Transforming

Cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a fantastic book that correctly argues that not only will LGBT be in heaven, but trans identities are completely valid in the sight of God. He demonstrates this quite well, tying everything back to scripture, showing how even though trans people are never mentioned in the Bible, there are many parallels, many that trans people like me can take comfort from. If you want a broad overview of a Christian stance on trans people, this is it.

[I received a copy of the book from the publisher with the expectation of an honest review.]

Before saying anything at all about Hartke's thought-provoking book, I should offer a full disclosure so my biases are known. I am a Christian; I am gay; and the idea of transgender and the phrase “I identify as male/female” makes me rather uncomfortable but not so much that I can't have a reasonable discussion about it.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio....” Anybody who does not realize that the world is far more complex than they are capable of understanding simply is not well suited for living in the real world. The biggest conceptual mistake we can ever make is to pretend that our understanding is sufficient to describe reality, that we know everything. I remember when I was maybe four years old, standing in the front yard looking at the world all around me. Voila! I had an epiphany. I rushed inside to tell my mother, “Mommy, Mommy, I know everything!” Oddly enough, she laughed at me.

That event was my whole life in one moment. I have never stopped thinking I know everything, and the universe has never stopped laughing at me. I have learned less humility from this than one might expect, but a little bit—enough that I get suspicious whenever I find myself “knowing something” with no actual evidence, learning, or experience to back it up. And since I have never said the words “I identify as...” (in fact, have no real point of contact to understand them), since I don't really know what it would mean to feel I am supposed to be a woman rather than a man, I am forced to admit that whatever I may think I know about the subject is ... well, sometimes I'm still a four year old who thinks he knows everything.

One of the clues I picked up fairly easily is the fact that some people are getting kicked out of their families, losing their jobs, spending enormous sums of money, enduring anguish, and undergoing medication and really severe surgery to make their physical body correspond with their emotional and mental conception of themselves. It is possible that people might do all of this because they are just bored, but as soon as I start thinking that way, I deserve to kick myself for an idiot. Of course this is something real to these people, real in a way I simply do not and can not understand. The tiny bit of humility I have learned forces me to admit that I just don't know what they are going through; I don't know what it feels like; I don't really know anything at all. The Golden Rules is very clear in this case: I need to shut up and listen. Nothing else will do. The Lord who teaches me “Do to others what you want them to do to you,” leaves me no other option. So I will shut up and listen, and fortunately Hartke steps in as someone patient, clear, and articulate to listen to.

Hartke begins with a careful exploration of the concept of sex and gender as expressed in the creation stories of Genesis. It has been normal to read those chapters as meaning that each and every human is precisely and entirely male or precisely and entirely female, that each person is and must be heterosexual, and that the whole point of it is procreation. In chapter 4, “And God Said, Let There Be Marshes,” he does a good job of deconstructing the binaries we imagine the Bible requires. Although there is a clean distinction between, e.g., light and dark, day and night, ocean and dry land, just as there is with male and female, it never occurs to anybody to assume this means that the Bible is saying there is no dusk or no swamps, even though it is normal to assume the story means that there is nothing besides the male/female duality. But it is simply a fact, he points out, that there are in-between areas, mixed zones. He asks the reader to consider the possibility that the “male/female” duality is no more meant absolutely than is the “day/night” duality. It is a difficult idea for some; but Hartke brings to our attention the testimonies of people who tell us what it is like to live with that as a reality of life. The biblical interpretation might not carry the weight of the argument on its own, if one were inclined to fundamentalism, and the personal testimonies might not, but the two together are presented to full effect and are compelling. At the very least, this reviewer finds it difficult to believe that anybody could read the section without at least a little grudging acknowledgment that there is a case to consider.

OK, now it is time for confession. Although I can have a reasonable discussion about the topic of “non-binary” and transgender people, I find myself uncomfortable with the dismissal of the male-female duality as a normal part of how the vast majority of humans perceive themselves and their humanity. I am uncomfortable with the dismissal of biological categories based on reproduction as normative for the common animal (including human) experience. I think I would have an easier time hearing someone like M, one of the transgender people whom Hartke quotes, if they did not say things like, “To say that you're nonbinary innately suggests there is a binary, and my whole point is that there's no such thing. We've created this formula and forced our understanding of gender into it.” While I very much need to hear M's story, and listen respectfully and carefully to what it feels like to go through life as they do, I nonetheless resist when told that the lived experience of humans and other animals as male and female is “created” by humans, imaginary. M needs me to understand that their experience is real and valid; I need M not to insist that they are representative of the norm. It would make it easier to hear; it would help me realize I am talking to a person who is living in the real world. Part of the rhetoric of transgender and non-binary coming out has the unfortunate consequence of telling those of us who see ourselves as complex and multifaceted but nevertheless “male” or “female” that our self-perception is wrong and non-existent. That Hartke naturally furthers this rhetoric interferes with my ability to listen respectfully, and I do not like that.

If you are a Christian who is transgender or think you might be, read this book for a comforting and strengthening reexamination of Christian theology. If you are Christian and not transgender, read it to have your horizons expanded and your assumptions questioned. Read it to hear to voices of people who experience themselves differently than you do. Read it to obey the Golden Rule. In spite of the discomfort is caused me, and my objection raised above, I am grateful to Hartke for having written this book. Having read it, I am sure I will be able to be a better friend to the non-binary and transgender people in my life.