Rev. Virginia Jarocha-Ernst

This will be the third in a three-part sermon series on the topic of gender: "Ah...men", "Ah...women" and "Ah...you". The concept of gender identity is very basic to how we experience the world. It has long been assumed to be a fixed aspect of a person's life. New research tells us that male and female are points on a continuum. In this series, we will talk about and celebrate all that we know about gender. 

Music by “Free to Be You and Me,” Elaine Held, and Louise Chernosky

SEARCH FOR MEANING by Judy Stevens

When Virginia asked me to talk about what it is like to be the parent of a transgendered person I thought I would be happy to do so, to share how transformative  this has been. The difficulty became apparent as I sat down to try to do the actual writing. Firstly because the issues surrounding gender identification, our perceived places along that spectrum, and how the duality of male/female is simultaneously central to our biological and social experience as humans and somehow and sometimes beside the point, and that these are issues outside my purview here, but central to my experience.  And secondly because my story is really very brief, but to understand my experience it is necessary to understand parts of my son’s story. And with that realization came decisions about how much to disclose about what is very individual and private, but also very much shared, very much a part of our common human experience. 

I wanted to be able to tell of his struggles, and a journey that at times has been very difficult, and of seeming to ultimately find his way, without romanticizing it. So this is my attempt to do so.

Many of you here know my children. They grew up in this congregation.  My middle child, Michelle, was gregarious, and playful. She sought attention, was the first to volunteer, for anything, loved Secret Friends, and the holiday craft fair, and was Mary in the Christmas pageant.

By middle school years much of that affect was no longer present.  Along with the usual angst of the pre-teen and teen-ager, she had her own demons. She was occasionally bullied in middle school for being different, for not conforming. Despite having several close friends, her propensity for wearing loose baggy clothing, and for telling a few close friends that she thought she might be lesbian, brought her some grief, with one girl in her group telling her quite harshly that her parents would now longer allow her to associate with Michelle.  The friends she had, a close and supportive family, some counseling  - those affirmations helped her to cope, if not always thrive.

In high school she continued to excel academically, and found satisfaction in various pursuits. She identified herself as bi-sexual, when she felt the need to classify herself, but considered everyone to be on a spectrum in terms of sexual orientation and in gender identification in general, and disliked the idea of slotting herself.

And she spent much of her years between the ages of about 11 and 21 in some pain. In general, her path brought her some joys, and accomplishments and points of satisfaction, but also brought depression, cutting, anorexia, suicidal thoughts and a great deal of suppressed anger. She saw therapists during much of that time and was hospitalized once. She knew she didn’t want to die, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue in the pain she was usually in, to greater or lesser degrees.

Few people who interacted with her casually would have known this. Like many youth she was accomplished at masking.  Despite my closeness to her, trying to help her cope with her depression, I was slow to realize she was suffering from anorexia. It is, of course, difficult to ferret out the causes of depression, the effects of worries about one’s self, family difficulties, concerns about ones future, and the physiological components, but one of the most constant manifestations with her was a profoundly negative self-image, too often bordering on self-loathing and that she could never identify anything approximating a, in her words, legitimate reason for her depression and lack of self-esteem;  it was truly a vicious cycle. And yet she got through the day, most days. She was smart and funny and always an appreciative child and sibling.

And one thing she worked on was her sexuality. She tried to determine whether she was simply a lesbian who was not embracing that part of herself, whether she was telling herself she was bi-sexual because she had had relationships with males and that the reason for this was because she was still trying to conform to some societal norm, and that this was causing a rift with being a whole person.  This resonated with her, and she felt somewhat better about herself, but after spending months with this focus it also didn’t feel quite right to her. 

And then came thoughts about the possibility of being transgendered. And the feeling felt right enough that (and here I will change to the masculine pronoun) he acted on it within weeks. He sought out counseling and turned to the internet for more and more and more information – experiences, possibilities, memoires, questions, self-examination, answers, procedures, prescriptions, proscriptions, everything that would effect a life-altering decision. Counseling was thorough and pushed further introspection and reality checks and a lot of processing. And with it came further epiphanies and more and more the feeling have creating a more integrated and authentic self.

And now here we here, here he is. Beginning with learning how to act more masculine, to “pass,” to accept himself as a man, to help others see him as a man, or, as he jokingly refers to himself, as at least a 15 year old boy. 

I do not want to infer that all of his struggles were answered through his realization and articulation that he identifies as being transgendered.  Or that he will never face awkward questions, incredulity or even hostility. But over these past few months I, and his siblings, have seen the reemergence of parts of his personality we have not seen in too long – a joyfulness:  the happy extrovert who takes pleasure in the company of others, in making new friends, in being secure that his goals and plans are achievable and will give him satisfaction. And I am profoundly grateful for the love and support he has in his life. 

