</h4><div>(1) Sprinkle got this story from a "Public Discourse" article in which the accounts provied are anonymous and uncredited. We don't know whether it is authentic</div><div><br /></div><div>(2)Sprinkles quote here (referenceing puberty blockers) is "From what we do know, they <i>may</i> have an adverse efffect on a person's bones, heart, and brain" (emphasis mine). The footnote he provides to source this <i>may</i> is a comment that he will talk more about this in Chapter 11. Notice that he is sourcing a future argumnet in a way that makes the claim <i>feel</i> supported at the outset of the book and will likely have been internalized and forgotten by the time he puts the argument forward. And the argument he makes is <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html" target="_blank">very weak and unevenly sourced per the habits I discussed in the intro to this series</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>(3) This story (Alan) is one he <a href="https://www.centerforfaith.com/blog/if-i-hadn-t-been-shown-grace-i-d-be-a-trans-woman-right-now">footnotes to his own blog</a> and it is an account of someone rejecting the identity of being a trans woman on the basis of thier interpretation and experience of Christianity. </div><div><br /></div><div>(4) There is a lot to say about it already but I am going to leave that for my review of later chapters for the time being I will only identify that "biological sex" and "internal sense of self" are doing a whole lot of heavy lifting for Sprinkle and that he is going to prove rather slippery around them throughout the book.</div><div><br /></div><div>(5) Spinkle defines "<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont">ontology</a>" as "a philosophical temr that has to do with the natrue of being; specifically, what does it mean to be human, especailly a sexed embodied human". I am not sure where he gets that definition but beyond the first clause he seem to actually be talking about <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophical-anthropology">philosophical anthropology</a>. Regardless he is not wrong in locating his question as ontological "what <i>is</i> a transgender man?" is properly an ontological question as well as a question of philsophical anthropology depending on where the emphasis is placed.</div><p></p></div>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-51930130469626775522022-10-19T15:22:00.031-04:002023-05-09T21:19:55.091-04:00The Sweetest Poisons: Preston Sprinkle and "Embodied: Transgender Identities, The Church & What The Bible Has To Say". A Review<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;"><blockquote>"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."</blockquote></span></blockquote><div>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. <br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQiSL3wLgkP2r6yZ3NZanaZnxDzenqpH1vgPhoSeEaS1hU5ri9z75bydJ7WCBwoyIlSe3aiYw0xNpMVpQLScoet0N0h-2EUNr4uYT9ll0W6WD8fy_wyNVZnfKTEKMShhr3sO97QIbY901VZsN1xRwJqUcRYQ2mLtHK7B5Z-wFl20k8yAeFcrVYhMFbeg/s1024/Poison%20Glass.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQiSL3wLgkP2r6yZ3NZanaZnxDzenqpH1vgPhoSeEaS1hU5ri9z75bydJ7WCBwoyIlSe3aiYw0xNpMVpQLScoet0N0h-2EUNr4uYT9ll0W6WD8fy_wyNVZnfKTEKMShhr3sO97QIbY901VZsN1xRwJqUcRYQ2mLtHK7B5Z-wFl20k8yAeFcrVYhMFbeg/w400-h400/Poison%20Glass.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />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, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53023844-embodied?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=m7II7yN5Wh&rank=1" target="_blank">Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church & What the Bible Has to Say</a></i>, 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. <br /><br />My intention in this series is to work through the book, in roughly<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(1)</span></b> 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.<br /><br />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 <i>in</i> 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.</div><div><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">1. Flawed Research</h2><br />Preston Sprinkle engages extensively in motivated and shoddy research. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">This isn't the first time I have called this out</a>, 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.<br /><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">Unbalanced ROGD Research</h3></div><div>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 <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">Wikipedia entry on ROGD</a>: 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. <br /><br />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)<a href="https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/Public%20Policies/2018/9_Sept/WPATH%20Position%20on%20Rapid-Onset%20Gender%20Dysphoria_9-4-2018.pdf" target="_blank"> statement on the problems with ROGD</a>, or any of the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">multitude of</a> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">scholarly journal articles</a> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">critiquing the theory</a> on <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">basic methodological</a> and <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">scientific grounds</a>. 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.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Sprinkle's <i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#" target="_blank">Whipping Girl</a> </i>Problem </h3><div><br /></div><div>As of <a href="https://theologyintheraw.com/podcast/906-getting-to-know-my-new-transwoman-friend-seda-collier/" target="_blank">September 30th 2021</a> Preston Sprinkle had not read Julia Serano's <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3S6P5ml">Whipping Girl</a>: <a href="https://amzn.to/3S6P5ml" target="_blank">A Transexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity</a></i>. Of course that in itself is no great crime—the overwhelming majority of people have never read <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3S6P5ml">Whipping Girl</a>—</i>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 <b>is</b> a big deal. Let me try to explain.<br /><br />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 <i>Whipping Girl</i> 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 <i>Whipping Girl</i> if they haven't read it fully, likely more than once. If there were a central text for trans women, that text would be <i>Whipping Girl</i>. 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 <i>Whipping Girl</i> is as academically ridiculous as someone trying to write an academic treatise on the history of English literature without having read any Shakespeare. <br /><br />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 <i>rigorous</i> reading appears to be of texts that support the argument he wanted to make while missing central texts which would counter his position.</div><div><br /></div><div><h2 style="text-align: left;">2. Slippery Rhetoric</h2><div><br /></div>Throughout the text, intentionally or not, Sprinkle employs several rhetorical devices of which the reader had better beware.<br /><br /></div><div>"If you've met one trans person you've met one trans person"<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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)<b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;">(2)</span></b>. 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, <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf" target="_blank">trans folk</a>, <a href="https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/sexology/autogynephilia/critics/" target="_blank">the medical establishment, and the scientific establishment</a> 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 <i>made</i> 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 <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">strawman fallacy</a> and the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">fallacy of composition</a>.) This is augmented in his book by a complementary bit of slippery rhetoric: his use of "trans*."<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Trans*</h3><blockquote>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] </blockquote><blockquote>-Chapter 2</blockquote>There 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—<a href="http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/08/regarding-trans-and-transgenderism.html" target="_blank">Serano documented</a> 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.<br /><br />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<span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>(3)</b></span>; 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<span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: xx-small;"><b>(4)</b></span>. 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.</div><div><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;"> Conclusion to the Intro</h2><div><br /></div>I am aware that the introduction to this review is not winsome. If you go and read through the<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#"> two part series I wrote back in 2015</a>, responding to his review of Ken Wilson's <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/5193013046962677552#">A Letter to my Congregation</a>, 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. <br /><br />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 <i>is </i>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. <br /><br /><h3 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes</h3>(1) for reasons that will become clear over the course of the series, I will have to jump around somewhat.<br /><br /></div><div>(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.</div><div><br /></div><div>(3) I absolutely will have something to say about Sprinkle's decision to not use the term "cisgender" in my review of chapter 2.<br /><br /></div><div>(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.<br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Series Index</span></h3><h2><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><br /></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkle.html">Intro</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 1—Chapter 1: People</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-sprinkles.html">Part 2—Chapter 2A: Terms</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_28.html">Part 3—Chapter 2B: Sex and Gender</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 4—Chapter 3: Varieties of Trans</a> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles_30.html">Part 5—Chapter 4: Male, Female & The Image of God</a></div><div style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-sweetest-poisons-preston-spinkles.html">Part 6—Chapter 5: Gender Stereotypes</a></div></div></h2><h4><br /></h4>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-3667661399734382412022-05-07T22:04:00.030-04:002022-05-08T15:16:26.094-04:00An Open Letter to the Ex-Gay Texas Politician who is Actively Hurting Queer Children<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-4lO8VoHKxN3oPluolnLA8QE5WSgA65ti5Et_zWi3TTvcsuATjRop8IwbX0xUTx3Zeutb-8pZXVFo8f5pley9GqDCCls8hXyHAe0GBkhQmi_3u3sHHDj1BeYYkRnIUgOkGBytQSyQHLSgb9IADY9xcmZtfScnw5giItu7l1HBhdmHo1UdJrVV6FGT4A/s3264/PXL_20220507_211802001.PORTRAIT.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-4lO8VoHKxN3oPluolnLA8QE5WSgA65ti5Et_zWi3TTvcsuATjRop8IwbX0xUTx3Zeutb-8pZXVFo8f5pley9GqDCCls8hXyHAe0GBkhQmi_3u3sHHDj1BeYYkRnIUgOkGBytQSyQHLSgb9IADY9xcmZtfScnw5giItu7l1HBhdmHo1UdJrVV6FGT4A/s320/PXL_20220507_211802001.PORTRAIT.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hi</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p><p> I am praying for you. </p><p>And no, I can't keep a little of the southern sting out of that phrase. I won't deny that I am furious with you, that I grieve deeply over the evil you are doing to God's precious little ones, or that I blame you for it. All of those things are true.</p><p>But also, I really am praying for you.</p><p>I have to pray for you, my heart has to break for you, because of what was done to you. And dear one, you will one day be healed. I pray that your healing will begin soon but if not in this life then in the time beyond time you will begin to recover; you will begin to let God love the you you hate today. With so many people it is easy—too easy—for me to see their crimes against us and to hate them for it. I am working on that, but that is not where I am with you.</p><p>You, I pity.</p><p>I am sure that doesn't feel good to hear—nobody really wants to be pitied—but that is how I feel about you. I know that there is a part of you that wakes up and yearns to be fully who God made you to be. I know that there a part of you that aches like a prisoner unable to fully extend his legs at the knowledge that you "have" to deny this beautiful part of yourself—your precious, glorious, holy queerness—that they taught you to hate.</p><p>When you attack us, when you mock, slander, and lie about the most vulnerable among us, I can't help but see the lies and pain that brought you to this state. And I know that I can really only imagine it. I am not a victim of conversion therapy attempts as you once told me you are. I dodged that fate by a hair and by the grace of God; I wish that you could have as well.</p><p>A friend of mine asked me what I think about sin recently and I found myself thinking about you. Could there be a clearer example of the tragedy of sin? Who you are in the world today was done to you. In churches we hear about original sin as though it were genetic but why would it need to be genetic when it is in the air that we breathe. Were you ever afforded the simple joy of seeing a beautiful man and not hating yourself for it? I will pray for that for you. You were born into a world that told you to hate yourself; more than that you were born into a world that told you to hate your queerness, to hate the strange spark that God placed in your soul.</p><p>I am not here to make excuses for you. You are fully responsible for the choices you make, you didn't have to turn your pain into hatred for all of your queer siblings who don't suffer the same repression you have been conditioned to wear. No, I'm not making excuses for you but I do want you to know that I see you.</p><p>I see you.</p><p>Not the you who is probably responding to this with a mocking laughter emoji, not the you boiling in fury at the effrontery of it all, not the you who is, even now trying to decide how to use this letter against me or against our shared queer community. I see the you in whom that tiny spark still burns. I see the you who can never be erased, no matter how much it is denied. I see the you whose stubborn seed of hope that maybe, just maybe, I am right and God loves your whole queer self as a whole queer self, is right now being attacked by all the other parts who built emotional systems and psychological structures of resentment, anger, disdain, and hatred in an effort to keep you safe from becoming someone who couldn't survive their attempts to make you into a good little Ex-Gay.</p><p>The one time I saw you talk about it you didn't say what methods they used on you. Did they tell you they could make you normal? Did you have one of those rubber bands in your wrist where you snapped yourself a jolt of pain each time you noticed you were staring at a handsome guy? Did they tell you that it is your parents' fault—warmed over pseudo-Freudian platitudes? Did you go to a camp or was it an office? </p><p>And I know that the reaction you need to have to this letter is to mock it, to rage, or to fight it. If you see this on Facebook you will probably respond with the laughing react. It makes sense, you have to make this ridiculous so that it doesn't reach you. I understand that this isn't safe to take seriously when I am speaking to a part of yourself that you have protected almost to death now. I know that if you take this even half seriously you will have to confront the immense pain you have caused, and are working to cause, queer children all around this country. I know that, for you, our queerness has to be bad because if it is good, and holy, and beautiful then what does that say about you? </p><p>Yeah, sin, like I said. You have taken what has made you needlessly suffer, and where you might have seen it for the sin it was, instead you baptized it, and now you are trying to tear that holy joy away from anyone who is able to experience what was taken from you.</p><p>I wish you would repent. I know that one day you will but oh the cost and the pain between now and that day. Until then know that I will oppose you at every step and that I will be doing it for the good of that one eternal spark of real you inside this monster you were convinced to create. You can rage or scoff but one day when our God reveals your true name and all is made well at the end of all things, you will thank God that there were people who worked against your evil ends as the Spirit of Truth worked to fan the queer fire in your soul.</p><p> </p>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-27315772199303425532022-03-07T14:31:00.003-05:002022-11-03T10:32:33.013-04:00How and Why I Left My Vineyard Church—or was I kicked out?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtXn-4hkcOKKCDH1-GWEZjwtSViEPF_d83BeDDviOOS_XXlWSMvfrDY8oBeyrSKZ5YxhkUxk0NFj_RaZc-nl_ywQEOavahUA9VGUwy79w6s51FLqfCARdRmHoyJkTFmh7RuDf7hyIczeouYi9lqBHR0AZMSu6o5k-AibMwYe9UypKA2yCL7E1YRs3HZQ=s960" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtXn-4hkcOKKCDH1-GWEZjwtSViEPF_d83BeDDviOOS_XXlWSMvfrDY8oBeyrSKZ5YxhkUxk0NFj_RaZc-nl_ywQEOavahUA9VGUwy79w6s51FLqfCARdRmHoyJkTFmh7RuDf7hyIczeouYi9lqBHR0AZMSu6o5k-AibMwYe9UypKA2yCL7E1YRs3HZQ=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>In April of 2015 my wife at I met our pastor and his wife at a bar near the church. We had asked our friends and small group to pray for us and for the meeting because we anticipated that it might be tense. At that time, our relationship with the pastor and his wife would probably best be described as a strained friendship. We all (I think) still liked one another as individuals but had come to realize that we were leaning in different directions spiritually and theologically. At least that is the way I would have characterized the relationship. Those disagreements though, they were coming to a head.<br />
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A week or so earlier my wife Ashley, who was serving* as the church's worship leader had asked why the leadership team (at the time I think we were referring to it as the Pastoral Council) hadn't met in quite a while and the pastor had responded that he had chosen to disband/dissolve the council. As Ashley and I were both members of that council and had not found out about its dissolution in any formal way until that communication, we were alarmed enough to ask to meet with the pastor and his wife to discuss things.</div>
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Thinking about that meeting I had thrown together a list of items of concern that Ashley and I had developed over time. In preparation for writing this piece I went back and reviewed the list. My concerns at the time involved concerns over leadership structures, over Ashley's treatment as the worship leader, over my own administrative weaknesses as the children's ministry leader at the church, and over two theological differences, one having to do with LGBTQ+ folks and the other having to do with a growing acceptance of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Faith" target="_blank">word-of-faith</a>/<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Name_it_and_claim_it" target="_blank">name-it-and-claim-it</a>** type ideas within our congregation which, in my view, reduce the Holy Spirit to a divine magic wand. At the end of my concerns I wrote these questions as entries into conversation for the evening:<br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-44c99b40-7fff-eef0-927b-a8349bf74c1e"></span><br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What is your vision for VCCCM [the name of our church at the time (Vinyeard Community Church of Central Maryland), it is now called <a href="https://wellvineyard.org/" target="_blank">The Well</a>] for the near and long term future, where are you trying to take us?</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How do you envision loyal, critical, dissent at VCCCM?</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you have been confused about “where I am [on LGBTQ theology]” why have you never asked me?</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How do you understand the leadership and authority structure in the Vineyard?</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[The Pastor's wife] has often repeated the phrase “we need to believe it” from the front. What, specifically, is the “it” that we need to believe?</span></span></div>
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<br />
We notified our small group*** about our upcoming meeting and asked them for prayers. We never did end up discussing most of those concerns though.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjIHsPKUCw_xgaOyYKxyV5iJ2-XaUkkU-CltTqJkPdEqOaYBCY0dKiBmwDxagKAkgr6PaO6SGgJOtgyY0jB1jOIbod2CUY78pdRj2K3xQmWh91QFOtXROZeMLJGS9B5i77tJVjaWnZe4n2axfCliC5l0W4hUH0whj8VpJfv2IP0FVKjjpMHRk0k9u_PQ=s1602" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1602" data-original-width="1104" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjIHsPKUCw_xgaOyYKxyV5iJ2-XaUkkU-CltTqJkPdEqOaYBCY0dKiBmwDxagKAkgr6PaO6SGgJOtgyY0jB1jOIbod2CUY78pdRj2K3xQmWh91QFOtXROZeMLJGS9B5i77tJVjaWnZe4n2axfCliC5l0W4hUH0whj8VpJfv2IP0FVKjjpMHRk0k9u_PQ=s320" width="221" /></a></div><i>---I started this piece several years ago but found myself unable to complete it in a satisfactory way while I was still closeted. Everything prior to this (aside from some formatting) was pulled from drafts of versions I wrote before coming out.<br />The material from here forward I wrote after coming out as a trans woman---</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The pastor (let's call him Mark) opened by telling us that he had indeed dissolved the leadership team unilaterally and without actually mentioning it to anyone on that team. He didn't give much of an explanation at first and to this day I don't know his full reasons, but what came next did clarify some of it. He went on to tell us that he had come to the conclusion that my presence, specifically as a vocally LGBTQ+ affirming person on our leadership team was preventing a significant move of the Holy Spirit in the church. He "reassured" me that I was still welcome to keep teaching Sunday school and that Ashley was still welcome to lead (he had resisted making her a worship pastor) worship but was clear that when he reconstituted a leadership team I would not be on it. </div><div><br /></div><div>That paragraph needs context. </div><div><br /></div><div>A perennial concern or desire among many Vineyard churches is the arrival of a significant revival movement marked by supernatural occurrences. Because those don't break out particularly often (the Vineyard was founded as part of one) many pastors and congregations can tend towards a preoccupation with figuring out why they aren't at the center of one of these revivals. A common framework for this (and one our pastor seems to have subscribed to) is the idea, derived from a particular passage in the book of Joshua, that certain people who are guilty of particular "unconfessed sins" will prevent said revival from taking place. Our pastor at the time was increasingly convinced that one of these revivals (commonly referred to as variously large "moves of the Holy Spirit") was right around the corner for our church if he could only identify what it was that was interfering. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the same time, I was engaged in a protracted formal online debate with a Vineyard pastor on the West Coast over the status of LGBTQ+ people before God (That debate eventually became my series on why God affirms same-sex marriage which you can find <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-couple-of-odd-words-my-christian.html">HERE</a>) and the Vineyard USA had very recently published a denominational Position Paper, declaring same-sex marriage, and the ordination of people in same-sex marriages invalid before God. The Vineyard has since unpublished the paper (<a href="https://covchurch.org/embrace/wp-content/uploads/sites/92/2019/10/PositionPaper-VineyardUSA-Pastoring_LGBT_Persons.pdf" target="_blank">Position Paper 7 <i>Pastoring LGBT Persons</i></a>) and, from what I understand, has directed all Vineyard USA pastors to hedge when asked about the Vineyard USA's position on LGBTQ+ people and to redirect any/all media questions to the central offices, but as of this writing my understanding is that it is still in effect and that any Vineyard church which performs a same-sex marriage or ordains a same-sex married person will be kicked out of the denomination****</div><div><br /></div><div>I was acutely aware of the denomination's now official position on same-sex marriage (their position on trans folk remains undefined and I hope to write a good bit about that in the future) and had even spoken with Mark about my disagreement with it. He had assured me at the time (maybe 3 months before this meeting) that I was fine. I had been particularly worried after seeing the denomination force out (I think they called it "disfellowshipping") a long time movement elder and a lesbian pastor after the two of them (prior to the adoption of PP7) had publicly embraced a the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in their church—you can read that pastor's reflection on those events <a href="https://ken-wilson.medium.com/seven-years-late-my-response-to-the-vineyard-lgbt-paper-6c236af65864?source=user_profile---------1-------------------------------" target="_blank">HERE</a>. After some encouraging conversations with Vineyard associated scholars from around the country I had started to think of myself as occupying a "loyal opposition" sort of role in the Vineyard. I loved the movement, I wanted it to improve, I knew they were wrong about same-sex marriage, and I would be part of a nascent movement pushing them towards full inclusion. </div><div><br /></div><div>And I thought that was sustainable. In fact only a few months earlier Mark had laughingly recounted that several people from around the country had emailed him after reading my debate pieces just to make sure he knew what his congregant was doing. We both shook our heads at how ridiculous that was. I knew he disagreed with my position but I thought he had my back.</div><div><br /></div><div>That is the context.</div><div><br /></div><div>So there we were sitting across the table from a pastor—our pastor—and his wife, telling me that my position in leadership was, or had been, the reason they believed that God had not sent a big revival and miracles to our church. The offer of teaching Sunday School felt like an insult. They were willing to use me and my labor but trusting me with any leadership role—that was a bridge too far. Ashley jumped in at that point and informed them that if they weren't willing to have me in leadership, she wasn't interested in continuing as their worship leader. They accepted this with some grace and we fell into the nuts and bolts of what our separation from the church was going to look like. I wasn't any more interested in attending a church whose leader believed I was stopping God from healing people than I expected anyone else to be and I told them so. I was struck by how my situation—I wasn't even out to myself at the time, in trans parlance my "egg hadn't cracked"—paralleled that of LGBTQ+ folk in the denomination as a whole: "serve: yes; lead: no; and oh by the way we think you are a contaminant in our church". I had already started warning queer people that the Vineyard was not a place where they would be fully included; now that was true for me too*****.</div><div><br /></div><div>To this day I don't know whether we handled the next step well. Oh I know we were right to leave; I just feel odd about the "how". Ash and I talked about it and decided to give them a month or so so that they would have time to find a new worship leader. I think that was fair, though we certainly weren't under any obligation to do it. The part I feel "some kind of way" about is the reason we gave. We told a half truth. We discussed it with Mark (I honestly can't remember how much of this was our idea, how much of it we just sort of let happen, and how much was a surprise the day the announcement was made) and on the last Sunday we attended, he announced that we would be shifting to attend a church in Baltimore, "closer to where they live and where they have felt more and more of a calling of late". That wasn't strictly untrue—Ash and I had talked about finding a church in the city a number of times before all of this went down but had always decided against it—but we knew, and Mark knew, that that was also not reason we were leaving. I remember feeling conflicted that day. The congregation prayed for us (that was the weekend of the <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/05/listen-to-baltimore.html">Baltimore Uprising</a> and one or two lines in their prayers for us as we "ministered in the city" was as much attention as the Vineyard Community Church of Central Maryland paid to those events) and it was over. I chose not to "make a scene" or challenge the narrative and we left. </div><div><br /></div><div>Given that I am writing this now I don't think I made the right choice there. I should have said something. I should have been public about what had happened. I know that we shared our story with some of our friends before and after we left but I don't know who ended up hurt by that church who might have avoided some pain if they had heard the story earlier.<br /><br />I don't have a lot to add to that. It is in the past and we are in a very good place at a <a href="https://www.bmoremenno.org/" target="_blank">very good church</a>. We are OK but I want the story out there. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></div><div><br /></div>
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*Ashley was unpaid and her hints and questions about being ordained as a worship pastor had been largely ignored.<br />
