Congress Paper Abstract

Until you can strip without shame: transsexuality and spirituality

Jed Chandler, FTM Network 

The objective of many transsexuals is, quite simply and profoundly, congruity of mind and body. However, a theme running through a surprising number of the recent biographies and autobiographies of transsexuals has been the sense of spiritual imperative and often of divine intervention and vocation in the life of the individual.

A number of these accounts end by concluding that there is a transformation yet to achieve - the ’higher path’, as Jan Morris expresses it, of transcending both gender and sexuality altogether.

Books dealing with transsexualism often include, as a kind of apologia, a catalogue of cultures in which the transsexual is regarded as being especially spiritually endowed and regarded as a ’natural’ shamen or visionary. In the interests of authenticating these accounts I have researched extensively reported transsexualism in Oman and among the Indigenous American cultures as well as in Old Germanic texts. Further instances in the Solomon Islands will also be mentioned.

The Judaeo-Christian tradition is also surprisingly rich in reference to gender dysphoria, transsexualism and gender transgression as well as to the practices of cross-dressing and ’passing’.

It is in the Extra-canonical Gospels that issues of gender and androgyny become inextricably enmeshed with spiritual progress. The progression from male to female was used to symbolise the progression of the soul from embodiment to disembodiment, from earth to heaven. The aspiration for humanity is to restoration of the androgynous perfection of the pre-fall Adam.

In Britain today, the established religions vary in their attitudes towards transsexuals. Still, many transsexuals themselves retain a doughty profession of spiritual conviction. My research suggests strongly that it is valid to conclude that transsexualism and transgenderism may predispose a person to the type of abstract and metaphysical speculation in early life, which serves to prime the mind for spiritual insight. (A similar case might be made for homosexuality).

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