On the Politics of Religion and Exhausting Wedge Issues
And Republican politicians maybe staying out of children’s underpants!
I wrote an especially vulnerable essay yesterday. It took the emotional stuffing out of me. It was what I needed to write, not what I felt like writing.
As we play Whack-a-Mole with Republicans across the nation over the rights of vulnerable children and their families, and we wrestle with the absolute fetish Republicans have with the genitals of young kids, I can’t help but remember my own childhood experiences.
I’m not sure if I can adequately convey what puberty blockers would have meant for me as I entered an unwelcome puberty, alone with my despair. I “accepted” what was happening as inevitable. That this was the “natural” course of events, and I had to stop denying the maleness my family kept insisting belonged to me.
It was in the summer of 1978, between 6th and 7th grade, when the hairs started popping. For a time I tweezed them, but so much began at once there was no stopping it. I got taller, my shoulders broadened, my voice deepened, my face became far more angular, and my body covered with hair I didn’t want. And I knew then, for sure, God didn’t answer the fervent prayers of little trans girls.
So I went about praying hard that if I had to be a boy, could my interest in boys be taken away? If I was supposed to be one of them, study and adapt their interactions more intently, could I at least stop wanting them to kiss me? Once again, my daily prayers remained unanswered, and I was still attracted to men. Great. Thanks, God.
Religion fucked me up, big time. Even though I did not grow up in a religious household, I worshiped my big sister, and she worshiped God and Jesus a lot. First as the Catholic we were both raised as, later a charismatic, later still various versions of Pentecostal. Pentecostals do not like queer people.
She lived a state away, and I would visit her for weeks at a time in the summer, eventually spending all of my 9th grade year with her and her young family as I attended a Pentecostal school.
Why would a trans girl, now thinking maybe she’s a gay boy, subject herself to Holy Rollers who hated all her secrets? Because I figured they Had to be nice to me because they all feared hell if they weren’t. That simple. And I was still deeply invested in the notion that if I prayed hard enough I’d wake up a straight cis male. (Nope.)
I wouldn’t find out until years later, at 18, experientially, that I was also — even if not equally — attracted to cis women, and by 20 I fell in love with a girl who seemed to make it all go away. The stable home filled with children I dreamed of having was possible in her eyes, and her happiness became more important than my own ever could be. For a time.
It would be decades before I realized I’m bisexual, or pansexual, or whatever sexual it is that means I become attracted to humans and figure out the genital configuration situation later. I was married twice, (I know…) loved both of my wives, and prolly would still be married had they not both left me.
Left me to figuring out myself all over again. The big difference now being I stopped asking “God” to change my situation, and began asking Her to change my heart. I began to finally, at long last, “Accept the things I cannot change.”
What I came to know — what we all come to know — EVERY queer and trans person on this planet and likely in the entirety of the Universe — is that we are wired as we are wired. Period.
We can struggle against it for all eternity. We can choose and maintain celibacy (why?!?!) and we can pray our hearts out — but we will never “become” cisgendered or heterosexual if we didn’t show up that way.
That’s why Conversion Therapy isn’t just a complete crock, it is deadly. Oh, and as to the “argument” that the LGBTQ+ community has magical powers of indoctrination, we can’t do that any better than y’all can.
We can’t “recruit” otherwise innocent cis straight folks to the dark side… and if there ever were folks who looked on at our queer community and thought, “hey, they look neat and fun! I want some of that!” — even if they do have (consensual) sex with us, if they aren’t wired for the attraction, it’s gonna be a Meh experience for all concerned.
THIS is our true fight: That we simply, naturally, EXIST. We are real. Our stories are real. Our experience of ourselves is REAL. And we absolutely deserve to be treated and respected AS REAL. We come to know ourselves JUST like they do. As we awaken to this life, we make associations and connections and distinctions — I am not a childhood development expert — I just had a childhood, and it took me decades to validate my own LIVED experience of being Me. Because other people denied my lived reality at nearly every turn. And I trusted them, and what they told me of an angry god, over my Self.
All the arguments against us are tired — but because they (Practicing Republicans and many religious folks) don’t like the scientific conclusions of the medical and psychological communities, they dismiss them. Religious folks will ignore as much reality as is necessary to contort whatever they Choose to believe (Yes, children — Religion, UNLIKE gender identity and orientation — is WHOLLY a CHOICE) into their “reality.”
“Faith” is a mighty big and mighty dangerous word when folks abandon their own hearts and minds to follow after what some random says from a pulpit. Especially when the random claims to be the Voice for God on Earth. HOW can you argue with God, right? Wrong. They don’t speak for God, if there even IS a God, they just need you to think they do. “God” remains silent. And they manufacture and distribute a whole bunch of stuff that will never be true. And they need the “flock” to buy it, or the dollars stop and there ain’t no more church. Religion is a business like any other, and just as dangerous in the wrong hands. Even a little humility goes a very long way.
I don’t know if there is a God in Heaven. I spent many years desperately trying to believe there is. I have come to strongly believe that IF there is, She “made” me exactly as I AM, (The Great I AM did so…) and the real “sin” lies in denying the majesty of Her work. *If you were thrown off, dear reader, by me assigning female pronouns to God, I assure you “God” is far Bigger than anything WE decide to call Her. Just look at those running around claiming they speak in God’s name and assigning all of their own hate and prejudice to God. Whatever “God” is, she ain’t that. Pffft
And guess what? The Bible isn’t our Constitution. It’s one “holy” book on a shelf full. And this was NEVER a “Christian Nation.” Learn actual history, I beg. Religious Freedom actually means you are free to worship (or NOT) as you see fit. As am I. Neither our Government NOR you can tell ME what is best for ME in terms of MY religion. Period. It is NOT a license for you to discriminate because you want to.
I don’t regret my marriages or my incredible children. Not even a little bit. And I can’t regret not having puberty blockers in 1978, or being the age I was, in the place I was, with the mores that existed there and then. That would be futile and a big waste of Martha’s time.
But, we’ve come a very long way since then. Puberty Blockers were initially introduced, as I understand it, to pause precocious puberty. PAUSE. They alter nothing, they create a bit of space and time.
It would seem this would not only answer the question of any “biological advantage” for young trans girls playing sports (still don’t know why they want to, but good on ’em) it also gives a span of time for one to be “certain” of the puberty meant for Them. (Yes — the vast majority are certain already, I won’t debate that here.)
We know better than any clinician, and certainly better than any politician, who we ARE. And the parents of trans children supporting their children ALSO know who they are, and are far better equipped to make medical decisions than ANY outsider with a political OR religious AGENDA.
Our “agenda” is LIFE, affirmed.
Theirs, ultimately, is the death of us.
I will always choose LIFE, and I wish more of the general population of fair-minded parents and grandparents out there would support us in supporting these wonderful, magical, awe-inspiring kids over the noise of wedge issues, and the cheap political games initiated by these children’s-genital fetishists.
Stay OUT of kids’ underpants!!!
/end rant
Peace, Lovelies
-MM
