Transgender Survival Guide

I'm now approximately two and a half years into my transition, and so have decided to put together a transgender survival guide to help others contemplating transitioning or struggling with gender-related discomfort. Please feel free to share this with others.

 

Disclaimer: it is both rather long, by necessity autobiographical, and aimed primarily at other female-to-male transsexuals, though I hope it'll be helpful to other transgender people and their friends and families. It will hopefully also be useful to those wanting to learn more about transgender issues.

What does 'transgender' mean?

'Transgender' is an umbrella term for a variety of experiences, from people who occasionally choose to cross-dress for pleasure or comfort (some use the term transvestites), to people who feel they are both male and female, neither of these, beyond gender or who experience gender as fluid (gender-queer), through to people undergoing social, hormonal and sometimes surgical gender reassignment or affirmation processes (transsexuals).

 

When we're born, we're assigned as 'male' or 'female' based on our genitalia (intersex people are those born with both male and female genitals or ambiguous genitals), and it is assumed that this decision based on these primary sex characteristics (biological) reflects the person's inner sense of who they are, the ontological. As we make culturally-grounded assumptions about how to treat someone and what's considered 'typical' or 'normal' behaviour based on the biological, this profoundly impacts the social aspects of our lives. Most of the time, the biological and ontological match up and there's no problem, though we may struggle with prescribed gender roles. However, around one percent of the population experience some degree of mismatch between the biological and ontological, which causes distress and leads to social assumptions being made about them which don't match up to the person's sense of their gender identity. This sense of discomfort, dysphoria, is called Gender Identity Disorder.

 

Check out this TED talk by comedian Sam Killermann if you want to think more about what gender, gender identity and gender roles are all about; it's very funny yet draws out the complex ontological, biological and social aspects and their interplay.

What causes gender dysphoria?

The GIRES website is very good if you want to learn more about the causes of transgenderism. No-one's one hundred percent sure, but it's thought to be caused by hormones in the womb not doing their job around the eight-week point when the foetus goes from having one sex chromosome (the mother's X) to two as the father's X or Y kicks into action. The body develops in one way but the brain in another, giving rise to gender dysphoria through there being a body-brain mismatch. One legacy of it having previously been understood as a psychological problem is that getting treatment means negotiating mental heath services.

How do you know things don't match up?

Like a lot of transsexuals, I realised at a young age that something wasn't right. Starting primary school was the first time I'd been around lots of other children, and I couldn't fathom why I was being told to dress like a girl, play with the other girls and act in a 'girly' way. It was profoundly distressing to me, and I think it's one of the main reasons I acted up a lot during my first months there; I didn't have the language to express what was going on, but felt it acutely. These feelings persisted, though being and looking incredibly tomboy-ish, and being able to 'pass'/'be read' as a boy if I wanted to, helped a lot. I used to like writing stories and illustrating them, and my little imaginary worlds were exclusively male domains. My cuddly toys were also all male, and apparently when presented with a doll on one occasion, it got banished to the wardrobe without a second look! I shrugged off criticism from teachers for not being 'ladylike' enough, and things weren't too bad.

However, when I hit puberty, things changed. I went from being flat-chested to a DD cup in little under a year, which meant I could no longer pass. Periods made me feel dirty and felt fundamentally unnatural. As I got older, I experimented with cross-dressing in the privacy of my bedroom, and the rush that gave me was both almost orgasmic and very confusing. I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me (I had never even heard the word 'transgender' before, nor had any idea that there are others who felt like I did), so I determined to bottle these feelings up and repressed them deeply for a long time. In the fullness of time, though, with the support of my now wife, my friends and my then boss, I felt I could both acknowledge who I am really am and begin the process of transition, so that the biological will finally reflect the ontological, which will in turn mean the social reflects the ontological.

My story is not unusual; while some children do experience the kind of confusion I did when younger but things settle down as they get older, for me the discomfort stayed and it's only through transitioning that I've found any relief. Others begin to experience gender dysphoria in adolescence and others in adulthood. For some people, their feelings can be relieved through things like binding their breasts or selecting hair styles and clothes that give them a more androgynous appearance, For others, hormone treatment alone does the trick, and some may opt for surgery but no hormones; others like me go for both. It's important to stress that everyone is different, and pushing people down a route that isn't for them is wrong.

If you want to learn more about gender dysphoria and hear some other people's experiences, check out this page from the NHS website. There's also an excellent series in the Guardian by Juliet Jacques, who is a male-to-female transsexual, and it details her story from starting out to recovering from her surgery.

Could you not have just had counselling?

Nope! This has been tried in the past and caused a great deal of damage to many people. I did have some counselling around three years ago, but that was to help me deal with my fears about coming out as transgender and how people would react. There are world standards of care for transgender people which make it very clear that the best way to help transgender people relieve their gender dysphoria and feel comfortable in their bodies is by offering options for changing outward appearance in some form, perhaps as mentioned above through clothing and other external choices, or perhaps by hormones and/or surgery if that is right for that individual.

What did you do about it, then?

Well, not having the faintest idea where to start, I did some asking about among my friends in the LGBT community (before I came out as a transsexual man, I identified as a lesbian) and came across a local trans activist called Delia. We had lunch and she talked me through what was involved in the process of transitioning and the good and bad things about how the NHS handles it all. This did scare me somewhat, as many people have had bad experiences of the NHS, but I think has made me a lot more realistic about what the process involves and what I wanted to get out of it.

 

I decided to tell the outgoing boss of my team at work, on the basis that if he reacted badly, he was leaving anyway! As it turned out, he was great and suggested that his successor would be a great person to support me. I then spoke with the equalities person in HR, and between the three of us, we put together a plan to 'manage' my coming out. Around that time, I decided on a new name, Karl, and began to use it with my partner and certain close friends. In February 2012, I began negotiating the NHS 'care pathway', and came out at work and changed my name by Deed Poll a month later.

What about negotiating the NHS pathway?

The NHS refers to the treatment options as a 'care pathway', which sadly still strikes me as a bit of a misnomer, as the early stages at least seemed more diagnostic than caring. The first step was going to see my GP and asking to be referred to the local mental health team for an assessment. I think the need for a local assessment might vary from place to place. I'm also not sure whether for younger trans people, the first stop would necessarily be the local Child and Adolescent Mental Health team. Either way, I was pretty scared before my GP appointment, and wasn't sure how he would react to me; others have had bad experiences at the hands of GPs who don't understand trans issues or have shown blatant prejudice (if this happens to you, insist on your right to see another doctor). While he admitted that, like the majority of GPs, he'd never met a trans person before, he was supportive but needed telling what to do.

This highlights one of the problems I've found with the NHS - you have to be an expert patient. I went into the surgery that day - by the way, book a double appointment - armed with useful leaflets I got from the GIRES website, which explained what 'transsexual' means, what treatments I needed and what my GP needed to do to ensure the funding was put into place for these. Things have improved considerably in England in the last couple of years, in that the money now comes from NHS England, rather than the local Primary Care Trust, meaning someone transitioning is no longer tired down to one area while they go through treatment, which takes a number of years. Anyway, this meant I could give him some bedtime reading to do, and not have to worry about chasing up funding myself.

One thing the NHS isn't very good about is helping with the practicalities of everyday life in the intervening period before treatment starts. As there is a requirement (the 'real life experience') to live in one's preferred gender role for at least six months to a year before beginning hormone treatment for adults (see below for a note on teenagers and hormone blockers), this can create problems. I mentioned earlier that periods were very distressing for me; I asked for female contraceptive injections that would stop (or at least notably reduce) my periods at that same appointment. Annoyingly, I got passed onto a female GP who couldn't get her head around things and gave me a lecture on safe sex (despite my saying I have a long-term female partner), but I got them nonetheless. I needed to be the one asking for this; my GP wouldn't have thought to suggest it.

