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Disrupting the trans-versus-Catholic dichotomy: An example from a Canadian elementary school policy
Abstract
Background: Mainstream media is increasingly reporting on the relationships between Catholic and trans identities in parochial schools, particularly with regard to gendered washroom use. With greater numbers of trans youth coming out at younger ages, significant educational policy changes are being considered around how Catholic schools can or should include trans youth.
Method: This study applies trans and queer theologies to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in investigating the Wilson case, which was the first known instance of a Catholic school including some affirming policy provisions for trans youth. The authors additionally collected and coded 12 news articles from a variety of platforms to discern and discuss the theological arguments in the public square against more fulsome trans student inclusion in Catholic schools.
Results: The authors found two related theological arguments against full inclusion, namely the notion that (1) Gender is God-given and therefore cannot be chosen or changed, and (2) That transgressive bodies are not sacred parts of the divine gender plan.
Conclusion: Trans theology allowed the authors to disrupt both of the theological claims advanced by the Catholic educators quoted in the Wilson case. This created rich, imaginative space in which to reconsider the relationships between Catholic and trans identities, namely by not arranging them in a binary. Significance for policy-making in parochial schools is discussed.
... We argue that fear of gender expression protections may stem from an erroneous conflation of "gender expression" with "gender identity" when these are in fact separate grounds-a conflation that is also endemic within secular Ontario school board policy (see Airton et al., 2019); this doubles as a conflation of gender expression with "transgender," as the latter is unfailingly linked with gender identity human rights. Transgender lives are frequently believed to fall afoul of the dominant Catholic doctrine regarding the immutability of sex (see Herriot & Callaghan, 2018). We suggest, then, that Catholic schools can actually embrace their legal duty to provide a learning environment free from gender expression discrimination without doctrinal conflict and arguably with ample doctrinal support, so that students of all gender expressions can flourish regardless of whether they are or will come to know they are transgender. ...
... In addition to our argument about the legal risks of failing to abide by Ontario's Human Rights Code, we further suggest that Catholic schools can and should embrace their duty to provide a learning environment free from gender expression discrimination without doctrinal conflict, and for the benefit of all students, including those who are or may come to know they are transgender. Indeed, as one of us has argued elsewhere (e.g., Herriot & Callaghan, 2018, not affirming a full spectrum of gender expression in www.cje-rce.ca ...
In this article, we share findings from an analysis of Ontario Catholic school board policy documents (N = 179) containing Canada’s newest human rights grounds: gender expression and gender identity. Our major finding may be unsurprising—that Ontario Catholic boards are generally not responding to Toby’s Act (passed in 2012) at the level of policy, as few boards have added these grounds in a way that enacts the spirit of that legislation. While this finding is likely unsurprising, our study also yielded findings that unsettle any facile binary of “Catholic boards/bad” and “public secular boards/good” in relation to gender diversity. We also leverage our findings to suggest a striking possibility for a vigorous and doctrinally-compatible embrace of gender expression protections in Catholic schools, if not gender identity protections. We argue that fear of gender expression protections may stem from an erroneous conflation of “gender expression” with “gender identity” when these are in fact separate grounds—a conflation that is also endemic within secular Ontario school board policy; this doubles as a conflation of gender expression with “transgender,” as the latter is unfailingly linked with gender identity human rights. We make a series of recommendations for policy, and a case for Catholic schools embracing their legal duty to provide a learning environment free from gender expression discrimination without doctrinal conflict and arguably with ample doctrinal support, so that students of all gender expressions can flourish regardless of whether they are or will come to know they are transgender.
... These interactions were frequently associated with fears and concerns for transgender people and their relational partners due to the frequency of objectively negative experiences in public. Social stigma and resultant difficulties with integration in society have been discussed in many empirical studies (e.g., Barrow and Chia, 2016;Blosnich et al., 2016;Bockting et al., 2013;Clark et al., 2018;Earnshaw et al., 2016;Field and Mattson, 2016;Gonzalez et al., 2018;Herriot and Callaghan, 2018) as posing an explicit challenge to transgender people as well as their relational partners (e.g., via courtesy stigma) (Angermeyer et al., 2003). Concerns tied to social stigma reflect the minority stress that transgender people experience. ...
Rationale
Social relationships are important in bolstering health and well-being for everyone in the general population. For transgender people, strong supportive social relationships may be paramount to their overall health and well-being due to their marginalised status in society.
Objective
This review aimed to investigate what is currently known about the social relationship experiences of transgender people and their relational partners (e.g., family members, romantic partners).
