The post on the former SP and temple architect who was excommunicated got me thinking.
Of all the religions out there the Mormons are best positioned, in their theology, to accept transgender people.
Let's look at a few things no faithful Mormon would doubt:
1. Gender is assigned to our spirits before birth.
2. Physical birth defects happen rather often.
Putting those two together, it is not at all unreasonable to conclude that the body that a spirit has been sent to may, through a defect, develop to express the wrong gender for that spirit.
Mormons emphasize that we must listen to that "still small voice" within, and to trust it. We are told that spiritual truths are discerned through that "still small voice."
Transgender people uniformly report that they KNEW they were in the wrong-gender body from a young age. Their "still small voice" was consistent and relentless with this message. Doesn't it fit perfectly with Mormon doctrine that, if a gender- assignment birth defect occurred that it would be expressed this way? Wouldn't the eternal spirit reflect the gender it had before birth, independent of what body it ended up i here on earth?
Maybe Mormonism of the future will consider the current anti- transgender "policy" to be the result of leaders incorporating current social biases into their religious understanding. This was the explanation given for the priesthood restriction on Blacks that lasted 126 years. The argument that "the leaders have determined . . . " didn't seem to be sufficient in that case. Maybe it's similarly wrong now.
In excommunicating transgender people, Mormons may be spitting in the face of their own doctrine.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2017 09:08PM by baura.
Because it's largely about control. And controlling a central human behavior like sex must be front and center. In other types of abuse, like domestic violence, it is often used similarly. Guilt and shame are sadly a huge part of many of our sexual lives. What a violence that is to use what should be a joy to degrade and harm people!
You're confusing intersex conditions with transgender. Intersex people are actually really sick of their condition being used by transgender activists to propagate their unrelated issue.
An XY female with AIS has a female brain structure despite being biologically male -- just like a trans female who also has a female brain but was assigned male gender at birth because of external genitalia.
while it's true that there are a few rare situations where someone can appear to be unambiguously female but actually be XY with AIS, like you said; for the most part, transgender people are objectively biologically one sex but identify as the opposite (or something inbetween or neither). People with AIS, while appearing female, are incapable of reproducing as a female and as such are officially intersex.
Which brings me to sexed brains. I've been researching this topic as an amateur for a while as it's just interesting to me. While it is easy to find lots of articles that say that there are differences between female and male brains, there are just as many that say that they are exactly the same and that any perceived differences are due to brain plasticity. That babies are born with no brain differences associated with sex and that our gendered experiences in life cause the brain to grow in different ways. but even those differences are miniscule compared to the variation in brains of the population as a whole. One thing that is interesting is that it's easier to find articles about brain-sex differences in "pop" sources, but hard science sources tack towards more data showing no brain-sex differences. I'm not sure what to believe and I'm sure there's more research to be done, but at the moment I think it's really hard to say with a straight face that brain-sex is scientifically real.
Finally, gender isn't assigned at birth. All birth certificates list "sex", not "gender". It's sex that is identified at birth, sometimes wrongly as we've discussed with intersex people which is often horribly "treated" with surgery.
Basically, my take on all this is that as a culture it would be good to move away from gendering everything and everyone and just let people be people. A person's sex shouldn't be an issue for anyone except their doctor and the people they shag.
just like race and class. The American "one drop" race concept that was incorporated into Mormonism is a perfect example of this. If you had any African ancestors you were considered to be "black" no matter your appearance -- and no matter what you as an individual thought yourself to be.
this post has a link to an article about gender fluidity in individual cells of the human body - it's a couple of years old now but still rather interesting and perhaps relevant to your private research.
I don't think I am confusing transgender with intersex. I'm talking about people who, though they may in all physical ways, appear to be one gender, but have a strong innate feeling that they are the other gender. As far as I can see this would, from a Mormon perspective, perfectly fit the idea of a spirit of one gender being in the body of the other gender.