**This is a simplification as this particular theological debate is not the focus of the post. More specifically I was concerned that the pastor was embracing a over-inaugurated form of Charismatic theology mostly informed by the <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Name_it_and_claim_it" target="_blank">Bethel folks</a> in lieu of a more classically Vineyard-esque now-and-not-yet theology and practice. As I understand it this has continued to be a significant discussion within Vineyard USA circles.<br />
*** A close knit spiritual community which met several times a week for shared meals and once a week for prayer and bible study.<br />**** The Vineyard USA (and International) does not consider itself a denomination but a "movement" but for our purposes "denomination" gives a better understanding of what they are and how they are organized and operate.<br />*****If you have been following my story recently, yes the parallel was deeply uncomfortable for me because even recognizing it felt like appropriating a queerness I felt I had no right to. "Blessed are you when they persecute you for My sake unless you have been so scarred that accepting that blessing makes you feel shame".</div>
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Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-52795949606295490832022-02-18T16:30:00.005-05:002022-11-03T10:34:27.810-04:00Sehnsucht or The Night I Shattered<p><i>Just a heads up: In this post I am going to be talking about queerness, about God, and about my own emotional/mental health experience in relation to those subjects. There will also be some C.S. Lewis.</i></p><p>I want to get back to blogging regularly. I am not going to promise that that will happen but it might. One thing that has been in the way of frequent posting over the last few years was the fact that I was not out about my identity. I have known I was trans since mid 2017 or so but for three and a half years I had this idea that I could just know that I am a woman but continue to live a life pretending to be a man. There were reasons I tried to do that, but it didn't work. During that time though, I did not think of trans-ness as a bad thing, and certainly not as something sinful or evil, mostly I think I just thought of it as excessively inconvenient to the life I wanted to have. The result was that I had a <i>lot</i> of thoughts about how transness and queerness interacted with or shone light on the rest of my life and the ideas I was playing around with. I tried to write some of those thoughts into blog posts but I just couldn't bring myself to write as though I were removed or detached from them. So mostly I didn't write them at all.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRxy9vdcz9GYAvfP7298FgGNxPThNU00kLAr-gbFlEXDLZ3vlySgqYn5CQ6JonLsG5PhC796I6IqmJhGeu3MVT2NA8BQEViJbOghuhDQtoPoVbL0HGrgf-HejRgj67Evk5hArSC6vpcXDhg064D7wyOVezC_imQIE2Upt-i05ylnH1iU2rK8ovPSAs5Q=s2142" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1681" data-original-width="2142" height="502" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRxy9vdcz9GYAvfP7298FgGNxPThNU00kLAr-gbFlEXDLZ3vlySgqYn5CQ6JonLsG5PhC796I6IqmJhGeu3MVT2NA8BQEViJbOghuhDQtoPoVbL0HGrgf-HejRgj67Evk5hArSC6vpcXDhg064D7wyOVezC_imQIE2Upt-i05ylnH1iU2rK8ovPSAs5Q=w640-h502" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>And now I am out and there is nothing really stopping me from getting to work on this backlog of ideas and thoughts I have been kicking around for four years. So here we go:</p><p>In his sermon <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3oYxktC" target="_blank">The Weight of Glory</a></i> Lewis (without using the term) describes the experience of <i>sehnsucht: </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Now in <i>The Weight of Glory,</i> as well as in the many other parts of his writing where Lewis explores this experience, Lewis identifies it with the desire for God and usually ties it to an apologetic argument. In fact I find the use of sehnsucht as a broader theological fact far more interesting than as a bit of apologetics. Still, sehnsucht does an admirable job of describing a certain invaluable facet of my experience of God. </p><p>But theology, much less Christian apologetics, is not really what I want to write about today. I promised queer content and I intend to deliver.</p><p>Ashley and I watched a movie a few weeks ago. It was <a href="https://amzn.to/3I0gm5G">Tick Tick Boom</a> and for the purposes of this story I only need to say that it is a musical about Jonathan Larson, the man who wrote <i>Rent, </i>and that the AIDS epidemic features heavily as the context for the musical. After the movie we started getting ready for bed. I wandered into the bathroom and, still discussing the movie but intertwined with other parts of our lives in that way that we do after a compelling film, Ashley commented to me "...that's the thing, you actually really want to be queer". It staggered me—literally. To my recollection I have never physically staggered just from hearing something before, I had always though it was more of a metaphor. That night those words made my knees go loose for a second and I had to catch the towel bar to keep from falling. </p><p>It actually took a few minutes for my mind to catch up with my body (my subconscious). My immediate response was something along the lines of "wow that is definitely true...wow" but as we kept talking I realized I was grinning like a fool. Then I was feeling overwhelmed. I started to brush my teeth but just as I was putting toothpaste on my brush a great, indistinct something came rushing towards a barrier in my mind that I hadn't known existed. For a second I saw it looming and gasped "Oh..it's going to happen" then it hit and I shattered.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxrR5d9alfwnBTP6QdZI5yoWZHuhB1TZf6hojsZPwrzwEWUd_sY8YPtYRH_QBPAAyWCr_yQ4659UX5htHI_RIENRyxyyMvQyQYL7QGweuArD9nXrss05IVCELrOi0E2kdG0ZGfhxvYP3zZ2XUiJ0KcmpscpPKfTNQEjcWUhBRjGvvlR0NZSgsAgXsrpQ=s1280" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1280" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxrR5d9alfwnBTP6QdZI5yoWZHuhB1TZf6hojsZPwrzwEWUd_sY8YPtYRH_QBPAAyWCr_yQ4659UX5htHI_RIENRyxyyMvQyQYL7QGweuArD9nXrss05IVCELrOi0E2kdG0ZGfhxvYP3zZ2XUiJ0KcmpscpPKfTNQEjcWUhBRjGvvlR0NZSgsAgXsrpQ=w640-h400" width="640" /></a></div><p>I have mentioned this before but I grew up Evangelical. That means a lot of things for who I am and how I experience the world, and one of those things is that I grew up believing that queerness is sinful. It was a nebulous belief at first. I didn't know what "gay" meant until I was accused of being it at a summer camp once—I had been sitting with my legs crossed in a way that I only later found is associated with femininity in US culture—but somewhere around middle school my Christian education ensured that I found out about homosexuality and that it was sinful.</p><p>At the same time I was starting to notice a particular note that would appear in certain stories, or around some people. In <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3v1OgDu">Surprised by Joy</a></i> Lewis, again discussing sehsucht, says that one of his early experiences of it was the longing for something he called "northernness": <span face="Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #439081; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Pure “Northernness” engulfed me: a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity… and almost at the same moment I knew that I had met this before, long, long ago. …And with that plunge back into my own past, there arose at once, almost like heartbreak, the memory of Joy itself, the knowledge that I had once had what I had now lacked for years, that I was returning at last from exile and desert lands to my own country, and the distance of the Twilight of the Gods and the distance of my own past Joy, both unattainable, flowed together in a single, unendurable sense of desire and loss</span> </span></p><p></p></blockquote><p>That thrill was something I started to treasure and to look for and for a while it existed in me together with the evangelical belief about the sinfulness of queerness without the two meeting... for a while. It couldn't last though; the draw I felt towards queerness—the fascination or longing—eventually showed itself to be too often present in the company of the homosexuality I had learned to call sin. Now this was confusing at first; Evangelical children are not, as a rule, taught about umbrella concepts or the nuanced and complicated ways in which trans identities overlap and differ from sexual orientation. I knew I wanted to be a girl and I knew I wasn't into guys, and I knew homosexuality was sinful and I knew I was drawn to this <i>thing</i> and knew that the <i>thing </i>often showed up around homosexuality and it was all just very confusing. The result though was that I distanced myself from that longing. I told myself it was sinful, or at least that it would lead to sin, and I worked hard to mimic the reactions to of those around me. "<i>This—This </i><b style="font-style: italic;">thing</b>," I told myself "is not for me, it is not about me, it is bad for me".</p><p>A friend of mine posted recently that post-Evangelicals have a complicated relationship with our own desires because we are taught that we need to reject our desires and replace them with God's desires. It takes a long time to figure out—and longer to integrate—that what that has often meant is that we need to replace the desires God has actually given us with the desires that straight white male Church leaders have for us. I think about that a lot.</p><p>Eventually I stopped believing that queerness is sinful. </p><p>For a while I thought that it might be a sort of tragedy that befell some people, but that didn't last long. I came to think, then accept, then believe, and now I <b><i>know</i>, </b>that queerness is beautiful and holy. </p><p>But the thing about growing up, the thing about our lives being a story in time, is that I could stop believing that queerness is sinful without remembering why I had decided that it is not <i>for </i>me, not <i>about</i> me. Queerness was beautiful but I was not queer. And of course that is the other thing: I could decide as a 12 year old that queerness was not about me but I was never able to stop the longing for queerness. The soul broken off from itself cannot stop wanting to be made whole no matter how well we bandage it. </p><p>I was magnetically drawn to queerness but I was a cis-het dude; there was no way for me to connect. Not that I didn't try; I read books about queer people and queer theory, I studied LGBTQ+ history, I sponsored my high school's GSA, I made friends with LGBTQ+ people, I advocated, I watched movies, I went to pride parades, I volunteered, I debated with people online, I wrote blog posts, I got kicked out of my church. And it was all satisfying—sort of; it all scratched at an itch—but though a heavy coat. Anyway though, it didn't matter; here was a community that was on my heart—a community whose holiness I could see even if so many Christians around me couldn't seem to—and I was going to atone for my past and, far more importantly, I was going to be towards them the way we all should. I wanted to badly to be a good ally. I think about that a lot.</p><p>Eventually I stopped believing that I was cis or het.</p><p>For three and a half years I lived in this in-between space: publicly a cis-het guy and knowing myself to be a trans lesbian. But see the thing about how we develop as people, about our lives being a story in time, is that I could stop thinking I was a straight man without remembering, or at least without <i>knowing</i> what that meant for who I am. I wanted to be part of the trans community; "You are valid" is a phrase I saw applied to me and to people like me all the time. And it was true, and it is true, and every trans person is who they are and I could still struggle to ever really feel like that was true. </p><p>That was the stage in my life where I stopped crying. I have never been a really big crier, but I haven't worked to avoid it either. There is this thing that happens when people think you are a boy. From the time you are little you get told in a million loud and quiet ways that growing up means getting control of your emotions; you need to master them. Then if you are the sort of person that most people tend to assume is a boy, in you teens you get these floods of testosterone. My experience on testosterone (and I have heard similar things from other people who have been on the hormone, both voluntarily and involuntarily) is that it makes your anger super accessible. I have seen this overstated as though T turns people into hulk-esque rage-beasts but it is really more like anger is one book on your shelf of emotions and T just pushes it out a little so that it's easier to grab. But, you see, this becomes kind of a whole thing for people who believe we have to master our emotions because now the consequences of not mastering them is that people get hurt, maybe people we like or even love. There is a reason that self-control is a virtue and it isn't a bad reason. And I did have a temper and I did have to learn to control it. </p><p>Anyway I got good at controlling my anger. Then I learned a neat trick. It turns out that if you try, you can turn nearly any negative emotion into anger. Sadness, depression, shame, and embarrassment can all be turned into anger. I developed a go-to method for handling negative emotions: turn them into anger and then control the anger. During those three years I would sing the virtue of my method. "Anger," I would say " is the only negative emotion that moves you forward. I turn my sadness into anger because it drives me to change the circumstances that made me sad." </p><p>I am now convinced that this is a perspective which is really only available to the sort of white men who can comfortably assume that their own channeled anger will result in positive change in their circumstances; it often doesn't work like that for the rest of us. I mean let's be real, it didn't work that way for me. I had plenty to be angry about and I channeled it into doing all sorts of good things but nothing I was willing to do was going to change the pain of not being myself.</p><p>The thing nobody warned me about (I mean <i>culture</i> sort of warned me about it but not in that "this applies to you" sort of way that might have worked) is that turning your negative emotions into something else is called numbing; really that's any form of trying to not experience your negative emotions. And you can't selectively numb. </p><p>So I stopped crying. Then I stopped really laughing. I really missed it too. I would think about it a lot.</p><p>Eventually I stopped believing I could save the life I had built by pretending to be something I wasn't. Eventually I realized that the attempt to be him was going to destroy everything I wanted for him. </p><p>And I told my wife that I am trans—I am a woman; and I told my family that I am trans—I am a woman; and I told the world that I am trans—I am a woman. I started laughing again about three months after I told Ashley. But I still didn't cry; I still couldn't cry. </p><p>See the thing about healing, the thing about growing, the thing about sewing back on the chunk of your soul that got torn away the day you realized that you couldn't be—<i>weren't</i>—the girl you knew you were* is that it takes time. Imagine sewing a hand back on after it has been severed for 39 years. You can connect things back together—the skin, the bones, the muscles, the blood vessels—but until the nerves connect, you aren't going to be feeling much from that hand. But what if those nerves heal too? What if they grown back together. What if your wife says from the other room "...that's the thing, you actually really want to be queer"? </p><p>And then your body <i>knows</i> that you are queer and that you are healing a step before you conscious mind does. And then you are about to integrate with your own experience—the experiences you were always having and never letting yourself have because you couldn't only now you could and now you did and here it comes, here it comes, here it comes. And then the toothbrush clatters into the sink and then you are crumpled up on the bathroom floor sobbing and you don't know why yet but you are starting to know why and you already always have known but you are also about to find out. And then there is snot and there are tears and your wife is holding you while you shake and you weep because life cannot be this good, and your own self cannot contain this much beauty. But it does and it already always has and now you know that—only it isn't that you know that, it is that you are <i>knowing it right now. </i></p><p>And then I was breathing and laughing and crying a little less and I wanted to tell Ashley how good this was and how grateful I am and we moved from the bathroom floor to the couch and she grabbed some tissues on the way and I opened my mouth and then the next wave hit and I was always already queer and I was always already everything that I had only known from behind glass and under the gauze that I had wrapped around my mind and then there was no <i>them</i> in queerness there was <i>us. </i>And every emotion I had had about them were altogether in one moment emotions I had already had/was having/will have about <i>us. </i>And of course I am sobbing again, I am shattered but I am born and breathing and held and whole.<br /><br />So anyway yes. Sehnsucht. That is a little bit what I think it means to yearn for being united with God.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjqA8TNHnS_nT52LDlKHlupVEy5arLAMXamo4qnOmbm3NcFOobOH358peSOvtVYYPAGGXkaiDmvaxAhZ3o0b_0WYooDvJy1THzuLuzWFyUV4HgsQEANRotShtYDVdL433e8iOvoxi_em8vM60fgZbRGXQdKZhDEaqnCTDIwbqybSq9du4QyPGSeg6d94g=s3264" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjqA8TNHnS_nT52LDlKHlupVEy5arLAMXamo4qnOmbm3NcFOobOH358peSOvtVYYPAGGXkaiDmvaxAhZ3o0b_0WYooDvJy1THzuLuzWFyUV4HgsQEANRotShtYDVdL433e8iOvoxi_em8vM60fgZbRGXQdKZhDEaqnCTDIwbqybSq9du4QyPGSeg6d94g=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am me now.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><div>*Ok it is a lot more complicated then "I knew". I have written a lot about that <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/01/so-it-turns-out-im-woman.html" target="_blank">Here</a> and <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/02/hidden.html">Here</a></div>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-41546128444686773462022-02-07T16:33:00.003-05:002022-11-03T10:34:39.499-04:00Hidden<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><p><br /></p><p>I want to give some context for this piece (apparently I am more concerned about being misunderstood than I used to be). This is a work of creative writing that began (about 90% of it) in the late summer of 2017, the year I had realized that I am trans and also decided that I was "not going to do anything about it" which is to say I had decided to know/admit/acknowledge my gender identity to myself but not to come out, not to identify publicly as trans, and certainly not to transition. Of course that is not how things turned out (and you can read about that process <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/01/so-it-turns-out-im-woman.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>).<br /><br />I decided to share this piece (once I had edited it, cleaned it up, powdered its nose and corrected the typos) for a couple of reasons: First I hope that this might be helpful to other people who are struggling to figure out whether or not they are trans. Second I think it gives some insight into what figuring out who we are <i>can</i> look like for some trans people and I have a hope that if more cis people have a better understanding of us, that will contribute to a better and more beautiful world for all of us. And third, I am rather proud of it as a piece of creative writing and I want to share it with the world.</p><p>And now some important caveats: In this piece I am using a very specific conceit to explore the process of coming to know myself more fully. That conceit involves splitting my self into two sperate personas. Doing that is fraught for a number of reasons. For one thing it risks giving the impression that I (or even worse, trans people in general) suffer from some from of <a href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9792-dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder#:~:text=Dissociative%20identity%20disorder%20(DID)%20is,%2C%20traits%2C%20likes%20and%20dislikes.">dissociative identity disorder</a>. That is not the case, and I do not at all want to give the impression that it is. I want to point out that this conceit has been used numerous times by cis authors and artists to explore the relationship between the conscious and the sub-conscious or between two strong desires which happen to be in tension, or to explore any number of ways in which we humans experience internal conflict or dawning awareness. And I am certainly not the only, much less first, trans person to use it. A few years after I had written the core of this and while it was still sitting in a journal folder, I ran across t<a href="https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=june-30-2020">his terrific series from Mae Dean at Real Life Comics</a> and more recently <a href="https://twitter.com/assumptionprime/status/1437818373124001797?s=20&t=L66QUpOFb1MFOcdbpPyb9Q">Robin Brooks gave a charming treatment of it for similar ends</a>. For another, this conceit risks giving the impression that I do not consider myself the same person as who I was for 39 years. This one is a little more tricky because there are trans people who prefer to establish a hard distinction between their past and current selves and that is certainly reasonable and works well for those it works well for. In my own case the experience has been much more one of continuity. I have always been <i>me</i> but up until last year I was <i>me-with-constraints</i> now that I am out I am still very much myself but I no longer am limited by the restrain of false-male-ness. Put another way, I have always been my true self, but now I get to be my full self; and that is glorious.</p><p>Also I dealt with some pretty significant internalized transphobia so if that isn't something you are comfortable reading you might want to skip this piece.</p><p>So with all of that having been said, here is <i>Hidden</i>:</p><p><br /></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align: center;">Hidden</h2><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZFXudhee__FOT_DqGR2uYRCDuuAoJhls41kMINhnu4Gv0apB5BbfzzIKEdRQgtw3kPpUmh_llAyv0cAs9uDGFCUwp9gQZnnWPJUOV73eTc2YGCmy2tMXPkBRIxFTy9_E0zHmJuPPsN9xrbzuF7nnpXm7GZJkxgSsmABfk_wejIvXuooVILcAMlgufmA=s1024" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZFXudhee__FOT_DqGR2uYRCDuuAoJhls41kMINhnu4Gv0apB5BbfzzIKEdRQgtw3kPpUmh_llAyv0cAs9uDGFCUwp9gQZnnWPJUOV73eTc2YGCmy2tMXPkBRIxFTy9_E0zHmJuPPsN9xrbzuF7nnpXm7GZJkxgSsmABfk_wejIvXuooVILcAMlgufmA=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" jsname="YS01Ge" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">I am he as you are he as you are me a</span><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" jsname="YS01Ge" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">nd we are all together</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I </span>am told, and I believe, that most people were created by God. I imagine it must be really nice. There must be a comforting solidity to it, being created by God. I mean... God, the Fundament of all Being. There is God and then God makes stars, galaxies, water, sunsets and you. You are right up there with galaxies. Do you ever stop and just stand there feeling solid, and grounded, and real?</p>I'm not really like you in that way. In a lot of ways I am a lot more like Frodo. I guess that is pretty cool too on some level—Frodo is the hero after all—but it has its drawbacks. J.R.R. Tolkien thought that one of the glories of humans was the work of sub-creation, that humans get the dignity of being creators and creatures at the same time; humans create within the scope of the everything that is already made by God. And that is great and all but did you ever stop to think how Frodo might have felt about it? Sure he gets to be the hero, he lives something like forever beyond the sea, but all of that is because he was created by a geeky philologist who had a hankering for writing British mythology. There must have been something a little unsettling about all of that for him. <br /><br />You were probably made by God so maybe you don't understand. I was made by a confused little girl living in North America in the 80s and I really feel for Frodo. I don't think the little girl really even knew what she was doing at the time. And from my creation forward I probably grew and developed in a way that is a lot like the way you did. Things came at me and in response I developed, I changed, I grew. A personality emerged; it has preferences, ticks, tastes, little things that drive it up the wall, and stories, songs, poems, and dreams that make it weep—or at least they used to have that effect, it hasn't been crying much anymore. It longs—I long—for home. But what is home, what does "home" mean when the mind you sprang from belongs to a little girl who forgot her own self? What is "return" for a derivative being, the product of a self-forgetting sub-creator? <br /><br />I think she was happy for a while—before she made me. I remember that she was a tomboy with a couple of boy best friends before gender and "ways of being in the world" complicated existence. She can't have been perfect and there is no way I can be avoiding some fairly monstrous hagiography here (is it really "hagiography" when you are talking about your own creator?) but I don't remember her being sad at first—well, not before the anguish—not before me. I don't think she knew she was a girl back then, she didn't really think of herself as a boy either or if she did I don't think she had much of an idea what that meant. Her friends were boys, her life was fun, her parents loved her, she could do pretty much whatever she wanted. At least that is how I remember it.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSQf__igqt8FVGr0_WHRBCGzbPKqk2txTEU23X2uDcfA_EmLLpbvpZhy261auy_Z_ufqCOEgOsJujvXJS1iCQ4csmdfpKRBinz30LngT30p9GAZtbmBonCPEk7mAg8TXfJBWjn71DY4atHscyQwu3TCzh64qrCCd4mMrRFHx2xyoh0e8lLy2Lcq1rEOg=s1500" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSQf__igqt8FVGr0_WHRBCGzbPKqk2txTEU23X2uDcfA_EmLLpbvpZhy261auy_Z_ufqCOEgOsJujvXJS1iCQ4csmdfpKRBinz30LngT30p9GAZtbmBonCPEk7mAg8TXfJBWjn71DY4atHscyQwu3TCzh64qrCCd4mMrRFHx2xyoh0e8lLy2Lcq1rEOg=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br />Then came the anguish. I don't really know what brought it on—I know she didn't have the foggiest idea. One minute she was sitting at a little desk working on her school work and the next she was sobbing having what I can only retroactively diagnose as an acute panic attack. In one arbitrary moment her whole world had suddenly skewed <i>wrong</i>.<br /><br />Everything felt <i>wrong</i>. She felt <i>wrong</i>—profoundly <i>wrong</i>. Her hands were <i>wrong</i>, her hair was <i>wrong</i>, her stupid clothes were stupid <i>wrong</i>. Her face was <i>wrong</i>. I remember that the wrongness was a very physical thing. For a while I described the whole thing as a sense of being irredeemably dorky. Imagine that you woke up tomorrow to find that, in your sleep, an enormous purple and orange flower had grown out of the side of your head. Imagine knowing that it could never be removed, and that for the rest of your life people would see you as "that person with <b>the ridiculous flower</b>"; no outfit will ever look right, you will never achieve a "look" at all because everything will always clash with <b>the flower</b>, everyone will always notice <b>the flower</b>. <br /><br />The little girl's parents (and they are lovely and loving people) were, of course, concerned. They didn't know what she was crying about and she didn’t really know how to tell them (six year old children do not, as a rule, have particularly well developed psychological or social vocabulary). All she could say was that she felt like nobody would ever like her. <br /><br />Her parents tried to comfort her. They promised that people would like her, they reminded her about all of her friends and her loving family. She knew they weren't wrong, but they were barely communicating. It wasn't about being liked, not really, that was just the closest language she had, it was about being <i>right</i>; it was about the stupid giant purple and orange <b>flower</b> growing out of the side of her head that no one else could see and was also all anyone could see of her. All that her parent's managed was to calm her down a bit and convince her that she was perfectly like-able just the way she was. But by doing that, they cut the cord binding her grief to her language. The anguish didn't go away, only her ability to talk about it.<br /><br />She accepted the comfort (she had already learned enough to know how to comfort the people trying to comfort her) then retreated to her bed for a while and lay there with the agony. It was a real thing. She knew, she just knew, that <i>the wrongness</i> would not be going away. And so she did the only thing she could. Drowning in <i>the wrongness</i> she clutched at the only life-line she could reach. Combining her pain with her determination to live, she created me. My creation didn't feel magical to her. I was not her inspiration; my birth was hardly spiritual or transcendent. No, I began to exist as she chose to make peace with her anguish. She took all of the <i>wrongness</i> and she accepted it; she took it into her own self. She made a boy for whom all of that <i>wrongness</i> could be rightness. Taking everything she liked about herself, she cut and shaped a boy who could hold as much of it as possible. He couldn't hold it all of course, but she managed to fit a lot of it into me—at least I think she did. This boy—me—was still raw and only barely formed; he, I, was nothing more than a person who could comfortably wear the weight of her <i>wrongness</i> and preserve as much as possible of her own self. Last she took her consciousness, her memory of her whole self, and she gave them to me, and I became alive for the first time.<br /><br />We were always together after that. Have you ever gotten into a relationship so much that you sort of forgot where you ended and your friend started, where "she" became "we" and for a moment you couldn't remember which one of you it was that loves hot chocolate and who it was that finds grasshoppers offensively pretentious? We were like that, my creator and me. On me, her <i>wrongness</i> wasn't wrong and so I handled most of the interacting-with-the-world for us. Don't judge, wouldn't you want to protect a little girl like that? The thing is, though, being in the world is sort of how people grow and work out who they are. So the more I got to be in the world the more we found out who I am, the way I deal with friends and with bullies. So many of those little bits that together form a personality, grow out of our experiences in the world. I might have started out as a barely formed lump of pain and determination—albeit one that looked a whole lot like my creator but then don't you claim to bear the image of your creator as well—but it didn't take long for me to start developing into a more and more distinct person. <br /><br />We very rarely disagreed. I don't know if we disagreed at all until recently, but that comes later I think. Mostly we wanted the same stuff, liked the same stuff, hated the same stuff. We don't like bullies, we hate feeling awkward, we learned that anger is the armor you can put on sadness if you want to fix your problems. We learned that laughter is how you breathe and that friends matter a lot. She was always helping me out too, she has always been better at seeing who is hurting and she cares enough to make me care. Together we studied the world and together we figured out just what sort of boy she thought was cool, and together we worked and worked to turn me into that boy. We goofed up sometimes; it's hard to build a real person out of a hodgepodge of archetypes and pop culture images—we (she?) figured out the trick is to build in some personal touches and quirks. I don't really have any of those of my own, so the only way for me to be real was for her to give them to me. <br /><br />I don't really think we forgot about her. If you look at it one way, we never really even knew she existed—or that she wasn’t me—or that I wasn’t her? I mean, her existence definitely turned out to be a huge shock to me; I think it surprised her too. I came along so early in her life, and everything hurt so much when she made me. I don't think she thought of me as another person, I was just the version of us that didn't hurt so much. I am the one that could survive in the world. I am not <i>wrong</i>. <br /><br />I'm not perfect though (have you ever wondered what it would feel like to realize that you couldn't perfectly protect your own creator, that you can't quite properly perform the one role you were made for?). Sometimes I wasn't strong enough or solid enough to protect her. While we were kids—elementary and middle school mostly—this generally manifested as a wistfulness. We would see some girl. I remember this one girl; we played on a youth baseball league for a couple of years—we weren't great but we weren't terrible either; we got by with humor and an infectious smile—and this girl was on a team which played adjacent to our field. She was fast and confident with long black hair and an athletic build. We always felt strange around her—sort of happy and sort of sad. I told my friends I had a crush.<br /><br />There were other times like that. I remember she sort of wanted to play with some of the girls in my fourth grade class. They were doing more and more impressive games with jump ropes which looked like fun. I found those girls sort of intimidating though, and playing those jump rope games would have been wrong on me; at least back then I really thought it wouldn't quite work with who she wanted me to become, not in public anyway. So I waited and we played the same games with my little sister and her friend when we got home.<br /><br />Neither of us minded being friends with the boys anyway. We weren't really great at the sports side of things but we love giving everything to a competition or a fight; I have believed for a long time that sufficient passion covers over a lack of talent to at least some significant degree. And when our group moved away from sports and started playing games with our imaginations—pretending to be the Ninja Turtles, or making up our own superhero personas to defeat imaginary bad guys—I really got to shine. We both love stories and imagination. Those guys were fun and they were good friends. <br /><br />Stories were a big thing for us; they still are. When we read stories we stop existing in this world altogether and instead we exist like a ghost floating over the world of the story. I have always been able to forget my worries, stresses, and pressures when I am reading. Some days I don't think that I have ever actually read a story—I think she reads them. When we are reading stories I stop existing; she has no body, no context, no social location. It's how she escapes from me. I don't mind though, I like the stories too and we have had a lot of fun thinking about them over the years. By high school we were reading five or six novels a week. It was a stressful time and I think she needed time away from us to breathe. But that is getting ahead of myself.