Methods
Thirty-nine qualitative papers were extracted from Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane, and PubMed that related to social relationships of transgender people. These papers were analysed via a qualitative meta-synthesis.
Results
Forty-nine second-order themes were identified, initially organised into relational partner clusters (e.g., family, friends, work colleagues) for specific phenomena, then these were synthesized into five overarching conceptual themes: (1) Development of relationships through transition and beyond, (2) Coping strategies of transgender people and their relational partners, (3) Reciprocal support in social relationships, (4) Stigma enacted and ameliorated interpersonally, and (5) Influence of stigma on social health and well-being.
Discussion and conclusions
These overarching themes show the potential characteristics that assist in the health-buffering role of social relationships for transgender people and their relational partners. Of particular note, stigma was reported as a common negative experience by transgender people and their relational partners, and open communicative social relationships had positive effects on self-conceptualisations of identity, which were inferred to protect against the damaging effects of stigma. We discuss the various implications and applications of this meta-synthesis to future research and clinical settings as well as how it can inform healthcare policy to support transgender people.
... Another Canadian study analyzed news articles focused on the issue of the compatibility of the transgender lived experience with the doctrine that guides the Catholic school system. By way of a critical discourse analysis, Herriot and Callaghan (2018) reported two theological arguments used to thwart transgender inclusion in Canadian schools -(1) that gender cannot be changed because it is God-given, and (2) a divine gender plan does not make room for transgressive bodies. Herriot and Callaghan took a unique approach to investigating an opportune topic the issue of trans bodies in traditionally unwelcoming spaces, and how this tension may be changing as social contexts become more progressive, is certainly timely. ...
In this paper, we describe the hopes, considerations, and questions of a narrative practice research collaboration among three closely connected transgender (trans) and/or non-binary collaborators, in a collection of work meant to support trans, non-binary, and gender expansive life and in response to trans death at a time of increasing hostility toward trans communities. We apply a specific focus on inquiring into how to do narrative therapy and community work research in and about our own communities, and what the ethical, relational and methodological practices for this work might be. We do this through reflecting on existing literature related to insider research in the field of narrative therapy and community work and in qualitative research more broadly, reflecting on our own practices of collaboration, and imagining possibilities for ourselves and other researchers working with and within their own communities. We describe our insider-outsider-insider positioning, how we understand this to be shaping our work, and share our ongoing curiosities about how to move through this work together.
The bullying of sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) is pervasive, with documented negative impacts on health. We explored the social ecology of bullying of SGMY, with a focus on religion as a source or context of bullying. Semistructured interviews with service providers, educators, and administrators in Toronto, Canada, who work with SGMY explored perspectives on the bullying of SGMY, focusing on religiously based bullying and strategies for intervention. Interviews (45-60 minutes) were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic content analysis. The data revealed religiously based homophobic discourse that permeates religious (places of worship, faith-based schools) and secular microsystems (public schools, families) across SGMY’s social ecology. The language and ideology of “sin” and “conversion” were evidenced in direct religiously based bullying of SGMY in schools, and victimization in places of worship and family microsystems, as well as serving as a rationale for bullying and nonintervention by teachers, school staff, administrators, and family members. Multisectoral and multilevel influences of religiously based sexual prejudice on the bullying of SGMY suggest that existing individual-level and microsystem-level responses in schools should be augmented with institutional, policy, and legal interventions in SGMY’s more distal social ecology in order to effectively prevent religiously based homophobic bullying.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the voices and lived experiences of four families and their transgender children (male to female). The methodology consists of a qualitative case study approach and ethnographic research methods over the course of 1 year. With a focus on mezzo and macro-level issues, the results of this article illustrate some of the ways that these families navigate their child’s transition, the social challenges that they experience from a society that adheres to the gender binary, and institutional challenges that this community faces in the realms of education, religion, medicine, and mental health. A discussion follows of the ways in which social workers can promote the health, happiness and the well-being of gender-variant children and their families within the community. We conclude with advocating for re-conceptualizing rigid and binary definitions of gender and challenging institutions that perpetuate oppression against trans children and their families.
