Why are we so uncomfortable with transgendered individuals?

          Anybody who watches any television at all, or looks at the Internet even occasionally, or even pays attention to what other people are talking about, has most likely heard of Caitlyn Jenner by now. The former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner recently identified as transgender and has completed her transition to female. Caitlyn debuted her new look in a recent preview of Vanity Fair’s July issue.

          Responses have been mostly supportive, but those that aren’t are often cruel and ignorant. Sadly, many of these are from people who claim to be followers of Christ. They say God doesn’t make mistakes, that if a man is effeminate or a woman is masculine, it’s because that’s the way God intended them to be. This argument is rubbish. If a child is born with her heart outside her body, do we glibly say, “Well, that’s God’s will, so be it”? Of course not! We live in a day and age where medical science can correct this defect so that the child can grow up healthy. We turn to medical science to correct all sorts of defects and impairments and incongruencies so that we can be “normal,” whatever that means to us. Even in the case of accidents, when one loses a limb or an organ, we seek ways to restore the lost or damaged appendage and to be whole again. Few criticize such efforts, and most praise the science that makes restoration possible.

          Yet when gender or sexuality are involved, many among us express disgust and even anger, purporting to defend God and God’s ways. How arrogant to presume that God has appointed us God’s mouthpiece! Isn’t God perfectly capable of speaking for God’s self? Perhaps our yapping and trolling and posting and criticizing and judging keep our brains and mouths busy enough so our hearts and ears don’t have to listen to what God is trying to say to us through the lives of the very people we are beating up with our words.

          Any patriarchal society—including most in Christendom—honors, reveres, and even worships the phallus. Many of my fellow Christians will be angry at this statement, because they don’t bow to a phallus statue like our ancient ancestors once did. But we do put humans with penises above those who don’t have them. How many Christian denominations still don’t ordain women for the ministry? Or allow women to teach in church? Or exclude gay men? Or deny women the use of birth control? Some fringe Christian sects even treat women as little more than baby factories and live-in domestic help.

          Most Christians will turn to the creation stories in Genesis to explain their viewpoint: “Male and female, he [God] created them.” (Genesis 1:27 and 5:2). Yet they ignore the New Testament reference to God’s opinion about gender, among other things: “…there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28). If we are all one in Christ Jesus, and God doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender, then why do we, as followers of Christ, continue to do so?

          Let’s get something very clear: your sex is between your legs, but your gender is between your ears. For most of us, the two match up just fine. But for some, they don’t. And that incongruence can make life miserable for people who live in a society that places so much emphasis on sex roles and gender conformity. Instead of looking at a person’s spirit, we evaluate what sort of genitals we think they have and then expect them to live up to certain expectations merely on the basis of whether they have a penis or a vagina (God help the intersexed, who are born with both!).

          In the ancient world, men who identified as female and women who identified as male were often allowed to live their lives as they identified. In many Native American tribes, such people are referred to as two spirit, or berdache. These ancient cultures understood something that we seem to have a hard time grasping, that sex and gender are two different things.

          And why do we, as believers in the God of Abraham, have such a hard time with gender fluidity and non-conformity when the very God we worship has no gender? We call God “he” simply because the English language doesn’t have a gender-neutral pronoun appropriate for a person; calling God “It” seems disrespectful. Some languages in the world have no gender-specific pronouns at all, and they don’t adopt English pronouns when speaking about God. And if we examine Biblical references to angels and the souls of people in the afterlife, we can surmise that neither angels nor we will have gender once we depart this earthly plane of existence (see Matthew 22:30 and Mark 12:25). At least, at that point, gender and sex will be irrelevant.

          So why do we berate and criticize and judge people like Caitlyn Jenner and Chaz Bono and countless others around the world who seek medical assistance to help their outsides match their insides when the Bible is clear that gender is not such a big deal? I’ll tell you why. It’s because it upsets the status quo and makes males and male-worshipping females feel a loss of power and control, and perhaps even question their own gender-based biases and assumptions. Because it forces us to confront God’s very own feminine characteristics (there are many references in both the Old and New Testaments that use feminine pronouns in the original Biblical languages to refer to God, and use female metaphors for God; just look them up, if you dare). Acknowledging these aspects of God’s nature compels us to reflect the same in the world we live in, a calling that truly terrifies many Christians because it makes them vulnerable to the same judgment and derision that they may have doled out themselves.

          I personally believe we are so uncomfortable with transgendered individuals—especially male-to-female individuals—and with effeminate gay men and masculine lesbians, as well, because at our core many of us are misogynistic. For thousands of years we have demeaned and exploited and abused and neglected God’s pinnacle of creation (if you are a creationist, you cannot deny that God wasn’t done until God made woman!). Men who identify as women, effeminate gay men, and even straight men who display personality traits that are perceived as feminine (sensitivity, creativity, a caring heart) have been the objects of derision because of their feminine qualities. Aren’t all people made in the image of God? Does God make mistakes? No? Then how hypocritical of us Christians to demean people for simply trying to be who they are in as authentic a way as possible.

          It is easy for me to write these words because I do not identify as transgender, and because I do not personally know a transgendered individual (at least, not to my knowledge). No one in my family or immediate circle of friends is transgendered. No one in my church or workplace is transgendered that I know of. I certainly know men who display feminine characteristics, as well as women who possess masculine traits, but none of them have come out to me as transgendered. I even hesitate to use those words “masculine” and “feminine” when talking about one’s characteristics, because all of that is merely a social invention. There is no biological basis for being strong or sensitive or caring or authoritative. These are all just human qualities that we are all capable of possessing and cultivating and fine-tuning as we grow and develop. But when the day comes that I am privileged to be in the company of a transgendered individual, I pray that I can respond with the grace, compassion, and dignity that my Lord Jesus would have shown that person, and that I can show them the love of Christ and accept them as they are, which is how I am accepted by the God who made me.