Marion and Sheila (not their real names!) have known each other for over 30 years. They met at University as committed Christians, have 3 grown-up children who they love and visit with often, are both in full-time employment, dress quietly and smartly, enjoy music, foreign holidays and gardening, and mean to stay together for life. This is quite a considerable achievement, when you realise what they have gone through together as a family.

Now, because of legislation regarding birth certificates, Marion and Sheila may be forced to un-do their long marriage, to unwillingly divorce. Just one of the anomalies and difficulties of being a couple who started off as male and female, husband and wife, and are now two women continuing to lead the same shared life, under the same roof.

If Sheila was still Steve, then nobody would investigate whether this marriage was, after 30 years, a sexually active one. Many middle-aged marriages are assumed not to put sex at the centre, but nobody much talks about it, unless this causes unhappiness to one or both partners. Even if intercourse is one of the church’s main purposes for marriage, it is not a requirement which is checked up on - and this is a significant point when we consider the question What is Marriage? The argument for intercourse is only presented when the marriages are same-sex, or as in this case, have become same-sex. Isn’t this insistence on the style and use of genital sex as a definition of Christian marriage a tad inconsistent, if not unfitting?

How do others react to Transsexuals?

When I read the chapter relating to Transsexuals in The Bishops’ Report on Human Sexuality recently (and I am not a transsexual but I have friends who are) I had a good think about the attitudes of the Church towards these people. I felt saddened that the greatest argument against ‘transitioning’ put forward by the Church of England is basically a physical sexual one. I wanted very much to find that the Church put spiritual arguments, and God’s love, justice and mercy before this - but no. We even heard a Bishop describing how well God has designed the body parts for intercourse, as an argument against transsexuals making the change - erroneously described as a ‘sex change’ by journalists many years ago. People do not transition chiefly to ‘have sex’ in the other kind of body. Yet that phrase, ‘sex change’ - with its hint of snide implication - has stuck. I keep thinking, Is sex central to our faith? Should it be?

Here we are not engaging at all with the subject of sexual orientation - homosexuality and the Church’s teaching. We are dealing with whether a person who is totally convinced of being essentially of the gender opposite to their body’s appearance should take steps to put the body and the spirit (or self-awareness) in line. Respect, love, and stability of relationship are the ideal situation for ‘sex’ to take place - but the transition argument is not ranged about these. It has been targeted by our Church at sexual organs and thus pretty much entered a form of Creationist/non-Creationist debate.

Popular culture has many ideas, based largely around fear of difference, and lack of knowledge. Transsexuals are often mixed up with Transvestites (who cross-dress for titillation) or with drag queens who dress up to shock, or to entertain. Misguidedly, employers will hand an employee the sack - maybe with lame excuses - when they are told transition is on its way. And co-workers refuse the transsexual use of either men’s or women’s toilets, fearing - for some strange reason - sexual harassment. (Would a man who is living as a woman really be a risk to rape a colleague in the women’s loo?) Partners will throw the person out of the home - with a sense of horror, disgust, betrayal - and ban legal rights to visit children. Churches have forbidden communion. Feelings run high.

What does it mean to be Transsexual?

Have you heard of "walking a mile in another person’s shoes?" We need to try to feel what Transsexualism is like from the inside. And what it is.

How does it feel? Some true transsexuals will admit that to begin with (in late childhood or teenage years) they found the cross-dressing exciting. But those who make the whole transition have a much deeper, and more humdrum, motives. Consider puberty onwards: Young females dread breast development and periods. They begin to bind their breasts uncomfortably tightly, so that the female shape doesn’t show. Young males are disgusted by facial hair, ejaculation, a deepening voice. Both sexes spend an isolated adolescence, "tomboys" and "wimps" must leave identifying with opposite-gender groups. They become rejected by both sides, as everyone else develops interests in gender-specific pastimes, dating, fashion.

It’s important to emphasise the horror and disgust at one’s own body which is involved. Being transsexual isn’t about wanting to flaunt oneself in drag or experience sex in the opposite gender. They feel increasingly wrong in their body , absolutely everything it stands for and every role expected of it. This can be so bad they will dread undressing for bathing or showering , and do it in the dark. Being stuck in the situation, apparently without solution or cure, causes much heartache, possible alcohol or drug abuse to dullen despair, many suicides. It is probably worst for young people from deeply religious homes, or service families, where gender-specific behaviour is of most importance.

So what is transsexualism - or Gender Dysphoria? We don’t know for certain. Research is emerging along the lines of the brain being ‘female’ or ‘male’ and the body being the opposite. Because male and female brains do it seems differ in physically measurable ways.

There is a deal of controversy here, the more fundamentalist Christians on the one hand demanding scientific evidence of real differences before they believe it is more than mistaken belief. And at the same time determined that ‘Male and female he created them’ means that God has pre-ordained our gender and we must not disobey him and take steps to change the body he has made for us.