<br /><br />Some time in early middle school I read <i>The Tin Woodman of Oz</i>. For a portion of the book, the main characters get transformed into strange animals and forms for the amusement of a giant witch. She adds something to the enchantment that causes them not to mind the transformation. We found it overwhelmingly arresting. I clearly remember something happening inside of us when we read that passage. It was a new thing but it contained echoes of other experiences. There were hints of the agony and hints of the wistfulness but<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfObowprJ-8OiEiS7rG_UrJb5hMbI7EmpaI1W1Yj0C_8OiPg7w6NcdLG58sCYDxWJn3QAsdY7Rb94XkQCTm_t5HzrRpl1fspx7ajSvz6JDkLV3PWF5wLe7GYhxAtaUUt7A0uCAUB_1Zok4RATBuuHtXdPDNXG4TTLMZT0bk-miLA1eLNDV16uBGZOGmw=s3767" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3767" data-original-width="2130" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfObowprJ-8OiEiS7rG_UrJb5hMbI7EmpaI1W1Yj0C_8OiPg7w6NcdLG58sCYDxWJn3QAsdY7Rb94XkQCTm_t5HzrRpl1fspx7ajSvz6JDkLV3PWF5wLe7GYhxAtaUUt7A0uCAUB_1Zok4RATBuuHtXdPDNXG4TTLMZT0bk-miLA1eLNDV16uBGZOGmw=w113-h200" width="113" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tip</td></tr></tbody></table></div>there was something more, something new, something urgent. And there was shame too. I had borrowed The Tin Woodman from the library and I must have read and re-read that passage dozens of times in the two weeks I had the book. After the first time I read it at night, under the sheets of my bed using a flashlight as a reading light. I had no idea why I couldn't let anyone know that I was fascinated by that passage but I knew I had to keep it secret. Having someone find out about that book would be like having someone see me naked. It is a strange thing to be ashamed of something you don't understand and don't have any language for.<br /><br />I think now that The Tin Woodman of Oz must have given her hope. I do know that after that I read all of the Oz books that I could get my hands on. Did you know that in Ozma of Oz we find out that Ozma, the princess of Oz spent her childhood magically transformed into a boy named Tip? L. Frank Baum had a hell of an imagination and those books are way stranger than most people realize. Did you ever notice that almost all of the protagonists are girls? <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFfkkCEoGWCXGCAOz0-9v-h6fDz3v1Eux06D8D-Kp6HLbUCYAErn42a9jorVGbKONmz8Lr5P-3XrsX0-R_MaU5IUqbOUpSTEF31mQplCSDQiu76m1IOF8S4eA5c14UBc923OhG8t-GvjP3l5YmOJrMausMk3ITn5LeVVYYE9xNBJdUcnliBdLwtfvsLA=s4032" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFfkkCEoGWCXGCAOz0-9v-h6fDz3v1Eux06D8D-Kp6HLbUCYAErn42a9jorVGbKONmz8Lr5P-3XrsX0-R_MaU5IUqbOUpSTEF31mQplCSDQiu76m1IOF8S4eA5c14UBc923OhG8t-GvjP3l5YmOJrMausMk3ITn5LeVVYYE9xNBJdUcnliBdLwtfvsLA=w150-h200" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ozma</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div>She really liked Pippi Longstockings too, and Nancy Drew. One of the cool things about having a reputation as a voracious reader is that adults, and even other kids, eventually stop questioning your choice of reading material. Everyone knew I would read almost any story I could get my hands on so I was able to supply her with Pippi and Nancy and Beezus almost as much as we read Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and Henry.<br /><br />She must have had some idea of what was going on during all of this time. I don't think she ever vanished into me entirely. I think now that that might be why we had such an aversion to male-female boundary crossing when I was young. One time, probably around late elementary school, I visited some friends. Two girls and two boys all around my age. Well, the girls were close to my age, the boys were younger. That day the sisters decided to dress one of their brothers up as a sister. It was... fascinating? I remember not knowing how to feel about it but knowing that I should not let on how strong my internal reaction was. The kids I was playing with all clearly thought that the whole thing was silly and fun, so I went along with that reaction but I freaked out when they suggested doing me next. I think she was afraid someone would see her. I have always experienced a measure of fear anytime I encountered public gender play. There were other emotions involved too and I think they probably changed from time to time but the fear was always a constant.<br /><br />I don't want to give the impression that I interacted a lot with my creator over the years. Most of the time we didn’t much notice each other—either because our interests were identical or because she left me on autopilot—and sometimes she would cheerfully advise me in the form of an inner monologue about what sort of man I ought to become. I think sometimes her dreams would slip through and I would catch myself day dreaming about how cool it would be to be a certain type of girl, but I knew that I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about that so I didn't. Well, no, there was one time when a friend of mine spent the night and, while we were in our beds chatting before falling asleep he blithely informed me that sometimes he thought it would be cool to be a girl. I think she told him that I agreed but maybe not. He did say it though.<br /><br />In a lot of ways puberty was a pretty decent time for us. Our body developed in a way that seemed to satisfy her; just like she had planned, it was just right for what she was designing me to be. Or it was pretty close anyway. She never really minded—at least at the outset—that our body was increasingly <i>wrong</i> for her. She was pleased for me as my voice cracked and deepened and when I got to start shaving; I think she was amused, excited, and impressed with how well these developments all worked to make our body more and more into a fortress which would hide her from an unfriendly world. In fact, it helped me to defend her (or hide her?) more effectively. <br /><br />Girls became fascinating in middle school, or rather that is when they became fascinating in that way. There was a cover of Elle magazine which had a picture of a woman with prominent cleavage. I was fascinated by the woman on the cover and couldn't figure out why, but I did know that I would be embarrassed or ashamed if someone caught me looking. The magazine was at a tutor's house and I remember working to sneak covert glances at the woman on the magazine throughout the lesson that day. <br /><br />I need to stop for a second here and remind you that she is really smart, and a pretty keen observer. By high school, she had definitely worked out the most effective way for me to live into her wrongness. She had figured out what sort of guy I needed to be in order to maximize my own realness and to give her a chance to express as much of herself as possible in the world without ever being seen <i>as</i> herself. Humor, wit, a love of reading and critical thinking, loyalty to friends and family. We know that the best deceptions incorporate an element of truth (the more the better really) so outside of a few failed and humiliating experiments, she never made any serious effort to make me into some sort of macho hulk. I was never the soldier or jock type, but I also learned quickly how to avoid being seen as effeminate. It was the 90's and the funny-but-passionate kid was an easy role for her to slip me into. <br /><br />I should also clarify that for all of this time—the cracks won't start to show till much later—I was just who we are. She never thought of any of this as deception or playing a part; were just learning how, and what kind of man we would be able to be in this world. We knew our options and she was living within reality. Neither of us had made a connection between the old anguish, the wistfulness, or our desires, and the possibility that she might exist.<br /><br />I don't really remember whether the stories or the cross dressing came first. It was probably the stories though. People grow during puberty. That stage in life is certainly a physically liminal one, but it is psychically liminal as well. I think maybe she stopped fitting into me quite as well around puberty and that only makes sense doesn't it? It can be hard to tell a little boy and a little girl apart but once they become teenagers they differentiate a lot more. As my sexuality developed along the fairly typical "straight, red-blooded, male" lines we discovered together the special wonders of the female form. She wasn't struggling to get out exactly, I think maybe a better statement would be that she began to wake up, or at least to stretch around that time. <br /><br />Seen another way, I stopped being right in the world around the time I went through puberty. I don't really remember how it was that I discovered the genre of gender transformation erotica on the internet but discover it we did. Here was a sexuality which felt comfortable, which "fit", in critical ways for the first time—the problem was that it didn't "fit" for me at all. It made all the sense in the world for her—at least it would have if either of us had realized that she existed at that time—but for the first time we had stumbled into a way of being in this world for which I was the one who was <i>wrong</i>. We both want to be with women, it's just that we both want to be with women as women. We resolved the tension by deciding that I am a pervert.<br /><br />It is easy to convince yourself that you are a pervert when the things you want feel so shameful. I think puberty and the feelings that go with it were something of a godsend to us really, I think they kept me around longer anyway. Sexuality gave us a box to put our experiences in. If they didn't fit perfectly, they at least fit into that box better than they did into anything else we had. I think she must have decided that I am a pervert—sure that's a problem but it's a manageable one. Most perverts are perverts in secret anyway aren't they? And besides, there is nothing odd or unusual about being ashamed of your perversions. I think she likes girls too. I know I do and that made a lot of things straightforward for us; with a little forcing and a little forgetting, it could contextualize all (or at least most) of the<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieGGqxWJOrjvf_6Gb7fw9Xd8WNQdZlUBSm-dwrTwx291oiKGe0YuVZ_NVS_wUbAi2Rrw-9CzytA8s9lep7rHdYq0noB004g5kASxOdKk_z4KxqzDOxWebwhyqHy6stiWAAJyjNK5p8YxBTGKIgj0HWBMCS5-en5ejTpf5fc_-uMdZq4XlJIHeR3FK8xg=s1024" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieGGqxWJOrjvf_6Gb7fw9Xd8WNQdZlUBSm-dwrTwx291oiKGe0YuVZ_NVS_wUbAi2Rrw-9CzytA8s9lep7rHdYq0noB004g5kASxOdKk_z4KxqzDOxWebwhyqHy6stiWAAJyjNK5p8YxBTGKIgj0HWBMCS5-en5ejTpf5fc_-uMdZq4XlJIHeR3FK8xg=s320" width="320" /></a></div> strange feelings I had ever had when I encountered femininity. Clearly, we decided, I was just hyper-sexual and so incredibly straight that my healthy sexual interest in femininity must have somehow overflowed and caused some perverse desire to enter into it myself. There is the one writer, C.S. Lewis, who said that we don’t just want to experience Beauty, the deep longing of our soul is to enter into it—to take part in it; but I don’t think he meant that the way I experience it.<br /><br />So I also started cross dressing in high school. I am not proud of it (I am not built to be proud of it) but it is a fact. I am beginning to wonder whether she might actually be proud of that. After all, cross dressing probably marks the first time she asserted herself powerfully enough to dictate my actions. I didn't do it a lot—only when the mood struck, the family was asleep, and I was sure I wouldn't get caught. I would sneak into the bathroom with my stash, lock the door, and turn into... a girl. You have to realize that this was a fairly confusing thing for a teenage boy to find himself doing. It wasn't really sexual—which would have also been confusing if I had let us notice it—it just felt good for about 10 minutes looking at myself in the mirror. Then I would take everything off and try to erase any trace of what I had done. Then I would get in bed and fall asleep praying that I would get caught so that someone would stop me from doing that ever again.<br /><br />My senior year in high school, my family found my stash. So that was awkward. They are a pretty cool family and I think they were more confused than anything else. I think they just threw it all away and confronted me about it when I got home from school. I kind of apologized, they made it clear that "it" wasn't cool but everything stayed pretty vague and nothing further was ever said about it. I think I ran across the term <i>autogynophilia*</i> on the internet around that time so at least I had a name for my perversion. <br /><br />I went to a small religious college and those don't provide many opportunities for cross dressing so I managed to stop that behavior after high school; she was relegated back to my fantasy life and only dared to hint at her own existence when I was especially aroused. Sexuality had become the only context in which she could emerge safely because it was the only context we had for making any sense of her.<br /><br />After college I got married. We both really love my wife. I should probably mention at this point that our whole upbringing and background was both religious and conservative. So it shouldn't surprise you to hear that we were hardly affirming of LGBTQ folks. I was definitely on the side of Team Conservative Christian. I don't know the extent to which shaping me towards being a "Big Hearted Conservative" type person was her decision or just the natural consequence of my surroundings as we grew up. But that is definitely what I was trying to be all through high school and college. At the same time, this meant that everything relating to her was something I spent a lot of my early adult life categorizing as "sin". I don't think she really had any problem with this since she had created me as a way of righting a <i>wrongness</i> she originally sensed within (without?). To the extent that she manifested in me, we both assumed that she was, herself, a <i>wrongness</i> (and yes I realize that there is some inversion and circularity involved there, people are complicated OK?). I didn't have any qualms about getting married. We were, we are, in love. Sure I was a pervert but I was pretty sure I had that under control and I was totally up front with my wife about the fact of my perversion as I understood it at the time. Well I was mostly up front anyway. I didn't get into specifics, I just talked about how I <i>struggled</i> with "sin". At the time it just seemed inappropriate and distasteful to talk about what type.<br /><br />Our outlook on LGBT people changed over time. Someone once asked me whether I believe that souls have gender. It occurred to me that I do but I have been struggling to find some proof or strong argument for that conclusion ever since. It just sort of seemed obvious to me at the time. Bodies are bodies. They are shaped in different ways and have different functions. They fit our purposes more or less well. The stoic philosophers used to argue that, since we have limited power to shape the world, the only way to become happy was to shape our desires to conform to the world; I get what they were saying but I think they were full of shit. Souls also exist. My whole experience of life tells me that souls can be and sometimes are gendered in a way which just doesn't fit the body. Some bodies just don't naturally function in a way that allows the soul to express itself fully. Anyway, we were affirming of transgender identities several years before we were affirming of lesbian, gay, and bisexual relationships; but it was the latter that led to the big change for us.<br /><br />Sometime after I had changed my take on LGB relationships (and we try to be a good ally now) someone—a gay man—asked on social media why it was that straight cis people who do ally work are so often assumed to be queer; can't people just be doing that work because they are decent human beings? I think it must have been a Saturday morning because I hadn't taken a shower yet. I cheerfully agreed with the person and said something or other as an encouragement to him. But as the day wore on I started to think about his question more and more. I was (I am?) a straight ally after all. But then I have always had that niggling thing in the back of my mind reminding me that it would be pretty cool to be a woman—but that was just my perversion wasn't it? I decided to take a minute and really properly examine that niggling thing so that I could get a proper grip on it, understand it, and move on. <br /><br />The thing is that, by then, I had learned a lot—a whole lot—more about LGBTQ folk than I had known back in high school and college. I mean I have always been drawn to queerness. I would never tell a trans person that their sense of a gendered self is a perversion. By then I had, she had, we had made quite a few LGBT friends, We, I, she, had read so much more. We know, I know that autogynephilia is utter bullshit—most cis poeple find it arousing to be in their own skin with their own bodies. But we hadn’t take that experience out and looked at it in a long time. <br /><br />When I really need to concentrate on a problem or a question I think about it in the shower. It's a quiet environment, the water provides just enough of a physical stimulus to allow me to concentrate at maximum efficacy, and I am relatively unlikely to be interrupted mid-ponder by one of my children. <br /><br />So I asked myself as I stood under the flow of water do I actually want to be a woman? What is really going on with this? Until I asked the question I genuinely expected an answer in the negative and to be able to get on with things. Instead I suddenly felt like I was falling: I couldn't answer "no". I could not, when being honest with myself, honestly say that I don't want to be a woman. Cis people do not want to be the opposite sex, cis people do not want to be another sex, cis people are happiest being the gender that they are; that is what makes them cisgender . But, the more I thought about it, the more I turned the thought over and over in my head, our head, her head, the more I found I wanted—no desperately wanted—to be a woman. And then it was like a bomb going off in my psyche. Everything was <i>wrong</i> again—<i>I was wrong again</i>. The next thing I knew I was curled into a ball, shaking under the water from my shower. I couldn't answer "no"; I couldn't answer "no"; I couldn't answer "no”. Oh God, oh God, I want to be a woman. What does this mean? What do I do with this? Am I a woman? What even am I?</blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQjbkm7-kEexilou1ch2nr3kR6-4uZomKF-8YiFArhkDm7P4cAMR5L1D3Agtv_v0FN_j0PA6BYjDdlbtIBL5y2PD1is3ni-UeZtzT0OQnUyyG9ElsBjD3jNe5RPfvGfLH7YcJgUpP2iG1M7tWvJVshrPyPfdEt5QhObZHJMIODDqVZ3tsqzl6fnQQIEA=s960" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="960" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQjbkm7-kEexilou1ch2nr3kR6-4uZomKF-8YiFArhkDm7P4cAMR5L1D3Agtv_v0FN_j0PA6BYjDdlbtIBL5y2PD1is3ni-UeZtzT0OQnUyyG9ElsBjD3jNe5RPfvGfLH7YcJgUpP2iG1M7tWvJVshrPyPfdEt5QhObZHJMIODDqVZ3tsqzl6fnQQIEA=w640-h396" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><blockquote>Even existential panic can’t last forever though and eventually we managed to pull myself together enough to finish my shower and get dressed. After all, I had almost half a lifetime's experience repressing—protecting?—this thing inside me; I was practiced at it; I knew that this shower experience was not something that the life I had built would be able to survive, and I have built a good life. So I concentrated on pushing, crushing, ignoring the whole experience. At least that is what I decided to do. It isn't what happened.**</blockquote><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEil3E-5dHK65LvAwC1Sex0H-XOHGCR2l59Sz9Bc9AHbQf47xlK8Pj747468LWv4J--DkXpOyR8EtEm1JptjiPKQj1q5966x-lefghVCF2gpnnNRNzjntt4N5LSDmmz3ZL8AIoTIVxIXCk_VH_kLf-Naiqw1N2qk8hegkvW_34NvgDVfge57uZX_kDFjIA=s3608" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2127" data-original-width="3608" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEil3E-5dHK65LvAwC1Sex0H-XOHGCR2l59Sz9Bc9AHbQf47xlK8Pj747468LWv4J--DkXpOyR8EtEm1JptjiPKQj1q5966x-lefghVCF2gpnnNRNzjntt4N5LSDmmz3ZL8AIoTIVxIXCk_VH_kLf-Naiqw1N2qk8hegkvW_34NvgDVfge57uZX_kDFjIA=w400-h236" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Footnotes:<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">* <span style="font-size: small;">This was my experience of what is called <i>Autogynophelia </i>theory. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038026120934690">The theory has been thoroughly debunked</a> but managed to hurt a lot of trans women and is still pulled out and weaponized against us by bad faith and misinformed people.</span></span></div></h3><div><span style="font-weight: normal;">**When I returned to this theme after processing all that shows up here and ultimately deciding to come out and live as my full self, I planned to write a sort of sequel from "the girl"'s perspective—and I may end up doing that some day—but what I ended up writing was <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/02/lazarus.html">this poem</a> and honestly I think it is a great follow up.</span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=june-29-2020"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="615" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhA9zlLmM_EveJwULAmwmpoCq2uiZgnNiw_tMBQ8kNcEZ8HEvwo3NVyTCbm7bwbUSBL_jgdPBZfgMtiBP9O9PYAAuJOBxYU-Dumi5SjLWcHNKawe49o5eOE3Vkv-g6wR-DOqjZEGf4DV5Ppyiak4KodqVzZ5YNm8_g1RoHz5nnQB8EPdoPyB9XfgCULYg=w578-h640" width="578" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=june-29-2020">You really should read this wonderful series by the incomparable Mae Dean</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-3d0f814f-7fff-6429-e862-15c51e1c265c"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-35611720500038384842022-02-05T09:56:00.002-05:002022-11-03T10:34:49.039-04:00Lazarus<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">LAZARUS</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of Lazarus, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am here and I am me </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and, I was always me. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now though, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am learning to un-learn </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the rough ruts I carved into my mind </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when I carved him out of pain and fear. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When he first found me </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I could only be </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the form of thought and longing </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was me, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and he was me </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">finding myself, and now</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am myself, and he is not dead, but we </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because he was always me. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The love, the life, the pain we lived; </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my loves, my life, and my pain. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And when I was him, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and when I was only just remembering to be me, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and when I was only just learning how to not be him </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but to have been him, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I told him to tell me that if I just let him </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">suffocate me a little longer, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">then the air would not burn so sharp </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nor the light pierce so bright</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as I emerged, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but now I am a little stronger, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and now I cannot tell myself that this coat is my skin, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and now I want the air to burn if it means that I get to feel the light. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to breathe,</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and I am breathing, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and maybe now </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">these are shallow breaths</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the dead skin of this mask is sloughing off,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and every day it gets harder to plaster it back on to my face </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and to use his visage to smile at the world. </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Lazarus heard the call to wake and to come out </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he did not take a shower, or change his clothes before he sought the sun, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and I do not want to wait in this tomb until the stink wears off </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and Martha brings me a clean set of clothes.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhJVq1XuLNXWkQ0a5spDdyQpxqprrZeUQfUGGFuzAR7ozsLICfpiX6l2gwgmxfZKqRjLx4vxD7rcPg4QWltlzSissrH0P5PZvcuahRRFps3omx8AKNuUUaEo6mkqit6NoBwgPPqVrB75SzstcNwJi--yspjalx1AvxD9ElfmusucFoVhhKzfHW-17jswQ=s780" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="780" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhJVq1XuLNXWkQ0a5spDdyQpxqprrZeUQfUGGFuzAR7ozsLICfpiX6l2gwgmxfZKqRjLx4vxD7rcPg4QWltlzSissrH0P5PZvcuahRRFps3omx8AKNuUUaEo6mkqit6NoBwgPPqVrB75SzstcNwJi--yspjalx1AvxD9ElfmusucFoVhhKzfHW-17jswQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p>
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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-22617236866335708592022-01-28T12:38:00.003-05:002022-11-03T10:33:06.413-04:00So it Turns out I'm a Woman<p>So it turns out I'm a woman. Surprise!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgYD3mV9G0T1P0qNywui-YJiB9HYdjosbihW-infO2HQIQ1pgBVPnIBFNMXGdDTWW4v0HmnLGzWz6rWhM0tOne3V2Ixn4RNxV1j7ZUvI9jz4UzSbnDCHfMV4L-5sFdI0dtKOdMl9gQ3qa0e5uLix7KTX_9Y0XkK6u6Kr00ojyOX41FCRg45EtUkpJwsKg=s3264" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2355" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgYD3mV9G0T1P0qNywui-YJiB9HYdjosbihW-infO2HQIQ1pgBVPnIBFNMXGdDTWW4v0HmnLGzWz6rWhM0tOne3V2Ixn4RNxV1j7ZUvI9jz4UzSbnDCHfMV4L-5sFdI0dtKOdMl9gQ3qa0e5uLix7KTX_9Y0XkK6u6Kr00ojyOX41FCRg45EtUkpJwsKg=w289-h400" width="289" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hello</td></tr></tbody></table></div><p>I guess, to be more specific, I am a woman of the transgender variety. Which is to say that I am a woman who was mistaken for a little boy at birth, whose family and society ran with that since my body matched the expectations they had, first for a boy and later for a man, who only fully realized my own womanhood a few years ago and who is just now telling the world that—well intentioned as I am sure it was—we were all wrong about my gender. </p><p>This sort of an announcement feels awkward. Mostly, I think, because we don't really yet have an established social practice built around it. And...yes I have thoughts about social rituals and gender—I have lots of thoughts—but this is not the time to share those thoughts. Maybe I will write them up in their own post someday. </p><p>I am a woman. It just feels good to say that.</p><p></p>Read on if you want more details but before I get into the narrative I want to be clear that trans people, like most people, don't <i>owe</i> anyone our stories. I am sharing mine below because I happen to want to. I am therefore going to allow myself the privilege (it's my blog post after all) of commenting occasionally on my own story. This version of my story is a modified version of the letter I sent my parents when I brought them up to date on my identity. The comments will be in italics. And as a heads up, I have dealt with some really transphobic thinking so if that isn't something you are in a place to read about you might want to jump to the end.<p></p><p>OK, here is the history:</p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ce359b7c-7fff-506b-8215-99ff3e239ca6"></span></p>The first relevant memory I have of all this is of a particular day back when I was 5 or 6 years old. I looked down at myself and suddenly felt just horribly, terribly, miserably, <i>wrong</i>. I didn't really have any language for it but I remember that I was upset enough that my parents noticed and tried to console me. I think I tried to express it (in kid terms) as a certainty that nobody would ever like me. I have described it to people since then as a feeling like waking up to discover that a giant polka dot neon flower was growing out of the side of my head. It was like my whole body clashed. My parents were comforting (they told me that they liked me and that lots of people would and did) and eventually I calmed down a little but the feeling didn't really go away.<br /><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><i>That feeling is one that I would much later come to understand and call </i><b style="font-style: italic;">dysphoria</b>. </div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><br /></div>From there, I remember sort of discovering some of the meanings built into the ideas that there are boys and girls in the world and realizing both that that sense of feeling <i>wrong</i> was related to that and that there wasn't anything I could do about it. Discovering stories and books around then felt like (and maybe was) a lifesaver for me because in my stories I found examples of boys that I thought were fun and cool and that I could borrow things from to incorporate into the person I was figuring out I had no choice but to be.<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRgaMp_n5lHGvNav_5SpP6JR8TS91lpNliWp_25XTO5Rvz_vj4n7TE81gY-H-4_hrUXfcJHYVZRt_HXLYVLANXoUx-cl7E-C9HGPgIFKKvaNqOLw-svahhwszx0dVHTgMv4WL043YIGch4IxGkKe36ZQw2CSkuJiPPen0IYwwquGADHilDT8GA-W9rMw=s472" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="472" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRgaMp_n5lHGvNav_5SpP6JR8TS91lpNliWp_25XTO5Rvz_vj4n7TE81gY-H-4_hrUXfcJHYVZRt_HXLYVLANXoUx-cl7E-C9HGPgIFKKvaNqOLw-svahhwszx0dVHTgMv4WL043YIGch4IxGkKe36ZQw2CSkuJiPPen0IYwwquGADHilDT8GA-W9rMw=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I wanted to be Susan or Lucy but I got to work figuring out how to be Peter</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div>I don’t want to give the impression that I was “always secretly miserable” or even “always secretly sad”. I was a pretty cheerful kid growing up. Yeah, I definitely spent a lot of nights praying that God would turn me into a girl while I slept and also make it so that nobody else would notice—that happened and not infrequently—but most of the time it all just wasn’t something I thought about and I had exactly the good or bad time I appeared to be having. </div><div><br /></div><div>There were also moments growing up where the whole thing got overwhelming and, in outline form, from middle school through college I “wrestled” with what I experienced at the time as a strong desire to be a girl. In high school I decided to classify that aspect of my life as a persistent perversion. I grew up Evangelical, I was (and am) very much attracted to women, and I couldn’t conceive of anything that could be done about what was going on with me and my gender identity so I mostly felt shame about it, and—outside of very private moments—tried to just not think about it at all. The thing is that when you restrict any introspection about a particular aspect of yourself to times when you are already sexually charged and feel shameful, it is fairly simple to think of that aspect as—itself—perverse and shameful. It was painful but that mentality allowed me to box one whole side of myself up so that it interfered with the rest of my life as little as possible. It was in that framework and mindset that I dated and then married my wife, I thought of "all of that" as a shameful perversion or kink which I pretty much had (mostly) under control. The thing is, as nearly all of the literature on trans people will tell you, dysphoria doesn’t go away with time no matter how much it is repressed; it just gets stronger. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>I have a lot of feelings and a lot of thoughts on what it means to have been raised in a system (Evangelicalism) which taught me that something basic, true, and frankly beautiful about myself was intrinsically shameful, sexual, and perverse. I plan to blog about those thoughts and feelings in the future. In the meantime I have already written about why, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5805290335961306135/2261723686633570859#" target="_blank">from even an Evangelical perspective, it is wrong to see trans identities as any of those things</a> <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-christian-defense-of-gender.html">HERE</a>.</i></div><div><br /></div>That was the mode in which I processed my high school and college years and on into adulthood as I got married and had kids but for now I want to jump to “the end” and talk a little bit about the last four years or so, how I ended up making the decision to “do something” about this realization around my identity, and why I am genuinely convinced that, although this is a hard thing—one of the hardest in my life and likely the life our family—it is also fundamentally a good thing.<br /><br /><i>Just to avoid any confusion or ambiguity: "do something" here means medical and social transition. I am medically and socially transitioning. Also, I chose the phrase "hard thing" intentionally; a gender transition is often hard but please don't confuse "hard" with "bad".