Getting through the local psychiatric assessment was pretty straightforward; I got grilled on my childhood and past relationships, as well as how the people around me were handling things. I think it helped that I come from an academic background and had already been grilled by supportive people with a knowledge of the issues, so I knew what was coming and didn't feel intimidated by the doctors. This highlights another issue: being educated and middle-class really helped when dealing with certain medical professionals. An acquaintance of mine, who found it harder to express what he was feeling, got quite a bumpy ride from the same people. One tip, therefore, would be to talk over how you feel with people you can trust and work out what you want to get across beforehand, so you can be clear and articulate. Be ready to be asked about some difficult things, and for it to feel like being put through the mill if the conservation goes to places you normally keep closed off; exercise judgment in what you say, and be gentle to yourself.

Eight months later, I finally got my first appointment at the gender clinic. Where you get sent will depend on where you live; I got sent to Charing Cross, which deals with London and surrounding areas. There is a useful list of the different clinics on the NHS website. Two psychiatrists have to agree on a diagnosis and the appropriateness of treatment, as well as one meeting the real-life experience requirements, to allow hormone treatment to commence. The questions were the same, but the tone was different. It came across as someone with a checklist and an agenda, and at times I felt pushed into simplifying my story and omitting certain things. For me, it's one of the problems with this model of treatment; the gender clinic staff are the gatekeepers of further treatment, and the resulting power dynamic, together with time constraints on the staff, can create tensions that might hinder honest conversations. I got past these hurdles, and started taking testosterone gel in September, and was referred for chest surgery at the same time.

Word of warning: Charing Cross have the worst administration of any organisation I've ever dealt with! I was supposed to take one 50mg sachet of Testogel each day, but was initially told once a week thanks to a clerical error, which is a bit of a difference - I'd wondered why it wasn't doing anything! I've also had to do a lot of chasing up if I've needed anything from them, such as help getting my hormone balance right. They also don't seem to have discovered the 21st century and e-mail seems quite beyond them!

How did you handle coming out at work?

As I've already outlined, my coming out at work was helped by having a supportive boss and HR department. Having already come out as gay, I was acutely aware of the differences; in one sense, nothing changed when I announced I had fallen in love with a woman and being attracted to women was part of who I am. This time, my name and the pronouns I'd be asking people to use would change, along with my appearance to some extent, though I'd long since given up any pretence to feminine dressing and wore a suit and tie to work. I was also nervous because people have been hounded out of jobs, and unemployment among transgender people is historically higher than among the general populous.  Having the support, therefore, was crucial to my sense of well-being during this time.

I work for Santander, and the equalities person from HR hadn't met a transgender person before, so once again I found myself having to be the expert. This guide for employers from Stonewall Scotland was particularly helpful. Again, though, what made this a good experience was the willingness of others to listen to my story and do their research to figure out how they could help me negotiate coming out. It was a pretty rocky time as my partner and family struggled to accept what was happening, and my boss really went above and beyond the call of duty in supporting me and keeping me on the rails during that time. When I'd seen my GP and felt ready, my boss was with me when I told my team, and then she told the rest of the department on my behalf so I didn't have to, which made it a lot less daunting prospect. HR had already sorted things so I could have a new e-mail address with my new name, and when I'd done the Deed Pool, I formally changed my details on the payroll, with my bank and other companies.
 

What about people in schools, youth groups and so on?

Again, Stonewall Scotland have some great resources for schools which provide advice on how to support transgender students, and there is a useful guide on the GIRES site for youth group leaders on making their group trans-friendly. There are also organisations like Gendered Intelligence which offer workshops for schools, resource-sharing sites like Schools Out, and many LGBT youth groups around the country. In my experiences and sadly that of countless others, being different in any way can make school a thoroughly shitty experience, and while I've not always got on too well with trans support groups, they can be a lifeline for both the person themselves and their families. It may well be worth having a trawl online and seeing what you can find, and there are some suggestions below. There is a Home Office guide on dealing with transphobic bullying that schools can access easily and should be putting to practice.

How do you change your name?

I used Deed Poll, which is one of two options; the other is to make a statutory declaration. People have gone for cheaper options and been fine, but I used the site linked to on the Passport Office website. It cost me £50, and involved sending for the form online, getting it signed and witnessed and then sending it back to get the final certificate. I've had no problems with using it to get a new passport (along with a letter from my GP saying the change is permanent and my gender identity is stable), or updating bank accounts, National Insurance and tax details, and so on. To change the gender marker on some paperwork (such as getting a new birth certificate) requires a Gender Recognition Certificate - see below.

 

Coping with everyday life: Friends and family

Telling friends and family is one of the most difficult bits of the journey in my opinion. As I've already hinted, it was hard for my now wife to come to terms with, as much as anything else because it created questions of identity for her: can she still be a lesbian if she's with a man? (Answer: of course!) My parents seemed alright at first and then exploded later when the reality hit them. Over time, things have got better, and in their own (unique) way my mum and dad now are great about it all, but they still find it a struggle. Some of my relationships with other family members have become strained, as they won't use Karl and misgender (refer to me as female) me constantly. That hurts like crazy.

Thankfully, things have been much more positive in terms of my friends; a couple of people did walk away, but everyone else has been really supportive, which has made such a difference. At our wedding last year, people I hadn't seen since I started transitioning came, and their acceptance of me just as I am was one of the things that made it such a special day. Work being safe has also helped, and I've not had any problems making new friends, in both professional and other settings, as a result of my transition.

One thing I hadn't expected was that some people, notably my partner, expressed a sense of grief when I started transitioning. They felt they were losing someone they cared about, and I found that incomprehensible at first, because for me it was a liberating experience. Having to be honest with each other and deal with painful stuff, as well as find language for what we were both experiencing, has brought my partner and I closer together, but has been very hard, with lots of tears shed along the way. It doesn't help that the NHS process focuses on the person, but there's not so much there for partners and family, especially if formal support groups aren't your bag. Thus, finding someone your partner/parents/other family/friends can talk to, who isn't you(!) about their feelings is important, in helping them come to terms with what, after all, is a big change.

 

Coping with everyday life: Support networks

On a related note, one thing I've learnt really helps is having people about with a bit of knowledge of the issues who are willing to listen, ask the hard questions and give hugs when they're needed. For me, one of those key people has been my minister at church, who is also a GP and has supported trans people before. She both helped me get to the point where I was ready to transition and dealt with curious questions from people in the churches I worship and lead worship in, meaning this part of my life (being a Methodist local preacher) has been able to continue perfectly happily since coming out. In addition, she led a naming ceremony for me in church when I wanted to reaffirm my commitment to God but use my new name, whereas when I was confirmed and first made that commitment, it was in my old name.

Coping with everyday life: Language and pronouns

Getting the language right is something that is very important, but can be hard for people. It takes time for people to change to using 'he', 'him', 'his' and so on, when they've been used to the female versions. Other people prefer 'they' or other neutral terms, and that seems to be quite beyond a lot of people to get right! One of the hardest things I found in the pre-hormones period was trying to live as a man but still sounding and looking female. It meant that even after binding my breasts and wearing a suit and tie, people got it wrong. Places that were very keen to affirm and welcome gay people were the worst - I think they assumed I was a butch lesbian! It's irritating, but you have to be patient with people, as it's very rarely borne from maliciousness. Now my voice has broken, things are a lot better, but it does take time for people to adapt to new language. Check out this TED guide for more on use of language.

