Who are the vulnerable?

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This week, the Otago Daily Times has covered a submission made to the Dunedin City Council urging Council to provide separate changing facilities for trans women and that Council staff should direct them to that facility.

The submitter, described as a feminist nurse, was interrupted in her presentation by the Mayor spontaneously rebutting her words in the name of being inclusive.

In a later edition, one transwoman user of the Pool concerned bravely allowed herself to be interviewed and photographed. She talked of the importance of swimming for her. She also admitted to being self conscious when changing in the women’s changing rooms.

The woman who made a submission to the council, in her intention to protect vulnerable girls and women, has, perhaps inadvertently, or maybe also intentionally, made her imagined enemy more vulnerable.

I really am not sure where the impression has come from that some predators deliberately ape female dress and style in order to prey on vulnerable women. There may be men who do that. It seems to be one fear – of trans women – being added to another fear of being preyed upon. More subtlety is needed in our analysis of the world.

Genuine transwomen have usually had a long confusing and lonely road to coming out as trans. They may have lost friends and family along the way as they worked to address their dysphoria (unease with their body and identity). They generally know, if they have been unable to afford to have surgery or if they made their transition after puberty, that they are noticeable as not-quite-female or not-quite-male but something else simply as they walk down the street. Even clothing choices and getting the usual female styling and body maintenance done must be awkward and often embarrassing. Finding a cohort of people who have the same experience or who understand enough for you to be comfortable with them must be almost impossible for some, especially in small towns.

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Children of course are vulnerable. And even though we haven’t done as good a job as we think we have looking after children in New Zealand over the decades now exposed by the Royal Commission, generally society agrees that children need various protections. That includes protection from unscrupulous adults of any and all sexual orientations and identities. The groundswell of opinion on whether or not children are vulnerable and need care, is more widespread and more of a consensus that that for trans people as yet.

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I don’t think we should have to choose on some kind of vulnerability top ten. All children and all trans people need compassion and care.

Both groups also require us to be nuanced in our thinking. We can defend trans people citing inclusivity as the banner under which we do so. We also need to be prepared to find that among the trans community as among the cis community, there are well intentioned people and those with bent tendencies.

When any minority begins to enter mainstream life more openly and thoroughly, there can be a tendency to idolize them – people are not allowed to criticize because that is to be exclusive. No, it is simply being realistic and wise.

At the same time, the majority needs to make sure they are not sanctifying their own group also. Let us who are white and straight and cis remember many evils have occurred at the hands of people just like us – colonization, abuse, rape, torture, coercion, fraud… we could continue the list. Ghislaine Maxwell is hardly, from exterior appearances, the typical image we might have had of a sex trafficker, but look. Would anyone object to her being in a woman’s changing room alone with a young girl who desperately wants to be a model?

So let’s recognise that whatever group we belong to, black or white or yellow or green; cis or trans, L or G or B, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or pagan, none of us are perfect. A supporter of Boris Johnson, when recently accused of voting for Boris as leader when he knew he was flawed, replied “We are all flawed. Everyone is flawed.”

I hope that Jesus’ words from the 8th chapter of John’s gospel are ringing in your ears. He spoke thus to the crowd who were avid to stone the anonymous woman caught in adultery.

8 ¹ But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² Early in the morning he came to the temple courts again. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. ³ The experts in the law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught committing adultery. They made her stand in front of them ⁴ and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. ⁵ In the law Moses commanded us to stone to death such women. What then do you say?” ⁶ (Now they were asking this in an attempt to trap him, so that they could bring charges against him.) Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. ⁷ When they persisted in asking him, he stood up straight and replied, “Whoever among you is guiltless may be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Then he bent over again and wrote on the ground.

⁹ Now when they heard this, they began to drift away one at a time, starting with the older ones, until Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Let me point out this doesn’t mean that I think homosexuality or going through a gender transition is a sin! But, we are all too quick to blame and label others, without remembering our own wrong-doing and frailties. Those are the only things we can change.

