(Here is a guest post by a parent and BYU graduate. They attend sacrament meeting weekly and live in a deep-red state.)
I understood my place in the world of gender when I was just a few years old [1]. I was a nonbinary Sunbeam, and Jesus wanted me. I was a gender non-conforming 8 year old kid when I was baptized, and no one batted an eyelash. I served a mission and married in the temple.
Because I’m a human being, when I was first told last year of the Church’s then-new degrading and un-Christlike policies towards transgender people my thoughts immediately turned towards the people I know who might be the most affected, and how it would harm them. “These changes will not bring a single soul to Christ,” I said, and I thought of how they would push people away instead. Soon afterwards I realized how unwelcome they made me feel as well.
I get the impression that in its willful ignorance and without consulting anyone it would affect in any meaningful way, the handbook committee thought they had hammered out a compromise that would be acceptable to all parties, but Jesus never met people halfway. He didn’t throw half the stones at the woman taken in adultery. He didn’t tell the woman at the well she could worship half as well as a Jew halfway through his ministry. He didn’t tell lepers to stay half the customary distance away.
Jesus taught that “by their fruits ye shall know them.” A 2017 survey of LGBTQ and/or asexual people who were current or former members of the Church showed that nearly three quarters of them had symptoms consistent with PTSD connected directly to their experiences of Church teachings and practices. I have PTSD [2] and I can assure you it is a very bitter fruit. Some of the greatest revelations in Church history came because a rank-and-file member pointed out a problem, but I feel like the Church has hardened its heart and foreclosed any reasonable avenue for providing meaningful feedback about this.
It’s been a year now, and I still feel betrayed by my church. I have done everything they ever asked of me to the best of my ability, and the moment it became politically inconvenient to care about “the least of these” they paid me back by instituting a policy that makes me feel like I have to choose between potentially being dishonest about who I am or potentially being treated worse than how they treated the well-connected man who molested a family member. I have never harmed anyone by doing things that society has arbitrarily decided should only be done by people who look a little less like me. I have never done anything to deserve being treated like that.
I mostly blend in now, but I think about how I would be treated now if I were 8 years old today[3], and my heart shatters. I think about how there no doubt are 8 year olds going through exactly that right now, and tears come to my eyes. They have done nothing to deserve being treated like that. Didn’t Jesus say that little children should be allowed to come to Him?
The Church taught me that to receive revelation you must first study the issue out in your mind, learning out of the best books. The best books are clear about what works for and what harms gender minorities, and recommended best practices are far from experimental. (Other voices with dubious expertise and limited experience, who often bear an ideological grudge, might try to tell you otherwise, but do not be deceived[4].) We are also actual, real people with real feelings and an unsurpassable understanding of our own experience and can be asked things directly.
It took me years to realize that most people felt gender — that they instinctively felt they were a part of some group of people they instinctively needed to cliquishly emulate, while avoiding the things the other group did, and feeling actual pain if people suggested they were a member of or acted like that other group[5]. Those kinds of feelings seem like quite a burden to me. If I can learn about and understand what gender is like for cis people, they can take the time to understand what it’s like for gender minorities. If you’re making decisions affecting people you owe them that much dignity.
Jesus is not recorded ever policing anyone’s sexuality or gender, so it seems strange to me that so many people who claim to follow Him spend so much time and energy doing just that. If it was important to Him, He would have mentioned it.
God gave me a body that doesn’t feel gender, gave me understanding and enthusiastically supportive parents, and sent me a nonbinary friend [6]. I don’t understand how anyone could look at all that evidence and not conclude He intended me to be nonbinary. I have a powerful spiritual witness that I am what I’m supposed to be.
The Church taught me to be valiant about the things I believe and to stand up for what is right even if I’m standing by myself. I decided on this fight against the world when I was barely out of diapers. Honestly I didn’t expect to still be fighting it more than forty years later. I have been waiting patiently my entire life for the equality promised by the best parts of LDS doctrine. I don’t know how much longer I can wait. I’m tired of the Church trying to shove me into a box that doesn’t quite fit when no one else does.
[1] Obviously I didn’t know the words to describe it at that age because they hadn’t been coined yet, but I did know I didn’t want to be told what I could or could not do based on my anatomy, and the idea that that would be expected out of me was painful.
