Monthly Archives: February 2019

This is the fourth of six posts on the Evangelical Alliance’s Transformed report. See the first, second, and third.

Confused Bodies

On the next couple of pages, still within its treatment of the biblical ‘big story’, the report moves on to talk about bodies (pp. 11–12). The authors’ positive argument is that what we think and say about gender should rest on what we know about bodies – and, in particular, on what they say is the clear biological differentiation of bodies into male and female. ‘Throughout the Bible’, they say, ‘biological sex is binary and integral to personhood – biological sex should reveal and determine gender’ (p. 11). Their negative argument is that transgender thinking rejects this proper ordering, and that it does so because it is not serious about bodies – believing that ideas or feelings are more important than bodies, and that our bodies can be remade to fit them.

Gnosticism?

Let’s begin with that last claim. Trans thinking involves, according to this report, a form of dualism: a downplaying of bodies and matter in favour of ideas and the ‘inner self’. In fact, the report labels trans thinking a form of ‘Gnosticism’ (p. 12), tying it to a range of movements from the early church that were ultimately declared heretical by catholic Christianity. Now, I have been trying hard (whatever my level of success) not to be dismissive in my critique of the report, but this accusation of Gnosticism in itself is nonsense. Even if the report’s analysis of trans thinking were correct, there would still be only a vague similarity, and no significant historical connection, between that thinking and one aspect of Gnosticism. The comparison is, to be fair, not their invention; I’ve heard it said in a number of other contexts – but it is in the end a nasty little bit of historical name-calling, which enables people in this debate implicitly to label those they disagree with as heretics, and it has no credible historical or conceptual basis behind it.

Look past this silliness, however, and there is a very serious point being made: we need, the report is insisting, to avoid a dualism in which bodies are devalued.

The first problem with this analysis should be obvious to anyone who has spent time reading in the area. One of the most obvious characteristics of the theological literature in which one is most likely to find arguments supportive of transgender people – including theological discussions of queer theory – is a rich and pervasive concern with bodies. Bodies in all their complex, messy, and glorious biological reality are taken with an attentive seriousness that has rarely been so prominent in the Christian tradition. It is just plain odd to think that this is a context in which the body is regarded as unimportant.

There is, however, a much deeper problem. In order to make their accusation stick to its target, the report’s authors themselves need to adopt a dualism of just the kind they deplore. That is, they need implicitly to deny that the deep-seated patterns of feeling and experience involved in gender dysphoria are themselves bodily. Their accusation works by drawing a sharp dividing line between these patterns of feeling or experience on the one side, and the biological reality of the body on the other. They want to claim that trans thinking devalues the latter (the body) for the sake of the former (the feelings and ideas). They want to claim that true Christian thinking allows the former (the feelings and ideas) to be determined by the latter (the body). In other words, in order to work at all, the report’s authors need to make dualistic assumptions: assumptions that divide mind from body.

What if, alternatively, one thinks of transgender people’s deep patterns of feeling and experience – patterns such as gender dysphoria – as bodily realities? What if these patterns of experience and feeling are rooted in a person’s body: in (to put it colloquially) the way their brains are wired, in facts about their bodies that could be traced with various forms of medical scanning and chemical testing? What if, more generally and less reductively, we recognised that our deepest patterns of self-perception and the intractable shapes of our affections happen in our bodies by means of our bodies? The question faced by a person experiencing dysphoria would not then be ‘Can I remake my body in the light of my ideas?’ but perhaps ‘How am I to respond to a body divided against itself?’^[1]

‘Biological sex is binary’?

The report’s argument in this sub-section can only get going because it assumes the very dualism that it seeks to deny. That realisation might drive us back to look at other aspects of this stretch of the report. The report confidently tells us, for instance, that ‘Throughout the Bible, biological sex is binary’ (p.11). In the previous post, I pointed out that the report itself shows us that this isn’t quite true, presenting Jesus himself as ‘making space in our thinking for people and situations which do not fit neatly into that pattern’. But I want to think about a different problem with this claim now.