</i><div><div><i><br /></i></div>There is this moment that happens in a lot of trans people’s lives where two important dots are connected and the whole picture suddenly emerges. Most of you have known for quite a while now that I am an open advocate for, and supporter of, LGBTQ+ rights. It was a little over four years ago now that I realized that the complex of ideas, issues, and theory surrounding trans people actually described <i>my</i> experience of myself and my gender. Despite being, by then, 100% LGBTQ+ affirming and knowing a lot about trans people and how gender dysphoria (the suffering that is experienced as a felt incongruence between someone’s gender and physical sex) works I hadn’t stopped to ask myself the question “But am I trans then?” or rather I had asked that question a few times—it tends to come up when you are working with a lot of LGBTQ+ people—but I hadn’t reexamined the whole experience. Instead I had, until then, always brushed it off because I had already decided how to categorize what was going on with me and gender and that category (a shameful, unspoken “perversion”) was so unpleasant to think about that I usually just avoided it or any serious reflection on my experiences. Then one Saturday a Facebook acquaintance of mine asked why so few of the really good allies ever turn out to actually be cisgender (non-transgender) straight people. The question struck me as a little frustrating and I decided to do a proper inventory of my own experiences so as to demonstrate to myself that I, at least, could be a good straight cis ally. So I set aside some time and really asked the question. I knew that I am not attracted to men so that ruled out the “G” (gay) and “B” (bisexual) but when I asked myself about the “T” this time I saw the question and myself in an entirely different light than I had before. The specific line that ran through my head was “Cis people do not secretly always wish to be the other gender; wishing to be the other gender is what trans people do.”<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhPYGtHNBcGOSxkNv2Uy24upFbDf69bjuWvBaSQMMBmk8jYADC_4_hipo_0J_PlwPLc4LszdTRG0ugvaT_8nE2h_uDTNK14uwVN9DVZOB5Q0ORhyzJGHpp80WqBpMGzN1yZmY7Ces4nRVIpiNAEuplgp4p2NqTw119DLX1boVSZhD7uZuhz0sfnQcK8_A=s259" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhPYGtHNBcGOSxkNv2Uy24upFbDf69bjuWvBaSQMMBmk8jYADC_4_hipo_0J_PlwPLc4LszdTRG0ugvaT_8nE2h_uDTNK14uwVN9DVZOB5Q0ORhyzJGHpp80WqBpMGzN1yZmY7Ces4nRVIpiNAEuplgp4p2NqTw119DLX1boVSZhD7uZuhz0sfnQcK8_A=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I tried to glue it shut a few times but... yeah</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><i>Just to clear some things up—because the internet. First, yes I absolutely was wrong about the whole "shameful unspoken perversion" thing and yes my therapist and I have been addressing the imprint that left on my subconscious for almost a year now. If you persist in thinking that "wanting to be the other gender" is a sign of perversion please take a moment to read <a href="https://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf">this paper by Julia Serano</a>. Second, feel free to note the fairly typical straight cis ally response I exhibited and the knee jerk felt need to prove that I am "one of the good ones" that is not a good or healthy response and yes I have been doing work around that as well; and of course please enjoy the irony—I do—of me trying to prove to my self that I was a good straight cis anything. Third it is actually true that cis people do not secretly always (or, as a rule, even sometimes seriously) wish to be the other gender. If your response to that is "they do so because I am cis and I do that" um sweetheart you might want to take some time with that thought. Also I mention GB and T here but obviously all of this ended up shedding some significant light on L as well.<br /><br /></i>That realization set me reeling for a while but eventually I rallied and ended up deciding that the fact that I am trans was something I could just know and not do anything about. I had decided that this wasn’t going anywhere. I made an effort, a multi-year effort, but in the end that approach stopped working. I think that’s probably the most succinct way to say why I am now doing all of this at 39. All those years of keeping this secret of which I was so very ashamed for so very long taught me, among other things, how to repress emotions I didn’t want people to see. It taught me that lesson too well. By the summer of 2020 I was in a state. On the outside what that looked like was a sort of frequent distractedness and increasing bursts of irritability. On the inside it mostly looked like pain and sadness that came in great waves. I would be fine for up to months at a time and then I would be hit with a wash of what I would now call existential dysphoria; it's an experience that is hard to describe if you haven’t had it and the closest I can get to it is that it is to wistfulness what rage is too irritation. I had experienced it very rarely and at a low setting before I had the realization but afterwards the waves started to come far more frequently and with far greater intensity.<i><br /></i></div><br />I was careful not to use alcohol to numb those emotions; instead I threw myself into reading, audiobooks, and podcasts (I set a personal record reading over 150 books in 2020). It worked to some extent but it worked by keeping me from feeling or fully engaging with my own life. I knew I was growing distant from my family and friends and I hated it.<br /><br />Around the same time, I started to realize that I had largely numbed away much of my ability to experience strong positive emotions along with the negative ones. I think I went a year and a half without belly laughing. And I discovered eventually that I couldn't physically express sadness any more either. I could feel sad (when I wasn't engaging in a numbing behavior) but I couldn't get a sad emotion to show on my face—crying wasn't even an option. When I wasn’t feeling the pain around gender, I was not feeling much of anything. So in the fall I told my wife that I thought I should start therapy. I hoped that, with counseling, I would be able to process the loneliness and anger of the pandemic and politics and that that would free up the space to get back to full functionality. I would just deal with waves of sadness around “the gender thing” every so often but without all the constant background anger and the numbing behaviors I hoped it would be manageable again.<br /><br />The very short version is that the problem wasn’t with the politics or the pandemic (not that they helped of course). I did process those issues but in the end I found that it came from not being, and not being known as, my own full self. It came from 38 years of living with a secret that nobody could know and that I knew nobody would accept. It was a grief that came from not being able to be as my full self.<br /><br />My therapist is of the school that doesn’t seem to believe in just telling clients what they should do—she wants to make sure that all of my decisions are my own—so she listened and we talked about it and I kept going around in circles. I realized that I was going to have to act on knowing I am trans and I didn't know how I could interrupt my family's life. Then we got to Lent and I thought that I could take Lent to decide what I should do about this trap I felt so caught in. So I did. Several times a week I would read a passage and/or pray and spend time listening to and talking to God. Those experiences all left me feeling like coming out and transitioning were the direction I ought to go but they were also layered with a strong sense of this being about my freedom, not a spiritual or religious duty. In the meantime though I was a total mess. Regardless of how much I wanted to, I couldn’t show my pain in front of other people. It was really pretty surreal to talk about these enormous agonies with my therapist in calm, even cheerful, tones buttressed by wry smiles and occasional small jokes or self-deprecating witticisms. It was also hell.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_NFNEo-W0rO_Zy6bLD7agL2mMqtiJlxneGzPSke1eGFHJSw3_o6oZT1TbBk62Gkd5K3ZozkevkW6kUZPoEVoPFQOzLa7c_QJhgeqWK8C9534RoPhbDVEjGlC4XAIrFRIoNtoV2zkHR-_rbreOB8k3F3iLapRC4hqZQZpAK0zxRjCqawqXCO1xpQuXXA=s1920" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1248" data-original-width="1920" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_NFNEo-W0rO_Zy6bLD7agL2mMqtiJlxneGzPSke1eGFHJSw3_o6oZT1TbBk62Gkd5K3ZozkevkW6kUZPoEVoPFQOzLa7c_QJhgeqWK8C9534RoPhbDVEjGlC4XAIrFRIoNtoV2zkHR-_rbreOB8k3F3iLapRC4hqZQZpAK0zxRjCqawqXCO1xpQuXXA=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span id="docs-internal-guid-ac840d00-7fff-0e69-4793-893f05fae288"><br /></span><div>The decision came one or two weeks before the end of Lent. I was in therapy, still talking in what felt like circles, and I realized that as things stood I had already taken several steps down the road towards being a bad parent and a bad spouse. What crystalized for me was the realization that by keeping all of the gender stuff locked up, by not choosing transparency and what at that time seemed like likely transition (It took me a little longer to make that decision) I was, at the same time, destroying the family I was trying to protect from the truth of myself. The trap only existed because I was operating under the assumption that by not acting on the realization of my gender I was preserving a thing which not acting on the realization of my gender was causing me to lose. The anger, sadness, and pain were destroying my ability to be the husband and father I wanted to be. <br /><span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><i>So here is the thing: you do not need to </i>e<i>xperience dysphoria to be trans. You absolutely do not need to justify transition if you are trans. The fact that I felt that I had to is a part of my own story and if you try to use that in any way to invalidate the experiences, choices, or stories of other trans people then you are entirely wrong in doing so. My story gets to be my story and nobody gets to use my story against my trans siblings. Also I used "husband and father" there at the end specifically because that is how I was thinking about myself at the time—those are what I was trying to be. I am still very much committed to being a good spouse and parent.</i></div><div><br /></div>When I explained this to my therapist, she asked whether I thought I would be able to be a good spouse and a good parent if I did choose to come out and transition. I realized that in fact that was probably the only shot I had at it.<br /><br />Within a week of coming out to Ashley I lost the constant background anger that had been a part of my life for over a year. It took a few months but I actually belly laughed for the first time in a very long time and, while this shift has brought about a whole host of new difficulties and fears, I am far happier and a far better parent and spouse than I had been for quite some time. On a personal level I have experienced this as really exciting growth as a person and as a Christian. I hope we have all had the joy of realizing something about ourselves which just made everything click a little better—this is like that for me but multiplied by a thousand. While there have been (and remain) difficult parts of this process, the overarching experience has been one of deepening integrity, wholeness, and health as well as an ever more intimate and precious experience of the Holy Spirit. <br /><br />So let me end with a few “what does this mean practically” bullet points just so that I can make sure I don’t miss important things:<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I am going by Billie.</li><li>I am using she/her/hers pronouns as we women are wont to do.</li><li>I have started the process of transitioning and am on HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). I have used the term “transition” a few times here and will make sure that some of the links give a full explanation of what it can entail. Beyond that I would prefer not to say any more about the relevant medical decisions involved.</li></ul><div>P.S. Oh, and just as a point of clarification, when referring to me in the past tense the feminine should be used as well though direct quotations do not need to be updated unless you know that the person prefers to remain private about their status as a trans person (e.g. I was chatting with Billie at a conference last year and I told her "you have strange ideas man").<br /><br />If you want to read about how I figured out who I am and why it was particularly difficult for me, I have written <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2022/02/hidden.html">a piece about that HERE</a></div><div><br /></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-14b9ec16-7fff-1fa1-3106-e4a54a2f38ba"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Resources:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">A Really Comprehensive Resource for Families and Friends of Transgender People: <a href="https://pflag.org/sites/default/files/Our%20Trans%20Loved%20Ones.pdf" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: pre;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://pflag.org/sites/default/files/Our%20Trans%20Loved%20Ones.pdf</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Book about transness and Christianity: <i>Transforming</i> by Austen Hartke</p></li></ul><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2YEumxt" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://amzn.to/2YEumxt</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><i>Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Trans (But Were too Afraid to Ask)</i> by Brynn Tannehill <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://amzn.to/3nQwH3T" style="text-decoration-line: none; white-space: pre;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://amzn.to/3nQwH3T</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Tips for Allies of Transgender People<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></span></span><a href="https://www.glaad.org/transgender/allies" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: pre;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.glaad.org/transgender/allies</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Christian Curated Resources for Family and Allies of Trans People<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></span></span><a href="https://www.transmissionministry.com/family-resources" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: pre;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.transmissionministry.com/family-resources</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">I have also written a series on my own blog in theological support of trans identities as well as a stand alone piece:</p></li><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;">This series is a Christian theological defense of the gender identities of trans people<ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: square; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-christian-defense-of-gender.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-christian-defense-of-gender.html</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: square; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: square; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: square; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li></ul>This piece probably gets the closest I have managed in writing to articulating my own understanding of what is “going on” with my transness:<ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: square; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/03/bareface-cs-lewis-and-identity-claims.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/03/bareface-cs-lewis-and-identity-claims.html</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p></li></ul></ul></ul></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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</script>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-21071934657201725212020-08-14T17:59:00.007-04:002020-08-17T22:04:24.424-04:00A Lost Argument From St. Thomas Aquinas on Same Sex Marriage<p><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>This manuscript (which I have taken the liberty of translating to the best of my ability) is one I stumbled across at, of all</i></span></span><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i> places, Moody Library at Houston Baptist University. Across the page were s</i></span></span><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>crawled the words "Can't let this get out". </i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KzbORUL48bw/XzcE50zDxnI/AAAAAAAAWF0/Ur6_9EVXwYopn_O-xGkNGg42p2ID0FBxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s275/images.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KzbORUL48bw/XzcE50zDxnI/AAAAAAAAWF0/Ur6_9EVXwYopn_O-xGkNGg42p2ID0FBxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/images.jpeg" /></a></i></span></span></div><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Details among the marginalia as well as certain syntactical peculiarities lead me to believe this to be one of sev</i></span></span><i style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;">eral missing articles from St. Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica". Even the briefest of scans will make clear the reasons that this article has been so scandalously disappeared from the annals of philosophy and theology.</i><p></p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: x-large; font-weight: 400; white-space: pre-wrap;">Article 1. Whether marriage between two persons of the same sex is commended by God.</span></h1><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Objection 1</span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It seems that the marriage of two persons of the same sex is not commended by God for God explicitly commends marriage between two persons of opposite sex saying “Therefore does a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife” (Genesis 2:23) and this commendation is reiterated by Our Lord who said “For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall be joined fast to his wife” (Matthew 19:5) and was repeated too by Apostle who also said “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife” (Ephesians 5:31).</span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-42f4cf8e-7fff-5a2b-8eca-d83d9a568126"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Objection 2</span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Further, our forebears whose marriage was the first marriage were commanded to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28), and this command is understood to be applied to the whole of the human race, being descendants and therefore inheritors of that original command. But a marriage formed only by members of the same sex would be, by nature, incapable of honoring this command.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Objection 3</span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Further, the Apostle has explicitly condemned the sexual union of two members of the same sex saying of women “Thus God delivered them to the passions of disgrace; for even their females exchanged natural use for what is contrary to nature,” (Romans 1:27) and of men “And the males also, in the same way, abandoning natural use with the female, burned in their longing for one another, males performing shameful acts among males, and receiving in turn within themselves the requital benefiting their deviancy.” (Romans 1:27). And as a coupling from which sexual union is absent cannot be understood to be a marriage, there can be no marriage between members of the same sex.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the contrary</span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when people are joined in marriage they become one flesh (Genesis 2:24).</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I answer that</span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> King David was married to multiple women, becoming one flesh with them. And we know that when two, though they seem disparate, are each equal to some third, they must also be one each with the other; for the Philosopher tells us that “when A belongs to B and C and is affirmed of nothing else, and B also belongs to all C, it is necessary that A and B should be convertible.” (</span><span face="" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Prior Analytics </span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">II,22,68) So if Ahinoam, Abigail, Maachah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah, Bath-Shua (1 Chronicles 3:1-6) and Michal also, who was barren, were each wives of King David and thus one flesh with him, they must also have been one flesh one with another. And inasmuch as becoming one flesh is marriage, Michal and Abigail were married one to another. Further we know that this relationship (of Abigail to her wife Michal or to any of her other wives) was not condemned by God for God sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke the King when David committed sin of a sexual and marital nature but God did not condemn King David for his becoming one flesh (and thereby joining in marriage one to another) with his wives, and we know that God does condemn that which is sexually immoral or adulterous for the writer of Hebrews tells us “Let marriage be honored by all, and the marriage bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4); for "God will judge the whoring and adulterous", and God did not judge the marriage union of Michal and Abigail or of any of David’s wives who did not commit adultery. Finally, in His own commentary on the uniting together of one flesh, our Lord informs us that the unification is one spiritually enacted by God, saying “So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God joined together let no man separate” (Matthew 19:6) so that we are forbidden from separating that union—be it between members of the same or divers sexes—which the Lord has established, either in our proclamations or by action of man.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reply to Objection 1. </span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Philosopher states that the predication of truth to one proposition is not, in itself, the denial of truth as predicate of another statement so long as the two statements are not logically opposite (</span><span face="" style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">De Interpretatione </span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7). When the Holy Scriptures affirm that “a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife” (Genesis 2:23; Matthew 19:5; Ephesians 5:31) said affirmation is not contrary to but merely subcontrary to the possible statement that “a woman shall leave her father and mother and be united to her wife”. Conversely to affirm that a one flesh union may be established between two of the same sex is necessarily subcontrary, and not contrary to, the proposition that a one flesh union may be established between two of divers sexes. Thus in affirming one flesh union between persons of divers sexes neither Moses, nor Our Lord, nor the Apostle deny the possibility of one flesh unions between members of the same sex</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reply to Objection 2. </span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The book of the prophet Samuel confirms Michal as a wife of David (1 Samuel 25:44) and we know that Michal is finally barren for the Holy Scripture tells us “Michal daughter of Saul had no children till her dying day.” Thus the fact of barrenness in a marriage can neither prevent nor annul the mystic one-flesh union. Furthermore, we know that God has supplied, by grace, a means for those who are barren to fulfill the command of Genesis to be fruitful and multiply for the prophet Isaiah proclaims “Of the eunuchs who keep My sabbath, and choose what I desire and hold fast to My covenant, I will give them in My house, and within My walls a marker and a name better than sons and daughters, an everlasting name will I give them that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:4-5). But that which is better cannot be inferior to that which is worse so that the keeping and following of God’s will must be sufficient to fulfill the command that we should be fruitful and multiply. And this is commensurate with Our Lord’s declaration that all the law and the prophets depend on the two commandments that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our reason and that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40) and with the Apostles insistence that the second command: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” sums up the Law. And that upon which a thing is dependent cannot be lesser than that on which depends upon it—on the contrary the dependent is the inferior. So by keeping the Law of God, by Loving God with all heart, soul, and reason, and by loving neighbor as themselves, couples which are by nature or by circumstance barren in terms of children are, in the eyes of God supremely fruitful in the multiplication of God’s love thereby fulfilling the commandment set to the first marriage. Further a marriage may nevertheless establish a union of one flesh and be blessed by God without sexual union for the Apostle admonishes the Corinthians “Do not deprive one another, except by common consent for an appropriate period, so that you might have leisure for prayer, and then come together again so that the Accuser might not test you through your inconstancy. Now I say this as a lenient concession, not as ordinance. I want all human beings to be just like me” (1 Corinthians 7:5-7) making clear that the command not to deprive one another is contingent on the inability of the couple to resist the Accuser in the absence of sexual intercourse one with another. But to those marriages in which is given the gift of celibacy to both members, so that they have leisure for prayer, what a grace is given by God and what joy to the Apostle.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reply to Objection 3. </span><span face="" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To condemn one or more particular instances of an act is not thereby to condemn all instances of said act. When the Apostle condemns those unions of men with men and women with women, it is clear that he is condemning that which is contrary to nature and is resultant of adoring and worshipping creation rather than the Creator only (Romans 1:25). Further we know that God through the Apostle did not intend this condemnation to be universal in nature for further in the same discourse and as an example of the same surrendering by God to reprobation we see that some are defiant of parents (Romans 1:30). Yet Perpetua is commended by God with visions and comfort despite defiance of her father saying in her own account:</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Then, when it came my turn, my father appeared with my son, dragged me from the step, and said: ‘Perform the sacrifice--have pity on your baby!’ </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hilarionus the governor, who had received his judicial powers as the successor of the late proconsul Minucius Timinianus, said to me: ‘Have pity on your father’s grey head; have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.’</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘I will not’, I retorted.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you a Christian?’ said Hilarianus.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I said: ‘Yes I am.’</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we know that those actions described by the Apostle are not here, best understood as universal but as particular condemnations fitting only to particular circumstances as a result of particular and wilful blindness to the glory of God.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further, we know that sexual intercourse in marriage is commended to us as a tactic for resisting the impassioned tempers and sexual incontinence foisted on us by our passions and by the Accuser, for the Apostle clearly tells us “But if they cannot remain continent, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to be afire” (1 Corinthians 7:9). But what help would this instruction be to those who are, in their own natures, attracted to members of their own sex rather than to those of a divers sex if marriage were limited to a union between those of divers sexes? It would be useless, and as we know that words from the mouth of God do not return empty but accomplish that which God desires (Isaiah 55:11) it is clear that this word--that it is better to marry than to be afire--is an exhortation establishing marriage as a refuge built for members of the same sex as much as for members of divers sexes.</span></p><div><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="" style="font-family: roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Note that this work is psuedopigraphical in its entirety, having been composed by me and by me alone. While the argument I express in this piece is in earnest, it amused me to see if I could write it in the style of the <i>Summa Theologica</i> in some rough and ready way.</b></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For More of my Writing on LGBTQ+ Identities and Faith</span></span></h3><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a series in defense of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual relationships using standard Evangelical interpretive techniques and looking at the standard "cobber passages":</span></span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-42f4cf8e-7fff-5a2b-8eca-d83d9a568126"><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-couple-of-odd-words-my-christian.html" target="_blank">Part 1: A Couple of Odd Words</a></div></span></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/romans-1-my-christian-defense-of-lgb.html">Part 2: Romans 1</a></div></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/romans-1-my-christian-defense-of-lgb.html">Part 3: Old Testament Passages</a></div></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-indirect-texts-my-defense-of-lgb.html" target="_blank">Part 4: The Indirect Texts</a></div></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-is-unnatural-my-defense-of-lgb.html" target="_blank">Part 5: Natural Law</a></div></li></ul><div>I have a series in defense of Transgender gender identities:</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-42f4cf8e-7fff-5a2b-8eca-d83d9a568126"><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-christian-defense-of-gender.html" target="_blank">Part 1: Introduction</a></div></span></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html" target="_blank">Part 2: Gender and Soul</a></div></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html">Part 3: Direct Scripture References</a></div></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html" target="_blank">Part 4: Indirect Scripture References</a></div></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-christian-defense-of-identities-of.html">Part 5: Positive Arguments</a></div></li><li><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2018/02/debunking-long-list-of-anti-trans-verses.html">Addendum: More Scripture References</a></li></ul><div>I have a piece on Intersex Persons</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-42f4cf8e-7fff-5a2b-8eca-d83d9a568126"><div><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-christian-defense-of-intersex-persons.html" target="_blank">A Christian Defense of Intersex Persons</a></div></div></span></li></ul></div><div>And I have a number of other pieces on the the topic</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-42f4cf8e-7fff-5a2b-8eca-d83d9a568126"><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/03/bareface-cs-lewis-and-identity-claims.html" target="_blank">Bareface: CS Lewis and the Identity Claims of Transgender People</a></div></span></li><li><div><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/search/label/Theology">My Miracle</a></div></li></ul></div><div><br /></div></span>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-28996535662332267222020-07-26T23:02:00.002-04:002020-09-04T16:34:06.317-04:00Libertarians are Complicated Y'all<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QZBo4dtVHmc/Xx5A3j48dUI/AAAAAAAAV4I/A29nBjxvOaQooqPqN-Gwi0rnVRGDOojZACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/1280px-Don%2527t_Tread_On_Anyone_%2528Libertarian%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="1280" height="329" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QZBo4dtVHmc/Xx5A3j48dUI/AAAAAAAAV4I/A29nBjxvOaQooqPqN-Gwi0rnVRGDOojZACLcBGAsYHQ/w625-h329/1280px-Don%2527t_Tread_On_Anyone_%2528Libertarian%2529.png" width="625" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>When I was 26 I was told (accurately) that I would eventually get over my "libertarian phase". I think it took longer than people expected and I took a different exit than most of my friends and family thought I would back in 2008 but they weren't wrong in assuming that my Libertarianism (yes I was a registered member of the Libertarian Party USA) wouldn't last. It is fairly rare for people to stay Libertarian, and I would argue that that is because American style Libertarianism is a a fundamentally contradictory political movement. <div><br /></div><div>But I want to talk about the Libertarians sociologically before I discuss the contradiction at the heart of their political philosophy.