Clare Weiner of St Margaret’s church, North Oxford, offers a critique of the section on Transsexuality in the latest Bishops’ report, ‘Some Issues in Human Sexuality’.
Background:
Let us make man in our image ... Male and female he created them ... (Genesis 1: 26-27)
Long existing by ‘stealth’ within society, transsexuals (following the example of gay and lesbian people) have begun to ‘come out’.
I was invited to write this ‘response’ to Chapter 7 of the Bishops’ Report on Sexuality after I had raised questions - my own questions - about present-day Christian attitudes towards the Transsexual community. And that followed on my own quest to understand when life brought me into contact with transsexuals.
Transsexualism is not the same as transvestism. A transvestite dresses as the opposite gender for pleasure and recreation: they are happy to live and be the ‘sex’ in which they were born. Transsexuals are not happy at all with their body: they ‘want out of it’ because for them, life in that body is meaningless or worse. Through my own contacts, and in reading around and becoming educated about this, I have discovered the reality of the transsexual dilemma.
Transsexuals can be loving, caring, lonely, confused or fearful about the future, financially hard-up due to loss of jobs and the enormous expense of ‘transition’. Transition is often expensive in terms of relationships as well. So there is a high rate of suicide. There is also often what appears to be obsession with the changing of the self, accompanied by self-doubt and extreme sensitivity to their situation and what others think. And, what concerns us here, the frequent experience of rejection from the churches.
Here I hope to engage with the Bishops’ Report chapter seven and to put over a carefully considered critique, a contribution to the ongoing, very important, discussion of our human sexuality within the Church.
My Theological Starting points are these:
One: A right understanding of ‘Male and female he created them’ as it says in Genesis.
Two: A Christian culture of respect.
Male and Female:
The Genesis quote above is a simple enough statement. The debate on human sexuality (both re gay people and transsexual people) has seemed to often stray into considering our maleness and femaleness only in terms of our bodily organs of reproduction, and how we ‘use’ these. Which has laid emphasis on using them as if for reproduction even if with contraception. This seems to have resulted in a regrettable drift towards viewing our ‘sexuality’ in rather debased, ‘animal’ terms. I should hope to set things a little straight for the benefit of the heterosexuals, as well as the gays, lesbians, and trans people.
A note on marriage may illustrate the point. It is not so long since the emphasis on Christian marriage was that ‘marriage is a sacrament’. A Sacrament is defined as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual truth’.
‘One flesh’, within the sacrament of marriage, is more than ‘organs doing the sex thing’ - it is as if one person is made of the two, in every possible way. Intercourse symbolises a greater and more spiritual unity. Two bodies, one unity - even when NOT ‘having sex’ - which is most of the time. Thus unity continues when they are not under the same roof, in the same bed, in the same country. When one is unwell, or unstably pregnant, if as they grow older they agree that sex is no longer important, if impotence prevents full intercourse. So, is the sex act the centre of marriage? It is surely important, but marriage does not stand or fall by it.
Emphasis used to be laid on the deeper meaning of the ‘euphemism’ used in the Genesis accounts of sex - the use of the word to ‘know’. Adam knew Eve his wife, Abraham knew Sarah - etc - and she conceived. The verb used here - ‘to know’ means far m ore than to have sex with. It means the intimacy of souls, the closeness of understanding, the knowledge that one’s partner is truly a partner in life, not just for sex. A partner in life’s ups and downs, a person you trust, who understands your feelings, cares about and harmonises with you. Puts you first before parents or children or friends. And you with them.
Without this kind of meaning to our male/female ‘sexuality’, we are left with a poverty-stricken view of marriage, a non-sacramental view of marriage. I am sad that some sermons have slipped over the past thirty years or so towards leaving out the emphasis on the spiritual unity, because without that, we have only a sex-manual’s attitude towards our sexuality. And this in itself has a domino effect on how we look at the whole issue of sex/gender.
