Transcript: Lesson 31 - Transgender People

Friends, welcome. We are thinking about God's story and our sexuality. We've been pondering  how there are different stories that are out there in our broader culture, and what those  stories say about who we are and, and how God's story informs how we think about ourselves. Especially thinking about how as we embody God's story in our own sexuality, how this  ultimately points to the reality of God's love for us, and what we see in Jesus's self giving love  for us. In this unit, we are going to think specifically about transgender people and the family  of God. We are reflecting in these last few units, about what it means to function as the family of God, how we can walk well alongside of one another, encouraging each other, and making  sure that especially LGBT+ people who perhaps in the past have been have been left out or  pushed aside in the Christian community can be more welcome and find a place where they  are loved and cared for. This is something that as we walk this path, we want to walk it with  grace and truth, recognizing that the grace and truth are not in opposition to each other. But  that the more we understand the truth of the gospel, and Jesus's love for us that we, we  understand both God's forgiving grace and His empowering grace, that enables us to walk by  the power of His Spirit. So in this first video, we're going to think a little bit about  understanding and defining what it means to be transgender and make sure we're on the  same page there. And then we'll think a little bit more about pastoral care for and some  theological reflections on walking with transgender people what it means to be transgender.  Well, we oftentimes use the term transgender. But the more technical term, and this is used  by the American Psychiatric Association, is gender dysphoria, and they define gender  dysphoria in this way. They say that it involves a conflict between a person's physical or  assigned gender and the gender with which he she or they identify. People with gender  dysphoria may often experience significant distress, and or problems functioning associated  with this conflict between the way they feel and think of themselves referred to as their as  experienced or expressed gender, and their physical or assigned gender. And so part of this  involves, as we said, before, this conflict between my internal gender identity, my sense of  my own gender, and biological sex, what my body says in terms of am I male, or am I female.  Now, when we think about people who use the term transgender, in some cases that can go  beyond people who are struggling with gender dysphoria. And so when we talk about this  experience of gender dysphoria, it's not. I want to be clear, it's not just the sense that, you  know, maybe in some dimensions of my life, I don't map onto gender stereotypes. Right in,  you know, sometimes people might say, if a girl is, you know, especially rowdy rambunctious  or, or good at sports, in previous generations, they might have called her a tomboy, and said,  you know, well, there are these dimensions, and maybe don't fit the stereotype of the girl.  And so we're not just talking about those kinds of stereotypes, we're talking about somebody  whose own experience causes significant distress causes significant conflict, and creates  struggles in terms of their ability to function, because of that disconnect between how they  experience their own gender identity, and their biological sex. And so when we talk about  transgender people, we're talking partly about people who do experience genuine gender  dysphoria. We're also talking about people, there are some who could identify as transgender  or who do simply in part because they say, you know, I don't fit the stereotypes you look at,  sometimes our culture stereotypes, and it's like, you know, boys, like blue girls like pink. You  know, boys like to play rough and rowdy. And they're, they're good at sports, sports and girls  are supposed to be, you know, maybe maybe more dainty and don't like, play in the dirt. And  we have these kind of different stereotypes that, you know, when we reflect on them, maybe  at the end of the day actually aren't that helpful. But for some people, when you if you ask  them and say, Well, what does it mean to you to be transgender? A big part of it for some  might just be this sense of, I don't really fit the stereotypes that are out there. It's also  important to be aware, especially when we're engaging youth, what what folks what scholars  called transtrending, and also rapid onset gender dysphoria. And so transtrending this is you  when you think about gender and sexual identity and adolescent development. It could be the case that somebody might be experimenting or just maybe questioning like, maybe I'm  transgender, maybe that describes who I am. And so there's a sense of, especially if one's  peers are identifying as trans, that that might be something that people do. Similarly, or  relatedly. rapid onset gender dysphoria is something that people have been noticing, 