</div><div><br /></div><div>The fact of the matter is that Libertarianism—both as a party and as a political philosophy—offers more individual liberty than either the GOP or the Democrats. The big caveat to this is that they are also sold out almost entirely to the idea that, in a perfectly free market—which they maintain has not yet really existed in the modern world—corporations and wealth would be entirely unable to impose any limits on individual liberty. Thus, on an economic level, Libertarians tend to be more radical than most Republicans, while on the level of social freedoms, libertarians are—on average—more radical than the majority of Democrats. It is worth noting that the Libertarian party <a href="https://www.lp.org/news-press-releases-libertarian-party-four-decade-advocacy-for-marriage-equality-pays-off-with-us/" target="_blank">supported same sex marriage</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_States)#:~:text=Its%20Statement%20of%20Principles%20begins,the%20rights%20of%20the%20individual%22.&text=In%202018%2C%20the%20Libertarian%20Party,the%20decriminalization%20of%20sex%20work.">drug legalization</a> long before the Democratic party did. This is important because that radical nature of the Libertarian party plays a significant role in the operation of the LP as a transition ground. </div><div><br /></div><div>The long and short of this is that the Libertarian Party in the United States is probably best understood as a transitional structure. Said another way, to be a Libertarian in the US is usually to be on your way to something else, it is the rare libertarian who will end up as a lifelong registered member of the Libertarian Party. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is, I want to argue, an important way to think about libertarians—not only because it is the most accurate way to think about them—because pragmatically structuring libertarianism as a transitional political identity allows us to make sense of some of the contradictions within the party itself and also to interact with libertarians in a way which will allow for the greatest chances for conversion to healthier, more informed political positions. For the purpose of clarity lets therefore distinguish between <i>Transitional Libertarians (TL)—</i>those libertarians who will eventually transition to some other political affiliation—and <i>Lifetime Libertarians (LL)—</i>those libertarians whose Libertarian affiliation will last their lives—while acknowledging that in the present every Libertarian has to be granted the respect we would want if we were in that position. Nobody likes to be told that their political identity is "just a phase" and we will do no good by insisting on the point viz. any individual libertarian. My recommendation is therefore to add a third category, let's call them <i>Schrodinger's Libertarians (SL)—</i>people who identify as libertarian or libertarian-ish and but who will eventually resolve into either <i>Transitional </i>or <i>Lifetime Libertarians. </i>This category should allow us to maintain the realist awareness that many libertarians will ultimately transition to something else without requiring us to insult individuals who have chosen their politics in good faith and not intend to ever transition to some other politics.</div><div><br /></div><div>With all of that structure in place, I want to look at the common doors out of Libertarian affiliation and make a few observations about the forces which seem most at play in determining which door will be chosen by any given SL.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">The Democrat Door</h4><div>I suspect that it is actually fairly uncommon for libertarians to transition directly into mainstream Democrats even when their views have shifted towards the left economically mostly because—and this is going to be a recurring theme—political edginess is a significant draw factor towards becoming a libertarian in the first place. Keep in mind that there are very few libertarian households in the country and so the number of children who are raised in libertarian families and unreflectively register as libertarians because "that's what my parents believe and its what I was raised with" is vanishingly small. My experience has been that most of the SL's who transition to mainline or progressive Democrats are Christians (often but not always of the ex-evangelical or ex-fundamentalist variety) for whom libertarianism ends up serving as an acceptable way out of being a Republican. In the Evangelical world, to announce that you are a Democrat is to invite significant social stigma if not outright religious hostility, whereas to announce that you are a Libertarian usually results in little more that being treated as a little eccentric. Certainly, this was my experience. While I did not end up taking the Democrat door out of libertarianism, I did come in through the Republican door and even in the Bible Belt I found that proclaiming my libertarian-ness did not meet with significant resistance. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now the some of reasons that libertarianism is acceptable in the southern Bible Belt are more than a little troubling including a history of Libertarian-Christian Nationalist alliances, and the opportunity to present an inclusive face to the world while working towards a state-run oppression (see the alt-right door below) as well as an application of the separation of church and state which is frankly more consistent than what is offered by the GOP. A good many of the Christians—and I again include myself here—who are now on the side of marriage equality took a first step in that direction based on the libertarian understanding that the a person's right to civil marriage should not be denied by the state. Christian Libertarians making that case in 2011 were often given a far more gracious hearing than Christian Democrats. </div><div><br /></div><div>When these folks leave libertarianism through the Democrat door—progressive or moderate—the shift is often contemporaneous with a "official" move out of White American Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism. </div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">The Alt-Right Door</h4><div>I want to spend a little extra time on this door because I think it can be one of the hardest to understand, but is also one of the most important and influential insofar as this path <i>through</i> libertarianism is one which I take to be one of the broadest paths into American style fascism, particularly for Christians in the United States. It is, of course, rather ironic that libertarianism—a political ideology which prides itself on being a maximalist defender of individual rights over and against government—has turned out to be one of the best, most effective tools for American fascist recruitment over the last thirty to fifty years, but it makes sense once we understand the history of certain movements; the explanation is not so much logical as historical.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Libertarian party was founded in 1971 as a party representing radically free market economics and as well as individual liberties. Essentially, at a time when Barry Goldwater and his new Republican Party were using the language and thinking of limited Austrian economics, the Libertarians went in for a double helping of what was, for the Republican party of the 70's, a political/economic seasoning. The big innovation of the Libertarian party was the addition of maximal individual liberty and anti-interventionism (views which put them at odds back then with the Goldwater/Nixon Republican ideology). While they don't love to be reminded of this, official Libertarian ideology exists as a mid-point between Goldwater republicanism and Anarchocapitalism. What is important for our purposes is that Libertarians are, from a particular point of view, radicals who are really committed to the politics which Republicans mostly only pay lip service to. It is incorrect to think of them as extremist Republicans but, because so many actual Republicans think of them that way, it is also important to understand that Republicans who are looking to be more hard-core in their politics are likely to be drawn to Libertarianism specifically because it is less compromising on ideals which, for the GOP are usually pretexts for critique of Democrats rather than real values.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then came the Christian Nationalists. The intellectual origins of the contemporary Christian Nationalist movement in this country largely go back to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Weyrich">Paul Weyrich</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Rushdoony">R.J. Rushdoony</a>. Of the two, Weyrich was the politician and Rushdoony was the academic. Both were evil, Machiavellian men and both were fond of libertarianism. Economically the hard-core free market views of the libertarians seems to have appealed to both Weyrich and Rushdoony, but Rushdoony also seems to have valued libertarianism because of it's hard core commitment to federalism and individual rights. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is a matter of his record from his own published books that Rushdoony was a huge booster of "lost cause" history, admired the mythos of the "genteel" confederacy and even believed that race-based slavery was a justified and Christian practice. He was also aware of the fact that these were views with little to no mainstream acceptance in the 70's and 80's. And here comes the key to understanding the appeal of libertarianism to American Fascists. In the context of a country which treats blatantly racist and fascist views as anathema and taboo, the ideology which will offer the most functional support for someone who holds those views is the party which, honestly, intellectually, and <i>consistently</i>, stands against federal authority, and against the suppression of views which even they find most abhorrent. Any Libertarian will be against federal guidelines around what should appear in history textbooks <i>even if that means that history textbooks in southern states contain blatant falsehoods and misleading omissions on the subjects of slavery, the civil war, jim crow, and the civil rights movement</i>. Any Libertarian will be against federal overreach <i>including hate crimes law </i>Any libertarian will be against restrictions on free speech, <i>even restrictions on the public expression of racist, homophobic, sexist or transphobic incitement. </i>Of course the flip side of this among Lifetime (genuine) Libertarians, is consistent support of Libertarians for very good causes (see the beginning of this post), but among Christian Nationalists and other fascist-leaning or full-fascist groups, Libertarianism provides a socially acceptable platform for opposing anti-fascist measures. Rushdoony recognized this and, knit his racist, Christo-fascist following (you will most often see them referred to as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology">dominionists</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theonomy">theonomists</a> these days) into Weyrich's moral majority as an anchor to the "libertarian-ish" wing of the Republican Party, with significant periodic spillover into the Libertarian party of the USA.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The upshot of all of this is that there are a significant number of Christo-fascists and other alt-right ghouls hanging around Libertarian spaces both using Libertarianism as a stalking horse for their authoritarian goals, or working to recruit folks who are radicals by temperament and who are inclined to feel that mainstream America is both too tepid and paradoxically too hostile towards their concerns. </div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">The Republican Door</h4><div>This door is, I think, the most boring—though not the least used—primarily because it fits a common trope in American political culture. The Republican door is the one that TL's mostly age out through. The standard American trope is that we mellow and grow more conservative as we age. While Millenials and, to some extent Gen-X—they got wierd—seem to be resisting this trend, the trope itself remains as a bit of conventional wisdom. and the fact remains that it is not that hard to find Republicans who will talk about having been libertarians when they were younger but who "realized it just wasn't that realistic" as they aged and moderated themselves into the Republican party. I know of a very few Democrats with this story but my time as a registered Libertarian introduced me to quite a few Republicans in this category. My own impression (and this is now entirely anecdotal) is that ex-libertarian Republicans who aged out the Republican door are likely to be more reasonable on social issues in general and tend to get uncomfortable around the alt-right crowd. Some have become #neverTrump Republicans but they are more likely to have stopped paying all that much attention to politics and "the culture war" leave their bank accounts alone and they aren't likely to interfere with the youth or the left so long as it doesn't interfere with their lives too much. </div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">The Weird Door</h4><div>I am using this as a catch-all for the other politics people end up with as they transition out of Libertarianism. It includes a wide variety of Anarchists and communists, as well as a few Greens, and some religious non-particpants. In my own case, I left Libertarianism in a vaguely leftward direction and after a few years trying to figure things out, ended up a weird sort of overly political anarcho-pacifist. Obviously, there will be a lot of variety among these folks but I suspect that we have a few strong commonalities. I suspect that a lot of us who leave Libertarianism by this door entered through the GOP—which is by far the largest door into the Libertarian Party. In this we share a commonality with the Democrat door people insofar as libertarianism offers a socially acceptable alternative to a Republicanism which no longer fit. At the same time, like the fascists, we are drawn to libertarianism for its radicalism and its refusal to compromise in the face of GOP ideological torpidity. This is why those on the left who reach out and dialogue with SLs in good faith are doing good work insofar as they are interacting with someone who is already likely to be radicalized in some direction and who—if approached honestly and with robust and rigorous political and ethical debate—may well choose to focus that passion and energy on behalf of justice and the marginalized, but who is also supremely vulnerable to alt-right propaganda.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h4><div>I am sure there are other doors (at a minimum, there are a percentage of SLs who turn out to be Lifetime Libertarians, but that gets beyond the scope of this post) which could be imagined and other taxonomies which might turn out to be more accurate and more helpful. The great strength of this analysis is, I hope, its capacity to help us relate to libertarians in a more helpful way. There is, on the left especially, a bit of a tendency to be dismissive of libertarians on the understandable but ultimately unjustified grounds that they are nearly all crypto-fascists. That is, the Left had a tendency to treat all libertarians as transitional libertarians who are inevitably going to choose the alt-right door. This belief can be self-fulfilling since a Schrodinger's Libertarian who is dismissed by the left and whose honest questions are—again understandably given the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ">well established tactics of the alt-right</a>—treated as bad faith trolling techniques, but who is treated with sympathy by the alt-right, is far more likely to ultimately leave through the alt-right door. </div><div><br /></div><div>My recommendation is that Libertarians ought be be granted a greater degree of the benefit of the doubt. I want to urge all non-libertarians to really consider adopting the <i>Shrodinger's Libertarians</i> category and beginning from that stance when interacting with people who claim a libertarian political identity. My only further caveat is that it is vitally important—for reasons of common decency as well as effective persuasion—to treat libertarians as serious political thinkers who are operating in good faith just as long as it is reasonable to do so. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the next installment in this series I hope to take a close look at what Libertarians actually believe and why I have concluded that there is a contradiction at the heart of libertarianism.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Post Script</h4><div>If you haven't already done so, please watch the Innuendo Studios video <i>How to Radicalize a Normie</i> as it is one of the more important pieces of anti-fascist work I have encountered recently and has a significant impact on this topic.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P55t6eryY3g" width="320" youtube-src-id="P55t6eryY3g"></iframe></div><div><br /></div>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-40639754528444202382020-05-17T16:33:00.002-04:002020-05-18T21:41:28.138-04:00Two Ways of Seeing Education are in Tension and they are both TrueI teach history as my day job. Specifically, I teach world history to high school students. In that capacity I have become increasingly aware that my profession exists in a place of tension between two ideas of what education is, lets call them <i>Education Proper (EP) </i>and <i>Education as Certification (EC). </i> In the context of the coronavirus shutdown this tension has increased almost to—and frankly probably past—the breaking point.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HvxUtkyBxlw/XsGeNV1e1PI/AAAAAAAAU6U/w9IALQbxtQIZ-K-XfB0ag1Ja-yCXCm2BgCK4BGAsYHg/graduation-cap-3430714_1920.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HvxUtkyBxlw/XsGeNV1e1PI/AAAAAAAAU6U/w9IALQbxtQIZ-K-XfB0ag1Ja-yCXCm2BgCK4BGAsYHg/s320/graduation-cap-3430714_1920.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Some explanation: <i>Education Proper</i> is what most people think of first when we think about the value of education: learning skills and facts, acquiring the collection of knowledge and skills which culture and government have decided make up a sort of lowest common denominator for active engagement in our society. There are, of course, many many legitimate critiques which can be and have been made of the particular set. Ours in the US is messy and has evolved only slightly from something designed to shape people into straight white cis male factory workers or (if they are more successful) businessmen. Despite that, there is a sort of general agreement that certain skills (reading, writing, arithmetic, a modicum of critical thinking, a basic history of the nation and even more basic history of the world, a rough understanding of biology, chemistry, and physics, exposure to music, and an assortment of fine arts etc...) will help a young person to live a more rewarding/flourishing life. In fact the whole justification for the idea of public education—as I understand it the real motivation may have been more sinister—lies in the understanding that the attainment of this body of knowledge and these skill represent a basic human good and should therefore be guaranteed to everyone regardless of income. <div><br /></div><div>So far so good. I got into teaching because I believe in the value of <i>Education Proper. </i>I genuinely believe that in teaching students to engage in historical thinking and analysis and in ushering them into the story of humanity (flawed and incomplete as all tellings of that story are) I am benefiting both my students and society as a whole. The tension comes with the introduction of the second theory of what education is, one which I like far less but which I cannot deny the reality of. <i>Education as Certification</i> is something which I think developed out of a practical recognition of the accuracy of EP. Because attaining an education situates a person to be more successful in many of the jobs our society happens to value (and thus more likely to be able to support themselves) education has taken on a particular social and monetary value. And because we use grades and grade point averages to represent the quality of a person's education as assessed by the school that educated them, a student who fails to earn a high school diploma is at a significant disadvantage in society. Thus EC has resulted in teachers finding ourselves in the position of gatekeepers to opportunity. As a world history teacher, students in my state are not eligible for a high school diploma unless they pass my class. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Here, then, is the core tension: According the the EP model I am doing a student a disservice by assigning them a grade which does not reflect their actual achievement in my subject. If the grade I assign is too high then the student will be judged unfairly and will be put in situations for which they are unprepared. If the grade I assign is too low then the student will not have an appropriately high estimation of their abilities and may not attempt challenges which they are actually able to handle. A student who receives a passing grade from me without sufficient proficiency in world history will be caught flat footed in society. And this is far more stark an issue for elementary and middle school students. A 4th grader who graduates to 5th grade without having a sufficient grasp of 4th grade material will be at a severe disadvantage in a 5th grade class and curriculum built on the expectation that all students in the class <i>have already acquired</i> a certain degree of proficiency. This means that 5th grade will be more difficult for the already-struggling student who needs <i>more </i>help. To promote a student before they are ready is to set them up for failure.</div><div><br /></div><div>But according to the EC model, I am doing a student a disservice when I do not assign them a passing grade. In the Covid-lockdown world of education, students with less access to technology are at a severe disadvantage relative to their peers. As a result of this economic and material inequity, these students often lack access to educational help and content which is available to their wealthier peers. According to the EC model, I would be perpetuating and magnifying exiting social inequities if I denied these students a passing grade in my class. Certainly it is not their fault that they have failed to attain (or at least to demonstrate) the necessary proficiency in my subject—the circumstances simply did not allow them the opportunity. But that does not change the fact that they have not acquired the proficiency which a passing grade is thought to represent. </div><div><br /></div><div>All of this puts educators in what seems to me to be an impossible double-bind regarding any student who fails to demonstrate proficiency in our subjects. I want to repeat that this double-bind is always present as a result of societal racism, classism, and sexim (traditional, hetero, and cis) but that it is magnified significantly under required distance-learning conditions. Both the EC and EP models are accurate representations of the world of education, and yet in the case of this student, injustice is magnified by the truth of the EP model if they receive a passing grade which their proficiency does not merit (instead of being required to repeat and pass the course in order to receive a passing grade), and injustice is magnified by the truth of the EC model if they are denied a passing grade (and the social/material advantages which come with that certification) despite the fact that their failure to become sufficiently proficient is not their fault.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't really have answers this time, but I think this question is important. Feel free to leave your thoughts in comments.</div>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-60891036614196524932020-02-02T16:13:00.000-05:002020-02-02T16:15:45.007-05:00Characteristics of the Unwise - Wisdom of the Vikings Part 13<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Worry</b></div>
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The unwise man</div>
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is awake all night</div>
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worries over and again.</div>
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When morning rises</div>
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he is restless still,</div>
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his burden as before.</div>
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<b>Face Value</b></div>
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The unwise man</div>
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assumes that only</div>
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friends laugh to his face.</div>
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At the table with the wise</div>
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he cannot tell</div>
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what they say behind his back<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0roxtpxLh0I/Xjc7QgiIx_I/AAAAAAAAS-0/mkBOmMTq7cQeuFc5f8Oh0yqxKoFW4oE9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/real-floki-from-vikings-1024x657.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="1024" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0roxtpxLh0I/Xjc7QgiIx_I/AAAAAAAAS-0/mkBOmMTq7cQeuFc5f8Oh0yqxKoFW4oE9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/real-floki-from-vikings-1024x657.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: left;">Note: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: left;">This is part 13 in an ongoing series (the series starts </span><a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/04/wisdom-of-vikings-from-havamal-part-1.html" style="background-color: white; color: #7c93a1; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">HERE</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: left;">) bringing together the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">Hávamál (a collection of Norse wisdom poetry) and the still-evolving rules and mores of the Internet, particularly as they are developing in the realm of social media.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Because humans are a social species, we all have a tendency to create a sort of mask of false-self which we use to interact with our world. We "prepare a face to meet the faces that ]we] meet". Of course this makes vulnerability, relationship, and connection far more difficult to achieve and plenty has been said about it already—if you are interested I would recommend <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability?language=en" target="_blank">the work of Brene Brown</a>. Certainly the Vikings are not a culture with which we generally associate vulnerability. The same ought to be said of social media and internet culture. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Living in the context of a functional anarchy and without the protections of a state, reputation was more important for the survival of a medieval Icelander than it is for most of us today. As a social species, we are fundamentally dependent on one another and threat of social isolation is ultimately existential. People literally die as a result—both direct and indirect—of social isolation. The psychological upshot of this human dynamic is to reinforce the urge to guard our reputations closely, to put great effort into defending our names and characters. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">All of that is natural and the degree to which it is true in modern off-line meat-space society is intensified by an order of magnitude in the contexts of medieval Iceland and the social internet. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">And yet, the best option—at the end of the day the only workable option—is the massively counter-intuitive choice to embrace authenticity and vulnerability. As the wise among the Vikings remind us, it is the </span><i style="font-size: 13.2px;">un</i><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">wise who "is awake at night over and over again". Bring to mind that person who is so afraid of being seen to have been wrong that she cannot ever concede a point in a discussion, or that friend who can never graciously accept a single barb as his expense. Have you noticed that they seem to become almost tone deaf online? Have you noticed those people (the unwise) who think they are "winning" when to every reader they are only making greater and greater fools of themselves?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">At the table with the wise</span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">he cannot tell</span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">what they say behind his back.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">So take a breath. Be willing to be seen. Admit when you are wrong. Be quiet when you could talk sometimes. And be willing to walk away when you need to. Don't stay up too late replaying a discussion, trying to formulate the perfect answer. When morning comes you will still be restless.</span></span></div>
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Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-13633717371502143792020-01-14T10:59:00.001-05:002021-10-27T10:28:48.596-04:00C.S. Lewis, Contrapoints, and Canceling<div>
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Introduction:</h4>
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The best (by which I mean the strongest and most reasonable) argument I have ever encountered against <i>canceling</i>, <i>cancel culture, </i>or <i>call-out culture</i> is the one recently made by Natalie Wynn in her video essay <i>Cancelled</i>. The best argument I have ever encountered in favor of the practice was made by C.S. Lewis in his book <i>Reflections on the Psalms.</i> Unsurprisingly given the quality of these two minds—dissimilar though the personalities behind them are—both arguments are exceptionally nuanced and more than a little ambivalent. Neither Lewis nor Wynn are quite able to make up their <br />
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minds on the subject.<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2fXxMTZIlNg/Xh31pvh4NXI/AAAAAAAASyY/CCTCgqZXmwIY43F7PeaNThbvTVDmkSV6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Medea%252C_con_los_hijos_muertos%252C_huye_de_Corinto_en_un_carro_tirado_por_dragones_%2528Museo_del_Prado%2529.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1133" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2fXxMTZIlNg/Xh31pvh4NXI/AAAAAAAASyY/CCTCgqZXmwIY43F7PeaNThbvTVDmkSV6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Medea%252C_con_los_hijos_muertos%252C_huye_de_Corinto_en_un_carro_tirado_por_dragones_%2528Museo_del_Prado%2529.jpg" width="226" /></a><br />
Please do not take my celebration of the arguments by Wynn and Lewis (both of which I will discuss below) as a suggestion that either of them has somehow managed some sort of definitive treatment of the subject—neither has—or that someone interested in the topic would be sufficiently informed by engaging with their arguments. What I <i>am</i> saying is that their arguments—each taken as a whole—are the strongest and most reasonable for and against cancelling; both are best experienced within the context of a much larger contemporary discussion.<br />
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There is probably also something intriguing to me about the social and historical location of these two folks and the way in which their respective positions are opposite what one might predict. Lewis was an Oxford don and celebrated author. Wynn is a purposefully lapsed philosophy student and trans woman who is best known as a video essayist. To be fair, the two are both white, share an education in philosophy, a particularly winsome way with words, opposition to fascism, and a tendency to incorporate alcohol into the text of their work but beyond that the contrast is pretty stark. Then of course I am drawing on the theory work of a black neo-pagan anarchist for my overall analysis. And yet it is the curmudgeonly Oxford don who provides the argument in favor of cancelling while the trans leftist vloger supplies the argument against.<br />
<br />
While I intend to look first at Lewis' argument in favor of cancelling, I am going to quote Wynn in the process definition she gave for cancelling as it was first intended as the basis for my working definition in this piece:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It [canceling] started as a vigilante strategy for bringing justice and accountability to powerful people who previously had been immune to any consequences for their actions.</blockquote>
Cancelling then, for the purposes of this piece, will be defined as the bottom-up imposition of social opprobrium against someone who is understood to have violated community moral standards.<br />
<br />
<h3>
