Last month I was blessed to be interviewed by an excellent journalist, Dan Hitchens, about the theological and pastoral landscape of transsexuality in the Catholic Church. I was interviewed alongside two other dear Catholic trans women: my friend Aoife Assumpta Hart, and a fellow activist Jane Fae.
An article based on the interview was featured in the Catholic Herald. You can read the entire article here: What’s the truth about transsexuality? by Dan Hitchens.
“Call Me Caitlyn” By J. Peter Nixon
The question as I see it is whether a person with a gender identity that is at variance with their chromosomal/physical gender necessarily violates the moral law if they choose to live according to their gender identity and (although this is a separate question) ultimately undergo gender reassignment surgery.
[…]
Perhaps the Church will come to recognize that a decision to pursue gender reassignment surgery need not be motivated by an understanding of gender that is incompatible with our theological anthropology.
Read the full article here.
Another prominent article about Nick Stevens, a devout Catholic transgender man.
Transgender and Catholic. These two words often aren’t used in the same sentence (at least in a positive way), but these words best describe who I am.
Yes, I’m a Roman Catholic in an increasingly secular world. But I’m also a Catholic in a transgender community who has often experienced religion as a mask for bigotry or even violence.
So when I came out as a transgender male at my small Catholic college in St. Louis I feared my peers would not respond well. Whether it was reactions of hesitation or outright exclusion, I knew things would change.
And things did change. But for the better.
Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/storywall/transgender-today/stories/nick-stevens
“I’m Proud to be a Transgender Catholic” – TIME Magazine
I came to school as Jes, a compassionate, but at times confused, young female searching for a way through school. I left Fontbonne as Nick, a young Catholic man who was more confident going out into the world.
During my transition from female to male, I was often confused with and mad at God. I didn’t understand why I had been born in the wrong body. This anger and confusion with how God had made me seeped into my daily life. I often wasn’t present to my friends and their needs, and I lost a sense of who and what mattered to me.
During this struggle, I closed myself off to God. But God never tired of pursuing me, and eventually we rekindled our relationship. It was at this point that I relearned one of the basic truths of our faith: that God created me, that God loves me, and that God accompanies me. The Lord already knew that I wasn’t accepting a part of myself, but once I told God how broken I felt, he showed me how loved I was.
Read the rest here: http://time.com/3744270/catholic-church-pope-francis-transgender-community/
Early Sunday morning a young transwoman, Leelah Alcorn, left a suicide note on Tumblr before walking out in front of a truck. She believed that she would never be able to successfully transition, that she would never be able to live a full life as a woman, that it was impossible for her to live a full life as a man.
Leelah’s mother posted that her “son” had gone for a walk and been hit by a truck. It’s a post that has been reposted, reblogged, tweeted and proliferated all over the internet, and there’s been a lot of hatred poured out on Leelah’s parents. As is often the case in teen suicides, Leelah blamed her parents for her unhappiness. I don’t know whether this is justified in most cases or not. I know that I when I was a suicidal teenager, my parents really had nothing to do with…
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I wrote recently on being gender-queer, and I promised that I write about transsexuality.
Before I do that, I want to give some idea of where I’m coming from on this issue. I recently wrote a paper on transgender and transsexual issues, and how trans identities relate to the traditional Catholic teaching on essential sexual complementarity. The paper was 5000 words long. I could have written four times that. As the foundation for writing I talked to trans people, read their writings, and listened to the stories that they had to tell about themselves rather than just approaching their experience through the filter of the “experts.” I’ve seen my own experience presented by experts often enough to know that there is often something missing in an allegedly “objective” account, and that the something missing is usually the heart of the human person.
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Catholic Trans* 