The biblical texts that the report cites speak about God creating men and women, and the authors note that the Bible speaks persistently about men and women from then on. But in order to summarise the import of this, the report makes some decidedly non-biblical distinctions: the Bible is telling us, they say, that ‘biological sex is binary and integral to personhood – biological sex should reveal and determine gender’. Now, the Bible doesn’t distinguish ‘sex’ and ‘gender’; it doesn’t speak about biology, or explain what biological features constitute femaleness or maleness. It simply talks, quite straightforwardly, about men and women. We, however, now make distinctions that Biblical authors did not make. We distinguish gender and biological sex (as the report notes), but we also distinguish a whole range of things that are involved in biological sex. We speak about chromosomes; we speak about genitalia; we speak about hormones; we speak about brain connections and chemistry – and so on, and on. And, as the report’s authors know, these things don’t always line up neatly. (The fact that they don’t always line up neatly is one of the things you can discover if you pay serious attention to real human bodies, in all their messy diversity.) We are coming back to talk about intersex in just a moment, but suffice it to say for now that the report acknowledges the plain fact that, for some people’s bodies, speaking about ‘biological sex’ gets very multi-layered and complex.

If, at the report’s own insistence, we refuse dualism – and if we therefore refuse the report’s own dualism that would separate from the body the patterns of feeling and self-apprehension involved in dysphoria or other kinds of trans experience – we simply add more layers of complexity to this picture of the body. The various different components and layers that go into what we think of as biological sex and gender simply don’t always match up, and that is a fact about bodies. Gender transition involving hormones or surgery would, if we thought this way, not look like a form of dualism (still less of ‘Gnosticism’); it would be a change made to the body in order to respond to a bodily situation.^[2]

Intersex

It is worth drawing in at this point, by way of contrast, what is said later in the report about intersex people. These are people who are born with bodies that are not unambiguously either male or female, but that have some characteristics of both, or that fit neither category. There are many kinds of intersex condition, which can involve chromosomes, genitalia, hormone balances, brain structure – any number of different aspects of bodily life. And intersex people experience and respond to those conditions in a wide variety of ways.

Look at how the report suggests that we respond. ‘Doctors, in conjunction with the parents, often make a decision as to the most likely or best sex for the child to be raised, but the circumstances are often complex and painful for the individuals concerned. Surgical intervention is kept to a minimum at a young age, though there may need to be corrective surgery as the person matures’ (p. 19).

Here, then, when a person’s body does not fit neatly into the male–female pattern, the report’s authors are willing that the body should be changed by surgical interventions, even at a young age (and perhaps with the decisions made by doctors and parents, rather than the young person themselves). An such intervention might be undertaken not, it appears, simply in order to deal with medical problems that might arise from someone’s intersex condition; it can be undertaken in order to fit the intersex person into ‘the most likely or best sex’ for them – i.e., in order to make sure they are fitted into either the category ‘male’ or the category ‘female’. The report’s authors seem to want those intersex people’s bodies to be assimilated as much as possible, and by surgery if necessary, to what they believe is the biblical ‘big picture’.

The authors acknowledge that this can be a complex matter. The main aim of the brief section devoted to intersex people, however, seems to be to minimise any challenge that intersex conditions might present to the ‘big picture’ of male–female existence. Don’t worry, we are told, intersex conditions only affect a ‘tiny proportion of the population’ (p. 18) – and don’t worry, most of these exceptions can be pushed back into the normal pattern by wise professionals and caring parents. There is no real acknowledgment of the many intersex conditions that can’t be treated in this kind of way, no mention of the differences between those intersex people who would want if possible to be assimilated to typical gender patterns and those who would not, and no mention of the bad outcomes that we know can follow form the kind of decision and medical intervention described – and specifically by the desire to identify ‘the most likely or best sex’ in too wide a range of cases.

Here, it seems, the authors of the report are perfectly content to see bodies being altered to conform to a pre-determined set of ideas. Real bodies, it seems, only matter when they look like the authors of this report think they ought to look.

Footnotes

^[1] I’m treading gingerly at this point. I am both wary of the kind of analysis that would reduce what we are talking about to the level of, say, brain chemistry, and that might push us to adopt too exclusively a medical framing for the whole discussion. On the other hand, I’m aware of some scientific work suggesting that the brains of transgender people do tend to differ from those of cisgender people, and resemble those of the gender with which they identify. I don’t have the competence to evaluate those scientific discussions, but it is at least worth asking the ‘what if’ question: what happens to dualistic arguments of the kind made in this report if such claims turn out to be correct?