C.S. Lewis:</h3>
<br />
<br />
What I have called Lewis' argument for cancelling makes up most of the chapter titled <i>Connivance</i> in <i>Reflections on the Psalms. </i>Lewis intended argument in the chapter has to do with understanding those<br />
Psalms in which the Psalmist professes hate for those whom he takes to be the enemies of God. The phenomenon, as Lewis sees it, is then the question of how we ought to relate to those we take to be evil—should we hate them? Lewis' first thought is that we should reject such suggestions altogether:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now obviously all this—taking upon oneself to hate those whom one thinks God's enemies, avoiding the society of those one things wicked, judging our neighbors, thinking oneself "too good" for some of them (not in the snobbish way, which is a trivial sin in comparison, but in the deepest meaning of the words "too good")—is an extremely dangerous, almost a fatal, game.It leads straight to "Pharisaism"(1) in the sense which Our Lord's own teaching has given to that word. It leads not only to the wickedness but to the absurdity of those who in later times came to be called the "unco guid".</blockquote>
but by the end of the paragraph he has admitted a countervailing factor, the analysis of which ends up forming the bulk of the chapter:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But we must not be Pharisaical even to the Pharisees(1). It is foolish to read such passages without realising that a quite genuine problem is involved. And I am not at all confident about the solution.</blockquote>
Without using the term, what Lewis identifies is the problem of <i>social capital</i> and the way in which it is accumulated by the wicked in the absence of public approbation. Lewis describes the problem so well that it is worth quoting at length:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ucxkUS7JeSA/Xh3kHB1pZyI/AAAAAAAASx4/6qDmUjSe-J0nVOgBkw9KXrbKxwqMZN1zgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/C.S.%2BLewis.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="809" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ucxkUS7JeSA/Xh3kHB1pZyI/AAAAAAAASx4/6qDmUjSe-J0nVOgBkw9KXrbKxwqMZN1zgCLcBGAsYHQ/s200/C.S.%2BLewis.jpg" width="157" /></a>We hear it said again and again that the editor of some newspaper is a rascal, that some politician is a liar, that some official person is a tyrannical Jack-in-office and even dishonest, that some celebrity (film-star, author, or what not) leads a most vile and mischievous life. <i>And the general rule in modern society is that no one refuses to meet any of these people and to behave towards them in the friendliest and most cordial manner</i>. People will even go out of their way to meet them. They will not even stop buying the rascally newspaper, thus paying the owner for the lies, the detestable intrusions upon private life and private tragedy, the blasphemies and the pornography, which they profess to condemn.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have said there is a problem here, but there are really two. One is social and almost political. It may be asked whether that state of society in which rascality undergoes no social penalty is a healthy one; whether we should not be a happier country if certain important people were pariahs as the hangman once was—blackballed at every club, dropped by every acquaintance, and liable to the print of riding-crop or fingers across the face if they were ever bold enough to speak to a respectable woman. It leads into the larger question whether the great evil of our civil life is not the fact that there seems now no medium between hopeless submission and full-dress revolution. Rioting has died out, moderate rioting. It can be argued that if the windows of various ministries and newspapers were more often broken, if certain people were more often put under pumps and (mildly—mud, not stones) pelted in the streets, we should get on a great deal better. <i>It is not wholly desirable that any man should be allowed at once the pleasures of a tyrant or a wolf's-head and also those of an honest freeman among his equals.</i> To this question I do not know the answer. <i>The dangers of a change in the direction I have outlined are very great</i>;so are the evils of our present tameness. [emphasis mine].</blockquote>
On the one hand, Lewis is concerned about what it means to live in a world in which evil (let us not be shy in calling oppression, marginalization, racism, sexism, and many of the other sins for which people are frequently subject to cancelling "evil") behavior is liberated from any social consequences. It would be one thing (and Lewis raises his concerns in this direction in <i>The Abolition of Man</i>) if the problem were that society no longer disapproved of the evil behaviors—but that is not the issue in play for Lewis here or in our contemporary discussion about cancelling. In the situation Lewis is concerned with, society still recognizes <i>that</i> the behavior is evil but has chosen not to impose any social punishment. In effect, the behavior is being called out (or is so generally well know that no call out is even necessary) but the person involved is not being canceled. Lewis reflects later on in the chapter:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Many people have a very strong desire to meet celebrated or "important" people, including those whom they disapprove, from curiosity or vanity. It gives them something to talk or even (anyone may produce a book of reminiscences) to write about. It is felt to conger distinction if the great, though odious, man recognises you in the street.</blockquote>
and he goes on to speculate about the ways in which peer pressure in combination with this dynamic can incline us towards acceptance and even embrace of what we knew to be evil before the whole process started.<br />
<br />
Throughout all of this argument in favor of censure or cancelling of those who behave wickedly Lewis makes a distinction which is both vital to him as a Christian and a basic tenet of those who, today, speak or write in favor of cancelling. In contemporary parlance we say that it is vital to always "punch up and not down", or as Lewis put it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
how ought we to behave in the presence of very bad people? I will limit this by changing "very bad people" to "very bad people who are powerful, prosperous, <i>and impenitent</i>". If they are outcasts, poor and miserable, whose wickedness obviously has not "paid", then every Christian knows the answer. Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Christ with the woman taken in adultery, Christ dining with publicans, is our example. [emphasis mine]</blockquote>
Thus I think it fair to summarize Lewis' view of cancelling as a dangerous practice which may nevertheless be necessary for the protection of justice and the overall health of both the individual and society but which should always target only those who are "powerful, prosperous, and impenitent".<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints):</h3>
<div>
<br />
Natalie Wynn has a whole lot to say about canceling. Given that her (first in a series?) video essay on the subject (embedded below) is more than an hour and a half long I will summarize her argument though I certainly recommend watching the entire essay as she provides a full series of examples and evidence in support of her core claims.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>As something of a sincere (if amused) content warning for constitutionally conservative folks: Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints) engages at an entirely different register from C.S. Lewis and so if you came to this post for the Lewis this could be more than a little jarring. Wynn uses a whole lot of bawdy humor, sarcasm, and cussing. If that isn't your thing, be warned.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div>
Wynn breaks cancelling <i>as it is currently practiced </i>(I want to come back to this later) into 7 "Tropes" each of which she unpacks and illustrates over the course of her essay. In contrast to Lewis, who was working almost entirely with hypotheticals, Wynn cites events either from her own experience of being canceled or from well known and/or well documented cancelings. Thus while Lewis' writing on the subject works from general cases—what <i>sort</i> of situations and people seem to merit canceling—and allow the reader to discern in particular instances whether a given person or action qualifies, Wynn works from the particular—such and such things happened when so and so was canceled—towards generalized conclusions about whether or not canceling is a valid/moral/appropriate action. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have cited Wynn's definition of canceling above and already it should be clear that Wynn is at least as nuanced as Lewis in here analysis. Although she comes down against canceling—or at least against canceling in many of the contexts in which it currently occurs—she recognizes some important values in it; specifically she recognizes that canceling is/can be/started as a tool for bringing <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5805290335961306135#editor/target=post;postID=2846691955337703020;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=17;src=postname" target="_blank">justice</a> into situations where, because of—to borrow from Lewis again—"people who are powerful, prosperous, and impenitent" have been able to escape justice. Her argument is thus not against the tool as such but against what she sees as contemporary and common misuses of a powerful tool.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<h4>
1. The Presumption of Guilt</h4>
<br />
The first of Wynn's seven Tropes of canceling is <b>the presumption of guilt</b>.<b> </b>Specifically because contemporary canceling began as a corrective to an unjust legal system—by which I very explicitly mean a legal system in which those with prosperity and power are often able to avoid many legal consequences for their actions—it does not claim or require the same standards of proof as a courtroom. In fact canceling is, at its core, theorized as a practice of the dispossessed. If you have really been wronged—wronged in a way that is common among people like you—by someone who is protected from justice by a legal system which is biased in favor of people like the person who wronged you, then speaking out and simply hoping to be believed may well be your best or only option.<br />
<br />
Obviously this trope is, and clearly has been, subject to tremendous abuse. But the presumption of guilt is not a flat or neutral trope. In fact (and Wynn references this in her essay) it is really the presumption of guilt on the part of the powerful when the accusation is made by someone who is marginalized. On this level it can (or, at best, <i>should</i>) operate as a corrective to an unjust legal system. The problem (and this analysis comes from Angie), is that in both liberal and leftist contexts, marginalization is itself a source of social power specifically because both liberals and leftists axiomatically accept the proposition that existing power structures are unjust. This means that an accusation, by dint of being also a claim to the status of marginalization, becomes simultaneously the acquisition of marginalization which thereby "confirms" the legitimacy of the accusation. Of course the very axiomatically accepted belief which drives this problem has a strong historical and evidentiary basis: existing power structures are <i>in fact</i> unjust, do <i>in fact</i> server the interests of the powerful, prosperous, and impenitent, and it is <i>in fact</i> reasonable therefore to weight our judgement in favor of the socially, legally, historically marginalized. Looming behind all of this, of course, are two intractable facts that punishment of the innocent is, itself, unjust; and that real victims of real oppression are often not believed.<br />
<br />
It strikes me that the tension created by this trope will remain so long as the unjust situation which gave rise to it (or at least the positive form of it: "believe marginalized accusers when their claims are credible") remains in place. While life in the tension between this trope and the presumption of innocence is uncomfortable, I will hazard that living in that tension is more just than simply resolving it in favor of either of the two dynamics which create it.<br />
<br />
<h4>
2. Abstraction</h4>
</div>
<div>
<br />
Wynn explains abstraction, the second trope, as the process of shifting from specifics of an individual persons specific misdeed (person X did Y) to the claim that that person does that sort of deed. Wynn uses the example of a young you tube semi-celebrity who was accused of something fairly specific which was then abstracted into a much larger species of evil, a species which contains acts far more heinous than the act of which he was initially accused. This trope does seem to be a particularly large problem in the context of the current internet. In tandem with the third trope (discussed below) it has the effect of shifting accusations from things people have done (and may or may not have repented) to identifying them as evildoers as such.<br />
<br />
<h4>
3. Essentialism</h4>
</div>
<div>
<br />
Essentialism is, in Wynn's analysis, the process of identifying the accused with the crime. On one level this seems like a ubiquitous enough process—we do it all the time when anyone other than ourselves (or maybe those we love) commit acts of evil—it is the linguistic shift from "Bob stole something" to "Bob is a thief", the identification of a person with their action(s). Now the process of deciding how many times someone needs to do something before we should identify them with it (essentialize them in Wynn's parlance) is often a subjective and vague one. Kill one person in cold blood and it does not seem at all unfair to call you a murderer; lie once in order to avoid an awkward social situation and it is probably unreasonable (even if technically accurate) to say that you <i>are</i> a liar. Notice that the effect of this trope is magnified by the one above (abstraction) because, in general, the more an action is considered evil, the more reasonable it feels to essentialize it. Thus if someone—let's say Bob—were to once take home a ream of printer paper (the specific act) it would not necessarily feel reasonable to essentialize them as a thief, but once the action has been abstracted (Bob steals) it is much easier to essentialize Bob as "a thief".<br />
<br />
It is around this point that Wynn starts to make the significant (if largely unstated) distinction between canceling as it could or should be and canceling as it often occurs. In fact from this point in her essay forward it becomes fairly clear that Wynn's tropes in fact frame what we might call "toxic canceling" as distinguished from canceling in theory or canceling as such. Put another way, we can read/watch Wynn's essay as a critique of how Tropes 2-7 have damaged a social justice tool which could otherwise be used well, if carefully.<br />
<br /></div>
<h4>
4. Pseudo-moralism/Pseudo Intellectualism</h4>
<br />
This trope, pseudo-moralism/pseudo-intellectualism, is probably the weakest part of Wynn's argument—if only because it is always finally impossible to know another person's real intentions—but it is also the least necessary for the structure of the argument as a whole and for the conclusion. It does, however, pack a significant rhetorical punch and it sets up a parallelism with a psychology Lewis addresses, that of the <i>bandwagoner</i> or <i>conniver</i>. Whereas Wynn argues that many of the people who participate in cancelling (both those who make the initial accusation and those who participate in the actual canceling itself) operate in bad faith—that the reasons they give for canceling the various subjects are not their real reasons, that in fact they were motivated by a sort of crowd masochism and the joy of seeing apparently powerful people "taken down a notch"—Lewis spends several paragraphs (discussed above) working through the potential motives of people who choose to give evil folks a pass. In effect, whereas Wynn examines the psychology of those who cancel in bad faith, Lewis examines the psychology of those who fail to cancel in bad faith. Thus these two psychological temptations taken together serve as the Sylla and Charibdis between which a healthy culture will have to navigate<br />
<br />
In Wynn's words:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Moralism or intellectualism provide a phony pretext for the call-out. You can pretend you just want an apology, you can pretend you're just a concerned citizen who wants the person to improve. You can pretend you're simply offering up criticism when what you're really doing is attacking a person's career and reputation out of spite, envy, revenge, I mean it could be any motivation.... It's schadenfreude right? This kind of petty sadism. </blockquote>
Wynn's follows this statement with an immediate acknowledgement that not everyone involved in a given canceling is insincere but maintains that bad-faith motives must account for a significant portion of the act. The body of evidence she supplies in support of this claim are bound up in the next trope: <i>No Forgiveness. </i>Wynn effectively argues that if the stated moral or intellectual grounds for the canceling were genuine then an apology (what I think she is really getting at is evidence of what Lewis would call <i>repentance</i>) on the part of the accused ought to result in the end of the canceling—at least the sort of internet malpractice cases which Wynn is concerned with. She then supplies a significant collection of evidence that said forgiveness does not, in fact, take place.<br />
<br />
<h4>
5. No Forgiveness</h4>
<div>
<br />
It is on trope 5 that Wynn and Lewis come into near synchronicity. Remember that for Lewis, the value of call-out and/or canceling resides in it's application to the "powerful, prosperous, and <i>impenitent</i>". While Wynn chose to use the language of forgiveness, it is clear from the way she discusses the forgiveness which is withheld that she is not suggesting that there needs to be any sort of total reconciliation between the accuser and the accused (she knows as well as Lewis that it is a monstrous thing to <i>force</i> or <i>require</i> a victim to reconcile to their oppressor) only that the canceling should be revoked. The canceling endures after an apology because, in Wynn's words:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Cancelers will often dismiss an apology as "insincere" no matter how convincingly written or delivered. And of course an insincere apology is [taken as] further proof of what a machiavellian psychopath you really are. Now sometimes a good apology will calm things down for a while, but next time there's a scandal the original accusation will be raised again, as if you never apologized.</blockquote>
Where Wynn and Lewis meet is in the conclusion that, whatever its total merits, a culture which includes canceling has gone bad in the moment that it fails to provide a mechanism for redemption of the canceled or called-out. But then this is one of the ways in which I think Christianity has something really substantial to offer not just online-liberal-and-leftist-discourse but the world as a whole. Christianity is nothing if not a religion of redemption. We are resurrection people and I will argue until I am blue that a society will always be limited in any attempt to move towards justice until it learns both to unflinchingly identify and own its own evils—both structural/corporate and instantiated in individual persons—though that unflinching gaze so often feels like death, and to embrace redemption, resurrection from that death. I have written elsewhere (<a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-funeral-oration-for-cs-lewis.html" target="_blank">A Funeral Oration for C.S. Lewis</a> and <a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-resurrection-of-dead-thinkers.html" target="_blank">On the Resurrection of the Dead</a>) about what this process could look like in its application to Lewis himself as a model for applying it generally.<br />
<br />
From this point in Wynn's analysis forward she is describing a form of cancelling which is so thoroughly corrupted that Lewis would, of necessity, have been in near lock step with her in condemning it.<br />
<br />
<h4>
6. The Transitive Property of Cancellation</h4>
</div>
<div>
<br />
To her credit, this trope—the Transitive Property of Cancellation—seems to upset Wynn the most. As she describes it (and recounts her own experiences with it), the transitive property of cancellation is the dynamic whereby a failure to participate in canceling a particular person results in being canceled yourself. Wynn shares the stories of a number of people, some friends and acquaintances and some who did nothing beyond showing support for the statement of someone else who had publicly refused to cancel Wynn, who have been on the receiving end of this dynamic. The accounts are heartbreaking. Further, Wynn's account of this transitive effect further demonstrates a certain mob mentality effect which seems to occur once the canceling process has begun. Specifically where there is <i>some</i> awareness of the original "punch up not down" rule when it came to the original cancellation (of Wynn) insofar as it was justified on the basis of her social media semi-fame, the application of this transitive property has in fact resulted in attacks on, and harassment of, people against whom these attacks are unambiguous cases of "punching down".<br />
<br />
As for Lewis, while a case could be mounted that those who refuse to cancel Wynn might fall into the category of <i>band-wagoners </i>and that they would therefore merit canceling on that level, that argument founders on the fact that Lewis never even suggests that merely being a band-wagoner should rise to the level of canceling. In fact, Lewis tacitly argues against canceling band-wagoners by exemplifying the opposite.<br />
<br />
In <i>Connivance</i> Lewis outlines a specific interaction he had with a band-wagoner of the worst sort (that is, for Lewis, a band-wagoner who associates with evil in order to gain access to their evil) and throughout he carefully masks the identity of the person whom he is using for an example. The story Lewis tells about the young man is damning and his conclusion is just as cutting:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here is the perfect band-wagoner. Immediately on the decision "This is a revolting tyranny", follows the question "How can I as quickly as possible cease to be one of the victims and become one of the tyrants?" If i had been able to introduce the young man to someone in the Ministry, I think we may be sure that his manners to that hated "meddler" would have been genial and friendly in the extreme. </blockquote>
And yet, given the opportunity, Lewis declines to identify and thereby cancel even this worst of bandwagon offenders.<br />
<br />
This trope also engages in some of the <a href="https://amzn.to/37YlDIg" target="_blank">worst excesses of disgust based moral reasoning</a> but that will have to wait for a separate essay.<br />
<br />
<h4>
7. Dualism</h4>
</div>
<div>
<br />
The Dualism trope (Wynn's last) is almost inevitable given the previous 6. It amounts to an impossible reduction of all people into the simplistic categories of <i>good</i> and <i>bad</i> or <i>good</i> and <i>evil</i>. And uses that to justify nearly any quantity of abuse and harassment of the <i>evil</i>. Hopefully by now the circularity of the process is becoming clear and the <i>reduction to dualism</i> (because almost none of these processes begin with dualism) is emerging as almost an inevitability. If a group permits itself first to assume guilt (1-Presumption of Guilt), then to equate specific actions with larger and broader species of evil(2-Abstraction), reduce the accused to their offence (3-Essentialism), insulate itself against introspection(4-Pseudo-Intellectualism/Pseudo-Moralism), cut off all avenues of redemption (5-No Forgiveness), and then expand the censure to include guilt-by-association so that any speaking out in defense of the accused results in similar treatment (6-The Transitive Property of Cancelation), the reduction of the whole discourse to black and white terms is practically unavoidable. The first, second, and fifth tropes all but forbid the introduction of nuance, and the sixth trope enacts penalties against anyone who might try to introduce any significant complexity to the conversation.<br />
<br />
The great power of reductive dualism after all is its motive function. A reduction to dualism obliterates all scruples. Certainly dualism has a sort of ontological strength as well, Lewis refers to the spiritual/religious iteration of it as (next to Christianity) "the most reasonable creed on the market". Good and evil are vital as moral polarities of course, but humans and human societies do not exist at the poles, we exist along a spectrum between them. Reduction to dualism forces us to ignore the good or the evil in a person in order to act for or against them. But since all people contain both good and evil, acting for or against them will always be a mixed bag. By reducing to dualism we act against evil (and in so doing also against the good which the reducing process ignores) or for good (and in so doing also for the evil which the reducing process ignores). It is therefore vital that we, to quote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers" target="_blank">one of the godfathers of vlogging</a>) "learn to imagine one another complexly".</div>
<div>
<br />
Or as Lewis put it in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/386LspV" target="_blank">The Weight of Glory</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.</span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<h3>
Conclusion. A Reflection and Some Recommendations:</h3>
<br />
It is worth noticing that Lewis' and Wynn's arguments form a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure" target="_blank">chiasm</a>. Lewis begins from the position that canceling is wrong and then responds to his initial position with an argument that a lack of canceling is a symptom of an unhealthy culture; Wynn begins by recognizing the good and necessary role that canceling plays in situations of injustice and then responds to her initial position with an argument that, in the form it currently takes, canceling has become only another form of injustice. This chiastic structure ought to suggest a point where the two arguments meet, and that there may be some treasure buried at the spot marked X.<br />
<br />
Both Lewis and Wynn acknowledge that canceling is an attempt at correcting a particular injustice. Where Wynn refers to "bringing justice and accountability to powerful people", Lewis agrees that "It is not wholly desirable that any man should be allowed at once the pleasures of a tyrant ... and also those of an honest man". On both accounts there is a need for a mechanism for bringing at least a modicum of justice in situations where existing power structures are unable or unwilling to act. And in fact both authors are consciously dealing with cases outside of any formal justice system. Of course, there are many important reasons for the existence of the bureaucracies and official structures of legal justice, but it would be foolishness to suggest that even the best justice systems is perfect. Whether because it is built to err against wrongful punishment, because it was framed by people who themselves had broken (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc...) notions of process and justice, or simply because there are some injustices which the public does not want the state to involve itself in, there will—I would go so far as to say <i>should</i>—always be some holes.<br />
<br />
Still the fact that all justice systems have fail-points means that there are always victims without recourse to those systems, and to be content to leave things at that—to dust of our hands and walk away—is unconscionable. Thus the need which canceling attempts to meet.<br />
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<br />
And yet, as both Wynn and Lewis are aware, an unregulated, people-driven justice mechanism is one of the most dangerous things in the world; it is neither accidental nor inappropriate that the darker days of the French revolution and even the terror are frequently invoked in this conversation since the reign of terror is the natural end point <i>if, and only if, the worst excesses and distortions of canceling prevail and are then joined to the violence of the state or of the mob.</i><br />
<br />
Moving away from their point of agreement, the different perspectives and approaches that Wynn and Lewis reveal a very helpful outline of what a healthy cancel or call out culture might look like—or at least they provide us with protective guide rails.<br />
<br />
On both accounts the operation is fairly straight forward. From Wynn's argument we simply invert tropes 2-7 to generate a look at what a just cancel mechanism could look like. To that I want to then add a few principles from Lewis, namely <i>charity</i> (hoping the best for everyone) and <i>humility</i> (keeping our own weaknesses in mind). Brought together the guidelines for just cancellation would look like this:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>(Lewis) In as much as it is possible, assume the best of everyone involved.</li>
<li>(Wynn) Keep the call-out specific: What did the person do or say?</li>
<li>(Wynn) Maintain the distinction between the <i>action</i> and the <i>actor</i>. </li>
<li>(Wynn) Inasmuch as possible work to operate in good faith.</li>
<li>(Wynn) Accept apologies (at least provisionally) and pay attention to behavior and speech over time.</li>
<li>(Wynn) Allow discussion about the called-out person and respect the fact that relationships impact moral reasoning.</li>
<li>(Wynn) The <a href="http://johngreenweblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/speech-i-wrote-for-alan-conference.php" target="_blank">John Green Rule</a>—Always work the imagine the other complexly.</li>
<li>(Lewis) Engage in regular introspection, remembering that power corrupts.</li>
</ol>
<h3><br /></h3><div>
<br /></div>
Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-14745472025609487972019-12-26T14:46:00.001-05:002020-01-23T10:16:24.580-05:00The Hermeneutics of C.S. Lewis: A Review of "Reflections on the Psalms"<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. We must not use the Bible as a sort of encyclopedia out of which texts can be taken for use as weapons.</span></span></blockquote>
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4OPo6xmOZE8/XgUMz8ImN4I/AAAAAAAASho/a3p36qrL2RAYZBE8Giezk_wVUiRIIX_FACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Lewis%2Bwith%2Bbook.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="328" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4OPo6xmOZE8/XgUMz8ImN4I/AAAAAAAASho/a3p36qrL2RAYZBE8Giezk_wVUiRIIX_FACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Lewis%2Bwith%2Bbook.jpeg" width="234" /></a>Every year or so I see this C.S. Lewis quote make the social media rounds. It is inevitably cheered and championed by progressive and other non-Evangelical Christians and is scorned, challenged, and/or ignored by the Evangelical and Fundamentalist crowd. The quality of the challenge varies but the strongest one I have encountered is <a href="http://www.essentialcslewis.com/2017/08/05/ccslq-38-christ-himself-bible/" target="_blank">this post from William O'Flaherty</a> who has written an (occasionally helpful) <a href="https://amzn.to/398ckqJ" target="_blank">book on Lewis misquotes</a>. O'Flaherty's argument is that while it is not a mis-quote (he acknowledges that it comes from a letter Lewis wrote in 1958) it also should not be shared because it is from a letter and is therefore a response to a specific question (the question was about what Lewis though of the doctrine of inspiration but O'Flaherty neglects to mention this). O'Flaherty then suggests that if Lewis had wanted to write extensively or publicly on the subject of inspiration we would have an essay from him on the topic.<br />
<br />
This is not an especially good argument (it is essentially an argument from silence that the quote has been taken out of context) but it is at least <i>an</i> argument. For all of that it is an argument which fails pretty miserably as an example of C.S. Lewis scholarship. While it is true that Lewis did not write any essay on the doctrine of inspiration (one has to wonder how careful O'Flaherty is being with his word choice) Lewis did write <i>three chapters</i> on the subject of inspiration and Biblical interpretation in his book <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2EOvpQR" target="_blank">Reflections on the Psalms</a></i>.<br />
<br />
The first nine chapters of the book are roughly what you would expect from Lewis: a thematic analysis of the book of Psalms, interspersed with reflections and insights on a variety of topics. While the whole is well worth reading, Chapter 9 <i>A Word About Praising</i> is so insightful and (almost ironically) timely that it merits a detour and select quoting. Lewis project in the chapter is dealing with the "stumbling block" Lewis claims to have encountered early in his time as a Christian. In Lewis' words:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and of His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind.</blockquote>