 

Coping with everyday life: To disclose or not to disclose?

How to talk about my past is another question that arises: should I be open, or just not say anything that could give away that I'm a transsexual? It's a complex question, with implications for people around me too, which I've not fully resolved yet. For example, can I talk about childhood or teenage experiences that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't been assigned female at birth? I think each person has to make their own mind up on this one, and so far I've chosen to be open most of the time. However, there are situations where that can make life awkward, and I don't know what I'll do beforehand. As an example, I was asked while on a church placement about when I got married and whether it was in church. I really didn't want to go into the complexities and avoided the question, but other times have told the person what the deal is, so it depends on the situation. Perhaps ask me again in a year's time on this one!

It helps that my relationship has survived the process, so I've not got the complexities of dating to deal with. The only thing I would say is that I'd hope that, if something happens and I end up single again, I wouldn't want to have sex with someone I couldn't trust to tell I'm transgender. If they couldn't handle that or insisted upon thinking of me as a woman, I'd be out of there!

Coping with everyday life: Binding breasts safely

I started binding my breasts after coming out, mostly because I was worried about how to do so safely. I'd met people who use elastic that binds so tightly it restricts breathing and causes pain, which is obviously not good. I'd also come across full upper body binders, which given I'm a tad on the larger side seemed a recipe for sweating and discomfort. In the end, I settled on sports bra-style chest binders from a company called Peecock Products, which had to be shipped over here and cost around £30, but which when worn with a bra underneath provided a good degree of binding and gave me a much flatter chest, but still left the area below my breasts free to breathe. They didn't work for me without a bra; my breasts fell out! One of the disadvantages of wearing this was that the bottom curls up sometimes, and can crease shirts and other tops. They do show through some clothes, but I reckon just look like you're wearing a vest.

The important thing with binding is to do it safely. I met a trans man who bound his breasts day and night for years, and did so that tightly that he hyperventilated when he took the elastic off, because his lungs weren't used to so much air! As a general rule, if you're struggling to breathe or in pain, you're binding too tightly. Once I got used to the new binders, I found them really liberating, as having a much flatter (though there's only so much you can do with DD cups!) chest gave me the confidence to use the gents' toilets rather than the disabled loo, and to feel confident challenging people about using the wrong pronouns. Binding reduces breast size over time, so one's chest appears less feminine as a result, though having squashy breasts might be off-putting for some people. The downside is that even with ones that don't cover the whole chest, they do trap a lot of heat and can be very sweaty and itchy in summer.

Coping with everyday life: Toilets and other gendered spaces

Negotiating gendered spaces can be tricky at first, especially in the period before starting hormone treatment. I'd never considered how difficult going to the toilet could be before beginning transition. One thing to make clear is that you're entitled to use the toilets of your preferred gender or the disabled facilities as you feel comfortable; if someone tells you it's illegal then they don't know what they're talking about. In my experience, I didn't feel confident to use the gents at first, so I used the disabled loos wherever I could. This was hard in some places like some pubs, as it required having a RADAR key and I didn't want to have to explain to the people behind the bar why I wanted to use that toilet and not one of the others. It meant knowing where I could go that was nearby, or simply avoiding certain places. As time went on, I got more confident and started to use the gents regularly at work, and later in public places that felt safe.

Over time, this has got easier as I have been binding for a while and my breasts have shrunk, my appearance is more masculine and my voice has broken. However, changing rooms haven't yet become any easier, as when I take off my clothes I still have a female-appearing body, meaning using the gents is out, but the hormones have made me rather hairy, and especially with a deep voice, it means I can no longer just use the women's changing rooms and keep quiet about my gender identity. When looking for a gym to join, therefore, checking out the disabled facilities was important, as was letting the staff know the situation and that I would need to use these. I mention this as my gym has a notice on the door of the disabled changing room telling people it's just for wheelchair users, so it helps if they are aware in case, as has happened to me once, someone takes offence to you apparently breaking the rules!

Coping with everyday life: Shopping

One situation that can become more difficult when transitioning is shopping, not least because there's another changing room situation to negotiate, and while some stores have gender-neutral changing rooms, many don't and that can cause problems. Once, I was shopping for a new shirt and got told I couldn't use the men's changing rooms, so reluctantly went to the women's section. They told me they wouldn't let me in with a man's shirt. H&M lost £30 worth of custom that day! My worst experience was in BHS in Milton Keynes; I went into try on some short-sleeve summer shirts for the office, and after my experience in H&M decided to use the women's changing rooms. The women minding them reported me to security as a potential shoplifter, and I was then followed around the store! Again, as time has gone on, things have got better, partly because I 'pass' more readily and partly because we've found shops that are more transgender-friendly. House of Fraser, Marks and Spencer's and Hawes and Curtis in Milton Keynes have been great for clothes, and Schuh and Doc Martens for shoes.

Another issue that arises for me is to do with sizes. I'm 5ft 2 and have proportionally short arms and small feet! This means I have to get shirt and jacket sleeves shortened, and because most places stock men's shoes from size six upwards and I'm a size five, I buy gender-neutral shoes like Doc Martens. I did try junior shoes, but they looked like they were for kids, so wouldn't really work on a thirty-year old! Finding a place that will do clothes adjustments can really help, especially if like me you work in a professional occupation and are expected to dress smartly. Learning what your size is when you start transitioning can be tricky; be willing to do a certain amount of trial and error until you get it right, and don't be afraid to ask for things in smaller sizes if you need them.

Coping with everyday life: Getting hassled

Sadly, being perceived as 'different' in some sense can put one at risk of harassment when out and about, and as transgender people challenge people's often rigid ideas about what is socially acceptable for males and females, simply by being ourselves and not hiding away, we often come in for more than our fair share of hassle, particularly trans women. I think my experience hasn't been too bad partly because I've often been viewed as simply a butch woman, and there's far more freedom for women to appear masculine then men to appear feminine in our society, something I think it is bond up with misogyny, homophobia and transphobia intersecting. However, I've nonetheless had to develop a thick skin.

Just to tell one story to illustrate: I was out for a lunchtime walk in Regent's Park, which is near work, a few weeks ago and wearing a suit and tie. I thought I looked pretty dapper for what it's worth, and was just enjoying my stroll. There are some benches by the lake, and that day they were full of French school kids. The children on the first bench pointed at me, laughed and started loudly speculating about my gender, which encouraged all the rest to do the same. One lad openly stared open-mouthed at me, and then nudged his friend and got him to do the same. I felt like a zoo exhibit! I've also had abuse (both homophobic and transphobic) shouted at me, been threatened and pushed about, chased and spat at, and one guy tried to punch me in a pub toilet. Thankfully he was drunk and he missed, but it was scary.

If you do experience harassment - verbally, physically or sexually - then please do report it rather than suffer in silence. Most councils have hate crime officers, and the police do want to help in my experience. It may help to get to know officers working with the LGBT community, as they've had specialist training in things like transgender issues. In Milton Keynes, we've built up good links with Thames Valley Police, and they've sent officers along to community events such as Pride and the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Employers also have a duty under the 2010 Equality Act to deal with discrimination against transgender people, and it is illegal to fire somebody for intending to, going through or having been through gender reassignment; it's worth getting to know your rights.

What about teenagers and hormone blockers?

Hormone blockers can be very useful for teenagers, in that they can stall the process of puberty and give the young person breathing space to work out what (if any) treatment they want to have as they get older. If you want to learn more, check out this guide on the GIRES website, or have a look at my previous blog post on the subject. Additionally, there is a great TED talk by Norman Spack, who has helped young trans people for years, which is about hormone blockers.