Certainly let’s hold people accountable when things do go wrong – as long as all people are held accountable, not only the people who unsettle us.

Certainly let’s protect the vulnerable, as long as it is all those who are vulnerable; transwomen and also children; gay men and also wards of the state or boys in church schools.

If you are unsure about this territory of sexual orientation and identity, We’re All Equally Human might help. One reader said recently: “Just to let you know that I learnt a lot from your book, “We’re all Equally Human”. I never did know what all those letters  LGBTQI stood for, let alone all the others you added in Chapter 11.”

And let’s remember the positives when a transition goes well.

“Recently I met a trans man whom I had known years ago as a woman. I’d been around when she was beginning her transition. I even created and led a ritual for her to symbolically make the transition with her friends. I realised a little too late that quite a few
of her friends were gob-smacked and not entirely approving! It was all moving too fast for them. It was a slightly awkward day, but I hope the ritual helped a little.”
“When I met him again the other day, I was struck by how ‘happy in his skin’ he is now as a man. He’s lived as trans for some years now. The woman I had known had been prickly and bit reactionary. No wonder, now I know what was going on for her at the time. Now he is self-assured and relaxed, though I’m sure life is still tricky occasionally given general ignorance about such things.” I smile, remembering Alan’s happiness that day…

Susan Jones, We’re All Equally Human, Philip Garside Publishing Ltd, Wellington, 2022, p. 104

And a hymn from Progressing the Journey

For all the saints’ (1)
Hymn for Transgender Day of Remembrance’

Tune: Sine Nomine

1. For all the saints of every age and day,
   who bravely seek to follow Jesus’ way,
   sharing Good News by what they do and say:
   Alleluia! Alleluia!
2. For those who struggle much with who they are,
   listening to feelings which with bodies jar,
   who seek and ask and travel near and far:
   Alleluia! Alleluia!
3. For those who understood, as feelings grew,
   the need to live within a body true,
   and all that’s needed to change and renew:
   Alleluia, Alleluia
4. For Jesus, who exploded people’s view,
   of who were ‘out’ or ‘in’ the chosen few,
   who died for freedom out of love for you:
   Alleluia, Alleluia.
5. And so we meet to celebrate the right,
   to be yourself by day and every night,
   in hope Love’s flame will always burn for right:
   Alleluia! Alleluia! Susan Jones Progressing the Journey 2022

Go well, everyone,

Stay Safe, Be Generous, Practice Compassion

Susan

Orders:jones.rs@xtra.co.nz

Book 2 of Coffeeshop Conversations trilogy

Book 1 of Coffeeshop Conversations trilogy

Progressing the Journey
Inclusive Lyrics and Liturgy

Phobia-day

Last week contained “International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia”

Unite’s website https://www.unitetheunion.org/ says this about the day:

Unite is proud to recognise International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia on 17 May. Known as IDAHOBIT for short, this date was chosen as it commemorates the date of the decision to remove homosexuality from classification as a mental illness by the World Health Organisation in 1990. [only 30 years ago!] The main purpose of IDAHOBIT is to raise awareness of ongoing discrimination, violence and persecution of LGBT+ people across the world.

Research by Stonewall, the national LGBT charity found that one in five LGBT people have experienced a hate crime because of their sexual orientation in the past year and over half of trans people have been subjected to a hate crime due to their gender identity.

It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why other people’s choices are the business of someone else. Even in the straight world, people often not related to you and with whom you are not well acquainted seem to think it is OK to comment on you being single, or married or divorced, and whether or not you have children. I can see that being confronted with a homosexually-orientated man or woman, a transgendered person or someone who identifies as bisexual might be actually confronting, if it hadn’t happened to you before, but why would it be your business to dispute that person’s choice?

It might be different if the person concerned ‘got in your face’ over it, but even then surely the situation is a discussion/debate/argument, not one where your personal opinion about their individual choices is the point.