I feel this has happened in Chapter 7 of the Bishops’ Report, and want to try to redress the balance.
A Christian culture of respect.
This second point can be made succinctly: I believe, for Christians, God’s blueprint for humanity is found not only in ‘male and female he created them’ but in spiritual behavioural attitudes.
The Old Testament prophets instructed that we should ‘Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with (our) God’ (Micah 6: 8). Every week at the Communion service we hear either Christ’s words: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matthew 23: 37, 39) or the full ‘Ten Commandments’ that we have taken over from the Old Testament.
Christ incarnate being our pattern, Love means no less than love laid down for others, love lived out no matter what. We have numerous examples in the New Testament of his acceptance of all kinds of people who were leading all kinds of lives. Love, justice and mercy are the ‘tools’ we have been handed to live out being the body of Christ. In my understanding, this includes having the respect for minorities to dialogue, to seek understanding, and to look at the literature in the widest sense, as well as to do this with a mind open to the communities themselves.
A third starting point is therefore this one: A better understanding of what transsexualism is and is not.
This understanding would include separation of ‘sex’ and ’gender’ and accepting that although we may be happy to have a certain set of bodily organs, for people who are unfortunate enough to be transsexual being unhappy to have these is not a choice, not a whim, not a perversion. And that to say ‘but those are what God gave you’ is not really either an argument or loving, or indeed a solution found in Scripture.
To begin my critique with point 3 - Understanding transsexualism in the light of Respect:
1.1 There is little or no evidence in the Report of listening to or discussing with the Transgendered community. Walking humbly means listening to the population we are researching: the Report by showing no evidence that they dialogued treats them like insects or cells on the slide of a microscope. Surely it is just, merciful, humble before God to take account of what members of a community believe themselves to be? Even non-Christian researchers, who are under no divine mandate to be loving, will do that!
1.2 The Report's unspoken implication is that the Transgendered know less about themselves than others do. They are not credited with inner knowledge of themselves. It is made out that they have decided to be awkward. This is hardly a response expressing the spirit of humility before God, of love and justice. Is our own selfhood not a mystery, known firstly to ourselves? Take Christ himself: he knew he was who he was - it was others who said, 'No, he’s a criminal element - crucify him!' He replied with silence, and went through the punishment meted out by law. That, indeed, was the only option for the Transgendered until Sex Reassignment Surgery became possible.
2.1. The report in essence deals with only male to female transsexuals - this is evident from the following surprising assumptions, (which apparently underlie the theology of the Report), deducible from Paragraph 7.3.3. There is a legal provision in Deuteronomy 23.1 that excludes men who have been emasculated from the assembly. The Report argues that this is mitigated by teaching in Isaiah 56.4-5, Matthew 19.12, and Acts 8.26-39. This argument has a number of implications:
2.1.2 The implication that a specific Old Testament law either has a specific abrogation in the New Testament (or a further part of the Old Testament) or still has authority over Christians. If this were so, there would be many other Old Testament laws that we should be observing. As it is not, it is inconsistent to accord Deuteronomy 23.1 any current authority in the Church.
2.1.3 Deuteronomy 23.1 is part of an OT ritual law code based on a system of beliefs about the human body and its reproductive system, about semen, menstruation, etc., to which no Christians writing or reading this Report adhere today. They are beliefs that have been proved inaccurate by scientific research, and even the most fundamentalist Christians generally accept modern physiology.
2.1.3 We miss the point of the Gospel if we think that OT laws that discriminate between people according to the state of their genitals, their bodily fluids, their parentage, or any other accidental have the slightest application to Christians. ‘In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians 3: 28)
Secondly, Male and Female:
3.1 The Report concentrates on various ways of insisting that God created male and female, and that we disagree with the phenotype that God has given at our peril. This only goes to show that the Report's authors have not got to grips with the emerging body of scientific evidence that gender identity in the brain is not inevitably tied to the bodily organs. Quite recently a report in the BMJ (noted below) described further relevant neurological findings. The Report ignores this research.
