Can I tell you what a big deal this service feels like to me?
I’m standing here looking pretty calm, but on the inside there’s a little version of me that is dancing for joy and also who is terrified because I really want to get this one right. If you know anything about my family’s story, you know why that’s so important. If you don’t know my story, well buckle-up buttercup, ‘cause we are in this one together.
I begin with a request, I ask that you hear my words as they are intended, which is to be loving, affirming, and kind. We are going to navigate into waters that are still shifting and changing as our siblings are still reclaiming themselves and their identities after years of being demonized and “othered” when the waters are shifting, language changes and so while we work hard to learn these things today, that may mean that we have to still learn another term or replace something we learned today in the future, may we seek to see the inherent worth and dignity of each person so fiercely that we see this learning as a worthwhile venture.
In 2019, I sat in my office at a hospital about an hour from here and I watched as the church that raised me allowed people to step up to microphones and say horrific things about colleagues and friends who had spent their lives devoted to their faith and to their church; all because those colleagues identified as part of the LGBTQIA2+ community all while the conference was broadcast all over the world. That day the denomination would vote 53% to adopt what they called the “traditional plan” which kept the language in their doctrine that claimed “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings” along with some strict penalties for gay clergy who did not abstain from relationships and those who perform same gendered marriages. The next day, I wrote a letter resigning from the denomination. I didn’t know what it would mean for my career in those moments, but I knew that I couldn’t stand by quietly. In those moments, I was shamed by my conservative collegues for standing up in defense of sin; I was also shamed by progressive collegues for not staying within the denomination to fight for change from within; offering the same promises they had offered all 7 years of my ordination track; that things would change. I just needed to stay and fight, but that wasn’t for me. I couldn’t stand before the bishop and agree to uphold the doctrine of the church when I knew it would be a lie.
That was 6 years ago and the denomination has finally/recently split and things are still messy.
2 years after I sat in my office in uncertainty about what was going to happen next, my youngest child started the process of coming out.
Friends,I am a fierce ally. Stew and I truly were trying to raise our children to see all people as worthy and deserving of love. We have been going to a liberal 4 day spirit, justice, music, and art festival since Zev was potty training in the corner of the tent. We attended this festival long before we ever knew either of our kids would be a part of the LGBTQIA2+ community. I left my former denomination before I had any idea. We deeply believe in justice, equity, and compassion as a family and I am so thankful that we did things the way we did because it gave my enby the courage to come out and know they would be loved.
Last time I spoke to you all I gave you a disclaimer that I am not a scientist, but that I was going to be sciency for a little while.
Well, history often repeats itself, in more ways than one because I am going to say some sciency stuff and also gender outside of the binary is anything but a “new” concept.
But first, let’s have some definitions, shall we? Maybe you know all of these definitions, but if you do, then let’s do them for me, because sometimes this like trying to hold jello.
A social construct is something that we as a society create and accept. Social constructs are how we categorize people especially, related to gender, race, or class level, etc.
A person’s sex has to do with their biology; usually specifically to do with their external anatomy, although, as we will see it’s not quite that simple.
Intersex is a term used to describe someone who is born with some combination of both male and female biological traits. Intersex people can identify as female, male, or nonbinary.
Gender is a social construct that is created to be a shorthand for roles, behavior, and expectations placed on a person as a part of society.
The gender binary is the “two party system” approach to understanding gender identity. It is based on the idea that there are only two genders; male or female.
To be CIS gendered means you identify or understand yourself to be the sex you were assigned at birth.
These next few terms essentially mean the same or very similar things, but people may identify more with one term or another to describe themselves
Nonbinary is a term used for people who do not identify with the gender binary options of male or female.
Gender variant and gender nonconforming and gender queer also refer to people whose gender identity does not fit within the binary
To be transgender is to identify with a gender other than the gender that was assigned at birth. This can include people who transition their gender on the binary for example – female to male and those who identify as nonbinary, however, not all nonbinary people identify as transgender.