I personally hate the thought of people talking about me when I am not there, but I realize I do that too, and it is human nature for us to discuss each other with our friendship groups. I might not agree with everyone’s choices, but unless they materially affect me in my life – why should I think I’m entitled to express an opinion or force that opinion on them?

The International Day this month mixes two different groups which are clustered under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Homophobia and biphobia relate to people who make a different choice from the straight variety of sexual orientation. The difference for them from the majority is who they choose as sexual partners – mostly a fairly private activity.

Transphobia relates more to sexual identity – how the person feels and presents themselves to the world. This can be more confronting for straight friends and family as it messes with accustomed perceptions and interpretations of bodies. It is still usual for collections of visual clues to go together – female clothing in the majority goes with ‘feminine’ features and build, for example, and there is plenty of male clothing which gives out macho or masculine vibes. Based on this we have been taught explicitly and explicitly different ways of identifying who is a girl or boy or woman or man.

If we consider a continuum or people, we might group at the middle, men and women who dress in ways the majority would be familiar with and expect. To one side, the ‘female’ side, we might group women who affect a more ‘masculine’ style – fewer frills, perhaps, darker colours, more often wearing trousers than skirts etc. We will still recognise this group of females as women fairly easily. Then moving on we find men dressing as women, maybe transitioning through hormonal and surgical treatment into being trans-women. This taxes the ability to instantly recognise the sex of a person and so renders us more uncomfortable, surprised or unsettled.

We could construct the same kind of continuum on the other side of the main group – after the macho ‘cowboy’ look, there are men who act in more feminine ways, wear a frill or two, perhaps more ‘feminine’ colours, less macho outfits. It’s not so usual because the overwhelming expectation of society – both men and women is for men to fit a fairly narrow range of types. These men are easily recognisable as men, but further down the spectrum we find women who adopt all male attire and through hormonal and perhaps surgical techniques, become trans men.

Note that, interestingly enough, my impression is that less fuss is made about trans men than trans women – I’m thinking because the male is a higher status in our society and it is a ‘step up’ to become a man while it is a corresponding ‘step down’ to become a woman – (for some people, not everyone thinks that if they have brought their reactions to conscious thought.)

As always, these types of phobias are, at base, like other phobias which we develop. They result from a majority group (in particular) meeting a group they have not met much before and being not quite sure how to react, or meeting a group which they have been taught to fear because of their ‘difference’.

More of us in the group doesn’t necessarily mean better. I remember a group of four or five 14 year old girls at a school where I was teaching. In that cruel, vindictive way teenage girls can sometimes adopt when in a group, they banded together to make a particular young male mathematics teacher’s life hell. He was a bit arrogant, but he didn’t deserve them. I remember meeting them roaming the corridors at lunchtime when they were meant o be outside and feeling afraid of them too, though I was the teacher and they were the students.

But we assume that if there are a lot of us, then we are automatically right, or entitled, or better, superior and probably too more intelligent. Uhuh! Ain’t necessarily so.

I found writing We’re All Equally Human fascinating because it exposed to me a few of my own biases. One reader told me they had found out where they had biases too and were surprised – because they were unconsciously held.

I was brought up short myself when writing WAEH when I found the original Greek or Hebrew words we have taken to mean same-sex or homosexual describe actual behaviors very different from the long term mutual gay relationships we would expect in Christian leaders. They in fact describe sexual violence ( in the First Testament passages) and child abuse with adultery on the side (in the second Testament passages). Of course that kind of behaviour is forbidden, but it doesn’t mean what we have been told it means. This is not homosexuality as we know it today. Why have people not done this investigation before, we could ask!!! And, if conservative Christians are shown this mistranslation and misinterpretation would this make the difference? Or is there now a vicious cycle where the mistranslated word has generated homophobia and then the misinterpreted Bible is used as a reason for that exclusion. Then this so called ‘righteous’ exclusion and homophobia are conflated, so that even if the original translation is null and void, people do not change their minds, as unknowingly they have become motivated by homophobia rather than by Bible-loyalty – right?

