Trans Freedom Is Religious Freedom
Trans Freedom Is Religious Freedom
We Kick the Ass of Religious Posers
We Kick the Ass of Religious Posers
Trans persons look down on religious people from a spiritual height.
Refusing to house/hire/admit-the-existence of trans folk is not “religious freedom.” TRANS PERSONS are the ones who exercise religious freedom.
Trans Martyrs
Trans women of color die for the sins of those who brutalize and kill them at an epidemic rate.
Christians argue that martyrdom is key to believing that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. Amid being crucified upside down (Peter), stoned to death (Stephen), beheaded (Paul), roasted on a grill (Lawrence), baked in an oven (Cecilia), mauled by wild animals (Perpetua and Felicity), Christian martyrs didn’t say, “Hold on! Now that you mention torturous death, let’s rephrase the idea that Jesus is Lord and rose from the dead. Don’t y’all get metaphor?”
Trans persons die at your hands and claim, to the death, our truth.
TRANS PERSONS are the ones who exercise religious freedom.
Trans Spiritual Journeys
Trans persons grow up in your gender-binary-obsessive culture that forces us to deny our identity. No one is more ruthlessly and intensely questioned than trans folk are.
“Are you sure you’re trans?”
“You’re the most masculine/feminine person I know!”
“ ‘Male and female HE created them!’ says my Bible! How dare you!!”
We awaken, after years or decades, to who we truly are and realize your Wizard-of-Oz shtick. Like Toto pulling away your medicine-show curtain, we melt a villain, stand up to lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), and flip the bird to you flying monkeys!
Trans folk are the leper, the beaten traveler on the Road to Jericho, the Woman at the Well, Zacchaeus, and the Christ on the Via Dolorosa, testifying against your ritual, liturgy, dogma, comfort, and hegemony. If this smacks of Christians’ living in catacombs, then you remember enough of your own history to know yourselves hypocrites.
Trans Exemplars
Being trans is a planet-sized fishbowl. Every encounter tests who we are. Every exchange that you so-called “religious” take as perfunctory challenges our identity. At every turn, you’re affirmed and affirm yourselves, so much so that, when your privilege is called out, you scream, “Persecution!” The blood of Stephen, Paul, Peter, Lawrence, Cecilia, Perpetua, and Felicity condemns you.
Trans folk are the leper, the beaten traveler on the Road to Jericho, the Woman at the Well, Zacchaeus, and the Christ on the Via Dolorosa, testifying against your ritual, liturgy, dogma, comfort, and hegemony. If this smacks of Christians’ living in catacombs, then you remember enough of your own history to know yourselves hypocrites.
Your only response is ridicule.
Trans Holy
We’re the ridiculous, which reminds you that from dust you came, and from dust you will return. Trans people own our dust. It’s all you’ve left us. And from the dust, we rise as humankind.
You’ve forgotten to be kind.
We re-MEMBER. We put it back together. Flesh of flesh, bone of bone.
Deny us, and you deny yourself.
Therein we are human. And you render yourselves … anything else.
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