[2] Incidentally, that PTSD isn’t from Church teachings. I attribute escaping religious PTSD (unlike many of my nonbinary siblings in the Church) to the fact that I was taught by my mother when I was very young that the gender essentialism I’d hear from members of the Church was not inspired and that the Church would come around on that eventually. I did not doubt my mother knew it, and it gave me what I needed to metabolize that poison whenever I heard it.
[3] Technically, what I did as a kid in the 80’s was probably not quite enough to make me unfit for baptism under today’s handbook, assuming a reasonably lenient bishop, but I know myself well enough to know that if I was raised in today’s society with my parents following the WPATH 8 guidelines then I would have probably been asking people to use pronouns I invented myself for me and telling them, “I’m not a boy or a girl. I’m my own thing.” by the time I was 8.
[4] Instead of true science they teach the philosophies of men mingled with cherry-picked studies.
[5] I can only imagine what that’s like, because no matter what I do or what people call me I can’t feel anything like that. It’s so strange to me that other people do.
[6] At BYU, of all places! Of course we really didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it then either, but after one very short, very awkward conversation about gender somehow I understood some of the ways we were similar and some of the ways we were different. It was so refreshing to realize there was someone else like me!
Wheat & Tares 
Thank you for this excellent post! And for your courage. I appreciated all the rhetorical gestures to our faith tradition in the OP. Truly our queer siblings are us. When we drive them away, we hurt them—and we hurt the whole body of Christ.
I’m teaching a group of Sunbeams in a couple of hours. And while Jesus never said anything about gender identity, I’m remembering what He said about offending our children and millstones.
As a people, we’ve a lot to answer for.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s important for us to hear first hand accounts of how people are impacted by church policies. I’m very sorry for your experience and it aligns with how I would expect such a policy to make someone feel.
I love your FN 4!
Exhibit A.
I do not consider myself nonbinary, but I do remember being rather strongly pounded into the feminine gender. I remember it not fitting at all, but not having anyway to argue that it was not fair that my brothers got electric train sets and I got another stupid doll. My demand to have fun toys was met with confusion by my mother and ridicule from my father. So, I played with my brothers with their train sets and outside games, or we all played school and the dolls were students, or out in the sandbox with toy cars and with three brothers, there were plenty of cars. Gradually even my brothers rejected me playing “boys” games and the first goal of the games was to make the girl and “little kids” go home crying by hitting us with balls or baseball bats. After multiple bruises, sprained ankle, a broken nose, and dislocated thumb I stopped trying and started hating boys and sports of any kind. So, I retired from outside play into reading and more acceptable “girl activities”. But the intellectual beatings for being interested in science, math, and other gender nonacceptable subjects continued until my senior year of high school when I really decided I hated men as well as boys, because even being the top math student in the school, I was ridiculed and put down even by my teachers. I was ignored when it came to the special tests and competitions and didn’t even know about them because the teachers who were supposed to recommend students were too busy thinking I didn’t belong. I was told multiple times, cracks like, “you’re pretty smart for a girl,” and “too bad you won’t use your math talent for anything but doubling recipes.” By the teachers! I could take the put downs by the brat boys, because I already hated the lot of them, but when it was the teachers, I hurt because I was the top math student and instead of praise, I got nasty remarks about taking scholarships opportunities from more deserving boys. So, they didn’t even offer the opportunity for me to even apply for those scholarships. So, when school guidance counselors tried to convince me that a career in math or science was impossible…..yeah “for a girl.”
So, about then I decided that I just didn’t want to fight to be just a bit different all my life. Yeah, I might be really good at math, but I am not good at liking the sexist jerks that are also good at math. It was only 1970 and gender lines were very firmly drawn. It didn’t matter that my mother was so strictly gender traditional. She had budged just a bit from the norm. After all my brothers at age 1 each got 1 baby doll that never left the house and was never seen by any of their friends. But she figured they were going to be fathers some day and the idea of pretending about babies should not be as taboo as it was. So, she bucked the system enough to give them each 1 doll. Still not willing to give me a train set or let me have the cap guns all the boys played with. Cap guns we’re pretty cool, with this paper tape with gun powder in it that when hit by the toy gun’s hammer, it went bang.