Gender non-conforming and sexual minority youth are overrepresented in the homeless youth population and are frequently discriminated against in shelters and youth serving organizations. This paper provides a contextual understanding of the ways that institutional and governmental policies and standards often perpetuate the social exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and 2-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) youth, by further oppression and marginalization. Factors, including institutional erasure, homophobic and transphobic violence, and discrimination that is rarely dealt with, addressed, or even noticed by shelter workers, make it especially difficult for LGBTQ2S youth experiencing homelessness to access support services, resulting in a situation where they feel safer on the streets than in shelters and housing programs. This paper draws on data from a qualitative Critical Action Research study that investigated the experiences of a group of LGBTQ2S homeless youth and the perspectives of staff in shelters through one-on-one interviews in Toronto, Canada. One of the main recommendations of the study included the need for governmental policy to address LGBTQ2S youth homelessness. A case study is shared to illustrate how the Government of Alberta has put this recommendation into practice by prioritizing LGBTQ2S youth homelessness in their provincial plan to end youth homelessness. The case study draws on informal and formal data, including group activities, questions, and surveys that were collected during a symposium on LGBTQ2S youth homelessness. This paper provides an overview of a current political, social justice, and public health concern, and contributes knowledge to an under researched field of study by highlighting concrete ways to prevent, reduce, and end LGBTQ2S youth homelessness.
Many Malaysian mak nyahs, or male-to-female transsexuals, undergo tremendous discrimination and persecution in various aspects of their lives. This is due to their liminal identities and their involvement in sex work in Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country that actively engages in moral policing. In this essay, I expand the notion of queer Christian theologizing by examining both the Muslim and Christian contexts in Malaysia, and pose the question of how queer theological instruments can challenge antagonistic attitudes towards mak nyahs. I discuss alternative theological models of Mary and mak nyahs by privileging the work of Marcella Althaus-Reid, as well as using findings from face-to-face, in-depth interviews with mak nyahs, and scriptural imageries in Quran 3: 42, 47; 19: 16–22/Luke 1: 26–38 in which Mary acquiesces to a divine invitation. In so doing, I strive to engage in a concomitant theological imagining of Mary and mak nyahs in hopes of providing an alternative and constructive perspective on mak nyahs.
Transgender theory is an emerging theoretical orientation on the nature of gender and gender identity in understanding the lived experiences of transgender and transsexual individuals. It is distinct in emphasizing the importance of physical embodiment in gender and sexual identity. Transgender theory integrates this embodiment with the self and socially constructed aspects of identity through the lived experiences of those with intersecting identities. Thus, it provides a theoretical basis for reconciling feminist and queer theoretical scholarship with social work practice and advocacy, with regard not only to issues of working with transgenders but also to larger issues of group identity and social oppression. This article describes the emergence of transgender theory from feminist and queer theories that used social constructivist approaches to challenge essentialist ideas that maintained the oppression of certain gender and sexual identities. Transgender theory is also applied to specific issues of understanding, working with, and empowering transgender persons and building coalitions between them and other socially oppressed groups.
In this article Nausner explores the concept of gender transcendence which he rephrases in terms of transgendering in the theology of Gregory of Nyssa. Nausner argues that such destabilizing of gender was not confined to the sacraments but present throughout the Christian life in Gregory's thought. Gregory is presented as prefiguring the project of queer theory in rendering gender slippery and non-essential not least in his performance of his own masculinity.
This paper considers the literary effect achieved through engendering divine wisdom in three texts. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom is compared to a good wife who provides a safe and stable homelife as an alternative to the frightening sexuality of alternatives. In Ben Sira, wisdom is engendered in order to stir the same kind of passion for the Law as one might have for a beautiful woman. In the Wisdom of Solomon, wisdom is engendered as male, female and 'other' in order to retain its mystery. It thus remains a 'riddle' to be interpreted by future generations. Engendering divine wisdom shapes these metaphors and allows them to function in very different ways.
This chapter presents the story of Hilary Howes, a public relations professional and transgender activist. She describes how she came to accept that her birth gender was not her authentic gender and her conversion to Catholicism in mid-life, in part inspired by the faith and love of her wife. Howes observes that while transgender Catholics are not as explicitly rejected by the church as are lesbian, gay, and bisexual Catholics, the absence of formal church policies on transgender individuals often renders them even more invisible.
In this article, I describe three problems found in some inclusive queer Christian theologies: a strong contrast between Christian queer inclusiveness and the exclusive other — a contrast that sometimes takes anti-Semitic form; ignoring what I term the affective life of binaries — the way symbol systems depend on associative relationships between multiple binaries, so that rendering one binary relationship fluid fails to destabilize the symbol system itself; and a presentist approach to origins that seeks legitimation for contemporary queer assumptions or for queer theology as such. I argue that the presence of any of these elements renders queer theology un-queer. By connecting inclusive queer theologies to debates over inclusion, livability and humanity in queer theory (particularly between Judith Butler and Lee Edelman), I conclude that the rhetorical posture of radical inclusion may have limited value for queer theology and suggest an alternative starting point grounded in a dictum from Marcella Altha...