Lewis solves this conundrum (one he thought almost embarrassingly simple to many but which I suspect many in our own age have not even risen to) by reflecting further on his own experiences of delight and love:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise--lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game--praise of weather, wines, dishes actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even some politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest , and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least. The good critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read. The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal; the dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all.</blockquote>
A few years worth of meditation and spiritual growth lie in those words.<br />
<br />
And for all of that wealth (the above digression is the smallest sampling, each chapter contains gems of similar worth), it is Lewis' treatment of Scripture and Scripture interpretation in chapters ten, eleven, and twelve which I was most strongly driven to write about.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Lewis' Hermeneutics</h3>
<div>
<br />
In the last three chapter of <i>Reflections on the Psalms</i> Lewis addresses, not the psalms or themes from the psalms directly, but questions of Biblical interpretation which arise from a study of the Psalms in a modern (and post NT) context and his own methods and approaches to Biblical interpretation. In chapters ten and twelve his primary focus is on what he refers to as <i>second meanings</i>--meanings within the psalms that the original authors themselves might (or even certainly) not have seen in their own works--Lewis comes out in favor of allegorical and prophetic <i>second meaning</i> interpretations of the psalms (as well as other OT passages) and uses an argument from his own work in literary criticism to do so:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The status I claim for such things [second meanings], then, is neither that of coincidence on the one hand nor that of supernatural prevision on the other. I will try to illustrate it by three imaginable cases. i. A holy person, explicitly claiming to prophesy by the Spirit tells us that there is in the universe such and such a creature. Later we learn (which God forbid) to travel in space and distribute upon new worlds the vomit of our own corruption; and, sure enough, on the remote planet of some remote star, we find that very creature. This would be prophesy in the strictest sense. This would be evidence for the prophets's miraculous gift and strong presumptive evidence for the truth of anything else he had said. ii. A wholly unscientific writer of fantasies invents a creature for purely artistic reasons. Later on, we find a creature recognisably like it. This would be just the writer's luck. A man who knows nothing about racing may once in his life back a winner. iii. A great biologist, illustrating the relation between animal organisms and their environment, invents for this purpose a hypothetical animal adapted to a hypothetical environment. Later, we find a creature very like it (of course in an environment very like the one he had supposed). This resemblance is not in the least accidental. Insight and knowledge, not luck, led to the invention. The real nature of life explains why there is such a creature in the universe and also why there was such a creature in his lectures. If while we re-read the lectures, we think of the the reality, we are not bringing arbitrary fancies of our own to bear on the text. This second meaning is congenial to it. The examples I have in mind correspond to this third case; except of course that something more sensitive and personal than scientific knowledge is involved--what the writer or speaker was, not only what he knew.</blockquote>
Lewis proceeds to helpfully apply this lens to New Testament and Patristic readings of the Old Testament. As an aside I suspect that he has established here a principle which may go a great ways towards resolving certain tensions between "death of the author" and "authorial intent" disputes in our own day. In Chapter ten Lewis primarily deploys this insight to defend the idea of true pagan prophets (he points primarily to <a href="https://amzn.to/2Ss20nz" target="_blank">Plato </a>and to <a href="https://amzn.to/2PZ1U5c" target="_blank">Virgil</a> though I think the same argument serves in favor of <a href="https://amzn.to/35WDVJC" target="_blank">Lao Tzu</a> as well) making similar arguments to those he makes in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2PXHkCl" target="_blank">Mere Christianity</a> </i>and other works concerning similarities between pagan "Corn King" myth and the truth myth of Christianity. In Chapter twelve he applied the ideas more directly to Old Testament passages and to the surprising, allegorical, and symbolic readings of them that we find in the New Testament and the Patristics.<br />
<br />
Chapter eleven is an exposition of Lewis' own beliefs on the nature of the Bible and of Bible interpretation (hermeneutics), and it is the existence of this chapter which wholly undermines the claims O'Flaherty makes about the quote I began with. Throughout the chapter Lewis shows himself to be very much in line with a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoorthodoxy" target="_blank">neo-orthodox </a>and <a href="https://amzn.to/3606YvR" target="_blank">christocentric</a>/<a href="https://brianzahnd.com/2011/08/god-is-like-jesus-2/" target="_blank">red-letter</a> understanding of the nature of inspiration and the proper interpretation of the Bible.<br />
<br />
The chapter merits a close, point-by-point examination. Lewis opens by straightforwardly disclosing his project:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For us these writings are "holy", or "inspired", or, as St. Paul says, "The Oracles of God". But this has been understood in more than one way, and <i>I must try to explain how I understand it </i>at least so far as the Old Testament is concerned. [emphasis mine]</blockquote>
Lewis will, in fact, also clarify a good deal of how he understands inspiration in the New Testament as well. He continues,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that includes the miraculous.</blockquote>
I do not think that any Lewis scholar would suggest that Lewis was anything but a thoroughgoing supernaturalist and, from the perspective of those who subscribe to "liberal theology" in the 19th century German tradition, this would seem to locate him in the camp of the Fundamentalists or Evangelicals. This, however, is a mistake of the sort we call the false dilemma. There are more than two possible theologies of inspiration--even when painting with a very broad brush--and Lewis is neither a 19th century German style liberal or a Fundamentalist as he goes on to clarify:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Some people find the miraculous so hard to believe that they cannot imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth. <i>But this I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that Moses described Creation "after the manner of a popular poet" (as we should say <b>mythically</b>) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or fiction.</i> [emphases mine]</blockquote>
Lewis here is clearly in the same position which so many of us who are currently being labeled "progressive" Christians find ourselves: on the one hand, robust supernaturalists happy to affirm the creeds and the rest and thus seen as still "Evangelical" or "Fundamentalist" by certain liberal and mainline theologians (I remember one moment in recent Twitter history wherein non-Evangelical Chrisitian Twitter was shocked to discover that so many still believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ); on the other hand non-interrantists who cheerfully apply non-literalist readings of a wide variety when approaching the text of the Bible. Lewis clarifies that his reason for accepting the miraculous is philosophical:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have never found any philosophical grounds for the universal negative proposition that miracles do not happen. I have to decide on quite other grounds (if I decide at all) whether a given narrative is historical or not. The <i>Book of Job</i> appears to me unhistorical because it begins about a man quite unconnected with all history or even legend, with no genealogy, living in a country of which the Bible elsewhere has hardly anything to say; <i>because, in fact, the author quite obviously writes as a story-teller not as a chronicler</i>. [emphasis mine]</blockquote>
In that last clause we get a glimpse of how Lewis individual vocation as a literary scholar informed his hermeneutic. As a man well versed in genre, he allowed what he knew about classical and ancient literary writing and genre to inform the way he interpreted the Bible.<br />
<br />
If all of this were not enough, Lewis breaks cleanly from any Fundamnetalist (and many Evangelical) intepretative doctrines when he continues:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have therefore no difficulty in accepting, say, the view of those scholars who tell us that the account of Creation in <i>Genesis</i> is derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical.</blockquote>
And Lewis has already shown in chapter ten why such a proposition is no threat to his view of scripture as a whole--much less his faith. He spends a few paragraphs making this connection explicit, concluding:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are poets like those in the <i>Song of Songs</i> who probably never dreamed of any but a secular and natural purpose in what they composed. There is (and it is no less important) the work first of the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonising just these books. <i>There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them</i>. On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure; of which not by any means all need have been conscious. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing psalms) wickedness are not removed. [emphasis mine]</blockquote>
So much for the <a href="https://www.churchcouncil.org/1-biblical-inerrancy-chicago-statement-on-biblical-inerrancy.html" target="_blank">Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy</a>.<br />
<br />
Immediately following this Lewis locates himself squarely within the neo-orthodox tradition on inspiration and summarily demolishes Mr. O'Flaherty's argument:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The total result is not "the Word of God" in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper ad so learning its overall message.</blockquote>
This statement might have appeared in any of a number of the theologians who claim that the Bible is a medium through which we come to know the Word of God but is not itself that Word (a title the Bible grants to Jesus).<br />
<br />
From here, Lewis goes on to recognize that the nature of the Bible as an "untidy and leaky vehicle" is frustrating to some (so much so that many of them resort to denying it altogether)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalist's view of the Bible and the Roman Catholic's view of the Church. </blockquote>
but, Lewis holds that it is actually a very good thing, and in his argument to that effect his christocentric/red-letter hermeneutic shines through:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped in some degree by their context. And when we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the 'wisecrack'. He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be "got up" as if it were a "subject". If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, "pinned down". The attempt is (again, I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam.</blockquote>
Lewis argues that what is true of Jesus' teaching is also ultimately true of Paul's teaching and of the Bible as a whole. In fact it is in his statement on that point that the final piece falls into place and the degree to which he affirmed the doctrine (currently enunciated by <a href="https://reknew.org/" target="_blank">Greg Boyd and others</a>) that the Bible is most accurately interpreted when Jesus' teachings are taken to be the center and highest point of revelation such that the rest, in varying degrees, should be understood by the light of what Jesus more authoritatively taught. Lewis in fact divides the Bible into three levels or degrees for the purpose of interpretation, first the teachings of Jesus, then in the teachings of Paul (for myself I would want to expand that to the epistles as a whole), and then the rest of Scripture. Each lower level can thus best be interpreted only by the light of the level(s) above it; all (as we saw earlier) only being profitably interpreted by the light of grace and the supervention of the Holy Spirit. As Lewis puts it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Thus on three levels, in appropriate degrees, we meet the same refusal of what we might have thought best for us--in the Word Himself [Jesus], in the Apostle to the Gentiles [St. Paul], in Scripture as a whole.</blockquote>
Lewis goes on to connect this view of Scripture to the meaning of the incarnation where he almost tangentially embraces the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For we are taught that the Incarnation itself proceeded "not by the conversion of the godhead into flesh but by the taking of (the) manhood into God"; in it the human life becomes the vehicle of Divine life. If the Scriptures proceed not by conversion of God's word into a literature but by taking up of a literature to be the vehicle of God's word, this is not anomalous. </blockquote>
Returning to his beloved theme of anti-reductionism, Lewis ventures an explanation for why and how all of this should be so:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Because the lower nature, in being taken up and loaded with a new burden and advanced to anew privilege, remains, and is not annihilated, it will always be possible to ignore the up-grading and see nothing but the lower. Thus men can read the life of Our Lord (because it is a human life) as nothing but a human life. Many, perhaps most, modern philosophies read human life merely as an animal life of unusual complexity. The Cartesians read animal life as mechanism. Just in the same way Scripture can be read as merely human literature. No new discovery, no new method, will ever give a final victory to either interpretation. For what is required, on all these levels alike, is not merely knowledge but a certain insight; getting the focus right. Those who can see in each of these instances only the lower will always be plausible. One who contended that a poem was nothing but black marks on white paper would be unanswerable if he addressed an audience who couldn't read. Look at it through microscopes, analyse the printer's ink and the paper, study it (in that way) as long as you like; you will never find something over and above all the products of analysis whereof you can say "This is the poem". Those who can read however, will continue to say the poem exists.</blockquote>
Thus the Bible is, according to Lewis, a fundamentally spiritual text without at any moment ceasing to be a material and literary text. The great mistake of the fundamentalists in his view amounts to a sort of bizarre flattening in which the spiritual dimension of the Bible is substituted for the material and literary text, with the result that Fundamentalists and Evangelicals are constantly, and futilely, trying to equate the spiritual meaning of the Bible with the standard and literary lower meaning of the Bible. The materialists commit the same error of flattening the text but they do it by simply denying the second meaning. Neither group is, in the end, willing to let the Bible be the haunted and holy text that it is.<br />
<br />
<h4>
So Anyway</h4>
<div>
I highly recommend <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2ESVDl5" target="_blank">Reflections on the Psalms </a>5/5</i></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mCIVETZjoYk/XgUOChAjWkI/AAAAAAAASh4/mnrszXApo3kIKu4JJIGOdl1li1MIHM42ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Reflections%2Bon%2Bthe%2BPsalms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="332" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mCIVETZjoYk/XgUOChAjWkI/AAAAAAAASh4/mnrszXApo3kIKu4JJIGOdl1li1MIHM42ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Reflections%2Bon%2Bthe%2BPsalms.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-78205791488508981592019-12-14T22:10:00.000-05:002019-12-14T22:11:15.674-05:00On Becoming the Monster<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VHaZ5BVZcgk/XfWjWkvN23I/AAAAAAAASRY/0I3Y-TGrS2ceFA0hCa4rHrHMkBFWN6jPACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/heronietzsche.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VHaZ5BVZcgk/XfWjWkvN23I/AAAAAAAASRY/0I3Y-TGrS2ceFA0hCa4rHrHMkBFWN6jPACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/heronietzsche.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nietzsche is watching</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I believe that Donald Trump's politics are best described as American fascism. Also—because apparently this has to be said these days—it is very bad thing to be a fascist because fascism is a very bad thing, has been a very bad thing for as long as it has been a thing, and will always be a very bad thing. For that reason it has been encouraging to watch the Democrats oppose Trump on grounds which are often (not always) both strong* and moral**.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That is not to say that the Democrats are, as a whole or as individuals, especially wonderful or especially moral. What it does say is that the President's behavior and speech has been so bad that his political opponents, opportunistic or ideologically pure, have been able to assume the moral and logical high ground for quite some time; with the concomitant result that they have enjoyed the alliance of moral and reasonable people from outside their own political party. They have, of course, also enjoyed the alliance of political opportunists from outside their own party, but that would have happened no matter who the president was.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a result of all this, we find ourselves in a position where we don't really know the degree to which Democrats as a whole, and individually, really are proponents of reason and morality (and I want to state for the record that both of these categories can operate independently of a person's general politics). They may all be shining beacons of integrity an reason, or they may all be crummy opportunists who are only too eager to exploit the country. In all likelihood of course, the truth lies somewhere between those poles. Hypocrisy is, after all, the tax that vice pays to virtue which is why virtue often characterizes the preferred rhetoric and methodology of those politicians to whom it is available as a sufficiently powerful attack on their opponents.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All of this is well and good and is something I have kept in mind over the course of the Trump presidency. Recently, however, I have started to notice a few Democratic and anti-Trump figures arguing that "winning" in 2020 is going to require Democrats to "play dirty". I want to highlight that sentiment and place a giant warning circle around it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ezra Klein over at Vox wrote what I think is <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/26/20978613/donald-trump-christians-william-barr-impeachment" target="_blank">the most insightful and accurate account of the Trumpification of white American Evangelicalsim</a> and it is all about power. In the second paragraph of the piece (the entirety of which is well worth reading) Klein lays out the thesis:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Enter Donald Trump. Whatever Trump’s moral failings, he’s a street fighter suited for an era of political combat. Christian conservatives believe — rightly or wrongly — that they’ve been held back by their sense of righteousness, grace, and gentility, with disastrous results. Trump operates without restraint. He is the enemy they believe the secular deserve, and perhaps unfortunately, the champion they need. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to understanding the psychology that attracts establishment Republicans to Trump, and convinces them that his offense is their best defense.</span></span></blockquote>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-napgZ0iz1kU/XfWjWacU0vI/AAAAAAAASRU/BwkevUMBTKMxsiYDnD5n_RdbxcAYHkSTQCEwYBhgL/s1600/MW-HS967_trump_ZH_20191009122825.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="890" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-napgZ0iz1kU/XfWjWacU0vI/AAAAAAAASRU/BwkevUMBTKMxsiYDnD5n_RdbxcAYHkSTQCEwYBhgL/s400/MW-HS967_trump_ZH_20191009122825.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This... happened</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The choice which white Evangelicalism made in 2016, which has scandalized so many other US Christians and has <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/millennials-are-leaving-religion-and-not-coming-back/" target="_blank">played a significant role in alienating a portion of Gen X and Millennial Americans who grew up within US Evangelicalism</a> is the choice to abandon "their sense of righteousness, grace, gentility"—in other words, to abandon strong moral arguments—in favor of what they euphemistically call "street fighter" tactics. There is a whole lot that could be said about this and Klein has already said much of it, but I want to focus here on the warning that this needs to be for those of us who are committed to actually working to build a better world, to standing against injustice, to being on the side of the oppressed and the marginalized. The great temptation is to descend.<br />
<br />
It is vital that we not forget, that we not fail to notice, that white American Evangelicals have justified their embrace of a philandering, racist, misogynist, dirtbag by first concluding that evil (here I am referring specifically to the many actions and words of Trump which cause white American Evangelicals to squirm and say things like "we didn't elect a Sunday School teacher") is finally more powerful than good. Machiavelli's view that "the ends justify the means"—while a very great evil—remains relatively harmless against those who believe that good is more powerful than evil. It is only once we begin to believe that lies are more powerful than the truth, that subterfuge and misrepresentation is more powerful than integrity that Machiavelli's poison can begin to really infect our thinking.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nkNrj5M1k_0/XfWjWeVSNWI/AAAAAAAASRc/Awrv2fepx1M4gerI-a6tv_1vsYZ5s1w2QCEwYBhgL/s1600/monter%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bmirror.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nkNrj5M1k_0/XfWjWeVSNWI/AAAAAAAASRc/Awrv2fepx1M4gerI-a6tv_1vsYZ5s1w2QCEwYBhgL/s320/monter%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bmirror.jpeg" width="320" /></a>I do not have a whole lot of use for Nietzsche but he was 100% on the ball when he warned "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you do not yourself become a monster." If we become that which we seek to defeat, only with a different hue, then in that same moment we have already lost the capacity to win. I am afraid that there is no help for it. Evil cannot be resisted on its own grounds of lies, deceit, bullying, and violence, evil gives way only to good and good will not prevail without faith. It is in the nature of good that it nearly always appears the weaker power at first. Good will prevail—it must prevail—but in the short term the Truth, Integrity, Nuance, Complexity, and Honesty, will always seem weaker and more fragile than the smarmy and swaggering oversimplified and obfuscating lies of evil.<br />
<br />
Good ends will never be achieved through evil means, or put more directly, evil means will never succeed in achieving good ends—the means always entail then ends—and if we forget that, we are doomed to create our own Trump.</div>
<div>
<br />
<h4>
Footnotes:</h4>
</div>
<div>
*<i>Strong</i> grounds would be grounds which are, and should be, convincing to a rational, reasonable person.</div>
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<div>
**<i>Moral </i>grounds would be grounds which do, and should, carry moral weight and do not involve advocating immoral motives or actions.</div>
Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-62071256373662542342019-10-18T12:17:00.002-04:002021-10-27T10:32:38.943-04:00My Miracle<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gUCUCt4nFpQ/XangM4yj2lI/AAAAAAAARn8/HZfiW52Zwc4lhPpgCAuu9ArnEFmUQOy7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/lgbtq%2Bfinger.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gUCUCt4nFpQ/XangM4yj2lI/AAAAAAAARn8/HZfiW52Zwc4lhPpgCAuu9ArnEFmUQOy7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/lgbtq%2Bfinger.jpg" /></a>I find that I am more than a little shy in writing this piece; it is, at once, apparently unlikely, and open to skepticisms of all sorts. For all that it is a true story and one which I want to have out in the world—I think it matters. I have held off on writing it out properly so far mostly because I have had intentions to include it in a much more comprehensive account of how I went from being a politically and theologically conservative evangelical Bible college student to where I am today ("LGBTQ+ affirming Anabaptist post-evangelical anarcho-pacifist" only scratches the surface). I still hope to write that story out properly at some point and, since this story plays a pivotal role in that one, I will have to recount this one. But since I have not gotten around to properly writing it up yet, I want to get this one out in the meantime. Anyway, this is a story of my miracle*.<br />
<br />
In the fall of 2011 I had just managed to work my way back into teaching and was, at the same time, beginning to really question my theology around sexuality (for reasons that I will get into some other time, I was already fully affirming of transgender identities). The coincidence of these two developments in my life came together in the form of two brilliant students. One a young lady who was, at the time, dating another young woman at the school, and the other a brilliant young trans man, James, who was at that time still identifying as a lesbian. These two were both the sort of students that you just like having in class and getting to know. Both are brilliant, engaging, and friendly—the one hardworking, passionate; an inspired poet with an ever-present gleam of laughter in her eye; the other energetic, mischievous, and compassionate with a sense of justice which drives him to speak out at all the right times. Without knowing a thing about it it the time, these two students made it impossible for me to think of "questions around the theology of LGBTQ+ identies" in the abstract. I had to deal with the question in the concrete: were the the things my conservative Christian upbringing told me to believe about these two young people true or were they not? As anyone who has followed this blog at all surely knows by now, I came to the conclusion that <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-couple-of-odd-words-my-christian.html" target="_blank">God fully celebrates the identities, relationships, and marriages of LGBTQ+ folks.</a><br />
<br />
Any analysis of one's own deliberation and discernment processes are prone to error, but so far as I can tell my theological shift began with accepting the plausibility, even the compelling logic, of LGB affirming interpretations of certain key passages from the Bible (I have written about those arguments <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-couple-of-odd-words-my-christian.html" target="_blank">in this series</a>) but in the early fall of 2011 I was still afraid to accept those conclusions. I was still fighting against the weight of a homophobic Christian culture, of a church and a peer group which I knew held contrary beliefs, and of the fear of being wrong. It was those two students who gave me the perspective and--frankly--the courage to break through those barriers in my own soul. By November I had begun to publicly (I think online and certainly to my friends and family) acknowledge that my "views had changed".<br />
<br />
But this is supposed to be a story about a miracle so I need to jump forward a bit. Several months later (late winter or early spring) found me having a conversation with James. He was telling me about instances of bullying that he and his friends endured at our high school. I didn't know much at the time but I knew enough to ask him whether the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at the<br />
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school wasn't helping enough with the problem. He ruefully told me that we didn't really have a functional GSA. I was a little surprised to hear it and told him that he ought to start one. That is as much of the conversation as I remember but he has since assured me that I followed up with a promise to be the faculty adviser if he couldn't find someone better. The first day of school for the 2012/13 school year, he popped up in my classroom grinning from ear to ear and waving the forms that I needed to sign in order to make the GSA and official club. Clearly running the Gay Straight Alliance at a public high school is not what I would have seen myself doing as recently as one year earlier, but I was not about to say "no" at this point so I signed the form, and declared him president of the club. Seven years later he has graduated from both high school and college and the GSA is still going strong.<br />
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It didn't take long for our weekly club meetings to become a highlight of my week. If you haven't ever had the chance to create and hang out in a safe space for marginalized and bullied high school students then you haven't fully lived. LGBTQ+ and ally high school students are some of the most resilient, quirky, fun teenagers in the world. I really have had the time of my life being their faculty adviser.<br />
<br />
And that is how I find myself sitting in my car in the parking lot of a local grocery store praying that I wasn't sending kids to hell. This might not make a lot of sense to anyone who wasn't raised in the toxic soup of white American Evangelicalism. By the fall of 2012 I barely believed in an eternal hell anyway and I definitely didn't believe that being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender would send you there. But fear is only rarely about what we give our conscious mental assent to. Very few of the children who are afraid of monsters in the dark still actually believe on a conscious rational level that those monsters exist. You really don't have to believe in something to be afraid of it. So despite my own convinced beliefs, I was afraid that by organizing a safe and supportive space for LGBTQ+ teens I was facilitating their damnation to a fate I didn't believe in.***<br />
<br />
Beyond the lingering fears rooted in my white American evangelical upbringing, I was struggling with something else in the fall of 2012: <i>homophobia</i>. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homophobia" target="_blank">Miriam Webster defines </a><i><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homophobia" target="_blank">homophobia</a> </i>as "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals***". The term overlaps with, but is distinct from, <i><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heterosexism" target="_blank">heterosexism</a></i>, "discrimination or prejudice by heterosexuals against homosexuals***" Given those definitions, over the course of 2011 I had moved away from conscious and intentional heterosexism but was still very much struggling with unconscious and visceral homophobia. The way I would have probably put it at the time is that I was find when interacting with LGBTQ+ folks in general and I supported their social and legal liberation but when I thought about what "being gay" entailed, it skeeved me out and I would experience what psychologists and sociologists refer to as a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind/transcript?language=en" target="_blank">disgust reaction</a>.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Let me take a moment here to emphasize something:</b> if this disgust reaction is something you experience as well please know that this is something which was done to you by an overtly heterosexist and homophobic society, and that, if you were raised in white American evangelicalism**** then this malformation of your emotional self was perpetrated against you by evil, sinful forces which have long operated within the church and are only slowly being exorcised.</i></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some beliefs can sicken the soul</td></tr>