TGNC is an abbreviation used for transgender gender nonconforming.
Gender fluid is the understanding of gender as something that can change either over time or depending on the circumstances. It can apply to a person’s gender expression and/or their gender identity.
AFAB – is an abbreviation meaning “assigned female at birth.”
AMAB – is an abbreviation meaning “assigned male at birth”
Dead name – a name that a transgender person no longer identifies with and has therefore stopped using. Sometimes it is a birth name, other times not.
Sexual orientation is related to what gender group(s) an individual finds sexually attractive.
Enby is shorthand for nonbinary. (A caveat: The abbreviation for nonbinary would naturally be NB, but people of color have asked that we not use this abbreviation because in the black lives matter movement NB means Non-black and for someone to identify as nonbinary and also be of color and to be forced to circle “NB” on a form or be called “NB” is kin to erasing part of their identity). Enby can be used as both an adjective or a noun. For example: “they are enby” or as a parent of a nonbinary child I could say, “My enby is 13 years old.”
Note: Not all people who are nonbinary identify or use the term enby, but many do.
Okay I think that’s enough of that, don’t you?
I mentioned that history sometimes repeats itself earlier and that is what is happening as people begin rediscover gender outside of a fixed binary system.
There may be a tendency of us to ask the question, when did nonbinary become a thing?
Well actually, it’s much easier to answer the question of when the gender binary began.
From ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs showing evidence of a third gender to the Bissu in Indonesia who have always recognized five different genders, the binary is certainly a much newer idea.
Even our neighbors to the south have a third gender identity. Muxe is a gender identity outside of the binary in Mexico. Muxe are revered and celebrated in various communities throughout the country.
You may have noticed that our abreviations got longer in recent months. Maybe you’ve heard someone say LGBTQ2IA+. The 2 isn’t a joke, it was a term that was started in the 1990’s to help us communicate the similarities and differences related to gender in native cultures. The term is new, but the understanding of gender as something other than binary is not new. It often refers to someone with mixed gender roles found among Indigenous North American cultures, in which the person expresses themselves and performs functions attributed to men and women; however, it can also refer to gender identity, gender expression, and/or sexual orientation.
Moving over to Norway, Jens Andersson was a nonbinary person – long before there was a term. Jens Andersson, was AFAB, and married a woman who later told the authorities that she believed Jens to be a woman. After the marriage was annulled, Andersson was imprisoned and sent to trial. In the trial, Andersson was asked: “Are you a man or a woman?” The recorded answer was: “he thinks he may be both.”
There are of course examples of gender expressions outside of the binary in all sorts of ancient faith traditions and mythology.
In ancient Greece, stories of Dionysis, Hermaphroditus, and others lend themselves to helping us understand that this being nonbinary is not a “new” thing.
Even in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the creation story God refers to God’s self as “they.”
In Christianity throughout the late 1700’s our Quaker friends here in the US had a lovely nonbinary preacher called the Public Universal Friend who after having suffered a serious illness claimed to have died and come back to life as a person without gender. They traveled all over the northeastern US and their followers came to be known as the Society of Universal Friends which still exists today.
So if the better question was “where did the gender binary come from,” then lets ask that question shall we?
During the Enlightenment period, in Europe scientists began to describe human anatomy as a “two sex model”.
Unfortunately, as other peoples were colonized by Europe, they pushed this idea of the binary as a matter of identifying and controlling people. They demonized people who didn’t fit into one of the 2 identities and even criminalized those who didn’t fit. Anything outside of the binary was seen as a deviant and barbaric. It’s hard to hear, but the gender binary is deeply rooted in patriarchy and white supremacy.
The truth is that the human body is naturally sexually indeterminate. We are not a binary.
Renowned biology and sex and gender expert, Anne Fausto-Sterling says that by the time a baby is born, they have five layers of sex.