Drawn from extensive, new and rich empirical research across the UK, Canada and USA, Queer Spiritual Spaces investigates the contemporary socio-cultural practices of belief, by those who have historically been, and continue to be, excluded or derided by mainstream religions and alternative spiritualities. As the first monograph to be directly informed by 'queer' subjectivities whilst dealing with divergent spiritualities on an international scale, this book explores the recently emerging innovative spaces and integrative practices of queer spiritualities. Its breadth of coverage and keen critical engagement mean it will serve as a theoretically fertile, comprehensive entry point for any scholar wishing to explore the queer spiritual spaces of the twenty-first century.
This paper raises the question of female-embodied subjectivity as impacting on transgendered and intersexed claims to subjectivity. Recent theoretical work, from Butler to Žižek, 'deconstructs' sexual difference, and in the process repeats the familiar gesture of erasing the specificities of female-embodied subjectivity. Recent feminist theory (especially Battersby, Grosz and Gatens, and central to Irigaray) attempts a delineation of female-embodied subjectivity, resisting the current anti-essentialist trend in gender theory. The foreclosing of debate around an ontology of female-embodiment performed by anti-essentialist dictums is answered by a 'new essentialism' in feminist theory. Between the concerns of the 'autonomous' female subject and claims to transgendered and intersexed subjectivity, female-embodiment remains suspended between reification (naïve essentialism) and cultural erasure. 'Fuzzy gender' (fuzzy logic applied to gender theory) offers a model for mobilising female-embodied subjectivity as a political and theoretical figure resistant to institutional embodiment. Through 'fuzzy gender' we comprehend binary sexual difference as an instance of the part mistaking itself for the whole, and negotiate the wake of the receding Aristotelian model of difference without collapsing into atomised relativity. In the end, 'fuzzy gender' argues for theoretical coalition between feminist, transgendered, and intersexed concerns, in the context of an unrepentantly masculine body-politic.
Gay–straight alliances (GSAs) in Canadian public schools have gained considerable attention from print media since reports first surfaced in the year 2000. This study tracked and analyzed Canadian newspaper reporting about GSA creation. It summarized the shift in public opinion toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth activism by analyzing how Canadian newspapers reported on emerging GSAs. The emergence of Canadian GSAs was grounded in what is known about the social, political, geographical, and legal contexts of the first decade of the 21st century. This study framed the textual evidence of emerging Canadian GSAs that was reported in the newspapers as one measure of public opinion toward LGBTQ youth activism.
Intersex in Church documents has, thus far, been given very little coverage in its own right. However, it is sometimes presented as a foil to transgender; a "natural" if unfortunate state in contrast to the resolutely "non-biological" state of transgender. This serves to stigmatize transgender, and fails to understand the extent to which intersex disrupts binary, dualistic notions of sex and gender in their entirety. Utilizing opposites such as biological/non-biological is not, in fact, the most useful way to represent the relationship between intersex and transgender. Rather, it must be acknowledged that both conditions profoundly undermine the givenness of certainty and either/or tropes as "goods" when it comes to sex identity at all. This article gives a brief summary of some occurrences of the unproblematized contrasting of intersex and transgender in some Church documents, and suggests that they are being contrasted in the wrong ways.
Participative research was conducted with a range of transsexual and transgender individuals. Findings outline recent developments among the transsexual and transgender communities, which challenge traditional medical models of transsexuality and transgender. Postmodernism provides a useful base for theorizing alternative models; however, postmodernism and poststructuralism are problematic in terms of their notions of identity and lack of attention to the structuring of gender at the social level. Social structure is suggested to be key in understanding transgender and transsexuality, with inequalities affecting transgender people's health and ability to participate in society as active citizens.
This essay argues for performative gender identities that are simultaneously multiple by analyzing the Augustinian interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and how this reading has been used to support normative gender and sexuality. I contend that certain ancient gender narratives which have been read through religious discourse as condemning ‘heretical’ or ‘monstrous’ bodies, can actually be reread as alternative engagements with the Chalcedonian body, that most holy of bodies (for Christianity). As a result, these alternative narratives offer us a place from which to construct a permeable and transgressive position and through which to rethink not only ancient battles over Jesus' body, but also, more importantly, the continuing impact of those ancient struggles in terms of gender and religious identification today. By using critical theological studies, I assert that a queer reading of the Chalcedic body, analyzed alongside transgender narratives, is a site from which to construct identities of hybridity ...
