Trans, Trans, Trans, Eggs, Baked Beans, and Trans

Last updated on: September 18, 2015 at 3:15 pm by Melinda Selmys

Trans, Trans, Trans, Eggs, Baked Beans, and Trans 2015-09-18T15:15:31-04:00 Melinda Selmys

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Okay, so there’s been some buzz surrounding the whole transgender thing the past couple of days. Caitlyn Jenner is back in the headlines for her speech at the ESPYs, and, on a somewhat surprising note, Gay Star News has published a piece explaining why the Catholic Church, and particularly Pope Francis, may not hate trans people after all. (The article even has a quote from the lovely Anna Magdalena of The Catholic Transgender.)
I’ve also seen some rather disappointing responses from the Catholic side of the fence, so I figure it’s time for me to open this particular can of worms.
Before I start, I realize that for a lot of Catholics the transgender issue is largely unfamiliar territory so I want to start by explaining why you should care what I have to say about it before I move on to laying some groundwork.
I first got involved with looking in the question of how Catholics should respond to trans people in March of 2013 when I offered to do a paper on gender and trans issues for the Institute of Church Life at Notre Dame. At the time I realized that I knew practically nothing about the topic. I knew that I experienced gender dysphoria (that is, a sense of alienation from my own femaleness) but was only even vaguely aware of the term for what I was experiencing. I had also been asked by several people if I knew of any good resources for transgender Catholics, or for their families. No. I didn’t know of any.
As soon as I started to do the research I realized that this was largely because there are almost no resources. The Vatican has quite a lot to say about sexuality and gender theory – but practically nothing to say about transgender (here’s a post about why they’re not the same thing.) Bishops conferences also tended to be fairly silent on the matter. Theological writings were few. Guidelines for pastoral care were basically non-existent. The only thing that existed in any abundance were loud, often strenuous opinions from people who really didn’t seem to know anything about actual transgender people or the experience of gender dysphoria.
So I started to do my research. One of the things that I felt was really, really important was to actually meet and speak with trans people so that when I was reading and writing I would be thinking about individuals rather than thinking about cold abstractions. (If you’ve not read it, Lumen Fidei provides a really beautiful explanation of why this is necessary: see especially paragraph 27. My tag line “amor ipse notitia est” – “love is also a kind of knowledge” – is from a quotation in that document.) Actually meeting and listening to trans people makes an absolutely huge difference in terms of how you will tend to approach these questions. When you’re just commenting on someone in the news, it’s easy to to dismiss their experience as a political statement or a polished piece of propaganda. When you actually start talking to people, you realize that this is a hugely complex issue that is subject to the most absurd forms of oversimplification.
Admittedly, this oversimplification does occur on both sides of political fence. Believe it or not, there was a lot of discussion within the trans community when Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair – and not all of it was cheer-leading. Many trans people are aware of the ways in which the often air-brushed, politically friendly narrative that is usually promulgated in public tends to give a monolithic and ultimately inaccurate vision of real trans experience. It is, however, at least an attempt to put forward a narrative that centers on trans people and their lives, rather than centering on trans issues and their political or theological ramifications. The oversimplifications that we tend to find on the left are definitely not accurate, but in a lot of ways they are better than the oversimplifications that we tend to find on the right.
If the Church is going to provide an adequate response to transgender questions – and especially if we intend to offer the love of Christ to transgender people – we’re going to need to start by actually seeking to understand.

Photo credit: Pixabay

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