^[2] The report at one point in this section says that ‘God does not rescue us from suffering but redeems us through it. In the new heavens and the new earth we will enjoy the restoration of our bodies and minds’ (p. 10, emphasis removed). This is clumsily phrased. Taken at face value, the first sentence seems not only wrong but horrific. Jesus, faced with people whose bodies needed healing, did not say ‘Sorry; God does not rescue you from suffering but redeems you through it. You’ll get better in heaven!’ However, I think the authors are talking about situations in which we have desires that don’t align with God’s will: we might have the capacity to act on those desires, but obedience to God will lead us to refrain, even though the frustration of those desires might cause us suffering. Barring a miraculous changing of our desires by God, we simply have to endure the associated suffering as part of our discipleship – one of the ways in which we ‘work out our salvation’ in a fallen situation. (I’m pretty sure that, even so, we should not say that we would be redeemed through such suffering; but let’s be charitable and say that the authors were speaking very loosely at that point). This in itself does not add anything to the report’s case against gender transitioning: it simply says that the bare fact that refusing to transition might cause some suffering doesn’t necessarily make transitioning right.

This is the fourth of six posts critiquing this report.

1. Whose stories?
2. The varieties of trans experience?
3. Listening to the Bible
4. Confused bodies
5. The rest of the report
6. Conclusion

This is the third of six posts on the Evangelical Alliance’s Transformed report. See the first and second.

Listening to the Bible

The section of the report on the Bible (pp. 10–12) comes in two parts. There’s a brief section on specific passages, and then a somewhat longer one on ‘the big story’.

Particular texts

The first of these sections mentions five passages. Deuteronomy 22:5 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 are mentioned very briefly – I presume because it’s a real stretch to think the latter has anything at all to do with trans people, and perhaps because the former verse, from Deuteronomy, comes from the same rather bewildering group of laws that includes not yoking an ox and donkey together (Dt 22:10) and not wearing clothes made of wool and linen woven together (Dt 22:11). I don’t say that to be dismissive, simply to note that it is not obvious what one is to do with such passages, and that Christians have not habitually taken them as straightforwardly determinative for righteous behaviour. It’s no surprise that the report moves past quickly.

Matthew 19:12, Acts 8, and Isaiah 56:4–5 get a slightly more extended treatment – two or three sentences each. The Matthew passage has Jesus talking about eunuchs. The report interprets this in the following way: Jesus is talking about ‘three different types of eunuchs, those born that way (intersex), those made that way (castrated) and those celibate for the kingdom’. It comments ‘The passage is an example of Jesus upholding the divine pattern while making space in our thinking for people and situations which do not fit neatly into that pattern’ (p. 10, emphasis mine). This reading is confirmed in the report’s brief commentary on the other two passages, both of which show people who do ‘not fit within a binary understanding of gender’ being welcomed into God’s people.

Because of what happens next, I want to pause to emphasise that. The report tells us that there are people who do not fit neatly into the male–female pattern portrayed by scripture, and that Jesus makes space for them in his kingdom. The report’s authors don’t suggest that Jesus by doing this is in any way rejecting the male–female pattern; they go on in fact to say that this verse is part of a longer passage in which Jesus reaffirms it. But Jesus, on their reading, recognises that not everyone fits into that binary pattern – and he makes space for those who do not.^[1]

The big picture

The report then turns to what it calls ‘the big picture’. I’ll cover some of this material in a later post, but it begins (p. 10) by claiming that there is in scripture a clear and insistent pattern ‘of two distinct and compatible biological sexes’ – and then it says something about people who don’t fit neatly into that pattern. And what it says is, rather sternly, that any deviation from that pattern is a result of the fall, and that it is a matter of disordered desire from which God promises ultimately to redeem us.^[2]

In other words, the report’s analysis of ‘the big picture’ – of the overarching story told by scripture – sits rather oddly in relation to the earlier exegesis of Jesus’ words. Jesus, in their portrayal, affirmed the male–female pattern while frankly acknowledging that there are exceptions to it; he offered no condemnation of those exceptions, rather (in the report’s words) ‘making space’ for them in the kingdom. The report’s big picture analysis, on the other hand, quickly calls that space into question: any such space, they tell us, can only be understood as a distortion of the biblically revealed pattern, and as a space that God wills to close. It’s almost as if they know better than Jesus how gender is supposed to work.