3.2 The briefest of references is made to any ‘causes’ of ‘Transsexualism’ other than the theory that it is some psychological idea which the Transgendered person has picked up. A passing comment makes an almost-invisible reference to the possibility that the organs of reproduction could be out of line with the brain. The area of brain, and the research involving measurement of brains of transsexuals compared with ‘normal people’ that observed this is not mentioned.
4.1. This emphasis on male and female being the two forms of humanity God created means that the main thrust of the Report can be the argument from ‘God-givenness’. But, as transsexuality is a matter of sexual organs being out of line with gender awareness, we must consider what each of these - God-given ‘sex organs’ and God-given ‘gender’ mean.
4.2 God-given Sexuality & the Church:
4.2.1The media, populace, and even the medical profession initially described the transition of transgendered people as ‘a sex change’. 'Sex' is a big word in our culture. It sells papers and attracts funding. One would expect Christians not to be influenced by this kind of mass market thinking. And we return to lack of consultation by the authors with the Community itself: both words - ‘sex’ and ‘change’ - are misnomers to many a “transgendered” person (though not all). Greater love, respect, and humility would have been shown by avoiding this emotive phrase and choosing ‘transition’ and ‘sex reassignment surgery’.
4.2.2. In most people, the ‘sex drive’ is strong. Sex and reproduction was to our ancestors a mysterious area, which has therefore had a special place in all religions down the ages because it is mysterious. The Church has already unfortunately transmitted a message to the world that sexual sins are the worst sins and sexuality the most central concern of Christian morality. Many branches of the Church have gone further and tried to impugn the validity of human sexuality, and especially female sexuality. These issues stem from the ancient (mis) understanding of the body.
The ‘now’ Church (following Martin Luther) has replaced suspicion of sexuality with the idea of the ‘God-given-ness’ of our sexuality.
Respect for the organs of reproduction and their thoughtful use is good. However, many trans people (ask them) cannot abide to see or think about their own organs of reproduction. It is useless to remind them that God ‘gave’ them those and expect a change to a positive response.
4.2.3 Our animal need for food and water and our digestive systems are equally mysterious to primitive peoples. They could equally be seen as ‘God-given’. I don’t think we can treat our ‘sex organs’ as different, as ‘untouchable, unchangeable’ for religious reasons based on ‘God created male and female’.
4.2.4. When the God-givenness extends to ‘God gave us sexual intercourse’ the importance to God about our ‘sexuality’ becomes the possession of a penis or a vagina, in order that we may have sexual intercourse. This can become a teaching that how we do sex is central to belief.
However, referring back to marriage - we cannot afford to descend into a discussion of the kind of sex we have to have in order to be a married couple, and whether penis-in-vagina sex is the only thing that validates a marriage. The community of non-Christians is right to laugh or groan if we do. I groaned with disbelief when I heard a Bishop on the breakfast radio programme Today spell out the idea that the purpose of being male and female was vaginal intercourse, and only that. Such reductionism cuts off the branch the Church is sitting on, removes the importance of love, mercy, justice towards our neighbour and continues an idea that the purpose of women is to satisfy men’s desires (and vice versa) and to reproduce. It reduces us, ironically enough, to animals.
Thus, the argument that transsexuals are ‘wrong’ in changing their ‘sex’ (ie their sexual organs) because God “gave” them these in order that they might have sex in the prescribed way is an empty one.
4,2.5 Is there then a problem with transgendered people who have had surgery and wish to marry in their new ‘sex’? The argument of needing to have the necessary organs has been used. However, if vaginal intercourse is necessary for a valid marriage, then providing the trans person has had the necessary surgery, they may qualify. They have the parts. Not God-given by birth. But God-given by the ability of medical science developing through the God-given talents of compassionate human beings.
