On Being a Tr*nny Pastor
When slurs offend, but systems do not. . .
I was recently called “the T word” for the first time in a long time. It was by a Presbyterian executive in a meeting with other Presbyterians. It happened so fast, I almost missed what happened. It wasn’t said with any malice; it sounded more like a joke by someone who hadn’t realized the impropriety of what they were saying. Or perhaps a Freudian slip, where someone accidentally belts out the very thing they aren’t supposed to say, but which is in the forefront of their mind.
I posted a video about this experience on my various social media platforms, mostly so people know it’s a thing that happens. A number of folks reached out to offer support, and several suggested I move forward with pressing charges against this person within the judicial system of the denomination.
In all honesty, my first thought was to chuckle. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the care; I was moved by the ways in which people wanted to act in response to what happened. Yet, I am regularly in conversation with people who believe trans people are an offense against God who only made men and women. These folks will either directly or indirectly tell me that my identity is a farce and an affront to God, and that I should not, in their opinion, exist. Does the church intend to bring charges against those people as well? Of course not, because they are using the Bible as justification for their perspective. Nevermind that this reading of scripture is rooted in a colonized perspective that seeks to take the inherent diversity of an abundant creation and reduce it down into a restrictive, binary understanding of the human condition.
While I truly appreciate the care implicit in the desire to hold this person accountable for their use of a slur, this response misses the bigger picture, and the complex ways in which restrictive assumptions about gender and about how we live in our bodies have permeated our lives for centuries. People jump to a desire to punish someone for calling me a slur, but do nothing when their colleagues or parishioners rant about the “transgenders (sic.) taking things too far by letting kids be trans.” It also misses how deeply gender norms and expectations have been baked into the culture of the Institutional church.
I often wonder if the desire to punish such displays of transphobia is a way of avoiding seeing the transphobia within ourselves. White folks do this with racism all the time: we will rush to punish and call in the person who says the racist thing out loud, without ever taking the time to look at the ways in which our own actions and assumptions maintain an inherently racist system. We then become more focused on policing other’s behavior than examining our own. We’ve been taught such a punitive way of being for so long that punishment in the form of “accountability” is our only response to harm done. We love pointing out the splinters in other’s eyes, never seeing the plank in our own. Our well-intentioned selves want to make right the wrong we’ve seen in another’s actions, often avoiding the ways in which we perpetuate the same assumptions they are embodying in doing so.
I’m not saying we don’t need systems of accountability. Quite the opposite: I envision a world in which accountability implies repair and healing, not only for those harmed, but also for those who’ve done the harming.
We continue to try and fix, when the only way we will ever truly be free is to heal. Fixing leaves us in a state of perpetual lack, looking for problems that get all our time and energy, keeping us busy without any room for self-reflection. Fixing prevents us from stepping back and seeing the bigger picture, of asking questions about whether or not this thing we are spending all of our time trying to hold together really needs to fall apart. It’s difficult to separate this from the larger conversations that are happening about how to fix the Institutional church. It feels like we’re saying on one hand, use of slurs is inappropriate. But on the other, we are going to do all we can to keep together the system which laid the foundation for people feeling justified in using that slur.
Healing takes humility and acknowledging that we don’t have it figure out. It means going slower, building in time for listening and reflection. This process means learning to hold space for ourselves and one another where we can cultivate true vulnerability and tenderness.
This doesn’t mean we do not act; it means we learn to act from a space of abundance, rather than scarcity. Once we find the stillness within ourselves and with one another, we will know the right steps to take.
People often ask me what they can do to support trans people right now, and every time I will say the best thing you can do to support trans people is by looking at the ways in which gender norms and expectations are preventing you from living in the fullness of your being. Because gender norms and expectations have been so deeply ingrained in our society, they can be especially difficult to see within ourselves. The desire to fix circumstances for trans folks comes from a righteous place; yet, is ultimately is ineffective without any self-examination around ways those norms and expectations inform how we see ourselves and move in the world.
This is not to say we don’t need advocacy or protection for trans people - we definitely do. But any advocacy which fails to acknowledge the interconnected nature of our struggles for liberation will be insufficient in creating any real or lasting change. Deconstructing the ways gender norms and expectations prevent us from living into the fullness of our being reveals the depth of infiltration these norms and expectations have made into our psyches. This process also reveals the interconnected nature of our struggles on a global scale. If someone is outraged about trans folks not having access to healthcare, for example, but cannot manage to say anything about every hospital in Gaza being destroyed, their advocacy is little more than a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. By taking off the rose-colored lenses of a white-washed history, we begin to see how deeply we have been indoctrinated into a binary way of thinking that maintains separation and the illusion of duality.
The healing work of decolonizing our minds is messy and rigorous; yet, healing will only happen through an honest examination of the ways in which these systems have forced us to forfeit the fullness of our humanity. When cisgender folks begin to unpack how they’ve been taught to see their embodiment, we will see exponential changes in how we live and relate to one another. This is when the magic really starts to happen.
One thing that gets me in conversations with cisgender folks about gender, even with those who are genuinely accepting of trans people, is how often they miss that we are actually the gift. So often people want to see us as victims in a particular way, which can entirely miss that trans people have claimed who they are despite the overwhelming and incessant noise in a society that tells us that we shouldn’t. Trans people are the embodiment of a way of being that shows humanity how to do something new and truly co-creative with the divine.
By claiming home in our bodies despite the overwhelming noise that tells us to do otherwise, we are revealing the lies of biological determinism and inviting others, cisgender and transgender alike, to do the same. We aren't victims or charity cases; we are among the leaders and guides inviting humanity into a new way of living.
We are at a time in history when all ties to an imperial way of being are crumbling. For thousands of years, all of Creation has experienced the brutal effects of systems built upon domination. A combination of theocratic imperialism, supremacist ideology, and exploitative economic systems have ravaged the planet and anything connecting us to Her. Because they have been built upon the illusion of separation, these systems have been doomed from the start. We are now bearing witness as they live out their natural lives.
The Institutional church is central among those institutions which are crumbling. One of the things the church has done most successfully is convincing humanity that God is something that exists outside of ourselves, and that we need an external entity to connect us with the divinity that is inherent to our very being. As the walls of separation come crashing down, something new is being born. Everything that has supported the illusion of separation is being washed away as we begin to see the ways in which we are connected as a living Body beyond the boundaries of any human-made institution.
There is a phrase in the Presbyterian Book of Order that says the Church is to be a community of faith, entrusting itself to God alone, even at the risk of its own life.” (F.1.0301). I get so excited sometimes when I imagine what it will look like if we took that seriously; first, by acknowledging the reality of what’s happening. Whether we like it or not, we are living through the death rattle of the Church as we know it.
It is up to us to decide how to meet this moment. Rather than denying the reality of what is happening, what would it be like if we embrace it? If we took this time to dream together and imagine a world built on connection, vulnerability, and true accountability that enables everyone to see not only that they are held in love, but that they are an indispensable part of the community? What would it be like if we leaned into vulnerability and entrusted ourselves to God and one another, without the big endowments or arguments over property or church attendance?
We don’t need money to be the Church; we only need one another. As we lean into the abundance that is inherent to our very being, we will see the gifts we offer one another when we step into the fullness of who we came here to be. Because the reality is that, just as something is ending, something new and more beautiful than we could possibly imagine is being born. I am certain that as we begin to lean into that certainty, we will experience more abundance than we could possibly imagine.