Let me put that another way, in acknowledgment that I have allowed myself to phrase that last sentence rather polemically. Consider just two possibilities. (There are others, which left to my own devices, I’d want to discuss; but let me stick to these two for now, for the sake of sticking close to the report’s own patterns of thinking). Scripture talks about God making humanity male and female. You could read that as meaning that God meant every single person to be either male or female, and that any exception to that is a problem that God will one day solve. (That’s not what the text says, but you could read it that way.) Or you could equally well read that as meaning that God has made humanity such that most people are pretty straightforwardly male or female, but not everyone. (That’s not what the text says, either, but you could read it that way too.) Proponents of either of these possibilities can affirm that God made human beings male and female, and can mean it quite seriously – it’s just that they understand differently exactly what kind of claim that is.

Now, with those two possibilities in mind, read this page of the report (p. 10) again. What the report says about Jesus seems to push towards the second possibility (i.e., the one that says that not everyone fits the male-female pattern, even if most people do). By contrast, what the report says about the ‘big picture’ pushes very firmly towards the first (the one that says that God wants absolutely everyone to fit the pattern). No argument is presented as to why this first possibility should be the only proper way to read the text. The possibility of reading it the second way (the ‘there can be exceptions, and there’s space for them in the kingdom’ way) doesn’t seem even to be imagined by the report’s authors, and it is certainly not explored. And yet this seems to me to be a missed opportunity: such exploration is, after all, what, in the report’s own reading, Jesus seems to point us towards.

Encouraging obedience?

Rather more tentatively, I want to point out one additional thing about the report’s handling of particular texts. The authors cite Isaiah 56:4–5, and suggest that it should be read as ‘encouraging churches today to make room for the marginalised, whilst encouraging obedience’.

In its context in the report, and given all that they go on to say, I think it’s likely that most people will read that last clause as directly qualifying the welcome that churches can appropriately offer to trans people. That is, I suspect people will read it as meaning that Isaiah was, as it were, welcoming the eunuch while expressing disapproval of the decisions or lifestyle involved in being a eunuch. And so, by analogy, churches are being encouraged to make room for trans people, while calling them away from some disobedience involved in being trans. To put it another way, I think many readers will hear this as a version of the old line, ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’.

Isaiah’s passage, however, does not make that connection: It is addressed ‘To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant’. That is, it says that eunuchs, too, can be followers of God’s law, in matters like keeping the sabbath. You could, I suggest, read the passage as saying, ‘Nothing about being a eunuch – or, by analogy, a trans person – means that you can’t be obedient to the law.’

It seems to me that the report’s authors don’t know how to leave open the spaces that scripture leaves open.

Footnotes

^[1] I’m working here with the way the report reads these passages, and what seems to be implied by that reading. I’m not trying to tell you how I read them, or how I think Christians should live in response to them. That would be a different and lengthier task.

^[2] I am going to talk quite a bit about this male–female pattern in what follows. I have questions about that whole way of talking, and would be dubious about using it for myself. In this context, however, I’m trying to work with the ideas that the report employs.

This is a revised version of this post. The ‘encouraging obedience’ section was originally a footnote, that has now been promoted to the main text and slightly rewritten.

This is the third of six posts critiquing this report.

1. Whose stories?
2. The varieties of trans experience?
3. Listening to the Bible
4. Confused bodies
5. The rest of the report
6. Conclusion

This is the second of six posts on the Evangelical Alliance’s Transformed report. The first is here.

The varieties of trans experience?

After Tim’s story, the report proper begins. We get a section called ‘Trans?’ (p.9) which is meant, I think, to help readers gain an initial understanding of what being transgender might mean. It begins (in an echo of the introduction) with the sentence, ‘There is no one trans experience’ – reminding us that the report is, in effect, promising to help us pay serious and compassionate attention to the actual and diverse experience of trans people. Here, as in my first post, I ask how well the report does at helping us understand this experience.

The report distinguishes people with intersex conditions (to whom we will be returning later) from trans people, and then divides trans people into people who it describes as having a particular medical condition and those who are part of what it calls a ‘wider ideological movement’.

The report turns to discussion of those whom it describes as having the medical condition of gender dysphoria. Two things happen in the report’s brief description of these people, which pull in different directions. The first is something you could call ‘medicalisation’. The only description offered of people in this category is the formal medical language offered to define dysphoria. There is no attempt to convey the variety of experience that this language might cover; there is no attempt to say whether many of the people involved think that their gender experience can be described primarily as a medical condition; there is no mention made of the widespread idea that being trans is a human variation rather than a pathology. The medical diagnosis in its bluntest terms is all that we are given.