Another view might be to see Transsexualism as a consequence of a fallen world like any other. I would like to suggest that it is really only because of the genital links that people misunderstand it more than they do, for example, Down’s or Cystic fibrosis, - other, fairly common, disabilities which a person has from birth. Some people may consider these were ‘how God planned’ the child, others as something which has gone wrong.

As many as one in 2,000 babies are born with an "intersex" condition: a reasonable life is believed to be that you must from the earliest age be a boy or a girl. So, indeterminate "sex" is far less acceptable than other disabilities. Parents and doctors quickly choose the gender according to ease of surgery combined with desire of the family.

Think of transsexualism as the extreme end of these kinds of assumption: blonds are air heads, certain racial groups are good at certain sports or occupations. We know these are basically myths. Some children are born with disabilities: we are happy to do anything it takes to help them to a reasonable life. We have learned, as entrusted with dominion over the world as it now is, to put some disabilities somewhere near approximately right: with transsexualism, there seems not more reason to hold back than, say, with spina bifida.

I hope this communicates where we really are: not in the area of sinfulness but of the consequences of a fallen world, of expectations and things which can go wrong. Whether in body - where it shows - or brain - where it does not - or not in the same way.

Think again of the transsexual baby: nobody knows about the disability until it is "too late" and the identity has become "fixed by use". But the child, or young person, knows differently. Change, if and when it comes, is a huge step for transsexual, family, and all contacts including the State.

We have another question here: How much is our bodily appearance, or our gender, who we really are? How much does self-awareness count - in the face of the awareness of other people? If a person is seriously uncomfortable with being a man or a woman, is it flying in the face of divine will to allow change? These can be deeply disturbing questions to answer. The debate challenges assumptions and as there is really no "text" in Scripture, it is my opinion that we have to turn to broader revelations of the character of God.

We might ask ourselves simply , What would Jesus do? Are we certain he’d say ‘But those genitals are what God gave you’ ? We can be certain that Christ would have an answer to surprise us: look at some of the gospel narratives - the Samaritan Woman at the Well, Martha and Mary, the raising of Lazarus, the healing of the Centurion's and the Syro-Phoenician women’s Daughters, the Woman caught in Adultery, or the Resurrection itself. Each incident has an outcome which I strongly suspect was not expected (even if some of them were desired) by the people inside the story - and we only expect it today because we are over-familiar.

In the Old Testament, God requires us to ‘Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with (our) God’ (Micah 6: 8). Every week at the Communion service we hear either Christ’s words: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matthew 23: 37, 39) or the full "Ten Commandments" that we have taken over from the Old Testament.

Christ incarnate being our pattern, Love means no less than love laid down for others, love lived out no matter what. We have numerous examples in the New Testament of his acceptance of all kinds of people who were leading all kinds of lives. Love, justice and mercy are the "tools" we have been handed to live out being the body of Christ. In my understanding, this includes having the respect for minorities to dialogue, to seek understanding, and to look at the literature in the widest sense, as well as to do this with a mind open to the communities themselves.

The discomfort of these people is real, (see above, suicide). And after transition, most transsexuals wish to disappear quietly into the community and live without telling about the past. That’s why the birth certificate change was made. And where the marriage/divorce problem begins.

Steve fell in love with Marion with whom he shared many interests, and hoped that in marriage he would set aside his secret alter ego, Sheila. But Sheila stayed, and occasionally she came out. Marion learned to accept that Steve would sometimes wear women’s nightwear. That was as far as it went - to keep the secret from the growing family. Nothing else was "wrong" with the marriage. (Not all wives are as tolerant as this of course.)

When the family were almost grown, and Marion and Steve middle-aged, Steve thought long and hard: he had not successfully banned Sheila, indeed increasingly wanted her to be an open and honest woman. It’s taken a lot of heartache on both sides, counselling, surgery, a change of job. Sometimes a transsexual has to take whatever job will accept them, and ends up as, for example, a care worker instead of a civil engineer. Sheila has been fortunate enough to find work in the same field for which she is qualified. But both she and Marion will admit the road "to hell and back" has been travelled in other ways.

Now that it has been, and the two remain together, this speaks to me of what marriage is about. Loving support, sharing of the good and the bad times, raising children, living under the same roof - and, very importantly, retaining the rights to which a legal relationship entitles you - pensions, inheritance, being the next-of-kin. These increase in importance as you grow older.

Transsexual people need friendship, support, love, respect. I hope that by sharing my own journey to understanding their world, I have helped some of you towards an open attitude to why this complicated subject will not go away. And why it is my opinion that people born with this problem should not be made to feel that in transitioning they are committing a sin against their Creator, but rather simply setting right something which for some reason went wrong with their development. Just as it might for another person who is born with a less controversial "disability".

And that those who remain in loving marriages should not be made to divorce, however much this will tease legal brains as legislation is worked out.

Clare Weiner

Oxford, 2/2005

Suggested Further Reading:

True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism - ML Brown & CA Roundsley, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1996

The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies - Anthony Giddens, Polity Press 1995

Information can also be obtained from the GIRES group for gender-related subjects, and Depend support group for families. Both have websites.