Changing sex? : Transsexuality and Christian theology – Helen Savage

I have long wanted to understand trans people. My gut feelings tend to be ‘against’ but my head sympathises as a result of listening to many trans people speak about their feelings on television.

In the year 2000, a male priest underwent the ‘sex change operation’ and I wrote to him/her “My gut feelings on the issue make me uneasy; one the one hand I find the idea somewhat repellent and on the other I question whether society has too rigid a view of gender and that if this was relaxed, operations would not be desired. However, listening to transsexuals on documentary television and recoiling from some bad theology from the Evangelical Alliance makes my ‘head’ sympathetic while my ‘heart’ lags behind. Hayley in Coronation Street has helped moral discourse more than many in the Church.”

On reflection, this was somewhat patronising and I suspect my motive for writing the letter was more for my comfort than for that of the recipient.

His bishop supported him. There were no ‘rules’ then. Things have move on since then.

The Evangelical Alliance condemned the priest but the Church Times was supportive: Gender dysphoria is simply a medical condition unrecognised in previous generations. The ignorance of the ancient Israelites should have no more influence upon us than the ignorance of, say, the Elizabethans. The related argument that gender dysphoria sufferer should accept “God’s created intent” is, by extension, a line of reasoning that rules out ail medical intervention, and therefore manages to be thoughtless as well as heartless.

In another diocese, the infamous bishop Wally Benn, was highly unsupportive of a priest in a similar position. He has since been vilified over lack of child protection procedures.

The author is a trans woman and an Anglican priest and this is her Ph.D thesis, published in 2005.

She starts with seven case studies of Christians who have felt gender dysphoria. It is a small sample because there aren’t many people to choose from thnat are in both these categories.

She then looks at evidence for gender dysphoria in ancient societies. For example, there is a mummy buried in an Egyptian pyramid dressed as a woman but with a prosthetic penis.

Hipocrates spoke of ‘men without manhood’.

Ovid wrote of drinking mare’s urine – today, that’s part of a drug given to patients undergoing hormone replacement.

Tacitus spoke of a priest ‘dressed as a woman.’ (Deut 22:5’s prohibition of crossdressing may be a condemnation of this priest’s cult.

Galen believed that both genders were the same but that females had testes inside their bodies. Semen contained heat. Women were lacking in this heat. So males worried in case they lost too much semen and became females.

Nero cross-dressed and one of his successors depilated.

Eunuchs attended Byzantine courts. Some despised them because they had smooth skin but wrinkled and inclined to become fat. Clements of Alexandria extended the use of ‘eunuch’ to include celibates and those who hads no desire for women.

Some women who dressed as men were regarded as saints, e.g.Thecla, Pelagia, Joan of Arc.

Queen Christiana of Sweden had a papal dispensation to wear men’s clothes.

Those who conquested Mexico and Latin America were horrified by the sight of cross-dressers.

Large numbers of women dressed as a men so as to fight in wars including World War One.

A sex change operation in 1952 was widely publicised and this resulted in a large number of people wishing for something similar.

In 1953, a teenage boy from a Liverpool council estate attempted suicide and what would become known as gender dysphoria was seen as the cause. He was given hormone therapy before having an operation in Casablanca.

In the Twentieth Century: as categories of gender and sexuality were parsed out, new more narrow definitions of homosexuality emerged. This was to prove
a curiously double-edged sword for transsexual people. As the homosexual community no longer saw transsexual people as their allies, others, especially in the churches, became more convinced that transsexuality was merely a less honest form of homosexuality.

Oliver O’ Donovan was one of the very few theologians to write on (against) this subject and a watered down version was endorsed by the Evangelical Alliance and by the less than remarkable Archbishop Coggan in 1990. The author describes it as ‘The Church of England: Trying to sit even-handedly on a rotten fence.

Scott Joynt, bishop of Winchester, showed the same lack of understanding about this issue as he does about homosexuality in the House of Lords, though four out of sex bishops voted for change in a liberal direction. A trans person wrote to forty-one dioceses and only got five replies.

In 2003, the House of Bishops wrote a mere three paragraphs on this subject. These were lifted from the Evangelical Alliance’s paper, which Scott Joynt called ‘carefully researched’ but which, in fact, contains little research.

It seems than trans people need to be tolerated and loved but that evangelicals don’t want to campaign for their justice.

On scripture, most trans people see a hierarchy of texts so believe that the prohibitions of the Old Testament are superceded by the New.

‘Male and female created he them’ is rejected as far as the plural is concerned by Von Rad. More likely, the original human was both male and female.

As for the rejection of eunuchs in the Torah, later scripture rehabilitates them.

The Song of Songs seems to reject binary language. We read into it what simply isn’t there in the text.

The crucifragram is seen buy some as showing Jesus as mother – giving blood and milk from his pierced side. Indeed, John Crysostom, no less, saw this as a reference to baptism and eucharist. More importantly, he calls it ‘nurturing’, ‘just as a mother… blood and milk.’

When Paul says that ‘in Christ there is neither male nor female’, is this a reference to the androgynous creation of Genesis as interpreted by Von Rad?

When Paul tells his audience to ‘shun fornication’ (1 Cor 6:18-29) he is writing against those Gnostics who say that the body doesn’t matter. What seems to be a negative ‘Don’t do that’ text is interpreted here as positive. Our sexuality has to be an expression of our whole selves. There has to be an integrity between soul and body. Our bodies have to express our whole selves. In trans people, the brain is wanting one thing while the body wants the opposite. This section made me think the most. The house of Bishops suggested that trans people might be Gnostic in separating soul/mind and body. The opposite is true; that if they don’t realign their gender this separation is already present. Psychological ‘cures’ don’t work. The idea that they might could be said to be Gnostic.

A study by Andrew Yip found that 93.3% of non-heterosexual Christians thought that the churches had not listened to their experiences. Listening is surely the key. Most people do their theology through experience so knowing a trans person is likely to change their outlook.

Rodney Holder is an astrophysicist but had written tow articles about trans issues. Though he shares many of O Donovan’s ideas, he does accept that gender realignment surgery might be right for some people. Here, he comes down on the side of wholeness and integration.

So where do I stand now? My gut feeling is still somewhat ‘against’ but my head knowledge is stronger in being able to override such feeling.

Then thesis is at http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3364/1/185.PDF?DDD32+

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