Conversely, if marriage is a sacrament, and intercourse the ‘outward and visible sign’ of an ‘inward and spiritual truth’, then maybe we have a problem - however, there are (as above) instances where total vaginal intercourse is for some reason impossible. In such marriages, there is no move to dissolve the partnership because the marriage has ceased to include penetrative sex and sometimes, due to circumstance, this impossibility of intercourse is present from the start., I would argue that in a society where children are not strictly economically necessary, where marriage is understood as loyal and faithful relationship, whether of not penetrative sex is happening is both a private matter and of lesser importance than love and respect. This seems to be in line with Christ’s commands on love.
4.2.6 And, as trans people are not seeking a change their bodies primarily in order to do anything sexual, or to become some kind of ‘third sex’ which God did not create, the argument from God-given-ness is irrelevant.
5.1 The Church and Gender:
The Report has failed to understand gender. ‘Gender’ is not orientation, or possessing or using organs. It is social, not physical. It is identity, the matching of behaviour to the body. The transgendered person feels inwardly that the various roles appropriate to the gender to which they do not belong physically feel more natural and comfortable for them than the roles which go with the gender they appear to have. The degree of discomfort is not small: it is total.
5.2 The 'God-givenness' of bodily phenotype - genitals visible at birth - is a dangerous doctrine. There is no evidence, Biblical or scientific, that external genitalia have a special sort of ‘givenness’ different to arms, legs or hearts. Surely we have genitals in exactly the same way as we have arms, legs, and eyeballs? We do not refuse baptism, communion, and marriage, to Thalidomide people because they don’t have arms and legs.
A child with Patau’s syndrome (Trisomy 13) is born with multiple organ deformities, possibly no eyeballs. Are we saying that this limited, dysmorphic body was specially given by God? If the child survives, many parents opt for surgery to correct the organ malfunctions and visible deformities. We do not take the view that this deformity is God-given and therefore not to be altered in any way.
I would argue that what is given as a body is all equally given or not given: and if a person has a female brain and male organs, this is the same in terms of ‘disability’ as to be born with your internal organs in an external sac, or as a conjoined twin. It is a tragedy, not a gift. It should not be counted your ‘identity’. How do we feel about our relative being called ‘the liver in the end bed’? We are appalled at the insensitivity of medical staff.
5.3 As mentioned above, reliable research literature and consultation was not taken into account in this Report: however, the sex/gender terminology confusion has been multiplied by reference to the discredited ‘sexologist’, John Money. In a case (1967) now made well-known by TV, at Money’s suggestion, a boy was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. Despite the absence of a penis and presence of (medically introduced) female hormones this person behaved as a male, and had awareness of her true male identity - her GENDER. Money's evidence actually demonstrates that gender identity is innate - realised by a person themselves, against the arguments or pressures of others. The boy knew she was not a girl, despite having no penis. Some boys - who have no vagina - “know” they are girls. Some girls, lacking a penis, “know” they are boys.
Yes, they may have, or not have, a Y chromosome. But gender is not bodily ‘sexuality’. Money dispensed ‘sex hormones’ - they failed to give Brenda girl-awareness.
5.3 What gender has God given to Intersex people?
'God-given' identity (as in visible phenotype) seems to have a not-too-unusual capacity to ‘go wrong’.
The number of babies with ‘indeterminate’ genitals at birth is higher than is usually admitted: around 1:2,000.
The subject is complex but sheds more light on the question of ‘sex’ versus ‘gender’. Do we believe that God ‘gives’ intersex people a jumble of reproductive organs? To take a text such as ‘Before you were formed in the belly I knew you’ as proof of such 'givenness' is to tread on dangerous, unhelpful ground. That expresses the profound mystery of God’s continuing love, care, and everlasting arms, and should not be devalued into a proof-text of gender/sex being planned by an architect of our bodies.
