I have a small porcelain dish that used to belong to my maternal grandmother. 
It is pearlescent white with three dusty pink roses and pale green leaves on the front. It has a scalloped top edge and a short pedestal base. On the underside is a stamp of the word Germany with a golden crown above it, a G to its left, and an H to its right. Greiner & Herda, a porcelain decoration studio in Oberkotzau, Germany opened in 1886. This stamp is one of their earliest markings.
I love diversity. I enjoy going against the grain and not conforming to people’s expectations. I’m for embracing truth within and without. I’m just not sure what the truth is regarding gender and transgenderism. I question whether the current societal and cultural narrative speaks truth and really encourages diversity and freedom.
Over many months and years of searching to find other similar voices, I have pulled together a collection of individuals who are questioning the narrative. Keep in mind that none of these sources are conservative or religious.
Most people in my circles would assume that there are only two genders and there’s nothing more to think about. Case closed. Maybe that’s what I think – thought? – too.
Gender has come to refer to the social and cultural roles that tend to be associated with one or the other biological sexes and is no longer considered synonymous with physical sex.
But even before the meanings of gender and sex diverged, there have existed terms for people not fully male or fully female, as in Mesopotamian mythology, or from inscribed Egyptian pottery shards from 2000 BCE that list three genders: tai (male), hmt (female), and sḫt (sekhet). Sḫt is often translated as “eunuch”, although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated. Continue reading
The night after our consultation with Dr. Yarhouse about our first twin’s gender dysphoria diagnosis, I had trouble sleeping. We had flown from Virginia across the country to visit colleges early that day, and had checked in to the third hotel of our spring break excursion. We were trying to be at peace with each other and have a good trip, while underneath there was plenty of turmoil in each of our hearts and minds.
After attempting sleep for quite a while, I moved from the bed to the couch in our little hotel suite. I didn’t want my restlessness to keep others awake, and my every move felt overwhelmingly loud to me. I wrapped up in a small, extra blanket from the hotel room closet. I was still cold, but eventually fitful sleep came. There were lots of thoughts spiraling through my brain, but ultimately one floated down through the swirling mass and settled gently at the bottom of my mind.
The truth is always true.
That was it. It was profound and peaceful, but also enigmatic and incomplete. The thought seemed a gift to me, not one I had consciously created, but one I had watched travel through the haze of my brain and come to rest as if summoned. That thought has provided moments of peace for me along the road of this journey. Though I can’t tell you exactly what the truth is, I believe it exists. And wherever and however it exists, it never contradicts itself. Continue reading
CAUSES?
The consensus so far is that no one really knows what causes transgenderism and that there is not just one singular cause.
Before looking into causes for transgenderism though, it’s important to distinguish it from intersex conditions. Intersex conditions include chromosomal and anatomical abnormalities. According to a March 2000 article in the American Journal of Human Biology entitled, “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis”, only 1.7 percent of human births are intersex, including variations that may not become apparent until, for example, puberty, or until attempting to conceive. For more information on intersex conditions, frequency of occurrence, and the differences between people with intersex conditions and those who are transgender or transexual, visit the Intersex Society of North America website at www.isna.org. Continue reading
A child is considered to be transgender if they consistently, persistently, and insistently express a cross-gender identity and feel that their gender is different from their assigned sex. Often expressing this feeling at an early age, they are more likely to experience gender dysphoria, discomfort related to their bodies not matching their internal sense of gender, as defined on the American Psychological Association’s Fact Sheet on Gender Diversity and Transgender Identity in Children. This dysphoria tends to increase at adolescence as the body matures. Continue reading
How do you see the world? Do you see it clearly? Do you see it through rose-colored glasses? Do you see it with corrective lenses in place?
Rose-colored glasses invoke the idea of seeing things in a positive light, even when circumstances aren’t positive. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing. It just depends on why and how you do it – to effect positive change or to deceive yourself.
Corrective lenses, on the other hand, are an invention from the late 13th century to correctly bend light entering the eye to mitigate conditions in the eye that cause refractive errors – nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hypermetropia), or astigmatism (deviation from spherical curvature). They can even correct presbyopia! Bifocals, anyone?
Dr. Mark Yarhouse, in Understanding Gender Dysphoria, describes three different lenses through which people view gender dysphoria depending on their starting point. Continue reading
Another seven books on my recent and current book list.
The Armor of God – Bible Study Book by Priscilla Shirer
This is an impactful study I completed with a lifelong friend over Skype. I greatly dislike “fill in the blank” Bible studies because it makes it seem as if the answers to faith are easy and the same for everyone if they’re doing it right. This study is totally the opposite. The questions are highly personal and thought-provoking. The more honest I was with my responses, the more insight I gained into the analogy of the armor of God. I used to think it was just another list of practices I needed to put into place to be a good Christian (one more thing at which I could fail), but I began to understand instead that the armor is a gift provided to us by God to help us in our interactions in this broken, fallen world.
Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children by Diane Ehrensaft Continue reading
Learning and knowing are things I enjoy. I tend to enjoy learning most about philosophy, history, personal stories, and how or why things happen. My reading list in the past few years has been quite eclectic. I’d like to share a handful of my selections with you.
This book didn’t come out until 2015, two years after our first twin revealed their identification as transgender. I wish it had existed sooner. It is a scholarly book with a pastoral tone. I found it while I was searching online for transgender information and support, especially for persons of faith. Our family scheduled a multi-day session with him and his team for our first twin and my husband and me in the spring of 2016. I’ll detail that experience in a future episode.
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