There were no gender neutral toys or even the concept that there could ever by a reason for not beating the square children into the round hole. So, yeah, this square child was pounded until I fit the round hole. No, I have not recover from all the pounding it took to cut off parts of me to fit into the acceptable round hole.
So, anyone with nostalgia for the 1950s, really the 1950s sucked to be a girl, really sucked to be a girl who wasn’t that into girl stuff, and continued to suck through the 60s and 70s. It wasn’t until the late 60s and 70s that the feminist movement started saying that all this forcing children into tight little gender slots was not good for them and we started ideas like STEM to allow girls to be good at science or math instead of punishing them for being good at “wrong” stuff.
So, yeah, I never felt like even Jesus wanted me because I just wasn’t a proper girl. Jesus couldn’t possibly approve of a girl playing in the dirt, ripping her dresses playing rough and tumble games, keeping up with the boys. My mother never punished my brothers for purposely hurting me so I wouldn’t try to play boy games. She didn’t think I should be outside playing in the dirt, catching garter snakes and climbing trees, so of course she didn’t punish my brothers for pushing me out of the tree. I was the one in the wrong for being up the tree, so he wasn’t wrong for pushing me out. I was the bad one for acting like a boy.
So, I never even was allowed to think I might like being male better. But what if I was born now and the beating me into the feminine role was not quite so violent, complete, all encompassing?
Thanks for this thoughtful post, op. You’re right — the way the Church treats gender diverse individuals is not Christlike. Christ felt so deeply for people who were puzzled about how they fit in, people who were pushed to the margins, people who caught the rough edge of society’s demand for conformity. Empathy harms no one and helps so many. This post felt pure and clean — just a quiet comment that all we really need to do is feel empathy and learn to accept people.
When I was younger, I remember hearing so many talks and lessons in which the Church leaders repeated over and over that the Book of Mormon was written for our day. Was it Mormon or Moroni who said that he’d seen our day in a vision and knew this book was especially for us? People will get closer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon and so on and so forth. And yet the Book of Mormon says not one word about gender. There’s an absence of words – women barely exist, and nonbinary and transgender people don’t exist at all. The Book of Mormon also doesn’t prohibit abortion or gay relationships. They’re just non-issues. I wish the Church would let them be non-issues in religious doctrine. Make it like birth control and let people make their own decisions.
The Book of Mormon barely mentions families either. The Church’s focus on gender roles and nuclear families is not drawn from our scriptures.
Imagine the freedom of a Church that teaches Christlike behavior and allows people to figure out who they are without twisting a couple verses into a cage!
Thanks for sharing your personal experiences. You make a number of excellent points and raise questions that Church leaders simply don’t have good answers/excuses for. I’m very sorry for the pain and struggles that the Church has needlessly caused you.
I am clearly a heterosexual male. With a job in agriculture and a wife and five kids. I served a mission. I have done all I was supposed to do as a heteronormative priesthood holding man. However when my children came out first the oldest as gay and then another as nonbinary I was surprised that among the many complex feelings I had, that I was jealous of them.
I have spent my whole life trying to be the person I was expected to be and I was envious of their ability and courage to live their lives without having to compromise or fit those expectations. I resented that I had jumped from school to mission to marriage to full time grad student and then to work while trying to be the best possible father, husband and man while at the same time feeling immensely lonely at times because I never really fit the masculine expectations of Mormon and let’s face it most of my other culture and life.
I am not trans or nonbinary but I have always been more comfortable with women than men and not interested in the narrow way that I needed to be or like for male friendships and I tried so damn hard to do. I used to read the newspaper so that I could discuss sports with my male colleagues. I felt guilty for having very close female friends but few men that I related to. As a father I have five daughters and am continually asked or teased about being outnumbered, when in reality nothing makes me feel at home like a house full of women.
I don’t miss elders quorum or segregated male Mormon activities and culture and have enjoyed being free of some of those constraints after leaving the church.
Thank you all for your kind, thoughtful, supportive comments.
Margie,
The times I’ve taught children have been hands down my favorite callings. That’s why the threatened punishment if I’m too forthcoming about who I am of never being allowed to teach children again without First Presidency approval is so devastating to me.
