I’m looking over past blog entries and realizing that I didn’t yet have a landing page for curriculum options. I’ve already posted about several options, but there are more that I’ll be adding as this isn’t yet a complete list! Most (but not all) of these are oriented toward Christian audiences. I would love to learn about additional resources to support conversation in other traditions!
Continue reading “Transgender and Religious Curriculum Guide”
Suzanne DeWitt Hall has self-published several books talking about sex, sexuality, gender, and Christianity. As a cisgender, queer author, she admits that she is a observer to the transgender experience. Her concise introduction to gender and the Bible in Transfigured: A 40-day Journey through Scripture for Gender-queer and Transgender People (2018) is useful. However, I would recommend it “for” cisgender allies more than “for” gender-queer and transgender people.
Continue reading “Transfigured: A 40-day Journey through Scripture for Gender-queer and Transgender people”
I knew that I wanted a picture of bread and a chalice in the wild for OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation. I actually drove all over New Jersey and into Pennsylvania before I found the final, perfect set up for the cover image.
The word “OtherWise” was actually given to me by the ancestors when we opened up a sacred site at Columcille. You see, they had a men’s sacred site and a women’s sacred site, but there was no place designated for the rest of us! The sacred OtherWise site remains off the map on the boundary at a cross-roads in a place of fire… but that is another story for another day.
Continue reading “OtherWise Christian cover images”
Foreword by the Rev Victoria Kolakowski (retired)
Preface by Mx Chris Paige
Introduction by Mx Chris Paige
[A]nd when he had given thanks,
he broke [the bread] and said,
“This is my body, which is for you;
do this in remembrance of me.”
1 Corinthians 11:24 NIV
As I compile these reflections, transgender communities have been holding vigils against anti-transgender violence on November 20 for twenty years now. That is long enough to have noticed patterns—not only about who is most frequently being killed, but also about how the rest of us are reacting to those deaths.
There are no quick fixes to the many factors involved in transgender tragedy, from intimate partner violence to economic insecurity. From gender to race to religion, there are many forces conspiring against us. There is so much work to be done. We feel so human and powerless in the face of it all. The temptations are many from going numb to turning away, from giving in to despair to sacrificing ourselves for the cause. Spiritual traditions have always been a rich resource for facing such overwhelming odds.
Continue reading “Introduction: In Remembrance of Me”
It’s finally here–Book #3 for those of you who are keeping track! After several unexpected, but important delays, In Remembrance of Me: Bearing Witness to Transgender Tragedy is now available on Amazon and making its way into other venues. I don’t even have my physical copy in hand yet, but while we wait for the photo ops to begin, here is the Table of Contents.
Introduction (1 Corinthians 11:24)
Continue reading “Table of Contents: In Remembrance of Me”
I recently blogged about gender as a Koosh ball. A friend pointed me to another resource that is aimed at young leaders: The Gender Wheel by Maya Gonzalez.
Continue reading “Reflections on the Gender Wheel”
In addition to the #TransphobiaIsASin campaign, today is also the first day to pre-order The Black Trans Prayer Book. The current timeline is that the book will ship February 1, 2020.
I have served as administrative support for the TBTPB project through my role at Transfaith, so I have been watching and waiting on this project for more than a year now. Obviously, J Mase III and Lady Dane Edidi have been working even longer than that on this labor of love! I seriously don’t even have that kind of patience (as you can see by how I’m popping out books), so I have big respect for the way that they have done this work and am confident that the finished project is/will be phenomenal.
While I cannot review the book (yet), I have been only one step removed from their process in several ways and am super excited about the collaboration that it represents, not only by the co-editors, but by all of the contributors. In early 2019, they held a retreat where most of the contributors gathered to discuss the themes of the book. So, even when individuals have written parts of the book, there is a deeper collaboration that preceded that writing.
There is so much heart and brilliance and love … poems and prayers and spells and theological narrative and personal journeys…
J Mase III, 1/15/2020
What’s more is that today they announced that they have received funding for a DOCUMENTARY! This is a super exciting development for the entire community, but especially for Black and Brown Trans Folk.
The Black Trans Prayer Book: A Performative Documentary explores the lives, reflections, performances, and spiritual journey of the contributors to the Black Trans Prayer Book—a collaborative text, co-edited by J Mase III & Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, that explores the healing needs of Black trans people.
Here is the Facebook Live with J Mase III (from snowy Seattle from the looks of it!). Since I can’t review the book yet, I want to highlight more of the analysis behind these projects.
