Gender and Identification – Feminism and Religion

DeeDee & Helen—A Trans Love Story, Part II by Mary Gelfand

Part 1 was posted yesterday

Being a lifelong spiritual seeker, DeeDee began searching for a church community where she could be herself. Fortunately, she found a Unitarian Universalist Church which had long welcomed the LGBTQ community. DeeDee felt very welcome in this community and it was there that I first met her, in the fall of 2002.

At that time I was doing a lot of teaching around paganism and goddess religions. DeeDee started signing up for my classes and we became friends. She was the first trans person I came to know deeply. Much of my understanding of the struggles trans people face comes from my relationship with DeeDee. For example, in one class I taught, students were asked to engage in an activity that involved braiding 3 pieces of yarn together. Most of the students were women, and they immediately began braiding. I took time to teach the one man in the class how to braid, and turned to find DeeDee at my elbow. She took me aside and shyly whispered—”I never learned how to braid. It’s not something that boys are taught. Can you help me?” This came in the category of “It never occurred to me,” and over the years DeeDee corrected both my assumptions and my language around what it meant to be trans. I was always grateful for her wisdom and insight.

DeeDee & Helen—A Trans Love Story, Part I by Mary Gelfand

Author’s Note: I am a cis woman writing about a trans woman who was my friend. What I know about her experience comes from stories she told me, and things I learned from her wife Helen, who has given me permission to share this story. So I am not writing from a position of personal knowledge of what it means to be trans. I am writing out of compassion for and sensitivity to the lived experience of my friend DeeDee and of trans individuals across the globe.

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I first met DeeDee when I stopped by my Unitarian Universalist church to drop off a colorful triangular hand-woven shawl I had made for the upcoming auction. DeeDee was sitting behind the desk, recording the items that were being donated and we chatted a for a few minutes. In those days, I was teaching a variety of classes on Paganism and the Divine Feminine at the church. She asked if I was the Mary who taught these classes and expressed interest in joining one That is how our friendship began. I later learned that she made the winning bid on the shawl I donated that day.

DeeDee was assigned male at birth–the oldest child in a large Catholic family residing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Naturally she attended Catholic schools. DeeDee briefly considered a life of religious service and enrolled in St. Joseph’s Seminary. However, being extremely intelligent and given to questioning everything, DeeDee was soon pegged as a troublemaker and she and the Brothers parted ways.

A Transgender Man’s Perspective on Purity Culture Got This Cisgender Woman Thinking by Liz Cooledge Jenkins

“Ewww, there’s been a boy in our cabin!” One of my cabinmates squealed. We were at sixth grade camp. Others chimed in quickly: “Gross!”

The evidence? A pair of boys’ cargo shorts, held gingerly between a thumb and forefinger as if they had cooties.

“Ew!” “Weird!” “How’d he get in here?”

The shorts were mine. But I did not admit this.

As a kid, I sometimes wore hand-me-down clothing from my older brother. It made sense. I didn’t have strong opinions about fashion, and the clothes felt just as comfortable and fit just as well as the girl clothes my parents bought for me.

My elementary school classmates didn’t seem to notice or care. But this was sixth grade. This was the first year of middle school. Things were changing, and I hadn’t quite realized the full extent of these changes. Showing up at sixth grade camp with hand-me-down boys’ shorts was taboo.

Expanding the Possibilities of Being: Transness and the Practice of Freedom by Mark Gardett

Imagine a tree.

This tree lives in a park, surrounded by other trees. There’s a lake in the distance, and the tree has plenty of space to spread its leaves to the sun. In the summer, its leaves are lush and green, and in the winter, its bare branches shake in the wind.

Now imagine this tree saying to itself, when its leaves turn brown in the fall, “I am so ugly—the other trees won’t like me.” Imagine the tree next to it thinking, “I am the smart tree,” or “I am mom’s favorite tree,” or “I’m a failure–I will never be a good enough tree” or “I’m going to be the richest and most successful tree.”

It doesn’t seem likely. Yet as humans, we have these kinds of thoughts all the time. They’re called identifications, and every practice of yoga, despite all the incredible diversity of lineages and traditions, is designed to teach us how to let them go. No matter what school of yoga you study, this is the goal: liberation from our identification with the impermanent, changing, and ultimately unsatisfying temporary self, so that we can reunite with the true Self beneath.