The second thing that the report does with this first category, however, undermines that first move. The next sentence is ‘Despite various claims about “scientific evidence”, there is no agreed understanding as to how or why gender dysphoria occurs, nor are there clear diagnostic criteria’ (p. 9). Look at those quotation marks about ‘scientific evidence’. You only put quotes around a phrase like that to indicate that these are not words you are comfortable using for yourself in this situation, though you acknowledge that other people do use them. We are, in other words, being invited to question whether there is any real evidence – anything really deserving the name. And we are meant to question whether the blunt medical diagnosis we have just been offered is a valid one: there are no ‘clear diagnostic criteria’. In a following sentence, we are told that very few people indeed fall into this category. The report states – choosing a figure that deliberately minimises the numbers^[1] – that 0.02% of the population have been diagnosed and are receiving treatment. Everything we are told either queries or minimizes the gender dysphoria diagnosis.

I’ll come back in a later post to some comments about the report’s relentlessly (and misleadingly) negative depiction of the relevant science. For now, what I want you to notice is very simple. For this first category of trans people, we have not been given any help to understand their experience – what it is like for them, or what they’re responding to, or how they would describe themselves. We have instead been led to believe that they are simply people with a very rare medical condition – that might in any case not be real.

For the second category (which, if I understand correctly, is meant to cover anyone who identifies as trans but who either does not experience, or who has not gone through the lengthy and difficult process of being formally diagnosed with, gender dysphoria) we are given a very different kind of description – and it is worth stressing that, once again, this is the only description we’re given of trans people who don’t fit into that misleading 0.02% figure given above. It begins when they are first mentioned: ‘Secondly, trans is used to describe …those who are part of a wider ideological movement.We need to distinguish good intentions from bad ideas’ p. 9, emphasis mine). The experience of these other trans people is, we are going to be told, a matter of ideology (a word we’re going to be hearing a lot), and of bad ideas. 

This is a movement, we are told, ‘heavily influenced by queer theory and prior ideological commitments about the pliability of gender’. We are not told anything about what queer theory is, and I’m assuming that the main likely audiences for this report won’t have heard much about it, and won’t have positive associations with the word ‘queer’. In context, I suspect that the main message that most of this report’s readers will hear at this point is that these trans people are simply folk who have been infected by distorted, sinful thinking. We are also told that the movement ‘has fed into issues surrounding identity politics and led to the “no platforming” of those who disagree’ (p. 9). Finally, we are told is that this is a movement that ‘includes many contradictory ideas’ – such as a mismatch between elements of binary and non-binary thinking.

All in all, the main picture we have been given of this second category of people is even more dismissive than the picture painted of the first category: we have been led to believe that they are nothing more than people infected by bad and contradictory ideas, that their approach to gender is determined more by these ideas than by anything real in their experience, and that they are unwilling to listen to alternative views. And that, so far, is the only description we have been offered of their experience.

Still, by this point, we have not heard trans people’s own stories at all; we have not heard how they might describe their own experience. We have not been shown the variety of ways in which they make sense of that experience, the questions they ask, the resources they draw upon to help them understand the possibilities open to them and decide between them. They have been set up to be belittled and dismissed – and, despite the report’s own promises, we have not had to face them at all.

A note on the 0.02% figure

^[1] Of course, even if the figures given here were accurate, that would not for one moment diminish the need to treat all the people involved with well-informed respect and compassion. In one sense it makes no difference at all. But the report’s choice of which figure to give is revealing. The authors confidently state that ‘there are approximately 15,000 gender identity patients in the UK – this equates to 0.02 per cent of the population.’ The reference they give for this claim is to a Guardian article (Kate Lyons, ‘Gender identity clinic services under strain as referral rates soar’, The Guardian, 10 July 2016), which mentions both the 15,000 figure, and the 0.02%.  The latter is mentioned in passing, and clearly described as (emphasis mine) ‘the most conservative estimate’ in studies in this area.

