Question Time

March 5, 2015

DignityUSA

by Hillary <img alt= src=/sites/default/files/Howes_0.png style=float:right; height:200px; width:150px />Howes In the Catholic Church as a transsexual woman I don’t officially exist. Officially the Catholic Church does not have a public policy on the range of gender expression but considering their policy on gay men lesbian women divorced women women priests and women who abort I should count myself as lucky. The unfortunate result is that like most churches its hierarchy defers to the most socially conservative views to maintain its aging power structure. However in a recent survey lay American Catholics who have learned well that Jesus always cared for the marginalized show overwhelming support for the protection of transgender people. We get questions: Over the past 20 years of talking about transgender subjects I have moved from educator to advocate to activist to evangelist in making presentations to college psychology and sex education classes to business leaders to congress people to support groups to religious communities. I have seen attitudes change:  now young people really don’t understand why gender needs to be ‘explained’; now an increasing number of businesses have policies against gender identity discrimination; now some local state and federal protections are in place for transgender people; now support groups tend to be about navigation rather than coping with guilt or shame; and an increasing number of churches accept transgender participants lay leaders and clergy. Over all those talks and interviews I have understood that telling my story is to tell a parable of spiritual transformation from ‘false self’ to being authentic. That the most powerful effect of my presentation is that people meet my reasonable and fairly normal self and their fears of what ‘a transgender person is’ seem to dissipate. But for me the most powerful moments come in the Question and Answer period. In these questions I get to see what their state of mind is. I now have moved the Q&A to the beginning of my talks to find out what this particular group’s level of comfort with this topic is. The questions have moved over the years from basic and operational to profound and spiritual: Questions: <ul> <li>What bathroom do you use?</li> <li>Did you have the surgery?</li> <li>What does your daughter call you?</li> <li>When did you first know your were trans?</li> <li>How could you do something so selfish to your wife and    daughter?</li> <li>Why would anyone choose to be a 40-year-old woman in our society?</li> <li>Why do you think that God made you a transsexual?</li> </ul> What bathroom do you use? People know better than to ask this anymore so I’m not answering it here. Did you have the surgery? Focusing on surgery effectively negates the spiritual path that most transsexuals report their journey to be. Having had no religious upbringing I used psychological terms to describe my progress to my true self. But living 12 years now in a community where we seek to follow Christ I understand that it was always my path of transfiguration of revealing my true self to my community. Hearing and saying the Nicene Creed each week I came to understand that my path followed Christ when we would say “He suffered died and was buried.” As a transgender person I suffered alienation died of shame and was buried in guilt. Through transition I rose again in accordance with God’s will for me and am leading a heavenly life. What does your daughter call you? I was 40 and my daughter was twelve and she changed schools when I went full time. Back in the 1990s there were few households with two moms and we decided it might be easier for her to call me Aunt Hilary. It worked for a while but as she felt comfortable with new school friends and their parents she started to share the real story with the people she wanted to. By the time it became cool among young people to mess with gender stereotypes she did start introducing me as her dad again but continued to call me Hilary. It was just last year that we talked about how common it had become for people to have two moms and how I’m now a daughter to my mother and a sister to my brothers and she agreed that it was time to refer to me as mom. When did you first know your were trans? Back in the 1950s when I was young we didn’t have a vocabulary for this. I always remember wishing I was a girl. I remember being humiliated when caught cross-dressing around six and getting very good at hiding it after that. But I was always that dreamy creative effeminate boy that apparently most people thought would be gay someday. I lived to hide away and dress up and never considered appearing as a woman in public until I decided to attend a support group. It was over a period of three years that I came to understand that my authentic gender did not match my gender assigned at birth and that meant I was some form of transgender. How could you do something so selfish to your wife and daughter? I share a birth year with Disneyland so for my 40th we planned a family trip there with a special treat for me. I could be dressed as a woman for the whole time. Now I had been cross-dressing in private since childhood on occasions with my support group for the past three years and adding feminine touches to my male wardrobe for the past year. For that year I had been trying to avoid transition by just seeing if expressing my feminine side while maintaining my male identity could work for me. I’m six feet tall and I had always doubted that anyone would ever accept me as a woman. In a far off vacationland we wouldn’t have to worry about rejection from anyone we would ever have to see again. There was some tension as we headed out until it happened. Absolutely none of our fears came to pass. I got to have a wonderful time with my family relating to them and the world as a woman for the first time. It was the happiest place on earth as I came to understand that it wasn’t about ‘enjoying feminine things’ for me. I was a woman being treated with dignity and acceptance by virtually everyone and it felt so right. It was on the drive home that the tears started to flow as we talked and came to believe that I would have to transition in real life too. I struggled to understand how I could be a woman a husband and a father. It took the right therapist good friends the wisdom of children the unconditional love of my wife and ultimately just trusting in God to find our path. Now I do live as a woman my marriage bond is strong I’m an honest authentic parent and the daughter my mother wanted after giving birth to two boys. Why would anyone choose to be a 40-year-old woman in our society? This question by a ‘woman-over-40’ underlines both the inequalities of gender and age but also the mistake that I am choosing what gender to be. My choice is not to abandon my white male privilege to be marginalized as a woman or even more marginalized as a transgender person. My choice is to live authentically as the woman God made me or continue presenting a false self and suffer the depression anxiety and anger that it creates. I wish it had been the courage-of-my-convictions that brought about my change like St. Francis when he appeared naked in the square and renounced all that privilege had given him. For me it felt like my life had become completely unmanageable and that the only path to sanity would be to live as a woman. People have called me courageous but is it courageous to run from a burning building? Why do you think that God made you a transsexual? Why does God make us anything? Scientifically a gender and genitalia non-match occurs in less than one in a thousand live births so I expect that all transgender people are a result of sexual reproduction that produces the maximum of variability. It is a precept of the theory of evolution that it requires variation in reproduction for a species to evolve. Our existence is evidence of that scientific reality. Sociologically the fact that we are controversial is an indication of the concern about power and class that we associate with gender. If we actually had equality of gender then my variation might be no more interesting than eye color. “Traditional” societies incorporate people with gender variations quite easily and have for centuries. Spirituality is that which gives meaning to one's life and draws one to transcend oneself. So for me the question of why God made me transsexual is the question of the purpose in my life. For the answer to that I would like to offer this story and a prayer: I joined a group of transgender ministers and theology students to develop a curriculum for a school of religion. We were challenged to create our own mission and goals. We spent the first day discussing the issues of our community testing a workshop and getting to know each other. The next day we would need to do the ‘real work’ of determining just what this organization was going to do. I went to sleep that night wondering what we could do that was different from the many programs of ‘radical inclusion’ that ask churchgoers to accept the marginalized LGBT community. The next morning I awoke and dashed this off: <blockquote> The mission of the trans round table is to testify to the transfigurational power of spirituality and religion to nurture dignity for people of all genders. </blockquote> It felt as though God had written through my hand and I feared that I would have to fight to be sure it remained intact. I was frightened felt unworthy and very uncharacteristically knelt down and prayed: first to be spared this task then for the eloquence to do it. When I read it to the group everybody immediately supported it. Anyone who has done committee work of any kind will understand what a miracle this was. All of us believed that transgender people have a spiritual story that can help heal what is broken about gender for church and what is broken about church for queer people. We choose to use the power of our powerlessness to build our faith communities from the margins.  And now for the prayer which has had great meaning on my spiritual journey. <blockquote> “My Lord God I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” � Thomas Merton Thoughts in Solitude </blockquote>

Subscribe to Our Newsletter