Bible and the Transgender Experience. Linda Herzer
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the woman she knew herself to be. During the last four years I have stood in line with her at the DMV to get a new license, nursed her through surgery, cheered when the judge pronounced her legal name change, cried with her when she struggled with family issues, and celebrated when she was honored as Atlanta’s Best Trans Activist for 2015. Most importantly, I have supported Gabrielle in her journey of coming to understand that God loves her just as she is and has a wonderful purpose for her life.
CROSS-DRESSERS
I have also had the honor of attending a monthly meeting for another group of people under the transgender umbrella, a support group meeting of a chapter of Tri-Ess. Tri-Ess is an international educational, social, and support group for cross-dressers and their significant others.3 While there are individuals who cross-dress as a fetish, that is not what members of Tri-Ess do. From these individuals and their significant others I have learned that, unlike trans men and trans women, cross-dressers do identify primarily with the gender they were assigned at birth, but they also need to express, experience, and spend some hours living as their “opposite” gender. What this means for these individuals is that they are comfortable living in the gender they were assigned at birth and have no desire to alter their bodies with hormones or surgeries. But now and then—and the amount of time varies from individual to individual—each of them has, not just a desire, but a real need to dress and act and be treated as a member of the opposite sex. Typically they do not cross-dress in their workplace, but many feel a need to share their identity as a cross-dresser with their family members. This often creates relational challenges, but those challenges are usually worked through and family relationships typically remain intact because cross-dressing is an occasional, not a full-time, gender expression.
Because cross-dressers rarely feel a need to share their gender expression with people other than family members, most people never know that they know cross-dressers…unless the cross-dresser happens to be someone’s spouse or parent. Consequently, as of this writing, our culture as a whole is more aware of transgender children, teens, and adults than we are of cross-dressers.
One common misconception is that drag queens and drag kings are cross-dressers. This is usually not the case. While it is true that drag queens and kings are persons who cross-dress, they typically do it for the purpose of entertainment. Cross-dressers, on the other hand, are persons who present in the clothing of the opposite sex in order to experience their feminine or masculine essence. If cross-dressers are at a club, they are usually trying to pass, to blend in; they are typically not the ones up on stage!
INTERSEX PERSONS
Today in the United States there are a variety of other people who are also included under the transgender/gender variant umbrella. Intersex persons, sometimes referred to as persons with differences of sex development (DSD), are individuals born with internal and/or external sex organs and/or chromosome patterns that are different from typical males and females. Like the word “transgender,” “intersex” is also an umbrella term including several dozen different types of physical conditions that are currently classified as intersex.4 While intersex is sometimes included under the transgender umbrella, it should be noted that most intersex persons feel their gender identity does match the gender they were assigned at birth, thus, most intersex people do not identify as transgender when the term is used in its particular sense.5 Nonetheless, because their physical beings do not match culture’s expectations of typical males and females, intersex persons do experience a marginalization similar to that experienced by gender variant people. As Georgiann Davis, intersex person, professor, sociologist, and author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis, wrote in a blog:
I do feel that society’s discriminatory view of intersex is something all intersex people struggle with on a day-to-day basis. Because of narrow understandings of sex, gender, and even sexuality, intersex kids do face marginalization and ostracization from their peers, teachers, and in some cases, even their families.6
Thus, while most intersex persons do not identify as transgender, per se, their societal experience has many similarities to that of gender variant individuals. (See chapters 6 and 7 for further discussion of the intersex experience.)
OTHER GENDER VARIANT PERSONS
Genderqueer persons identify as neither entirely male nor entirely female, whereas bigender persons identify strongly with both genders and see themselves as both male and female. Calling on their own traditions, some Native Americans use the term “two-spirit” for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons in their cultures.7 Likewise, there are many other terms and people under the transgender umbrella, as evidenced by the fact that in 2014 Facebook introduced fifty different terms for individuals to use to categorize their gender identity and expressions on their personal pages!.8
GENDER VARIANCE IN THE BIBLICAL CONTEXT: EUNUCHS
Needless to say, our modern cultural context is very different from the biblical context. If you are familiar with scripture, you know that nowhere in the Bible do we find the words “transgender,” “cross-dresser,” “intersex,” “genderqueer,” “bigender,” or “two-spirit.” Historically speaking, these are modern terms, which do not show up in our two-thousand-plus-year-old Bible. However, that does not mean there are not gender variant folks in the Bible!
In biblical times, the main group of gender variant people were eunuchs. These were men who had either been born eunuchs (Matt. 19:11–12) or who had been castrated for various reasons, often as the result of military conquest. Eunuchs were sometimes advisors and high-ranking officials in royal courts. Often they served as protectors and overseers of royal women since they were now considered “safe” to be around women because they had been surgically altered. Lacking the ability to procreate relegated eunuchs to the category of gender variant and caused them to be looked down upon in ancient Jewish culture.9
To understand why eunuchs were not highly esteemed back then, we need to know that in the early days of Israel’s history the Jews were just a small tribe. Since they were constantly in danger of being overrun by neighboring peoples, producing children to maintain and build up the tribe was a highly valued cultural trait. Because eunuchs could not fulfill this critical gender expectation, they were definitely viewed as different, as gender variant.
So while the Bible does not specifically say anything about the categories of gender variant people that we know about in today’s culture, we can look at what it says about the gender variant people of its day, the eunuchs, and see what we can learn that might be relevant in today’s context.
part two
EXPLICIT VERSES AND ARGUMENTS
3
VERSES ABOUT EUNUCHS
Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:1-7, Acts 8:26-39
In chapter 2 we noted that eunuchs were the main group of gender variant people in biblical times, at least according to the biblical record. Since procreating was so necessary for Israel’s survival and thus highly valued in Jewish culture, to be castrated or to be a eunuch from birth and unable to produce heirs made one highly gender variant. In considering what the Scriptures have to say about eunuchs we may learn some principles relevant to gender variant people today.
DEUTERONOMY 23:1
In Deuteronomy 23:1 we find a verse prohibiting eunuchs from the assembly. Let’s consider this passage in its context.
1No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.
2No one born of a forbidden marriage [footnote: or one of illegitimate birth] nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.
3No