The first is chromosomal sex, second is fetal gonadal sex, third fetal hormonal sex, fourth internal reproductive sex, and fifth is external genitalia.
Admittedly, much of the layers build upon one another; fetal hormonal sex for example in fetal development affects the development of internal reproductive sex. However, we don’t know how often there is a discrepancy between any of the layers.
Fast forward from the enlightenment to the 1950’s John Money, who is not the hero in this story, a scientist and scholar normalized the belief that children are born maliabile enough to use surgery and hormones to ‘correct’ their bodies and finish their genitals if they had been born with something seemingly ambiguous. He founded the Gender Identity Clinic at John Hopkins university. He experimented on children and his tactics were terrible. Money believed that if a child who was born anatomically male was raised as a female, that person would grow up to be attracted to males and live as a female. Most of his “science” was exposed as fraud, specifically the John/Joan study, but the damage had already been done.
Money birthed the idea of gender identity, as well as the perceived idea that sexuality is a result of nurture rather than being “born this way”
What we know now is that even anatomically there are more sexes than male and female. In parts of the world where it is legal and destigmatization has begun, the numbers of children born intersex is surprising. About 2 in 100 children in the US are born intersex, for context, the percentage of natural redheads in our country is lower than that.
Ironically, Zev was born with red hair. When they were coming out, they “tried on” the idea of being pansexual, and they didn’t tell me directly. I heard them tell someone else and so, later when we were alone, I sat in the room with them and asked questions I already knew the answer to. I was a little pushy about wanting them to answer me because I had already heard it and also, hello? If anyone is safe….it was me, I thought. They did eventually tell me that night, but as I went over and over the conversation in my head I had a lot of regrets. I talked to a friend about it and I realized I should have let them come out on their own without me pushing them.
A few months later they text THEIR DAD asked to buy a lesbian flag. Ya’ll youth group kids came out to me and trusted me. Why didn’t my kid want to talk to me about this. So, I asked them casually, “that flag you sent to your dad is it the lesbian flag?” “yes” “oh okay. So is that something that feels like it’s more you than being pansexual?” “yes” “okay! Let’s go eat dinner”
A few more months would go by and they shared that they wanted to use she/they pronouns which implied that they were identifying outside of the gender binary. It didn’t take long after being called by those pronouns that they dropped “she” and switched entirely to “they/them”
Then one day walking through a parking lot, holding my hand, they said to me that they wanted to begin to go by the name “Zev.” I asked them if I could still call them by their birth name and they reluctantly agreed, but I know it wasn’t really what they wanted. Their birth name was important to their dad and me, but I had to learn that this wasn’t about us. It was about them.
I share these things with you because even though I thought of myself as a staunch ally. If I could go back and do it over, I would. I would never have pressured them to tell me before they were ready. I would have celebrated their coming out in their own time and I would’ve acknowledged the bravery it took for them to tell me that they had a new preferred name and I would have celebrated that, too.
As a cis gendered person I have the privilege of not understanding what it is like to not feel like my gender fits. I’ll never be able to understand that experience first hand, but I am so thankful that we as a society are returning to a broader understanding of who we are.
So my kid uses they/them pronouns and often there is a gristling about using what we identify as a plural pronoun to describe a singular individual.
I want to encourage you, first that you already do this when you don’t know the person about whom you are speaking. For example, “if someone hit my car in the parking lot and left, I might say. Someone hit my car in the parking lot and they just left. I know, they didn’t even stop.”
There are actually other pronouns that are less popular than they/them. I’ve printed them out on your insert as well. Some of them feel much different than our common language.
They will require work and practice. We have to practice to get them right. After Zev came out to me and gave me permission to talk about it, I started practicing when I talked about them at work and using the correct pronouns. I practiced to be able to get it right because it was/is important to me.