(I know the Church says I’m safe as long as I don’t socially transition, but I wish they realized that socially transitioning and just saying who I am are not meaningfully distinct for someone like me. I’ve always lived my life authentically, and as the saying goes, I don’t owe anyone androgyny. I also don’t trust them to not change the rules on me again.)
Chadwick,
It could also be said that they have the form of science but deny the results thereof.
attendingonlyone,
Growing up I was always certain I’d never leave the Church. It never occurred to me that I might need to decide what to do if the Church left me.
anna,
My heart aches when I hear stories like yours. As the saying goes, if the binary was real they wouldn’t have to enforce it. I once saw an informal survey with a huge number of activities that at least some people consider gendered. The results showed that we’re all gender non-conforming to some extent.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn I wandered both sections of the toy department as a kid. The only toys I asked for were ones considered appropriate for my assigned gender, but that’s mostly just because of my personality and what was offered at the time. I found most of the toys aimed towards my assigned gender unappealing, and found some of the toys on the other side interesting, just not as much as my top choices.
I’m so grateful that my parents were enlightened enough to let me be who I am and to support me. I have no gender-related trauma and as an adult I recognize that is absolutely a miracle.
Janey,
I wish the Church would focus on the questions Christ has said will be in the Celestial Kingdom recommend interview: What have you done to provide for people who needed food and water? What have you done for immigrants? What have you done to provide clothing for those who need it? How have you cared for the sick? What have you done for criminals?
I have to admit that would be a pretty uncomfortable conversation for me. I imagine it would be for most members of the Church. That tells me we probably can’t afford a lot of the distractions that the Church spends so much time and money on.
mountainclimber479,
I realize I’ve been very blessed. So many are impacted by these policies so much more than me. It would be so easy for me to be silent, but my heart cries, “If not me, then who?” I don’t like the answer, and so that’s why I’m speaking.
A few days ago I was reminded of the classic “Do I have a nonbinary spirit or a nonbinary body” question, which I admit I’ve never been very interested in speculating about. The thought came to me that my body is obviously nonbinary, and so it made sense that my spirit is nonbinary to match. I then wondered why I have the anatomy that I do and the thought came to me that my working reproductive organs were gifted to me by my Heavenly Parents because They knew how much I’d want to have children in this life. That really resonated with me. I couldn’t imagine a loving parent doing anything differently.
Later I realized that gender and reproductive role don’t 100% match up in this life, so there’s no reason to assume they do in the eternities, either. I think a lot of our theological problems around gender are just failures of imagination.
Brian,
I can relate to a lot of the things you said. For example, I hated gender segregation when I was a kid. The only reason I tolerated it was because I’d heard that it was psychologically beneficial for some people. Now my attitude towards it could be better described as “weary disaproval.”
It’s sad to me that so many men in our culture undervalue the company of women and girls. It’s also strange to me that men are supposed to be attracted to them and yet not like the things they like, the way they are, the things they do or to be around them. How could that possibly work?
One thing my childhood taught me was that you don’t need anyone’s permission to violate gender norms. One time I heard my sister complain, “I hate that men make me wear high heels to church.” I replied, “Name one man who makes you wear high heels to church.” She didn’t respond to that, but the next week she wore combat boots to church. No one said a thing.
There’s this false narrative that people just know their gender. I’m one of the few lucky ones that had some inkling I was different from a ridiculously early age, and yet still I had to word the first few sentences of that essay very carefully in order to be accurate without going into an enormous amount of detail about the very complicated journey my understanding took on its way to where it is today. I had big misconceptions about how other people experienced gender and so I genuinely thought I was more like then than I really was. That’s not an uncommon experience.
You can hardly fault me for not realizing I was something no one had heard of yet when I was a kid, but would it surprise you to hear when I first heard the term “nonbinary” there was absolutely no recognition? My reaction to reading that article was “I feel like I understand gender now even less than I felt like I understood it before.” It wasn’t until several years later that everything clicked and I finally realized how different I was from most people.
The reality is that most people realize who they are based on what they like and what makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes eventually they stumble across a label that fits. Labels can be very helpful but they don’t make your who you are. Only you can recognize who you are.
I would love to hear the comments from the 7-10 people who voted down on this post. Their unkind reasoning must be fascinating.