I was very surprised when someone I met in the gym ( not a regular church goer since his youth) who has now read both books 1 and 2 in the trilogy, said that he was ‘mortified’ reading that chapter about mis-translations and interpretations. ‘Mortified’ was the very word he used. He went to a Presbyterian Sunday school and to youth group within the Presbyterian church because they had girls in the group. He’s not really experienced Presbyterian full on church as an adult. Yet obviously he had taken on board the church’s anti- feeling about gays. Perhaps he’d picked up an uneasiness about gays from the society at large, but felt it was justified because the church agreed. So he was mortified that he had taken that ‘biblical’ view. I was worried that the church had such an influence on the general population. It’s OK to have influence when it is a good one – but spreading homophobia? Ewww. I realized thinking this through that I too have thought that in being pro-gay in the church debates, I was somehow doing something vaguely wrong or dangerous. My mind has completely changed on that – now my view is that it is the church which is doing something which is actually dangerously wrong.

Especially when, doing my book research, I found that gay young people who go to church are more at risk of poor mental health and suicide than gay young people who do not go to church, I found myself becoming braver in my stance. Tony Campolo (famous evangelical speaker in the US) is right when he says that the church is doing something very wrong to produce this result and should stop it immediately.

Gay relationships are not necessarily abusive (though just like straight ones, they can be), but when I think of the millions of children abused by heterosexual paedophilic leaders in different sectors of the church which has been reported in recent enquiries I really wonder how the church can have the confidence – arrogance? – to continue to stigmatise and demonise same sex couples.

As a result of this phobia over many years being held in the church, church people are consequently ill educated on the terms and categories and protocols common in rainbow communities. So we blunder around, like colonially minded incomers blunder around with respect to indigenous understandings and language. I tried in We’re All Equally Human to put in as much information as the format would allow.

I’ll never forget a trans woman telling me that the sign outside St Andrews on The Terrace was ‘wrong’. This sign was the pride and joy of the congregation and had been put up in 1881, welcoming people of every race, creed…. and sexual orientation. She rightly pointed out that sexual identity was not included. I asked around the congregation about their understanding of trans issues, to find that they were only just a little knowledgeable about orientation issues and variations. The whole sexual identity area was a relatively unknown country. Yet the same church was known as activist in the same-sex arena.

At the recent Special Assembly of the PCANZ a motion was carried about a dialogue on ‘inclusivity divisions’ in the church. From the reported debate it looks like for some this is just ‘how can we leave the church with our property intact’ – or maybe ‘how could we bribe the ‘other side’ to leave if we say they can take their property with them’? Whatever they discuss, maybe it will lead to some positive developments, but it will depend how rabid the phobias are and whether both rationality and compassion will intertwine in the discussion.

In this climate it would seem that We’re All Equally Human could be a good resource!! Great timing! Groups could read it. Individuals could gift it to more conservative friends. If people had bought a copy before the end of April 2022, the reduced pricing in place then could still apply. If anyone wants to order 5 books or more for discussion purposes, a lower price could be negotiated. The aim of the book is to present recent findings and to help both those who are ‘anti’ and ‘pro’ to be more knowledgeable in their conversations.

Email me (see below) and ask for costs with postage for the numbers you want. In this possibly more conciliatory climate let’s at least allow ourselves to get more educated, to become more able to have a conversation which goes beyond two people merely disagreeing without educating each other further.

My personal trainer described Wherever you are, you are on the Journey (book 1 in the trilogy)… as being as ‘smooth as a mochaccino’ to read. We’re All Equally Human, he said last week, for him is like a Long Black – deeper and darker but still a good cup of coffee! Get yourself a ‘Long Black’ too.

Grace and Peace and an end to all phobias

Susan

Orders: Email jones.rs@xtra.co.nz