The Guardian article itself points to the charity GIRES (Gender Identity Research and Education Society) as the source of that figure; it comes from a 2009 report of theirs, funded by the Home Office, that estimated that, in 2007, the estimated prevalence of those presenting for treatment of gender dysphoria was 0.02% – but the same report explains that this figure is growing significantly year on year. (Bernard Reed et al., Gender Variance in the UK: Prevalence, Incidence, Growth and Demographic Distribution, GIRES 2009, p. 4; it is unclear to me where the 15,000 figure comes from, even though I have seen it several times attributed to this report). GIRES explain in a 2011 follow-up report that the number has indeed continued to grow markedly since 2009: it appears, in fact, that ‘the number who have presented is doubling every 6 1/2 years’ (‘The Number of Gender Variant People in the UK – Update 2011’, GIRES 2011, p. 1). That strong upward trend is confirmed by the data presented in the Guardian article, which suggests that the increase has continued since 2011. GIRES also carefully explains that (as should be obvious, given how difficult and painful a step it can be to seek medical care in this area, and how patchy the availability of treatment has been) the numbers seeking medical care ‘emerge from a large, mainly invisible, reservoir of people, who experience some degree of gender variance’ (p. 1).

So, the authors of the EA report have done two things, here. First, they have given as a statement of simple fact a figure of 0.02% which they know (because they were told this in the source they cited) is the most conservative estimate in the field – and when I say that the authors are deliberately minimising the numbers, this is what I mean. Second, though, the authors appear not to have done the five minutes of extra research needed to show that this figure is out of date, and thoroughly misleading when presented in isolation.

This is the second of six posts critiquing this report.

1. Whose stories?
2. The varieties of trans experience?
3. Listening to the Bible
4. Confused bodies
5. The rest of the report
6. Conclusion

Whose stories?

Back in November, the Evangelical Alliance released a report called Transformed:  A brief biblical and pastoral introduction to understanding transgender in a changing culture; it is available for download from their website. The lead author was Peter Lynas, though others also contributed.^[1]

I am going to argue across several posts that it is in various ways a bad report. And I will argue that not just because I disagree with its arguments and its conclusions (though I certainly do disagree with them), but because I judge that it fails on its own terms. That is: in various ways, this report tells you what to expect from a good answer to the questions it is tackling, and then it fails – quite dramatically – to give an answer that meets those expectations. It fails to do what it says on the tin.

That does mean that in most of what follows, I’ll be working with the report’s language and arguments, rather than using my own. Left to my own devices, I would want to approach the whole topic very differently.

‘We must start by listening to their stories’

The report begins with a quotation: ‘If you have met one transgender person you have met one transgender person. No two experiences are the same’ (p.5). (It’s a quotation from ‘a participant in a conversation conducted by the author with a transgender support group’). The introduction then stresses that readers should keep clearly in mind the people whose lives are being spoken about, and face them with love, compassion, and welcome. Later (p. 13), the need to offer trans people a pastorally sensitive welcome in church is stressed again; later still (p. 17), we are reminded of the need to meet the people involved ‘where they are at’. In the conclusion, we are told that ‘It is necessary for each of us as individuals and part of gathered communities to understand, love and relate to transgender people’, and that ‘If we want to understand those who are wrestling with gender dysphoria, we must start by listening to their stories’ (p. 29, emphasis mine).

I think we can, then, fairly ask whether this report lives up to this. Is it written in such a way that it will help readers understand some of the diverse stories of transgender people – to understand what it is like for them, what their journeys have been like, and why they have chosen the courses that they have followed? I think we can fairly – holding the report to the standard it sets for itself – expect it to be written in such a way that a wide range of transgender people might recognise themselves in its pages. I don’t mean that the report needs to come to conclusions that all trans readers would agree with, but that it should be a report that helps all its readers understand and relate lovingly and attentively to people with a wide range of transgender experience.

That, then, is the first and main lens with which I’m going to read this report – because it is a standard that the report sets for itself.^[2]

Tim’s story

One story is told in detail, and it is told right at the start of the main body of the report. It is Tim’s story (pp. 6–7) – the story of how Tim reacted when his dad, who had previously been known as Stephen, transitioned to become Stephanie. Now, to get a rich picture of how people are affected by transgender experience, it is certainly important to hear a wide range of people’s stories, including the stories of family members of trans people, stories where some of the outcomes of transitioning for the transgender person involved are ambivalent or negative, and stories where the reactions of those around them are difficult. Those are amongst the pastoral realities to which churches will need to respond in attentive and compassionate ways. This, however, is the only story that we are told in detail in this report, and it is the story that gets to frame the whole argument. In emotionally powerful ways, it sets the tone and the terms for the whole of the rest of the discussion. It is worth asking, therefore, what kind of framing this story gives to the report’s argument.