especially in the last several years, where someone will quite quickly move into a pretty deep  stage of gender dysphoria, maybe even as they're surrounded by going through this  developmental process, surrounded by others who are raising questions and wrestling with  their own gender identity. And so these are things to be aware of, too part of the point here is  that when we're talking about transgender people, it's it's not always the case that it's simply  one size fits all, but everybody's experience is the same. And so if somebody identifies as  transgender, I think it can be helpful to, to very humbly, just ask them, What does that mean  to you that that's how you identify, that's how you understand yourself. Because even when  we think about some of these different dimensions, different people's experiences are  different. And so it's helpful to understand what people mean, when they talk about  transgender in their own life in their own experience. Now, how should we view how should  we think about transgender people the experience of being transgender, Mark Yarhouse, in his book, "Understanding Gender Dysphoria" gives a few helpful frameworks that he says people  often look at transgender people or gender dysphoria through the system, different  frameworks to understand the transgender experience. And in this, he differentiates three  different frameworks. And so by the diversity framework, he says, this is often the dominant  framework in the broader culture that many people use to understand being transgender, that being transgender is just one dimension of human diversity. And so when we think about  human diversity, we recognize that that includes ethnic differences, that that does include  gender differences, but that the diversity framework says, part of the normal natural  differences that we would expect in human life is, you know, there are some people whose  biological sex and their internal sense of gender that that those align, and then there are  other people where they don't align. And rather than, rather than seeing that misalignment,  or that experience of being transgender as sort of something going wrong, a disorder, the  diversity framework just says, that's a different people are made differently, they have  different experiences. And so it's not that that's wrong or bad, it's just different. It's just  diverse. And so the goal here shouldn't be necessarily to change somebody or to try to bring  their sense of gender into alignment with their biological sex, but just to acknowledge, hey,  different people are made differently, they're wired differently. And so we just need to make  sure that we're affirming and respecting people across the board. That's, that's a little bit  different from to other scripts or frameworks that Yarhouse highlights. The other one, you'll  see this one, he says is the highlights the conservative religious script, which is the integrity  framework, by Integrity, he means the sense that this view that many conservative religious  folks have, which is that there should always be this complete, congruence complete  connection between biological sex and gender identity. And so for a lot of people coming at it  from this perspective, they look at the way scripture talks about male and female and would  say, really, the ultimate goal for transgender people is to know if your body is if you are  biologically female, then you should do everything within your power to bring your internal  sense of your gender into line with that. And same for same for you if you're biologically male. And so the integrity framework part of the struggle with this, Yarhouse points out is this  framework often if there is a sense of misalignment between biological sex and my my own  internal sense of my gender, it treats that more as a sin as though somebody who  experiences gender dysphoria is is actively sinning through that. And part of what Yarhouse  suggests is that maybe there's a little bit different way that we can take some dimensions of  these different frameworks and and look at them together. That disability framework by this  yet and this way, especially if you know if you're watching this and you're you're transgender, I can understand somebody kind of reacting pretty strongly against that saying, Are you just  saying this is just a disability? How should I view this? Part of what Yarhouse means when he  uses this language is he says, when we think about physical disabilities, especially for  conservative religious folks who tend to operate out of the integrity framework, you know, if  we look at somebody who has a physical disability, I don't think most of us would say, you  know that that person is born with a chronic condition, or they they have this disease, most of us wouldn't say, that is because of a specific sin that they committed, we would say, look,  they didn't, they didn't choose to have that physical disability. And so we need to walk  alongside them to minister to them, and be aware of those physical needs, Yarhouse's if he 

wants, I think, especially as he speaks to more conservative religious folks to say, Look,  Yarhouse has done extensive research with transgender people, people who experience  gender dysphoria. And he says, Look, these folks are not choosing this experience that that  for many of them part of what's come along with this sense of incongruence between  biological sex and gender, it is a lot of painful experiences, like difficult experiences. So it's  not as though people are just choosing this, that they're just willfully wanting to walk through  this, but rather like a physical disability, this is something that is beyond their, you know, that  will beyond their choice to control. And so Yarhouse, in this in this graph, wants to bring  together some pieces of the disability framework, the diversity framework, and the integrity  framework to say, recognize that folks who are struggling with gender dysphoria are not just  choosing this, but there's, for most of them, this element of this is just a part of their  experience for as long as they can remember. There's also an element that Yarhouse wants to  affirm of the diversity framework of recognizing and respecting people as people that there's  it's really important that we don't, again, set up a two tier system, where cisgender people  are seen as spiritually better or more mature, or maybe less in need of the gospel. But that  we want to honor each person as a person, and respect their experience and see what we can all learn, both from their struggles and their victories as they walk through life. But Yarhouse  also does want to affirm pieces of the integrity framework as well, he recognizes that when  you look at scripture, there is the sense of being created as male and female. And so if there  is a, if there is a struggle there, if there is a misalignment, he does recognize that that can  that can pose difficulties for us. And that there's also the sense in which even as we, we  maybe each of us struggle with what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a  woman to realize that sin in the fall affects all of those things, and that we are called to walk  alongside each other to really encourage each other, as we figure out what it means to be  followers of Jesus, and wrestle with questions of gender identity. And so I think, I think it's  helpful to bring some of those different dimensions together in the way that he does to say,  what's positive from the diversity framework that's maybe more popular in the broader  culture? But how can we think about how scripture talks about who we are as male and  female, and move forward with compassion toward those who are struggling with gender  dysphoria? And again, not just with compassion, but actually asking what can they teach us,  those of us who are cisgender, followers of Jesus, about what does it look like to follow Jesus?  What does it look like to grow in our walk with Him? And as we do that, as we walk on that  path together, that this this sense that we are all in need of the gospel, and we're all following Jesus together is a key part of what it means to be the family of God. Now in the next video,  we're going to talk in a little bit more detail about levels of treatment and how to walk  alongside transgender people well, and what that can look like in some concrete ways. And so until next time, blessings