It occurred to me the other day that I have never really talked about trans identities on here. I'm not trans, after all. When I was Catholic, I didn't mention the subject because I knew how everyone around me felt about it and what they would say. And when I stopped being, it actually didn't change my opinion at all because I had already accepted trans identities for a while by then.
But given that trans people seem to be the scapegoat for a lot of people right now, I thought it would be a good time to come out and say something, in the one place where I've done most of my religious and ethical thinking. Social media isn't a great place for that kind of conversation.
It actually started in late high school or college, when I watched a House, MD episode. You probably know the one: a girl collapses and House finds out her chromosomes are actually XY, which is medically relevant for some reason or other. House immediately starts calling her "he" because chromosomes are everything, even though everything else about her was female. (This is a real medical condition that happens sometimes and isn't always discovered.)
It left me puzzled. Obviously she was a girl. She looked like a girl, had been raised as a girl, and was quite insistent that she was a girl. My parents pointed out that sex does come from chromosomes, and I asked, but does it? Surely it's a combination of factors and in her case she's more girl than boy?
They said that, well, imagine a case where a boy looked like a girl in some way, surely it would be cruel to call him a girl if he isn't one, and after all the truth matters. My private conclusion was, in a case like that we should just ask the patient. Because clearly it doesn't really matter if somebody's a man or woman anyway. Nothing bad happens if she calls herself a girl. And it makes her unhappy to be called a boy. So shouldn't that be the end of it?
My next exposure to the idea was when Marko was little and I was reading lots and lots of blogs by religious mothers. I had wanted to see how other moms were doing it, especially if they were religious and had a lot of kids. A blogger I read had a post about how her husband had recently transitioned, and the problems that raised among their family and church. It was a heartfelt post, and the blogger was fully in support of her now-wife. I read it a few times and thought--well, why do those people care so much? It's a little weird but it clearly made the person happier. And what do I know about gender, really? I can't say how I would respond to feeling that I was a man inside, because I don't feel like a man inside. I can say that I wouldn't like to be a man outside, given that I feel like a woman inside, though I don't know exactly what I'd do about it. But she feels like a woman, dressing and acting like a woman makes her happy, so how is it anybody's business?
Of course, I assumed the Catholic Church had a problem with it, but the couple wasn't Catholic, so I didn't worry about that angle.
Later, however, I discovered the Catholic Church didn't really have a teaching on it. (There's been a few statements since, none of which I'd exactly call authoritative.) An oversight? Maybe. But clearly two thousand years of tradition hadn't happened on a reason why it had to come up. People in the Middle Ages did crossdress sometimes, and it usually wasn't a problem (unless you were Joan of Arc).
I thought, what if it's no different than that girl with XY chromosomes? There's something about them that is male (in a trans woman's case, her whole visible body) but also something about them that is female (her mind and inner sense of self). Isn't that the same as being intersex? And when someone is intersex, shouldn't we just let them choose?
The result was that when I did have a friend who actually transitioned, it was met with nothing more than an "oh? good for her." A lot of friends dropped her immediately, and I have to say I still don't understand that. Even if there was a Catholic teaching she was breaking (which I don't think there was), people break Catholic teachings all the time and Catholics are very selective about whom they drop, and for which sins.
I assume it was because it's weird. It makes them uncomfortable. They got used to having a male friend and now were expected to adapt. It's a life choice that does affect other people in a way, because humanity has an obsession with gender, with knowing everybody's, and with judging them according to the standards of that gender. People don't know how to react.
But not knowing how to react isn't the same as being a victim of a crime. It still affects a trans person way more than it'll ever affect you. Life--an ethical life--involves a certain amount of putting up with people and situations that make you uncomfortable. Disabilities, injuries, age, mental illness, all affect the way a person interacts with you and how you feel about it, and yet you put up with it because a person is a person.
Of course it raises deeper questions about what is a gender, anyway, and how do you know. Is gender a real thing that exists or only a social construct? And if it's a real thing that exists, how does our brain know which one we are? And if it's a social construct, isn't it a construct that's necessary to the running of society?
These are much bigger questions, on which I have opinions but not very firm ones. I think gender is first and foremost a category, and the thing about putting things into categories is that some things defy categorization. So what gender means to me, as a person who fits reasonably well into one of the two boxes, is going to be different from what it means to someone who doesn't fit well in the box life put them in. I'm perfectly willing to draw the lines of those categories different ways, or to imagine new boxes for new people I meet.
But we don't really need the answer. We can really, truly, just mind our own business. Because what the House episode really taught me is, calling someone he who doesn't feel like a he is pointlessly mean. It didn't change her treatment and it didn't change the way she lived her life and it didn't change the way other people were going to treat her given she looked female. All it did was make her upset while she was undergoing a medical crisis.
I feel like this country is bit better off when we stop policing other people's gender, and just let them tell us the best way to respect them. And if that's a bridge too far, we could always just leave people alone.