SERMON

I have to admit that I was a little depressed last Sunday after speaking to you about all that accompanies the gender called female in our society. When you pick apart the assumptions and the oppressive practices that come with the label, it is indeed sad. This binary gendering practice has led to such a colossal waste of human potential.  The programs, the stereotypes we’ve inherited about what it is to be male and female are not fair or equal.  They box women and men into untenable positions of powered or disempowered, up and down. They limit how we think of ourselves as whole and capable people. It makes the ask of finding that authentic place of celebration of who we really are is hard and sometimes very sad work.  It is both internal spiritual work to resist the stifling messages of our gender identity, and it is political work, to make laws that are fair to all people no matter what their gender identity might be.

The religious dimension is there, too. That is the radically hospitable reaching out to make human connections and to heal the brokenness into a beautiful and holy whole.  So the issue of gender is internal, political, and religious.  

While the source of our being can be attributed to god or nature or nature as god, how we define what we are, the parameters we give to the gender we live within, is a human creation.  Some cultures create stricter boundaries than others . “In Navajo culture, there are four genders; some indigenous cultures recognize more. Native activists working to renew their cultural heritage adopted the English term “two-spirit” as a useful shorthand to describe the entire spectrum of gender and sexual expression that is better and more completely described in their own languages.” (Two Spirits, a movie on PBS)

And it is also true that one of the least understood, most frequently victimized groups today are folks who are transgender.  The violence toward transgender people is so extreme that the State of Massachusetts has now approved legislation to ensure their equal rights under the law. To be born into a body that does not match your internal sense of who you are happens to human beings.  In every culture, throughout all time, there have been born people whose gender is more ambiguous, who fall between the two poles on the spectrum, people who know innately that their gender is not what their body shows.  Gender identity and expression are often confused with sexual orientation.  But they are in fact all very different things.  Sexual orientation is about who you are attracted to, the one who sparks that little flame of desire to know more, whereas gender identity is about who you are in your mind, how you think about yourself. Gender expression is about how you act, as male, female, or something more androgynous. All of us are some combination of these.  You may have heard that sexual orientation fits the standard bell curve. Why should gender identity graph any differently?  But the roles we try to fit into do not allow for such variation.  The boxes of male and female are built by societies that want to contain and suppress our individual expression.  They are constructs that uphold authoritarian structures by oppressing other people.

There is a tremendous amount of fear about those who transgress these boundaries in any way. You may have heard this latest bit of news that makes me want to buy Girl Scout Cookies even more than usual:

Three Girl Scout troops in Louisiana actually disbanded and won’t be selling Thin Mints this year. “They've disbanded in protest after the Girl Scouts of Colorado accepted seven-year-old transgender child Bobby Montoya as a member. Montoya was born a boy but has considered herself a girl since she was two years old, says her mom Felisha Archuleta. In October, Archuleta took her daughter to speak with a Denver troop leader about signing up, and took her daughter away crying after the Scout leader referred to the child as "it" and said "Everyone will know he's a boy." Three weeks later, the statewide Girl Scouts body issued a statement saying, "If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout." When they heard about this reversal, three moms and troop leaders in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, decided to dissolve their troops and leave Girl Scouts.”

“Right-wing groups and some conservative parents and scouts have posted to a site called Honest Girl Scouts, YouTube, and Facebook pages—including one called "Make Girl Scouts Clean Again"—urging Girl Scouts everywhere to go on strike from selling cookies, and their parents to stop buying them. They want Girl Scouts USA to officially ban transgender children from membership, and kick out any known transgender scouts "hiding" in the troops.”  (Nicole Pasluka, Mother Jones, Feb. 2, 2012)

Groups such as these Louisiana moms are deeply threatened by the presence of one small child who wants to be a girl. Why is this such a huge threat?  I suspect it is based on the moms’ own need for order and predictability, and a sense of vulnerability in a world that constantly changes. Their fear and outright hatred of difference is based in their own need for comfort in their identity and for a society that affirms their view of who they are. The world must define girlhood in one particular way, or their own female lives might lose their meaning.  In much the same way, some speak of marriage between gay and lesbian couples as undermining marriage for heterosexual couples, for some need that affirmation of their identity and of their relationships to come from the uniformity of society’s expectations.  They need the boxes of identity to be fixed firmly and for all time.

But the terms of that argument do not hold up for me.  My marriage to a man for 33 years has been occasionally threatened, not by other peoples’ marriages, but rather by our own internal workings, our expectations and our own choices.  To my mind, what holds a marriage together is commitment to it - loyalty, fidelity and the willingness to try to understand another person throughout many seasons, to change ourselves and to love another human being through all those changes, too. It’s not easy, and some couples are better off not trying for the long haul. But marriage between any two people who love and commit to each other?  Why would that be a threat?  