 

What happens when you take testosterone?

After negotiating my way through the NHS system, I eventually started taking Testogel at 50mg once a day. I began in December 2013 and have noticed significant changes, despite transitioning with gel being slower than injections. I'm scared of needles and didn't want the aggression after an injection and the gloom in the run-up to the next one. The most notable change is that my voice has broken, and after going through a phase of being squeaky, has settled down to a nice, deep tone. It does crack and squeak still while singing, so someone concerned about this might want to do voice exercises like singers do a little more diligently than I did! This has been really liberating for me, as now I don't get misgendered over the phone or anywhere near as often in person, and I feel more confident in handling gendered spaces and social situations.

Other changes have thus far included development of muscle mass, particularly in my legs and shoulders, increased stamina, growth of body hair on my legs, arms, back, chest and shoulders, the beginnings of facial hair, being more (but not hugely more) short-tempered, increased sex drive and an enlarged and more sensitive clitoris, increased sweating and spots. I think my face looks more masculine, and my skin is a bit tighter around there. The spots have been easy to deal with, but the sweating harder. I occasionally get hot flushes, and feel like a teenage boy crossed with a menopausal woman! My periods had stopped but have recently restarted, which has been quite distressing, so it evidentially takes time to get the level of testosterone right. One thing that hasn't happened is that I haven't suddenly become really aggressive, something I was worried about beforehand; I'm still just a weedy mathematician!

Overall, I have found taking hormones to be a good experience, though one thing that has taken a bit of getting used to is how my sexual orientation has shifted. I'd now say I'm bisexual but still much prefer women to men. I'd heard this could happen, but it's taken me a while to get used to it. Taking hormones does mean needing regular blood tests, as cholesterol levels can shoot up, and increased red blood cell count can cause problems, among other issues. I dread these, as it's not easy to get blood out of me. I'm told I have bendy veins! Hormones are something I'll need for the rest of my life, as without them, certain characteristics (such as facial appearance) will begin to regress, and  because I'll need them to maintain a healthy body when I've had my hysterectomy - see below.

If you want to know more about how the hormones work and what the risks are, check out this NHS guide.

What surgical options are there?

I have decided to have what's commonly called 'upper surgery', which means having my breasts removed and a male-appearing chest constructed in their place. As I noted earlier, I've been stuck with DD cup breasts since around twelve years old, which has been a source of great distress to me. Even if the world around me was more tolerant of gender variance, I'd still have to look at them every time I take my clothes off. I'm really looking forward to the surgery (hopefully in October 2014) and have been working hard to lose weight so I can get good results from it and recover more quickly.

I've elected not to have any lower surgery (penis construction) because to my mind, the dangers outweigh the benefits by quite a way. I'm told around 5% of trans men opt for this treatment, which involves using arm tissue to construct a phallus. I will need to have a hysterectomy, though, as otherwise the thickened womb lining caused by the testosterone can give rise to problems, and there's an increased cervical cancer risk. I'm quite nervous about that operation, to be honest, but at least it means I'll never have another period.

 

If you want to know more about what it's like to go through chest surgery, check out this Guardian article by a trans man called Fred McConnell, or the ever-helpful GIRES website again, which also talks about options for lower surgery.

What is a Gender Recognition Certificate?

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 allows someone who has transitioned to obtain a new birth certificate with their new name and the correct gender. It also affords the person extra legal protections, and it is illegal for someone to 'out' someone as having a gender history. To obtain this, one has to have lived in one's preferred gender for at least two years and have changed appearance sufficiently. It has implications for marital status: someone in a civil partnership will have to transfer to a marriage before obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). Everyone will have to have written confirmation from the partner, sworn before a solicitor, that they are happy to remain married. This is called the spousal veto, and has the potential to cause issues when nasty break-ups occur...

For more information on the Gender Recognition Act, check out this guide to the process of obtaining a GRC.

Where can I go for support and advice?

There are various websites worth checking out if you want further help and advice. One very good list has been compiled by Juilet Jacques in the Guardian. There is also a new book called 'Trans Bodies, Trans Selves' which may be worth a read, and there's an associated website to check out. Finally, there are local groups out there, so have a hunt around the internet and ask about.

 

Thinking about Sacred Spaces

The idea for this piece is to think a bit about what we might mean by ‘sacred spaces’ and how this connects with mission. In particular, I want to look at how we might make connections with people who don’t see themselves as having any affiliation with Christianity or the church by making ‘spaces’, in a broad sense, available to bridge the gap. To help me do this, I’m going to attempt to reflect theologically on an experience I had a few months back. I can’t promise this will be entirely clear or fully-formed, but it captures where my thinking is at currently.

For the past two years, I’ve organised the Transgender Day of Remembrance events in Milton Keynes. This happened quite by accident! I agreed to help another transgender person to organise something, as Pink Punters had stopped providing a coach to take people down to the London event. We had an initial meeting and I said I’d do a few of the jobs around the edge of things, and no more than that. However, due to illness, this friend, who’d agreed to do the majority of the work, bailed out with a week and a half to go. We’d already invited the then mayor to come, and she’d accepted. As all the others in the small team we’d put together dropped out too, I realised if I didn’t do something, it would be me, Sally and the mayor! So, I set about doing the publicity, putting together the plan for the evening, found people to do readings and so on. I also, rather by default, ended up leading the event on the day, too. As no-one answered my plea for help last year I planned and ran the event then, too.

For a bit of background, TDOR is held on 20th November each year and remembers those killed throughout the world for being (or being perceived to be) gender-variant. This encompasses transsexuals (those going through or who have gone through gender reassignment), cross-dressers/transvestites, people who don’t feel they fit into either of the binary categories we usually employ, or fit into both, or who experience gender as something fluid and varying, and so on!

It was started to mark the killing of Rita Hester in the United States, who was a transgender activist and campaigner, and is now held across the world in several countries. In most places, the commemorations consist of reading the list of the names of those killed in the past year, along with poetry, music, prayers and so on. Most events are held in, and organised by, religious communities of one sort or another. Ours was therefore somewhat unusual in being a secular event, though I did incorporate a version of a prayer written by a Rabbi specifically for TDOR in both years, as it is rather beautiful.

Our event has been held in a small room in the city centre church in both years. We chose this venue because it’s central and easy to get to, has a room which is the right size and cheap to hire, and I felt it was a safe space. The free church minister knew what was happening, was supportive and gave permission for us to use the room, but it was not an ‘official’ church event – this would’ve been difficult as though I’ve been accepted without any problems (or at least if people have had problems with me being transgender then they’ve not expressed them to me!), the mix of the congregation is such that many don’t approve of homosexuality, and no doubt would struggle with transgender issues if they knew about them!

In 2013, we had over forty people attend and were supported financially and with publicity by the local LGBT Pride organisation. Some of the participants and certainly our sponsor knew that I am a Christian and more specifically a Methodist local preacher, however they understood that. I’m also going through gender reassignment at the moment, and identify as a transsexual man. Our TDOR brought many into the church who wouldn’t darken its doorstep in normal circumstances; for some, it was their first time inside a church, and others hadn’t been in a church building for many a year. People commented on how they’d always thought churches were cold and unwelcoming and this had blown their stereotype apart, and one of the local LGBT youth group leaders joked about getting the young people to the church on time!