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Disgust reactions are really hard to revise but they are not impossible to get rid of. They are also extremely destructive. When disgust is activated against people or groups it results in marginalization, persecution, scapegoating and, in extreme cases, genocide. It is by activating a disgust reaction against minority communities that evil men have been most effective in attacking and damaging those communities. Based on what I have read***** (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562923/" target="_blank">here is a decent place to start</a>) I tend to think about changing a learned and ingrained disgust reaction about the same way I think about overcoming a phobia: possible but difficult and ordinarily requiring a lot of work. In that context, changing my beliefs was the way to start, and ongoing positive interactions with people who were likely to elicit that reaction was a solid way to move forward. But despite being on (probably) the right track psychologically, this remained a problem for me. I had enough of a handle on it that, so far as I can tell, my students were entirely unaware; it almost never occurred to me when I was around actual LGBTQ+ people in any case but I knew that it was having some effect on my overall relationship with my duties as facilitator of the GSA. If you have never experienced this imagine having in involuntary queasy reaction 10% or so of the time you think about your best friend. It wouldn't end your friendship but it would definitely be something you would want to overcome if at all possible.<br />
<br />
So there I am, sitting in my car, suddenly flooded by irrational fears and doubts and struggling to overcome an ingrained reaction which I hated an which was getting in the way of relating to and helping the very students I most wanted to help. I started praying.<br />
<br />
This wasn't the first time I had prayed about this topic or asked God for some sort of guidance. As I said, I had been working through bible study and theology on the topic for more than a year at that point and that process had involved a whole lot of prayer. To put it in distinctly white American evangelical language, my exegetical and discernment process had been bathed in prayer from the start.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not much of a stretch</td></tr>
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In 2007 my wife and I joined the Vineyard Community Church of Central Maryland, a charismatic and (at the time) relatively progressive—context matters folks—evangelical church. I found a whole lot of healing and growth in that church and was profoundly mentored and encouraged by the pastor at that time, John Odean. His support and teaching are substantially responsible for my even being willing to begin questioning the perverse doctrines I had been taught about LGBTQ+ people. But by 2012 John O had moved on and the new pastor, whom I got along with fairly well at the time, brought a different focus to the church. This new pastor was passionately motivated to see miraculous events (healings, speaking in tongues, prophecy etc...) at the church and in that vein he like to bring in various teachers and pastors who were known to practice and elicit that sort of experience. One of those pastors he brought in, offered to pray and prophesy over each member of our leadership team—including me. So I had walked up to the front of the church with my long hair, beard, beat up jeans and over-sized sweatshirt to get a prophecy. The teacher (a pastor at another church in our denomination) put his hands on my head and prayed quietly for a while and then told me "I think God is calling you work with marginalized and outcast people in this community". I had thanked him and gone back to my seat more than a little skeptical. The idea that a statement like that might apply well to someone who looked like I did in that mostly white middle class suburban church was hardly any sort of stretch. I had mentally filed the prayer away as sort of interesting but unlikely to mean much and gone on with life.<br />
<br />
A year or so later and I am sitting in a car, pleading with God for direction, trying to figure out whether all of these negative feelings were damage I needed to heal from and overcome, or that last warnings of the Holy Spirit to a confused soul about to cause horrible damage to the spirits of teenagers by encouraging them in identities and behaviors which God objected to. "Jesus," I prayed, "am I doing the right thing?"<br />
<br />
I talk to God a lot and God does talk back sometimes, but it is pretty rare for me for God's response to shake my soul. Usually, the stuff I hear from God I perceive as gentle encouragement, suggestion, or reminder: a stray thought or spontaneous emotion which has the smell of the Divine about it, the sort of whisper that doesn't seem to have come from my own thoughts, but hey, maybe they did. Very occasionally though, God speaks in a way that causes the bones of my soul to vibrate, communicating directly to me so clearly and overwhelmingly that I can't account for it as anything but connection with One who is greater, fuller, deeper, and higher than I am or could ever imagine. God's response this time was like that.<br />
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Those of you who have experienced the sort of thing I am describing will know that putting the response into words always diminishes it; the best I can get at is a "mostly this but that isn't quite right and it was also so much more" like if you were trying to describe sailing on the ocean and could only come up with "It's like stepping in a puddle but floating instead of touching the bottom". So God didn't respond to my prayer by saying "This is exactly what I have for you. That is what I was talking about when I told the preacher that you were being called to work with the marginalized and outcast in your community" but that is the closest I can come to describing what God actually did communicate to me.<br />
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But that isn't my miracle.<br />
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The miracle accompanied the response and was in addition to it. As soon as the prayer had ended I was enormously comforted. I felt like I had my answer and I felt something more. My disgust reaction had vanished entirely. I haven't felt it since. A process of pyschological healing from sinful malformation at the hands of a broken and homophobic heterosexist church and homophobic heterosexist society which ought to have required months if not years, happened in a moment. From that day until now the disgust reaction has been entirely absent from my mental landscape regarding LGBTQ+ people. God gave me both the confidence and the capacity to lean joyfully into holy work: advocacy for LGBTQ+ people and particularly teenagers.<br />
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That isn't to say that I am all the way where I need to be. I doubt that any of us are, and I know that I still have thought patterns and reactions (but not disgust reactions) which were formed by heterosexism, patriarchy, cissexism, homophobia, and transphobia (to name just a few) I have much to learn and many LGBTQ+ people and allies to learn it from. My claim is only that this one barrier, a socially formed disgust reaction rooted in homophobia was overcome for me by the power of the Holy Spirit.<br />
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This is what I now understand when I hear people talking about being liberated from sin and death. This is what I now understand when I read about Christ overcoming the body of sin. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Freedom to free others from the clutches of sin: homophobia, transphobia, heterosexim, cissexim, racism, patriarchy, greed, consumerism, nationalism... the list goes on and the journey is long. But it is joy and it is freedom.<br />
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In the aftermath of that experience I was kicked off of the leadership team of my church (which we subsequently left) but the new pastor because of my online advocacy for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ folks in the life of the church. But that is another story (one I hope to write up properly at some point). I bring it up here only to say that it was the message of encouragement from God and the evidence of my miracle (as well as the support of a beautiful community) which gave me the strength to get through that with my faith intact.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<span class="text Jas-1-2" face=""helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;">Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,</span><span class="text Jas-1-2" face=""helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"> whenever you face trials of many kinds,<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-30269A" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30269A" title="See cross-reference A">A</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span></span><span face=""helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white;"> </span><span class="text Jas-1-3" face=""helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" id="en-NIV-30270" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;">because you know that the testing of your faith<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-30270B" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30270B" title="See cross-reference B">B</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> produces perseverance.</span><span class="text Jas-1-4" face=""helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" id="en-NIV-30271" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> </span>Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature<span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-30271D" data-link="(<a href="#cen-NIV-30271D" title="See cross-reference D">D</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span> and complete, not lacking anything. </span></blockquote>
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James 1:2-4 NIV</div>
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Please support the work of <a href="https://www.glsen.org/" target="_blank">GLSEN</a> and of the <a href="https://www.thetrevorproject.org/" target="_blank">Trevor Project</a>, two remarkable organizations working to support and protect LGBTQ+ teenagers and high school students.</h4>
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Footnotes:</h3>
* When I say "miracle" I am speaking of a supernatural event which is outside of ordinary experience and which seems to subvert the usual course of material causation. That is I mean by "miracle" exactly what folks generally take it to mean and not some sort of liberal theology appropriation of the term to describe the mere good and or psychologically profound.<br />
**If you are interested in my views on hell, I found David Bentley Hart's recent <i><a href="https://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2019/10/david-bentley-hart-is-threatening.html" target="_blank">That All Shall Be Saved</a></i> rather convincing.<br />
***I 100% recommend against calling anyone "a homosexual" outside of an academic or specialist context.<br />
**** I am very much aware of the fact that this spiritual dynamic is at play in other Christian and religious traditions; white Evangelical Christianity merely happens to be the tradition with which I have personal experience.<br />
***** I you are looking for spiritual (Christian) analyses of Disgust Reactions my brother and I wrote a paper on exactly that subject: <a href="https://theotherjournal.com/2020/10/19/eucontamination-christian-logic-disgust-contamination/" target="_blank">Eucontamination: A Christian Study of the Logic of Disgust and Contamination</a>Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-79495167714734774702019-10-03T22:39:00.001-04:002019-10-07T10:16:11.888-04:00David Bentley Hart is Threatening Christian Imperialism (and that is a very good thing)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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David Bentley Hart recently released his much anticipated <i><a href="https://amzn.to/30HiM2n" target="_blank">That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation</a> </i>and, to put it frankly, the theology internet is freaking out. The book, Hart's argument for universal reconciliation—the idea that, in the end, everyone will be saved—has already been ably reviewed (I recommend <a href="https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2019/09/harts-that-all-will-be-saved-i.html" target="_blank">Brad Jersak's review</a>, <a href="https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2019/09/16/universalism-the-only-theodicy-a-review-essay-of-that-all-shall-be-saved/" target="_blank">this review by Dr, Akemi,</a> and <a href="http://www.jonathanmartinwords.com/the-zeitcast/2019/9/24/that-all-shall-be-saved-with-david-bentley-hart" target="_blank">this interview with DBH over at Jonathan Martin's <i>Zeitcast</i></a>) such that I was not planning to post a review of my own. In fact, by way of review proper I will say only that I think Hart has successfully shifted me from the "hopeful inclusivist" camp into the "universal reconciliation" position and has almost certainly put forward an argument which any future conversations about hell will have to interact with. He makes four distinct and overlapping arguments, and the one I found most compelling is his third in which he points out that, because all persons are ultimately entangled in a web of relationship with all other persons*, it is impossible that any one person could ever fully experience heaven while any single person is still experiencing hell—the very nature of agape makes it impossible. Having said that much, what I really want is to move on to one particular dynamic which I think is present and active behind the scenes of this discussion.<br />
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It will come as not shock to any of my regular readers that I think white American Evangelicalism is deeply entangled with white supremacy to the point that its only hope for redemption lies in near-total deconstruction and careful reconstruction under the guidance and tutelage of extra-hegemonic Christians (if you aren't convinced then I would urge you to watch David Gushee's address to the American Academy of Religion <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPkl-sBFzdQ" target="_blank">In the Ruins of American Evangelicalism</a>). </i> As is ever the case, conservative and Evangelical Christianity is freaking out over this latest broadside against the doctrine of an eternal hell. You will remember that the last time this happened was the infamous John Piper "Farewell Rob Bell" tweet in response to Rob Bell's <i><a href="https://amzn.to/31Mbzzo" target="_blank">Love Wins</a>—</i>a book which is far humbler and tentative in its challenge to <i>infernalism</i> (the belief in an eternal hell). While no less passionate this time around, the Gospel Coalition corner of Christian internet is somewhat more tentative as DBH is blistering compared to the irenic Bell, and is also an academic heavyweight who seems to delight in lambasting the perverse doctrines of Calvinism and whose scholarly credentials the Gospel Coalition folks are far more likely to find threatening. So the freak-out is a little quieter but no less real for that.<br />
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The question, though, is "why"? Hart (like Bell before him) is hardly threatening any doctrine of Christian orthodoxy. At no point do the creeds insist on an infernalist position, and Hart cheerfully and heartily affirms the incarnation, the deity, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hart's universalism (much less Bell's tentative speculation in the universalist direction) is hardly a threat to orthodoxy in any meaningful way. I suspect that the freak-out is happening because on some level, white Christian conservative and Evangelical leaders realize that they need the doctrine of eternal hell not only (as even Hart, following Origen speculates) to scare lay Christians into being good, but more fundamentally, to justify centuries of white Christian genocide and imperialism.<br />
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I do not mean to suggest that this is the conscious motive for all, or even for very many, of the infernalists; insofar as it plays a role in their motivations I expect that it is subconscious—that is how white supremacy operates at present. At the very least I am convinced that the theory fits the data. Eternal hell is a perfect justification for all sorts of atrocities and has been used precisely in that way for centuries; the tortures of the inquisition <a href="https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-61-blitz-painfotainment/" target="_blank">and of many medieval executions </a>were justified as extreme measures which were necessary to save the soul of the victim from the eternal torment of hell. But so too were the epochs of white colonialism justified in this way. The beautiful (terrible) thing about the infernalist doctrine is that since it represents an eternity of torment--the worst possible fate any person could ever possibly suffer--any actions taken in the interest of preventing it are automatically justified, if not perfectly, then at least as an understandable overreaction. You see the argument? "Yes," the infernalist says, "it is a real tragedy that our ancestors/forefathers in the faith destroyed that indiginous culture, stole those lands, oppressed, enslaved, or even murdered those people. But at the end of the day they were trying to save souls." The whole crime, the great sin of white Christian Imperialism is thereby demoted from "ghastly sin" to a mere "tragic overszealous mistake". The atrocities of manifest destiny and the whole <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOktqY5wY4A" target="_blank">D</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOktqY5wY4A" target="_blank">octrine of Discovery</a>—that infernal carte-blanche from the Church to Europe to enact its bloody megalomaniac will upon non-white peoples and lands—may be reduced by infernalism to a culturally misinformed attempt to spread the gospel. "Gold," as the saying about white imperialism goes "provided the motive; God the pretext". Absent infernalism and the chance to save souls from eternal conscious torment, the shabby pretext becomes infinitely less effective. In sum, Hart's attack on infernalism constitutes nothing less than an attack on one great foundation of colonial white supremacy and its unholy entaglement with white religion.<br />
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Dave Gushee <i>In the Ruins of American Evangelicalism</i></div>
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Mark Charles on <i>The Doctrine of Discovery</i></div>
Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5805290335961306135.post-59372576373674443282019-09-02T18:33:00.001-04:002019-09-03T15:27:52.063-04:00Straw Man Jesus, Narnian Dwarfs, and Exvangelicalism <blockquote class="tr_bq">
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"Well," said the Black Dwarf (whose name was Griffle), "I don't know how all you chaps feel, but I feel I've heard as much about Aslan as I want to for the rest of my life."<br />
"That's rights, that's right," growled the other Dwarfs. "It's all a plant, all a blooming plant."<br />
"What do you mean?" said Tirian. He had not been pale when he was fighting but he was pale now. He had thought this was going to be a beautiful moment, but it was turning out more like a bad dream.<br />
"You must think we're blooming soft in the head, that you must," said Griffle. "We've been taken in once and now you expect us to be taken in again the next minute. We've no more use for stories about Aslan, see! Look at him! AN old moke with long ears!"<br />
"By heaven you make me mad," said Tririan. "Which of us said <i>that</i> was Aslan? That is the Ape's imitation of the real Aslan. Can't you understand?"<br />
"And you've got a better imitation, I suppose!" said Griffle. "No thanks. We've been fooled once and we're not going to be fooled again."</blockquote>
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A <a href="https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/169/Strawman-Fallacy" target="_blank">straw man argument</a> is a logical fallacy in which someone substitutes their opponents actual argument with a much weaker version, then disproves the weaker version (the straw man) and claims to have disproved the overall position. The straw man fallacy is especially irritating because it tends to occur more as propaganda than in actual arguments between two people. Because people usually know what their own arguments are, it is very hard to successfully deploy a straw man argument in a private one-on-one discussion; it inevitably runs into "well, sure you have disproved <i>that</i> argument but that wasn't what I was saying". The really pernicious use of a straw man argument is when it is deployed while arguing to an audience--which is probably why it has become so common online. If you tear apart an argument your interlocutor was never making and then proceed to announce your victory over their position, you clearly will not have swayed them but you may succeed in convincing those who are following the debate that you have won. This is true whether you deployed the straw man argument intentionally--arguing in bad faith and hoping more to convince than to work towards truth--or unintentionally--sincerely (but mistakenly) believing that the argument you took down was the best your interlocutor has to offer. So that is a straw man: an easily undermined argument in favor of a conclusion for which far more robust arguments exist.<br />
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Given the obvious fact that Christianity is a far lager and more diverse phenomenon than is white American Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism, it always comes as something of a surprise to me when #Exvangelicals (the online community which has been built by and for Ex-Evangelicals <b><u>1</u></b>) insist that their rejection of Fundamentalist (or sometimes conservative Evangelicalism) somehow disproves all of Christianity. As <a href="https://amzn.to/2NLuQ02" target="_blank">David Bentley Hart</a> and others have pointed out, the vision of Christianity over which the <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/" target="_blank">New Atheists</a> are forever trumpeting their victory, is very much a straw man version of Christianity. Even more, the god whom they claim to have disproved is very much a god of straw, in the context of Christianity, the Jesus they reject is a straw man Jesus.<br />
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All of this does not (and I want this to be clearly understood) mean that those who accept these arguments are operating in bad faith. On the contrary I lay the blame here not at the feet of the New Atheists but at the feet of the self-identified Christians who have built a religion around the worship of straw-God and straw-man-Jesus. I have found that post-evangelicals are frequently bemused but the fact that the virulent atheists and the virulent fundamentalists we end up at odds with online seem to agree with one another. I have had atheists yell at me for believing in the wrong version of Christianity and insisting on the sort of bizarrely literalist interpretations of religious texts which they would never apply to any other historical document. I cannot, in good faith, accuse the New Atheists of arguing in bad faith because the straw man God they delight in disproving is very much worshiped by a great number of fundamentalist and conservative white American Evangelical Christians <u style="font-weight: bold;">2</u>.<br />
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I also need to stipulate that the straw-man-ness of the Christianity promulgated by these fundamentalists and conservative white American Evangelicals does not mean that their beliefs are insincere. To the contrary, I am convinced that the vast majority of them hold to their religion in good faith. But a sincerely held wrong belief is no less dangerous (and in some ways I hope to address, significantly more dangerous) than one maintained in bad faith. The really insidious effect of this fundamentalist religion of the straw-man-Jesus which I want to focus on for the remainder of this piece derives from the fact that this idolatry really believes itself to be Christian.<br />
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In <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2NJvx9X" target="_blank">The Last Battle</a> </i>one of the most tragic accounts (recounted above) is that of a band of Narnian Dwarfs. In the book the Dwarfs, together with quite a few fellow Narnians are taken in by an ape named Shift who convinces his simple yet generally good-hearted donkey friend Puzzle to wear a lion's skin and impersonate the Christ-figure Aslan <u style="font-weight: bold;">3</u>. In their deceived condition the Dwarfs are horribly mistreated and eventually reduced to slave workers before they are eventually freed by the heroes in the name of the real Aslan. The tragedy of the dwarfs turns on their ultimate unwillingness to accept the real Aslan in the wake of their deception by the false. "The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs," they announce "we won't be taken in again."<br />
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You see the parallel. It would have been relatively straightforward for a 1st century woman to renounce a belief in Zeus only to accept, some time later, allegiance to Freya or Thor or. The latter shared no real identity with the former and thus acceptance of the latter would have been little impeded by rejection of the former. A man who has given up belief in unicorns is not thereby much defended against belief in elephants. But to have rejected a straw man version of Jesus, a half-Jesus who bears the name of the real Christ and some of his characteristics, is both a real move forward and a half step back specifically because it erects a barrier against all claimants to the title "Christ".<br />
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Of course the psychological phenomena here are well established. "Fool me once," the old saying goes, "shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." to have been mistreated, abused, and taken advantage of will inevitably tend to create barriers and guards in the hearts and minds of the victims. This is all very well insofar as it helps us to become more critical and more discerning. The wisdom of serpents is as hard to win as the innocence of doves can be to reclaim after all. But we humans fool ourselves in thinking that we are overly rational, and our emotional being is conditioned by betrayal to reject forcefully all that seems too similar to that which first betrayed us.<br />
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This, I suspect, is the very heart of what it means to be Anti-Christ. Not a being 180 degrees removed from the real and living person of Jesus of Nazareth, but a caricature just similar enough that allegiance to it ends in subjugation while rejection walls away the very Christ whom it aped to begin with. It was not Puzzle's difference from Aslan which betrayed the drwarfs but his similarity and his identification with the Real Lion. It is, similarly not the dissimilarities between white American Evangelicalism and allegiance to Christ which harms the #Exvangelicals, it is their proximity-in-distance. The old, philosophical term for this is harsh, and yet quite appropriate here: perversion. The gun toting, 'Merica loving, homophobic, pro-capitalist white Jesus is a foul straw man perversion and we are witnessing its current foul work in the unholy union of white American Evangelicalism and Trumps fascist vision of the United States, facilitated by his <a href="http://heavenandearthquestions.blogspot.com/2017/11/americas-sadducees-jeffress-graham-and.html" target="_blank">false court prophets</a>. Rejection of this idol of straw is certainly a necessity and we would do well to offer support and friendship to those who manage it.<br />
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I want to return to the story of the Narnian dwarfs for one final bit of Lewisian insight. Griffle and his crew go on, in the story to work with, and against, both the ultimate heroes and villains of the book. Their deadly archery proves decisive in the titular last battle of the book as the employ it both against the talking horses rallying to aid the last true King of Narnia and against the servants and allies of Shift who are working to subjugate the last of the free Narnians. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs. I have found this same dynamic to be true in my interactions with many (certainly not all) atheist #Exvangelicals. Their rhetoric is turned against the straw-man religion of white American Evangelicalism (and Fundamentalism) as it is against the work and claims of other Christians. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs after all. But I want to caution against certain tempting harsh reactions against this proud, if traumatized population. Or rather, I want to let C.S. Lewis do the cautioning for me.<br />
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At the end of all (Narnian) things, the world has ended and our heroes have moved into Aslan's country:<br />
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"I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine"<br />
"No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrible. They're still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."<br />
"<i>Friends</i> with them! cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"<br />
"Oh stop it Eustace," said Lucy. Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps <i>you</i> could do something with them."<br />
"I have no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this." </blockquote>
Our heroes find the dwarfs sitting in a tight circle and believing, despite the fact that they are in a lovely wide open field, that they are held prisoner in a stable. Tirian and the rest try their best but the Dwarfs remain in their circle defiantly insisting on their own misery and captivity. Eventually Aslan, the real Aslan, shows up and Lucy tries again.<br />
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"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you--will you--do something for these poor Dwarfs?"<br />
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take <i>us</i> in again!"<br />
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses they all said:<br />
"Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs." </blockquote>
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"You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out." </blockquote>
The story really is tragic but I think that one crucial element of it is terribly overlooked. The Dwarfs are not excluded; they are included in the new, real Narnia. True, what was done to them has made them--for the time being and maybe (let us hope and pray not) forever--unable to participate but they are not barred from flourishing. As Lewis wrote in <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2LfnqjU" target="_blank">The Problem of Pain</a></i> "The Gates of Hell are locked on the inside." Within the Narnia canon we never find out the final fate of the Dwarfs, Lewis leaves open both the possibility that they will remain forever locked in the stable-prison of their own minds, or that they may in time, wake up to reality and move joyfully "further up and further in" where the inside is always bigger than the outside and joy cascades upon joy. This great sin must be laid once more at the feet of the straw-man Jesus of white American Evangelicalism, that it has inflicted a wound, a trauma of the sort that cannot be healed until healing is sought.</blockquote>
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<b><u>1</u></b> For the sake of clarity, I will, in this article distinguish between #Exvangelicals and post-evangelical. for my purposes, #Exvangelicals are those who identify themselves primarily in opposition to Evangelicalism, while post-evangelicals are those who identify with where they have arrived. Of course real people lie along a spectrum between these two poles and the whole thing is far messier than my binary treatment would seem to imply. Nonetheless I think the distinction useful insofar as there is value in understanding the characteristics which shape polar ends of a gradation.<br />
<u style="font-weight: bold;">2</u> There may well be quite a few Jews and Muslims who believe in this straw-God as well but I am insufficiently versed in those traditions to make such an assertion with any degree of certainty. I am confident of the planks in my own tradition's eye that I would be remiss in finding specks in theirs.<br />
<u style="font-weight: bold;">3</u> If all of this is seeming far fetched or overly strange to you then please stop reading here, go read the full <a href="https://amzn.to/2zHujnp" target="_blank">Chronicles of Narnia</a> and come back. You will thank me.</blockquote>
Billiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05444391902853133843noreply@blogger.com0