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10.2 (2004) 212-215
If queer theory was born of the union of sexuality studies and feminism, transgender studies can be considered queer theory's evil twin: it has the same parentage but willfully disrupts the privileged family narratives that favor sexual identity labels (like gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual) over the gender categories (like man and woman) that enable desire to take shape and find its aim.
In the first volume of GLQ I published my first academic article, "My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage," an autobiographically inflected performance piece drawn from my experiences of coming out as a transsexual. The article addressed four distinct theoretical moments. The first was Judith Butler's then recent, now paradigmatic linkage of gender with the notion of trouble. Gender's absence renders sexuality largely incoherent, yet gender refuses to be the stable foundation on which a system of sexuality can be theorized. A critical reappraisal of transsexuality, I felt, promised a timely and significant contribution to the analysis of the intersection of gender and sexuality. The second moment was the appearance of Sandy Stone's "The 'Empire' Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto," which pointedly criticized Janice G. Raymond's paranoiac Transsexual Empire and called on transsexual people to articulate new narratives of self that better expressed the authenticity of transgender experience. I considered my article on transgender rage an explicit answer to that call. The third moment was Leslie Feinberg's little pamphlet, Transgender Liberation. Feinberg took a preexisting term, transgender, and invested it with new meaning, enabling it to become the name for Stone's theorized posttranssexualism. Feinberg linked the drive to inhabit this newly envisioned space to a broader struggle for social justice. I saw myself as a fellow traveler. Finally, I perceived a tremendous utility, both political and theoretical, in the new concept of an antiessentialist, postidentitarian, strategically fluid "queerness." It was through participation in Queer Nation—particularly its San Francisco-based spin-off, Transgender Nation—that I sharpened my theoretical teeth on the practice of transsexuality.
When I came out as transsexual in 1992, I was acutely conscious, both experientially and intellectually, that transsexuals were considered abject creatures in most feminist and gay or lesbian contexts, yet I considered myself both feminist and lesbian. I saw GLQ as the leading vehicle for advancing the new queer theory, and I saw in queer theory a potential for attacking the antitranssexual moralism so unthinkingly embedded in most progressive analyses of gender and sexuality without resorting to a reactionary, homophobic, and misogynistic counteroffensive. I sought instead to dissolve and recast the ground that identity genders in the process of staking its tent. By denaturalizing and thus deprivileging nontransgender practices of embodiment and identification, and by simultaneously enacting a new narrative of the wedding of self and flesh, I intended to create new territories, both analytic and material, for a critically refigured transsexual practice. Embracing and identifying with the figure of Frankenstein's monster, claiming the transformative power of a return from abjection, felt like the right way to go.
Looking back a decade later, I see that in having chosen to speak as a famous literary monster, I not only found a potent voice through which to offer an early formulation of transgender theory but also situated myself (again, like Frankenstein's monster) in a drama of familial abandonment, a fantasy of revenge against those who had cast me out, and a yearning for personal redemption. I wanted to help define "queer" as a family to which transsexuals belonged. The queer vision that animated my life, and the lives of so many others in the brief historical moment of the early 1990s, held out the dazzling prospect of a compensatory, utopian reconfiguration of community. It seemed an anti-oedipal, ecstatic leap into a postmodern space of possibility in which the foundational containers of desire could be ruptured to release a raw erotic power that could be harnessed to a radical social agenda. That vision still takes my breath away.
A decade later, with another Bush in the White House and another war in the Persian...
In this article I develop the idea that sexual theologies need to use a hermeneutics based on different sexual epistemologies, such as those coming from fetishist subcultures Voyeurism and permutations are not only different ways of loving and knowing the world, but they also imply different theological ways of thinking and questioning. Not only do they provoke in us different ideological suspicions on Dogmatics, but they also provide us with a different material basis for sexual assumptions. The dislocation of the sexual subject in theology has alienated us in different ways, including defamiharising us with God, by preventing us from interpreting and understanding God outside the narrow scope of a theological heterosexual text Sexual epistemologies in the margins present us instead with per/verted options, or different versions of fundamental issues such as Salavation, where the Voyeur's gaze may help us to dislocate many assumptions in Christianity which come from a heterosexuality in the closet, and its particular systematic theological order ‘There is something worse than having a perverse soul, and it is to have an accustomed soul.’
Radical orthodoxy and the heresiological habit: Engaging Graham Ward's Christology
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