Thus, without really trying, we ended up creating a sacred space, both in the sense of taking an ordinary room and turning into somewhere we could hold a ‘service’ (it did feel very much like a service despite the lack of overt Christian content), and in terms of what we were actually doing. In order to compile the list of names, I had to take a document put together by an organisation that sets out to track these things and extract the information I needed: the name, age and country of origin of each person listed. As this paper details the causes of death of each person, and some of the descriptions are very graphic, it wouldn’t be appropriate just to take the raw document as is. Thus, I’ve gone through and copied the information into a list of my own. It’s by far the hardest bit of running a TDOR, and both times I’ve got through multiple tissues.

It occurred to me before I began that, especially with those people who are never identified, who remain nameless, there may be no-one to pray for them. I find it hard to imagine having nobody to miss you, or to hold you before God; makes me feel emotional just thinking about it. As I was compiling the list, it struck me that God was asking me to pray for the folks I was reading about, and the people who were gathering to remember to hold them too, in a prayerful way, in love and respect. Importantly, we also remember the people who’ve been driven to suicide because of the way they’ve been discriminated against; they aren’t included in the list I mentioned, yet matter just as much.

I think that’s actually quite a priestly thing to do; as we hold the world before God in prayer when we intercede, so we were holding those people before God in TDOR, consciously or otherwise depending on the participant’s views. Additionally, it’s an active, rather than passive, kind of remembering, akin to that in the Eucharist in that makes a conscious connection and gives a degree of dignity to those cruelly deprived of it by violence and hatred. Consequently, I would argue that whether they knew it or not, our TDOR participants were behaving as the people of God in that space, in that thirty minute act of remembering and hoping.

Moreover, it was a chance to invite un-churched, to use the jargon of fresh expressions, people into the building, including as I said the local LGBT youth group, and make them feel welcome and safe in the space we created. I hope it broke down some of the hostility there sadly can be between LGBT people and religious groups. As I’ve noted already, that was probably made easier by going under the ‘official’ church radar, yet it was by its nature missional, both because it got them across the threshold of a church building, but I think also because many knew I’m a lay preacher, and more importantly because of the nature of our actions on those days. What we were doing wasn’t part of a traditional church pattern, nor was it a fresh expression, but something in the gap between the two: mission for the moment, or mission in the gaps.

In her book ‘Journeying Out’, Ann Morisy talks about apt liturgy. By this, she means words and actions that are appropriate for a particular community at a crucial moment, probably involving minimal overt Christian content but not totally devoid of it, which expresses the thoughts and feelings of those people, giving them the space to deal with the situation at hand. It points to something beyond their ordinary experience of life, without bombarding them with religious language or dogma, and invites them to perhaps begin to see something of a bigger picture beyond the material world. I think that, without consciously thinking about it, that’s what happened in those TDOR gatherings. Apt liturgy is one way of bridging gaps.

Romans 15:13 and Paul’s words in abounding in hope come to mind here. Each time we had two poems written and read by transgender people, the reading of the names, silence, prayer and music. First time we used ‘Something Inside so Strong’ and second time ‘True Colours’; these seemed to capture the mood well, and offer encouragement and hope, as well as an opportunity for remembrance, which I think is very important. I think I can say the ‘space’, both physical and otherwise, was sacred because it opened up room for the God of resurrection and new beginnings to be at work, pointing to something more than the grim reality of prejudice against transgender folks, as well as making a connection with and honouring those who had died.

Moreover, without trying I think we created something akin to the temporary autonomous zone, or TAZ, written about by Hakim Bey in a 1991 essay. Essentially, a TAZ zone is a temporary space that subverts the normal rules and eludes formal structures of control. An example outside the church might be the camps set up during the Occupy movement, with no explicit hierarchy and enabling the establishing of different kinds of relationship. In our context, though we had permission of a sort from the church hierarchy, it wasn’t an ‘official’ event and we left to get on with it. Had the wider community known about it, it may not have been possible to do; it subverted the normal rules of what can and cannot be done in church! Everybody joined in reading the names together; this was very important, as it meant though I was in one sense leading, or perhaps facilitating is a better word, the event, each person’s own remembering was equally important and valid and real.

I realise I’ve talked about sacred spaces in various senses here, both in terms of physical spaces transformed into ‘TAZ zones’ and spiritual (for want of a better word) spaces created by priestly actions, by using apt liturgy. I acknowledge my thinking on this is not fully coherent, and that this is a (rather long) stream of consciousness piece. Yet I think at the heart of all of this is that when Jesus is welcomed in somewhere and/or by someone, whether that’s through overtly Christian prayer, words and actions (so we might speak of cathedrals or places like Iona as being ‘thin places’ as they’ve been soaked in prayer) or via welcoming, remembering, honouring the most vulnerable in God’s world, then transformation happens and sacred spaces are formed. I come back to Matthew 25 and the parable of the sheep and the goats: what you do for the least of God’s children, you do for Christ. That’s got to be a door onto the sacred, right? 

Acts and Omissions

Sally was asked to review a new book, which was previously published as a set of weekly instalments on the author’s blog, called ‘Acts and Omissions’ by Catherine Fox. I’ve been off to Spain again recently for work, which means lots of time sat around with nothing to do. I’d had a brief look at the book before I left and found myself laughing out loud. Consequently, I figured it would pass the time on the plane and stuck in the hotel very nicely, so I decided to pinch Sally’s proof copy and take it with me. Having now finished the said novel, I’m getting in there first and posting my review.

The story’s set in the fictional Anglican diocese of Lindchester, and follows a year (specifically, 2013) in the life of various of its inhabitants, including the bishop and cathedral staff, some of the local clergy, and others they come into contact with along the way. Fictional events are interwoven with actual happenings, such as the passing of the Equal Marriage bill and attempt to resurrect the measure to allow women to become bishops. It’s clear that Fox has spent a good deal of time around both cathedrals and universities; she studied in both Durham and London to gain her theology PhD, and she’s married to the dean of Liverpool Cathedral, hence the depictions of cathedral life in particular are deliciously naughty. It does have the downside that there’s a lot of ‘insider’ jokes there, but having spent far too long loitering in Durham Cathedral as a PhD student, I couldn’t help but think of real people I know and smile…

The novel primarily focuses around the adventures of the decent but conflicted bishop of Lindchester, Paul Henderson. He has a reputation for taking in waifs and strays, and his latest is a young blonde gay walking disaster area called Freddie May. No-one, not even his wife Suzanna, who deals with life’s ups and downs in typical Christian fashion – by baking – quite understands why Paul’s so taken with Freddie, whose capacity to mess things up is quite remarkable. Our first introduction to him (Freddie) sees him rolling off the bishop’s palace roof after getting stoned on New Year’s Eve, so hardly an auspicious beginning! The young Mr May continues to cause trouble for the Hendersons, the bishop’s chaplain and secretary, the archdeacon and many others, yet it’s hard not to like Freddie, who’s immensely talented as a singer but also very hurt by things that have happened in his past.

Fox’s sympathetic portrayal of May is typical of her narrative as a whole, from Father Wendy who carries her grief over her daughter’s death as a daily burden as she walks her elderly dog Lulu along the river paths, to Dr Jane Rossiter, a hard-nosed feminist historian with a propensity to develop migraines at the mere mention of university administration, who’s dealing with empty-nest syndrome after her son takes off to do a gap year in New Zealand with his dad, via the love-struck archdeacon, Matt, whose ethics and desire for his new partner come into conflict when sex appears on the cards. I particularly like Father Dominic, a gay Anglo-Catholic who is an excellent parish priest, simply because he really deeply loves the people he’s been given to lead and to care for, yet who finds being single (not through choice) difficult at times. He reminds me of various people I know, and in that captures one of the strengths of the book; Fox’s depictions are very real and honest.