Nonbinary people are reclaiming something that was stolen by the patriarchy. They are putting themselves back in the narrative and unapologetically bucking a binary system that simply doesn’t fit the broad spectrum of who people really are. They are changing the world and we can help them.
In their book, In Transit- Being Nonbinary in a world of dichotomies by Diana Anderson, they suggest that those of us that are cis gendered question ourselves, first before we expect transgendered people to answer them. They ask that we do the work we ask others to do. They say, “take some time to write down what describes you both gendered and ungendered. Then think about what you think describes a man, a woman, a nonbinary person. Genuinely challenge yourself to think about where your identity fits in that realm. Ask yourself: why do I believe I am a man? What makes me say I am a woman? Interrogate beyond the biology. Would I still feel like a woman if I lost my uterus? Would I still identify as a man if I got testicular cancer? What parts of myself do I see as vital to my gender? Question who you are, what made you cisgender and attempt to put yourself, mentally, into a body that reads differently from your current one.”
They continue, “Before you start doing anything with trans people, you need to interrogate yourself about why you believe you are the way you are. It’s like asking a gay person why they’re gay; it’s just as reasonable to ask a straight person why they’re straight. Trans people can’t be the only ones taking on the burden of introspection and thinking carefully about their own gender. Once you’ve done that work on yourself you’ll probably understand a bit better what it’s like for transgender and non-binary people to be who they are. “
In recent years, this fellowship did the work of becoming a welcoming congregation. It’s one of the reasons we are here walking in and seeing Stephanie and seeing the pronouns on some name tags. It’s the reason we stayed.
One of the commitments set out in that agreement was this:
A Welcoming Congregation does not assume anyone’s affectional/sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Vocabulary of worship reflects this perception; worship celebrates diversity by inclusivity of language and content.
Inclusivity of language includes using things like friends, instead of “ladies and gentlemen” and it does include being willing to learn and work on retraining our brains to using the pronouns people ask us to use. It means we might be corrected if we misgender someone and we need to understand that the person who is correcting us is doing it because they care about being in relationship with us.
It is not enough to just roll our eyes and say, “This is how I learned it and it’s hard to unlearn.” I promise you that there are very few people in this room right now that love a turn a phrase more than I do. I love language. I love a double Ent Andra. I love to be able to articulate my thoughts and dance with my words. Trust me, if I can do this, you can do this.
Committing to this means avoiding certain microaggressions and reframing our language.
Someone can be nonbinary and still appear to be binary to us. We see the world through a binary lens because it’s part of our identity, but nonbinary people do not owe us androgyny. Just as cis gendered women and men have a right to dress how they would like and wear makeup or not, nonbinary people are as well.
We won’t do it perfectly. I know I won’t because I didn’t do so great on my first go around. We will make mistakes and fumble and when we do we should correct ourselves and move on.
Today, in the interest of living into that commitment, I want to invite you when this service is over to find the label sheets in the foyer. There are plain white ones that say, “he/him,” “she/her,” “they/them.” There are also blank one for you to fill in on your own. There are post it notes if your gender doesn’t fit any of those three I will be honored to print a different set that does fit for you, but I encourage you, in order to make it clear who we are and to live into the commitment we’ve already made by becoming a welcoming congregation, that we make pronouns a thing that we stop assuming.
This may seem like a minor thing, but it really does make a difference in putting ourselves out in the world as allies. If we can’t do this very simple thing to show that we are allies, what will we do in bigger situations where we are called to help someone or speak up against injustices. Just by putting pronouns on a name tag, we tell the people who are visiting us that we are safe for them to talk to.
I have a picture of Zev when we took them to their first pride festival in Greenville. They are smiling bigger than I had seen them smile in a long time. Over the course of that year in pictures you can see them come into themselves. Their smile is wider, it’s as if the weight of the world had been lifted off their shoulders.
As a mom, I want what’s best for my kid. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. But that wouldn’t be any different if my kids were cis gendered and straight so I guess this is just the way life is and so it is