There are three points to be made:
5.3.1 Intersex people’s parents are nearly always anxious to ‘decide’ on how to raise the baby. Why? Not because the baby will be ‘sexually’ active very soon. But because society likes to know in which physical category to place everyone. They need to assign a gender - socially-constructed, before the baby has self-awareness: ‘blue or pink?’
5.3.2 Sometimes an intersex person, assigned to, and raised, in one gender, will know that they really ‘belong’ to the other. Say a baby is born with indeterminate external sex organs, and is raised as a boy. Then as he grows, he feels so much like a woman that he decides to ‘transition’. Given female hormones, he may begin menstruating from a womb and ovaries that had been hitherto undetected. Only then is it demonstrated that the parents' and doctors' decision, to make him male, did nothing to alter the innate gender. He was aware all along of the hidden female ‘sexuality’. Such a case is the opposite of transgender, but it demonstrates that awareness of gender does not automatically to go along with visibility of organs. Children don’t look at their genitals and say ‘Aha, so that’s what I am’ to themselves.
Could the Reports’ authors have said, ‘Maybe a transsexual does have a God-given awareness of gender - an awareness not obvious to the viewer?’
5.4. Does 'Male and Female he created them' answer any question being posed by the Transgender debate? No, because a transgendered person is not aiming to become a third gender. Just to be male or female as they feel comfortable, the same as the rest of us.
5.5 What I have been saying here is, Doesn’t male and female he created them simply mean that there are males, and there are females, as among most animals? Does it have to mean that each person is designed inwardly to be what they are also outwardly, and so specifically that there are no errors? Or can Christians believe the medical evidence, that things can and do go wrong with the process of reproduction?
Finally, a few considerations on Scholarship:
6.1 Lastly and importantly, the emphasis on God-givenness seems far too Calvinist for an Anglican Report. Paradoxically, the belief among many Presbyterians that God has given us the means to practise scientific research so as to increase our knowledge and apply this knowledge to life decisions seems more in the spirit of Anglicanism.
6.2 This rather determinist approach is however not too surprising when we consider that the Report relies heavily on one viewpoint: the Evangelical. Long quotations from the Evangelical Alliance report appear early, and occur at least five times. It then passes on to the work of the Oxford scholar Oliver O'Donovan. This material is from 1982, it is not up to date research. It seems unjust and lazy to use old information. In addition, O’Donovan is well known as an apologist for the same viewpoint as the Evangelical Alliance, his arguments only being couched in more sophisticated philosophical terminology. His piece quoted in the Report relates specifically to the marriage of transgendered people in their ‘new’ gender; since its purpose related to a particular point, it should not be used to support a general argument.
6.3 Is it not also questionable for a Report to use another Report as a substantive source?
7. In conclusion:
If we do not love transgendered people as themselves, we present them with continued, real, rejection. From a fundamentalist viewpoint, this would amount to denying transgendered people a chance of eternal life. But from a more liberal view, the rejection we are projecting at them means that transgendered people have to find friendship and acceptance elsewhere than in the Church. We should have them on our collective conscience.
I would urge that the Church of England to rethink the argument from God-given-ness, and refer more to the touchstone of love, justice and mercy. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. We can accept the challenge of Christ’s example, his willingness to overturn tradition in order to set greater love, and greater challenge, before his listeners. We can and should listen to transgendered people, and study, without bias, the latest research.
Clare Weiner
October 2004
BA Hons majoring in Religious Studies
Foundation Certificate Social & Political Science, Oxford University Dept Continuing Education
Member of Depend support group for Transsexuals & their families since 2000
Member of GIRES group for education in Gender-related subjects since 2001
Joint Moderator of e-group for Transsexual/Asperger people since 2003
BMJ Article referred to: ABC of Sexual Health Kevan Wylie, in Clinical Review BMJ Volume 329 11/09/04 bmj.com
Other suggested reading: True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism - ML Brown & CA Roundsley, Jossey-Bass, San Franscisco, 1996
The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies - Anthony Giddens, Polity Press 1995