While thoroughly taking apart the way church life can be utterly disconnected from the rest of the world, and frequently ribbing certain parts of said church (evangelicals don’t come off too well – Liverpool experience shining through, perhaps?), Fox nonetheless avoids painting one-dimensional pictures or merely wheeling out stereotypes. Her characters’ vulnerability and humanity comes through, and I found myself both laughing out loud on the metro in Madrid (which it appears is just as frowned upon as laughing on the Tube!), particularly following the antics of the Dean’s camp and hilariously rude husband, Gene, and then crying buckets, as life takes its toll on the characters and they get themselves into interesting situations.

The book doesn’t shy away from dealing with difficult subject matter, not least the way the Anglican Church’s muddle when it comes to sexual ethics, in particular homosexuality and sexual identity, impact its clergy. It’s hard to say more without giving away the plot, sufficed to say that the fallout from the messiness that engulfs some of the main characters is written in such a way that it’s possible to feel deep sympathy for the participants, while being angry about the way the church (and wider society) forces people to tie themselves up in knots as they navigate their way through the muddle.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to my churchy friends everywhere, though while Fox attempts to translate the oddities of the Church of England into something readily comprehensible outside of its mysterious little world, I do fear a certain amount would be lost on someone unacquainted with its peculiar little ways… Looking forward to the upcoming sequel!

 

Title: Acts and Omissions

Author: Catherine Fox

Publisher: SPCK Publishing (17 July 2014)
ISBN: 0281072345

Thinking about Light and UFOs

On Tuesday evening, Sally and I attended a Durham University panel discussion event that was held at the Institute of Chartered Accountants headquarters in London. It was part of a programme run by the Institute of Advanced Studies, which essentially is an interdisciplinary project trying to bring experts from a wide variety of fields together to take part in shared conversations around a given theme. This year’s topic is light, and the evening took the format of a panel discussion with a theologian (David Wilkinson), an astronomer (Jocelyn Bell-Brunell), a classicist (Serafina Cuomo) and an anthropologist (Bob Latyon), and chaired by Martin Ward, who is a physicist. It proved to be a very lively evening with lots to think about.

After enjoying much needed refreshment beforehand (it was a very humid evening), the discussion began with the four panel members being asked what they felt when they looked up at the sky, and all four mentioned a sense of wonder and mystery. The discussion then proceeded to think about the place the various objects in the night sky – comets, stars, supernovae and so on – have played in human understanding and interpretation of events. We learned of the political ramifications that could sometimes be associated with unusual cosmic events in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, the relative lack of interest in such things in the Bible, which then makes the story of the star at Bethlehem even more unusual and intriguing, the different ways in which cultures other than our own have interpreted the constellations, and how we need to get our act together and think much more seriously about how we would deal with supposed contact from an alien civilisation. Quite a mixture, I’m sure you’ll agree!

I thought the most interesting part of the evening (and this probably says a lot about me!) was the discussion of UFOs and why it might be that so many people (including apparently four million Americans) believe they’ve either encountered or been abducted by aliens. Each of the panel was asked how they’d respond if a signal wishing to make contact was received, and if we should send a message back, what would it be? Serafina Cuomo admitted she’d known the question was coming and so asked her eight year-old son what he thought. Apparently, he wanted to go to see them, and take all the penguins, because he’s worried about the polar ice gaps melting! While this was very sweet, it has a serious point: perhaps we’re so keen on the idea of alien visitations because we’re seeking salvation, a second chance after we’ve made such a mess of our own planet. It’s not an unusual theme in science fiction, after all. David Wilkinson’s answer was that our message back should be ‘tell us your story’, to try to build relationships.

Both got me thinking, and I know David’s done some work on this, about the theological implications of there being intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, something that cannot be ruled out categorically, and indeed as the Drake Equation suggests, is perfectly possible. We talk about Christ’s resurrection as having implications for the whole of creation, not just our own planet, because that’s what the Scriptures tell us we must do. It’s the first fruit of a new creation, according to St Paul, which will eventually be brought to completion when God restores the heavens and the earth (you might read ‘Surprised by Hope’ by Tom Wright for a fuller discussion of this theme and its implications), and some such as Rowan Williams have referred to it as a ‘second Big Bang’, an explosion of new creative energy into the universe. If this is the case, and our understanding of the resulting atonement for sins and restored relationship with God is bound up with God having shared our human nature (the Word became flesh as John’s Gospel puts it), then what meaning does this story have for an alien civilisation with intelligent beings capable of moral agency, and therefore presumably of sin?

 

It got me thinking that perhaps there are at least three possibilities for how God in Christ might interact with other worlds:

• What we understand as a unique event isn’t actually thus, and the salvation story is brought about by particular events in each world where redemption is required. In other words, God enters into those worlds in different ways and brings about salvation one at a time. This raises all sorts of questions about revelation and our understanding of God as Trinity, to name but two issues.
•  Perhaps the Christ story really does represent God’s one foray into the creation, and so when such a story might get communicated elsewhere in the universe, it could well have to begin with ‘a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…’! This may well make it incredibility hard to relate to God, but perhaps not; I find the incarnation and God having been there and done that, if you see what I mean, very comforting when life’s tough, but many of other faiths manage quite well without such an understanding of a personal God (or even a God at all). Either way, it’s hard to imagine what Christianity would look like without the incarnation at its heart.
• Perhaps God doesn’t care what the vehicle is by which people (in the broadest sense) gain insight into the divine, as long as they do, which would impact our own earthly interfaith dialogues, never mind a wider cosmic view! In some ways this is the easiest answer to work with, but again it asks us what we believe about revelation and the true character of God – can we say anything ‘true’ about the divine?

A not unconnected question relates to what it means to be made in the image of God, and indeed what it is to be human. I saw a fantastic BBC series a little while ago about animal intelligence and behaviours, called ‘Super Smart Animals’. It showed how various animals can do things we used to think were unique to humans such as multi-step problem-solving, imagination, abstract reasoning and so on. While not as smart as the breed of crows featured who solved several stage problems to retrieve food using tools, the crows around our neck of the woods certainly display teamwork and problem-solving skills when they want to raid our rubbish bags! It’s also been long known that apes, for example, sometimes display what we might call sinful behaviours if they occurred in humans, such as bullying, freezing out, domestic violence and even infanticide. Taking what we can see in the animal kingdom and what we might see ‘out there’ at some point in the future, I think we seriously need to go on wrestling with the question of what it means to be made in God’s image, and perhaps to acknowledge that we’re not as special as we like to think…

 

 I don’t have any answers for these questions, but nonetheless enjoyed being prompted to think about them by this very engaging evening. After grabbing another drink, we headed off to our hotel, which because of an admin cock-up by the website I used for booking, was not near Regent’s Park as intended, but at another part of the same chain at Canary Wharf. I’ve now had, as a result, my first experience of a jacuzzi, and all I can say is I want one of those!

Reaction to the Elections

So, we've had the latest round of European and local elections, and I thought I'd post my initial reactions having had chance to take in the European results this morning.

 

The BBC have been very keen to push how well UKIP did in the council votes, despite the Greens being better represented in local government. In reality, Labour saw the most gains nationally, with the Tories and the Lib Dems taking big hits. The Greens faired well, and UKIP ended up with a similar number of councillors but with far less influence overall, though, in terms of council control. I cannot pretend I'm happy about seeing an odious party such as UKIP doing as well as they did, but it's hardly the earthquake the BBC seem so keen to make it out to be. Moreover, it seems their new councillors are already showing their true colours, so one does wonder how long many of them will last...