The first and simplest thing to notice is that this is a relentlessly negative story. It is a story in which the transgender person’s transition breaks relationships: the relationship between Stephanie and her children has clearly been damaged; the relationship between Stephanie and her wife of many years is broken; we are told that Stephanie has lost touch with all her old friends. We are told that ‘Nothing has changed’ for Stephanie (p. 7) – meaning, I think, that transition has (in Tim’s view) resolved none of the problems that led Stephanie to it. We are told, in Tim’s words, that Stephanie’s transition was ‘self-harm at the highest level’. A story has been chosen to frame this report that paints a relentlessly bleak picture of trans experience – and in the absence of any other story, this gets to be the whole story.^[3]

The second thing to notice is that Stephanie doesn’t get to appear in her own right. We are (as the title suggests) being told Tim’s story, and we are given fairly extensive quotations in Tim’s own words. We are given some of Tim’s mum’s own words. We don’t, however, get to hear Stephanie. There is not a single word of direct speech from Stephanie, and it is unclear whether the small amounts of reported speech that we get come from the authors’ conversations with her, or whether they are mediated through Tim. We don’t get to know in any serious way how Stephanie would tell her story; we only know how that story is told by other people. That is reinforced by other details, like the fact that it is Tim’s choice of pronouns for Stephanie (‘he’ and ‘him’) that are used throughout, not Stephanie’s. This is a story that leaves out the experience of the transgender person at the heart of it.

The third thing to notice is that the story is written in such a way as to foreground and approve Tim’s theological commentary, without opening it do discussion or critique. Tim is portrayed as someone with a strong, clear faith, who sometimes ‘has truth conversations’ with Stephanie, even if at other times he ‘leads with grace’ (so we are already being told that ‘truth’ runs counter to the path chosen by Stephanie, even if ‘grace’ will mean continuing to engage with her). And we are told, in Tim’s stark words, that gender reassignment is definitely against God’s plan, and that it is chosen mistakenly by people who should instead be finding their identity in Christ. The mix of direct and reported speech means that it is hard to tell where Tim’s voice stops and the authors’ voice starts: Tim’s perspective is implicitly endorsed and owned by the report. Before the report has given any theological arguments or discussion of its own, before it has given its readers any tools with which to make sense of trans experience, before it has introduced any nuance or complexity into its discussion, it has handed readers a stark theological condemnation.

Contrast the way in which the report distances itself from Stephanie’s theological perspective. We get (p.7) a brief description (again, with what is presumably Tim’s choice of pronouns rather than Stephanie’s): ‘Stephanie has a faith and says that he asked God to take being trans away and when that didn’t happen, he decided it must be for him. He has been involved in a number of faith communities and has engaged in different ways but has always struggled.’ To say that Stephanie has a faith – some kind of faith, something that should probably be called faith? – sets us up to question what she is reported as saying. We are told that Stephanie’s decision is made in the absence of guidance from God, rather than being a response to God’s guidance. We are left with the impression that she has struggled with church and with faith, and that her decisions have made full Christian participation difficult for her. And these brief sentences are followed immediately by Tim’s confident and articulate theological condemnation. The report does everything it can to insinuate that, in relation to Christian faith, Stephanie’s decision was as rootless as Tim’s faith was deep-rooted.

Remember: I am not for a moment denying that this is an attentive portrayal of Tim’s perspective on his experience. Nor am I denying that stories like Tim’s are important, and need to be heard and understood. The authors of this report have, however, made the decision that the only substantial story of trans experience in the report, the story that will frame their whole approach, should be one that unequivocally condemns transitioning as a theological error, that paints the consequences of transitioning in the worst possible light – and that does not allow the person who transitioned any space to speak for herself.

‘We must start by listening to their stories’, the report’s authors said – but they are not practicing what they preach.

Footnotes

^[1] I am grateful to Susannah and Hope for their comments on an a draft of these posts.

^[2] Note that I am not asking whether the authors talked to transgender people while preparing the report: they clearly did. I’m asking about what the report’s words communicate to its readers about the stories of trans people.

^[3] There is also a quote from a trans person on p.14 (comparing their trans experience to cancer or schizophrenia), and a snippet of a story from ‘Sarah’ on p. 15 (who suggests that in transitioning she ‘may have sinned’). These are tiny in comparison to the telling of Tim’s story – and they also serve to frame trans experience negatively.

This is the first of six posts critiquing this report.

1. Whose stories?
2. The varieties of trans experience?
3. Listening to the Bible
4. Confused bodies
5. The rest of the report
6. Conclusion