And so it is also true for Mason, Bobby and Carol Ann and all those who seek to find their true gender identity.  What makes me sad is when such a journey toward authenticity is denied.  What I see in the examples of transgender individuals is a beautiful thrust toward knowing who we really are in all its complexity, with all its surprises, with all the struggles…. The truth of who we are is blossoming always, blossoming beyond the borders of those tight little boxes.

Now it isn’t easy to talk about this change in gender… pronouns in particular become hell.  Just ask Judy about how I tripped over language as she shared about Mason’s transformation with me last week.  But it is so right to try to speak about a person as they wish.   And it is right to expect that we will stumble and will accept corrections graciously.   The fact is our English language is not built to be terribly inclusive.  Just last week, we sang a song with the line ‘brothers, sisters, all’ repeated, which may not feel at all inclusive to someone of ambiguous gender.  Some people are not brother or sister but sibling. We are not yet able to truly express in language the fluidity of our gender experience.  But let’s not allow that to keep us from talking about it.  We’ll find the words eventually.

Kate Bornstein, in her book Gender Outlaws, says this about her experience of categories within the transgender community:

I’d like to be a member of a community someday. One of the reasons I didn’t go through with my gender change for such a long time was the certain knowledge that I would be an outsider. All the categories of transgender find a common ground in that they each break one or more of the rules of gender; what we have in common is that we are gender outlaws, every one of us. To attempt to divide us into rigid categories (you’re a transvestite, you’re a drag queen, and you’re a she-male and on and on and on) is like trying to apply the laws of solids to the state of fluids; it’s our fluidity that keeps us in touch with each other. It’s our fluidity and the principles that attend that constant state of flux that could create an innovative and inclusive transgender community.

This fluidity is true for al communities. It is indeed our fluidity that keeps us in touch with what is important and binds us together.  The religious task of binding to what is true and free in each person happens in the flow of living true to who we are today.  My model for this is the woman whose husband discovers his true gender to be female.  And the marriage between those two people continues because the love is there.  This really happens, and it is a beautiful example of marriage’s many layers and dimensions.

This becoming the person you need to be is truly about radical hospitality, being open to the person who enters your life today, right now… in all their beautiful and fluid particularity.

This Valentine’s Day, I ask you to consider how you, in your everyday life, can stand on the side of love. Where are you keeping open the possibilities for new love and acceptance in your life right now?  Each of us must face this challenge of loving ourselves, letting who we are today out into this crazy world.  The journey that our transgander friends engage in teaches us this. To be who we truly are meant to be, we have to step outside those boxes. 

Judy is my hero today, because she is a living example of the boundless love between parent and child, love that has nothing to do with gender, really.  The person we love so deeply is so much more than that. As religious liberals, we have a mighty task ahead of us, to stand on the side of love, to lower the heat when fear and hatred speak their ugly words.  We are called to stand on the margins, outside the boxes.  We stand with those who have to be who they are, with those who have to love and marry, simply who they love.  

These are the unceasing demands of love and hospitality – to meet ourselves, to meet another, and to welcome them all as the children of the universe they truly are.

I have questions that remain unanswered:

What gender is God? What gender is the universe?  

What gender is your soul, your essence? What gender is your heart?  

Penny Gneisin paid a visit to my office this week, and we were talking about our experiences meeting transgender individuals.  Penny has a gift for seeing the kinds of energy a person has, and she confirmed for me something I knew already inside – some parts of me are female, and a large part of my being at this time in my life is gender-neutral.  Perhaps that’s why my vision of God and soul seem to be more inclusive of all genders and less about gender at all. In some way, this is healing for me.  It puts gender in its small fluid place in my world.  When all the world seems bent on injustice, hatred and cruelty in the name of gender, I hope I can see what that gender truly is. Gender is just a lovely particularity, just one part, of our humanness. We do not need to give it so much power.  It need not be the source of a culture war, if love is more powerful than fear.  Let the child blossom into who they must be, let love blossom, in all the quiet corners, all the deep and hidden places.  It is not love we should fear, only its absence.

Love yourself, all of yourself. You are a miracle!

From this, it is easy to love another human being.

From this place of honor, it is possible to give countless blessings to all the love we witness in this world.

Give your blessings to the individuals, the marriages, the partnerships, all the families that express true love for one another.

Give them your best blessing every day.

I pray that our state of NJ will do the right thing this week and legalize marriage for all loving couples. I pray we, too, will honor equal rights for all human beings at every opportunity.

May it be so. Amen.