To Be A Blessing: Welcoming Trans, Welcoming By Callan Williams, Copyright 2013
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It’s more than once a pastor has asked me to attend their church as token, maybe to encourage those not yet strong enough to stand up and express their own gender difference, but sometimes just to show the flag. When you walk into a new place as a transwoman, you can’t assume anything about how welcoming people will be.
We were about to pass the peace at an LGBT inclusive service when the pastor next to me suddenly realized there was someone across the room he needed to see. In the middle of the service he got up and walked away from me, just before he would have to shake my hand and offer me the peace of his lord. I was in a workshop at another event and a pastor said that she needed some LGBT people in her church, but, she made clear as she pointed at me across the table, not as queer as I am. I was just too much for her church, she decided. At a PFLAG meeting the chair talked about her son being gay, but it could have been worse: He could have been transgender. Some women in the room who knew my history just looked at me, knowing that truth would out. After a service I said to a pastor I was glad I wasn’t the only transperson in the room. He looked at me oddly, and I knew that he hadn’t noticed the transman in the back of the congregation.
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Even people who have the intention to be welcoming may have no idea about the challenges of a transgender life, no idea how to connect with and respect transpeople. The transgender experience is different in a number of ways. Transgender isn’t about who you love, it’s a personal journey to expressing who you are inside. You both have to stand out, being a unique individual and assimilate, fitting in as a member of a group. Many transpeople want to blend in, not be identified as different. You can’t assume we want to be out and visible, nor can you assume we want our unique history ignored. I told a pastor that what makes me happy was what makes everybody happy. He questioned that, so I just said “I want to be seen and valued for the unique gifts I bring to the world.” He thought a moment and said “Yes. That’s what everybody wants.” Virtually every transperson has had the experience of not having the childhood they would have chosen for themselves. We missed support growing up, missed socialization that valued who we knew ourselves to be. Instead, we felt pounded into performing a role that didn’t fit, that just hurt.
Struggle
To welcome transgender people, you need not to just welcome their current presentation, but also have to welcome the struggle to get to this point, welcome the struggle they face tomorrow and in the future. We may seem grown up and together, but the knocks of our experience always lie under the surface. We work very hard to fit in with normal expectations, but it is impossible to live a transgender life and not come out very tender underneath. There are very few congregations where transpeople can just slip in and sit with the other transpeople in the room. We are alone, even in a room filled with many caring people. Just because we can stand up and be boldly who we know our creator made us, expressing across gender boundaries to reach for some kind of continuous common humanity, doesn’t mean we are ready or willing to absorb the fear and disquiet of others. In the end, welcoming transpeople, and welcoming their struggles, is welcoming not just brave warriors who show strength, it’s welcoming humans who are the same as you. Callan Williams recent writing can be found at http://callan.wordpress.com. This article is one of a series provided by Advocates for Welcoming Congregations, a Capital Region group that encourages the welcoming of LGBT persons into the full life and leadership of communities of faith. The group also works to make visible for members of the LGBT community opportunities for practicing their faith traditions.