Be A Woman!: Becoming The Woman God Has Denied You From Being
[This post is part of a series. You can navigate through it with the following links: NEXT (coming soon)]
Introduction
For about a decade of my life between the ages of 15 and 25, I was really Catholic. But then a few things happened and now, at 30 years old, here I am: a Marxist transgender woman. This blog series is not about how I ended up where I am. Suffice it to say, sometimes life comes at you fast.
One of the features of modern American Catholic culture—a Catholicism which is trying to reach the Youths, to carry out “the New Evangelization” and bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people via the new technologies of an ever-changing world—is the motivational speaker. These are people who get paid to speak in Catholic school auditoriums and at big Catholic events about chastity, or their conversion stories, or how yes G.K. Chesterton said all those misogynistic things but he did it in a funny and clever way so it’s actually based, and other awesome shit like that. They go on speaking tours and make book deals. Some of the worst self-help literature you have ever laid eyes on is sitting on a “FREE” table in the foyer of your local church, bogging down a genre that is frankly already over-saturated with profoundly, insultingly bad books. I have to imagine that these speakers are not unlike the sophists of ancient times, often both revered and reviled by audiences for warning of the evils of premarital sex and peddling the snake oil of the forgiveness of sins. As it turns out, the New Evangelization of the 21st century consists primarily of commodifying Catholicism through careers as glorified life coaches, except even more caustic to society.
Some of these speakers are also priests. In the world of modern American Catholic micro-celebrities, one stands out to me more than most, because he was the biggest claim to fame my diocese had: Father Larry Richards. He was a controversial figure even in Catholic circles, mostly because he yelled a lot. He was very, very intense and often overbearing. But his parishioners certainly loved him, and while I myself was not overly devoted to his particular cult of personality, from the times I visited his parish and heard his homilies, even I’ll admit he had charisma. He had a joke about wanting to write a mystery novel with a serial killer priest who would murder his victims immediately after receiving the Sacrament of Confession so that they would go straight to Heaven (which is indeed accurate to Catholic beliefs). After yelling at you and being generally abrasive, the tone of his voice would always change and turn to how much Jesus loves you. It’s very compelling if you’ve spent anywhere between 10-40 minutes immediately prior feeling incredibly guilty and unlovable even by your own mother if she only knew What You Did. He most famously did this with his own dramatic narration of the Passion of Christ, which he would always perform on Good Friday before Easter, and which you can buy on compact disk. I’ve met him in person a number of times. I’ve also told him my sins in terms of number and kind; I’ve told this man I’ve masturbated and looked at pornography. I don’t know where he is or what he’s up to these days. I never got to know him personally, and I highly doubt he remembers me.
In addition to his motivational(?) Passion narration, he also wrote a book entitled Be a Man!: Becoming the Man God Created You to Be. I received this book as a gift at about 19 years old. I think I got maybe a few chapters in and then never finished it. I had philosophy books to read for school, and was never big on the whole “authentic masculinity” thing Catholics are pushing anyway, though not for lack of trying. Needless to say, I did not follow the book’s primary instruction. And I am glad that I didn’t. Becoming a woman is one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. And I think it will be for you, too. Now, 11 years after receiving the book, I’ve dug it up again as a starkly different person than I was back then—namely, one with far better self-esteem and much perkier breasts. And that’s what this blog series will be about: attempting to counter the harmful traditional gender roles and norms perpetuated by the Catholic Church by means of inverting the advice of one of the very merchants reinforcing them. I’m going to walk you through Father Richards’ Be a Man!, and use it to help you become a woman. If you are a man who has felt consistently uncomfortable or alienated by your gender, a closeted trans woman who is hesitant to commit to transitioning, or someone who just finds the prospect of a trans woman ripping into a priest’s harmful rhetoric amusing or ironic or funny, then this blog series is for you. You may, if you are a repressed or closeted trans man, find this series useful as well, since much of its content will be universally applicable to all trans people—but it will be addressed to the girlies specifically, out of special care for them and in direct defiance of Richards’ gendered imperatives. You may also, if you are someone burdened by the grip Catholicism (or Christianity, or any suffocating religious tradition writ large) has on you, potentially find this project to be particularly helpful, or offensive, or both. And, if you do find yourself wanting to transition while reading, you are encouraged by me to do so socially, medically, or by whatever means and to whatever extent you feel is appropriate to you.
One thing this blog series is not meant to do is convince you not to be religious if you are religious. To be clear, in principle I do not believe that if you change your gender, you must also abandon your religious beliefs. All of my advice herein will be both kosher and halal, and will be allowed to be eaten on Fridays during Lent. In my case, my personal journey led me to something akin to agnosticism, but no two people’s religious trauma is the same. Your religious beliefs, if you have any, are yours to contend with. But I do aim to help you contend. There are ways in which Catholicism (et al.) in practice fundamentally opposes your existence as a trans person, and I am not going to let you convince yourself that that is out of love. I want to help you get mad and be as brutally honest as possible with the God who supposedly loves you. Maybe the prospect of going toe to toe with God is intimidating or feels wrong or even blasphemous. But God is a big Girl, She can handle it.
One thing this blog series cannot do is materially help you transition. It is not a practical guide. It can’t tell you how to escape your transphobic family, or start HRT, or meet other trans people; it can’t give you fashion advice, or walk you through makeup tutorials, or teach you how to train your voice (though maybe reading it aloud to yourself would be a good way to practice?); etc etc. If it’s any consolation, ample resources for these things already exist online, and I promise you that with time, you will see progress—as my endocrinologist reiterates, “Transition is a marathon, not a sprint.” You do what you can with the means you have. The important thing is to do it. While I can’t personally help you do it, I will be rooting for you the whole time. My goal is just to get you to start, whether that means motivating you to finally take hormones or even just accept in your heart that you are a woman. And if you can only start transitioning, the rest will come, perhaps slowly, but surely.
With our intentional expectations out of the way, let’s get a taste of how this is going to go methodologically. In Father Richards’ Introduction to his book, he writes,
In the past forty years or so, you may have noticed that some of the women have become more masculine and some of the men more feminine. Some of us seem to be confused, going against the way we were created: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27 [RSVB]). There is a difference! Men are not called to be women and vice versa. This has caused more problems than we can deal with here; but we are different—not better, but different—and we are called to be fully men! (7-8)
Already, any reader of his book should want to ask a few questions, such as 1) have women actually become more masculine and men more feminine?; 2) what problems has this phenomenon of masculine women and feminine men supposedly caused which Father Richards takes for granted?; 3) how are women and men different, exactly?; and other, similar questions. As much as we can in a series of blog posts, we are trying to be good scholars and take a critical approach and bring a healthy skepticism toward any claims that jump out at us. As I read through the book for you, that’s how I’m going to help you sow doubt (assuming you are not already outright rejecting his claims), and then I will cast my evil transgender spells and twist his words into reasons for you to transition. Father Richards may insist as much as he wants, “Men are not called to be women,” but I am calling you to be a woman. So that’s at least one person giving you one reason to do it.
I may be becoming what I hate by writing this; I suppose it is a form of self-help literature, and I as a consequence a kind of self-help author. But one key difference between me and any self-help author is that I’m not stupid as shit. I’m also not doing the political pundit thing where I teach you how to epically own your interlocutors. My background is in philosophy, and while this project is not academic, we’re not getting through this without at least casually engaging with theory and scholarship. I am not giving you the tools to fight your ideological opponents. I am giving you the tools to fight God—and come out a woman on the other side.
See you again for Chapter 1.
Jamie Barne