[To address] the religious based trauma that we experience all the time… knowing that we have a right to healing, that we have a right to disrupt that type of violence, and that we have a right to hold religious institutions accountable. … to dismantle religious-based violence, and to reframe conversations about what it means to be a trans person (particularly a Black Trans person) and our right to healing.
J Mase III, 1/15/2020
Congratulations to Dane and Mase, to the many contributors, and to all of us who will benefit from this important, ground-breaking work!
Compiled by Mx Chris Paige on January 15, 2020.
Note: This blog is intended to be an on-going work in progress. Please contact us if you have additions, corrections, or concerns.
Christian Faith and Gender Identity… There’s an app for that!
In other words, my seven-day devotional, titled, “Christian Faith and Gender Identity”… just launched on Our Bible App!
Today was the (first) transgender visibility march. Seems like a great day to pull out a classic!
Leslie Feinberg is one of three OtherWise prophets that I honor around the edges of OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation. Leslie Feinberg was talking about gender-benders and intersex folk long before most people were educated about those topics (recognizing that we still have a long way to go, even today).
Transgender Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue is Feinberg’s 1998 book. It is a collection of speeches, with a few individual profiles of transgender people woven in. It’s a great resource for thinking about how things were back in 1997 or 1998, during the “transgender spring.” While Feinberg is not writing from a Christian point of view, ze push on all of the edges of what organized back then.
What makes Feinberg especially prophetic is that zir writing is still timely today. The politicians are different, but the issues are very much the same. Feinberg coined the term “Transgender Liberation” and did important work connecting the dots with other kinds of liberation, making the case that broad based solidarity is important for our survival.
Our lives are proof that sex and gender are much more complex than a delivery room doctor’s glance at genitals can determine, more variegated than pink or blue birth caps. (page 5)
And if you do not identify as transgender or transsexual or intersexual, your life is diminished by our oppression as well. … So the defense of each individual’s right to control their own body, and to explore the path of self-expression, enhances your own freedom to discover more about yourself and your potentialities. (page 6)
To me, gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught. (page 10)
We… don’t have to explain why we are the way we are. We have to explain who we are. How we see ourselves. (page 29)
The real burning question is: How did we ever find the courage? From what underground spring did we draw our pride? How did each of us make our way in life, without a single familiar star in the night sky to guide us, to this room where we have at last found others like ourselves? … I think we have the whole world to give back to each other. (page 34)
The way in which people express themselves is a very important part of who they are. It is not possible to force all people to live outside of femininity and masculinity. Only androgynous people live comfortably in that gender space. There’s no social compulsion strong enough to force anyone else to dwell there. Trans people are an example of the futility of this strategy. (page 53)
What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other’s oppression. … Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. (page 60)
I live proudly in a body of my own design. I defend my right to be complex. (page 70)
I recently put that question to Puerto Rican drag queen Sylvia Rivera–a combatant at Stonewall: “Were you fighting against police brutality? Were you fighting racism? Or for your right to be gay? Did you fight because so few of the queens could produce the military draft cards government agents demanded that night? Or because so many of you were homeless and hungry and embattled on the streets?”
Sylvia replied with quiet dignity, “We were fighting for our lives.” (pages 96-97)
What unites us is not a common sexuality or experience or identities or self-expressions. It’s that we are up against a common enemy. (page 102)
That’s why we must ask everyone who puts forward theory: Which side are you on? … History is recorded from the point of view of the hunter or the hunted. … So the question we must demand of historians is: Which side are you on? (pages 115, 119)
So perhaps the greatest contribution that any of us can make who excavate history, and who develop and clarify theory, is to ensure that our history and theory is relevant and accessible to all those who are ready and willing to take action. (page 124)
Leslie Feinberg also has a 1992 pamphlet, titled Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, which is available as a free PDF from Workers World. Pieces of this pamphlet would make their way into Feinberg’s equally important Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1997).
Feinberg writes with a strong class analysis born of their involvement in Marxist and communist organizing. The 1992 pamphlet actually has a very nuanced assessment of the role of Christian tradition in gender oppression (incl. transgender as well as women’s rights).
Feinberg’s classic Stone Butch Blues is also available for free as a PDF (or at-cost through Lulu) at Feinberg’s website.
Compiled by Mx. Chris Paige on September 26, 2019.
Note: This blog is intended to be an on-going work in progress. Please contact us if you have additions, corrections, or concerns.
OtherWise Christian 