 

I must admit that I find the whole Europe affair depressing to say the least. We've seen far right parties, who make UKIP seem nice and fluffy, win in France, Denmark and Austria, and a far left party win in Greece, as well as strong votes for other obnoxious groups such as Golden Dawn in Greece and a neo-Nazi group in Germany. In Poland, there was a sexist and racist anti-democracy nutter whose party managed to get four MEPs elected. For a breakdown of results by nation, check out this useful Guardian summary page. It seems that Europe, with some exceptions like Germany which was still dominated by the mainstream parties, and Italy where the governing centre-left party triumphed in style, is lurching to the extremes, in particular towards far-right, anti-immigration, anti-Europe parties.

 

Predictably, there have been calls for Labour to focus more on issues such as immigration in order to try, once again, to out-UKIP Farage's party and get the votes of those who voted for him. I hope that Ed Miliband has the courage to resist the pressure and not join a rush to hammer a group (immigrants) that are already seen as an easy target for politicians wanting to appear 'tough', though sadly I think I may be somewhat optimistic. It seems that, of the five main parties who now make up our domestic political landscape, it's only the Green Party who're offering an alternative perspective on things. It presents a challenge in particular to Christians: what can we offer in these debates about the direction of our country that offers hope to people, rather than rushing to take everything down to the lowest common denominator?

 

When preparing to preach yesterday, in a Methodist church in the one part of Milton Keynes that returned a UKIP councillor, I was originally going to talk about how we in the church can engage effectively with contemporary culture. However, the more I looked one of the lectionary readings, and having come across a story of a UKIP council candidate in Croydon saying she'd joined them because she felt they are the only party standing up for Christianity (presumably by opposing equal marriage), I was prompted to think about what does actually form an appropriate response (note, I'm not claiming to be making the appropriate response!) to the kind of politics of fear we've seen being pushed in these elections. The result is the sermon I've reproduced below, which I think annoyed some in the congregation (one woman in particular seemed furious!) but after seeing the European results and the rise of the far right needs to be said. All feedback is welcome!
 

This isn’t the sermon I intended to preach today! You see, when I started out preparing at the beginning of the week – and looked at the lectionary readings – I decided that I was going to talk about how we engage effectively with modern culture. I’d finished drafting my order of service by Monday evening, and as the passages were very familiar to me, I figured I wouldn’t need to spend too much time delving into commentaries and studying them, in order to prepare my sermon. I was, therefore, quite convinced I was in for a nice, easy week. However, the more I looked at the readings I’d originally chosen, the more convinced I became that God was asking me to take a different tack, and wrestle with something all together harder. Thus, Paul preaching in Athens became the famous passage from Micah, a few tweaks were made to the order of service, and off I went reading up on 1 Peter, a text which poses a very difficult question: what does it mean to be willing to suffer for doing right?

As I guess it doesn’t take too much effort to imagine, I’m quite an opinionated person and a bit mouthy on occasion. I’m willing to write to my MP or other public officials if something’s annoyed me, or to pull apart someone’s argument on my blog if I think it deserves it. As well as writing, I’ve occasionally been known to pipe up in discussions and meetings, saying what I think needs to be said, even if I know it’ll annoy people. So far, so good, perhaps; yet, to tell the truth, I’m a bit of a wimp at heart. I don’t like physical pain of any sort, I’m not too keen on standing out from the crowd unless I really have no choice, and actually, if I’m honest, I quite want people to like me. Thus, studying our passage from 1 Peter proved hard going, as the author talks about being willing to suffer for doing right, just as Christ suffered to free us from sin. I have to admit that it made me feel uneasy, yet that’s the challenge that both readings pose to us.

It’s generally accepted that 1 Peter was written from Rome to a scattered group of churches, containing both Jewish and Gentile Christians, who were having a hard time for refusing to go along with aspects of local culture, such as attending sacrifices. It was probably carried along the route through Asia Minor – modern-day Turkey – suggested by its opening verses, and it seems that Silas, who also accompanied Paul on some of his missionary adventures, might’ve been the messenger. There’s some debate as to whether Peter’s the author, or whether it was written by early Christians influenced by him; using prominent people’s names pseudonymously was pretty common at the time. Either way, images of God’s rescue of Israel from exile in Egypt are used throughout, reminding people of God’s care for them, and a key theme in the text is how Christ’s death and resurrection have fundamentally changed the world, and so are worth suffering for.

When we pick up the argument, the author’s been using examples from everyday domestic life to offer advice on how people should conduct themselves in a hostile environment. In verses eight and nine, they’re encouraged to love and respect one another, being willing to do what’s right even if it’s costly. In a reminder of Jesus’ teaching on loving enemies in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:10), the people are told not to repay evil with evil, but instead to respond by blessing those who’ve wronged them. The quote in the middle of the passage is from Psalm 34:13 – 17, and again it focuses on God’s call to live righteously, to seek and pursue peace. The final section of the text argues that even in the face of misunderstanding of their Christian faith, and aggression brought on by fear, the churches shouldn’t be intimidated or respond in kind. Instead, they must be ready to explain why they have the hope they do, gently and with respect. Verses seventeen and eighteen capture what the basis, the foundation, of that hope is: that Christ suffered and died to free us from sin, and was raised from the dead by the power of God, made alive in the Spirit.

The more I think about the latter verses in particular, the more this seems like a very timely reading to have, in the aftermath of the recent local and European elections. Whatever our political allegiances, we need to be wary of attempts to use fear and scaremongering to seduce us into voting one way or another. I don’t know if anyone saw the UKIP poster that had a National Lottery-style finger pointing outwards and suggested that millions of EU migrants are coming here seeking to take British workers’ jobs. It’s part of a very worrying trend, as these sorts of campaigning methods work by tapping into people’s insecurities during difficult economic times. Just as the early Christian recipients of 1 Peter were feared because they were different from those around them, the temptation is to scapegoat, to lash out at others, rather than to stick together and do the right thing by our fellow human beings. How we respond to scaremongering, and whether we have the courage to seek peace and pursue it, as Psalm 34 puts it, is a test of our discipleship.

Being willing to go against the grain and challenge popularist thinking isn’t an easy business, yet as Christians we’ve got a vision of hope to proclaim to the world, which has its foundation in the fact that there’s no such thing as a person that doesn’t matter, because there’s nobody who isn’t made in the image of God, and nobody that Jesus didn’t die for. Fundamental to John Wesley’s understanding of his faith, which he proclaimed up and down the country and even in places like my home town of Preston, where he got a good pelting with stones for his trouble, was that all can be saved; in other words, there’s no-one outside the scope of the love of God. If that’s really true, then it has major implications for how we live and act in the world, and in particular how we engage politically. If we have the same hope within us as Wesley did, we too need to be ready to give an account of it when called upon, which includes when we see people pushing prejudice, and to do so with gentleness and respect even if we’re met with ridicule, hostility or violence.

Our Old Testament reading concerns a community who were meant to live in hope and to be a light to the nations, but instead had turned away from God. Micah’s confronting a divided Israel and Judah, whose society and values embodied inequality and injustice, and showed a failing to follow through God’s command to care for the foreigner, the orphan and the widow. The same people believed this fundamentally didn’t matter as long as they kept their worship going and offered the prescribed sacrifices to God. In the first part of chapter six, God acts as judge of the people through Micah and reminds them of how he saved them from oppression in Egypt. It then moves into our reading, which asks about the heart of what God requires from his people. It’s not burnt offerings, even of the best possible produce in huge volumes, nor is it to go along with the practises of other nations and indulge in child sacrifices, but instead it’s to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. As much as anything else, this means the care for the vulnerable and outsiders that shines through in the Law, and was later to be embodied by Jesus.

Taken together, then, our readings challenge us not to get sucked into a way of being that responds to legitimate worries when money is tight and jobs scarce by giving into fear and resentment of others, or simply burying our heads in the sand and retreating into a church-shaped bubble. Negative campaigning relies on being able to stir up fear and suspicion of ‘the other’, whether that’s immigrants, or asylum seekers, or disabled people, or the unemployed, or the working poor, or Food Bank users, or single mothers, or teenagers, or gay people, or transgender people, or Muslims, or black people, or Romanians and Bulgarians, or whoever the latest fashionable victims are. Our hope as Christians, by contrast, centres on the love of God being universal, meaning there’s no such thing as a person that doesn’t matter. Giving an account of this hope to those who demand it may well prove costly as it was for the readers of 1 Peter, but the challenge cuts to the core of our faith.

After all, Jesus wasn’t crucified for preaching motherhood-and-apple-pie, or for being a nice guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. We follow a crucified God who challenged religious and secular authorities alike when they sought to exclude the poor, the vulnerable, the broken and those whose lives didn’t fit the social and moral expectations of the day. We follow a crucified God who embodied a radical love that welcomes all. The challenge, then, is to be willing to do the right thing, and stand up to the politics of fear and exclusion. It’s to do justice and love mercy as we walk humbly with the same crucified God who, as 1 Peter tells us, was raised from the dead and is alive through the Spirit. 

On Hormone Blockers and the Daily Mail

In the Mail on Sunday, there was an article which made the front page of the paper version expressing outrage at the expansion of the prescription of hormone blockers to young people from nine years old onwards, following a successful clinical trial conducted by Dr Polly Carmichael at the Tavistock Clinic in north London. I came across this by chance having glanced at the headlines in the shopping centre, and while I'm not the first person to deconstruct their latest rant, I think I can add a useful perspective to the discussion.

 

Firstly, a bit of background. Hormone blockers can be given to young people who experience gender confusion to delay the onset of the changes that take place in puberty. This gives the young person time to work out if the confusion they've experienced is something permanent, perhaps related to other things like coming to terms with sexual orientation, or simply something that passes as they get older. The effect of these drugs is reversible if the person decides they wish to continue to live as the gender assigned to them at birth, and if they wish to transition, the hormones of the preferred gender can be administered instead. If you want to learn more from someone who has worked with trans young people for many years, check out this TED talk by Norman Spack.

 

I cannot state categorically enough what difference hormone blockers would have made to me as a teenager. I hit puberty at age twelve, and before that point I could pass/be read as male quite easily if I wanted to and was in a context where people didn't know me already. After that, it became impossible to do so, as I went from being flat-chested to having DD breasts in all of a year, a fact that caused me enormous distress because it felt every day like my body was moving further away from reflecting the person I really am (I find the 'trapped in the wrong body' language the Mail uses problematic, for theological reasons as much as anything else - I'm not a disembodied soul dwelling in a temporary vessel, but a fully embodied person!). Added to that, monthly periods were not just painful and unpleasant, but a further reminder of what was wrong with my body that made me feel dirty and incredibly miserable. While there were other things going on and my gender dysphoria was far from the only reason, it played a big role in me being suicidal during my last couple of years at school.

 

If I had been able to do something to stop this happening and delay the onset of female puberty, I would not now be faced with having to undergo major surgery to flatten my chest, and I'm certain I would not have spent so many years feeling deeply uncomfortable in my own skin and distressed every time I looked in the mirror. For those who knew me before transition, the reason I hid under hoodies and baggy t-shirts was to try to be as invisible as possible. It was awful when well-meaning friends tried to encourage me to be more feminine, as it was the last thing I wanted! Given that surveys suggest around 75% of trans people while consider suicide at some point, and the actual suicide rate is many multiples of the national average, I can't be the only person who could've benefitted from this treatment to prevent this divergence of body and identity being so acute.

 

The Mail quotes Andrew Percy, a Tory MP, as saying that hormone blockers will prevent 'natural' development. Let's pause here and think about what's being said. Firstly, like many trans people, I became aware something wasn't right at a very young age, in my case I was four years old when I realised that my body (biological) didn't reflect my inner sense of being male (ontological), and thus people didn't treat me as a boy (social). For someone with gender dysphoria, the ontological (the person's sense of their gender) is not reflected by the biological (both the primary sex characteristics - read genitals - used to assign sex at birth or the secondary sex characteristics - voice, build, facial hair, etc. that emerge later), and because people apply a shedload of presumptions and cultural baggage based on the biological and the binary idea of gender most people work with (social), the person's sense of themselves is also not reflected in interactions with others. Thus, there is nothing 'natural' to someone like me about allowing puberty to progress, only a deepening sense of unhappiness at a body that doesn't reflect the reality of things.

 

Secondly, allowing puberty to progress and forcing people to seek treatment in later life makes it a lot harder, particularly for trans women, to undo the damage. A lot of changes happen by sixteen that can cause immense distress. For example, once someone's voice has broken, that's it, so trans women can be stuck with a voice that sounds male no matter how many hormones they take. Moreover, it means corrective surgery can be much more involved and necessitates dealing with a greater level of risk than if puberty hadn't been allowed to progress. There is nothing 'natural' about forcing people into this position if it can be stopped.Yes, there are risks involved in using blockers, the Mail is right (show me a medicine with no risks at all!), but there are far greater risks involved in having more extensive surgery! Dare I also mention it's by far the least cost-effective solution to have people go under the knife more often than would have been necessary if hormone blockers had been prescribed?

 

Thirdly, Percy and others are working on the presumption that children are way too young to be able to make informed decisions, without understanding that hormone blockers are useful precisely because they do give time, breathing space, for the young person to mature and to be sure they wish to continue with gender affirmation treatment. Moreover, as I've already said, many trans people become aware that something's not right at a very young age, and to treat children as incapable of any self-awareness is not only dangerous but undermines their sense of selfhood. It is very telling that the Mail were forced to rely on a pro-life campaigner (it's funny how people like that are often so keen to stop abortion but seemingly don't care about suffering after birth... ) rather than a medical expert to put their counter-case and spearhead their moral panic, exactly because a thoroughly conducted clinical trail does not support their narrow beliefs about what is 'normal'.

 

Last week, I was privileged to take part in a gathering of local schools, churches, LGBT youth and many others under the auspices of Citizens:MK, a community organisation working for a better city. One of the campaigns we were working on was related to protecting funding for an LGBT youth group, and two of their members stood up and shared their experiences; one was a trans person and the other a young lesbian. Both were incredibly moving, as they talked openly of bullying, suicide attempts and feeling worthless. This kind of journalism, seeking I can only assume to stir up outrage and put pressure on the NHS not to treat trans people (the Mail call the gender clinics, which help hundreds of people like me every year to finally be themselves, a "largely taxpayer-funded industry"), makes life harder for trans people and adds to the pressure many of us experience to justify our existence on a regular basis.

 

The hormone treatment I've finally been able to undergo as a thirty year old guy has already made a massive difference to my self-confidence, not least because my voice has now broken and so I get mis-gendered a whole lot less. I am also very grateful that I don't have to find thousands of pounds to pay for the chest surgery that will finally mean I can look at myself in the mirror and feel good about my body. I feel very lucky to be in a country with a health service that makes this possible, and also seeks to help young people avoid some of the misery my generation have experienced by offering hormone blockers. The Mail has, once again, got it very wrong indeed.