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
As with most people, a lot of my formative music taste happened when I was a teenager and young adult. Naturally, some music is period-defining for that moment of my life, with most of it consisting of indie folk and alternative rock. One of my favorite albums from those days was Dark Eyes by Half Moon Run, an album I discovered through a friend of mine during our mutual developing affection for Of Monsters and Men. He had seen OMAM live, and the opening act was Half Moon Run, who had around that time released the absolutely electric song “Call Me in the Afternoon” and its enigmatic music video, which he sent to me. If you’ve never heard it before, I really can’t recommend it enough as an introduction to the band. There is something uniquely haunting, almost tribal, and exhilarating about it, like it would be best listened to while dancing around a bonfire ritual in the dark of night. Suddenly, you are brought to an awareness you are a hair’s width barrier away from losing all inhibitions, from communing with some ancient, primal, feral self. At the time, I had never heard anything like it. In a way I was even scared of it. It is seductive.
Of course, I had to listen to the rest of the album. And, unsurprising coming from the same vein as “Call Me in the Afternoon,” the whole work carries this bewitching sense of the occult, often evoking and intermixing imagery of drug use and spirituality. It is a frightening juxtaposition for a sheltered religious teenager, but simultaneously invitingly taboo. “Full Circle” made me nervous, with the most explicit reference to a possession of sorts, setting the dark, drug-laced spiritual tone of the whole tracklist in the very first lines of the album:
Cap off kneeling at the back of the church
feeling water on your brow, if it’s healing it hurts
At first a sharpish pain that returns as a thought
that the needle in your skin will bring you closer to God
And I watch
as your head
turns
full circle
The narcotic imagery spreads across the album, serving as a sort of bridge between the material and the spiritual (or the demonic). And it musically lends itself to all sorts of dark thoughts, with folk guitar arpeggio, melancholic ghostly vocals, and even a wailing harmonica. It is not an album for happy people, even at its most energetic. No, this album is for the coven when we are sacrificing goats and casting blood hexes in the woods unbeknownst to our husbands, and doing drugs. What I’m trying to say is that thematically it is a thoroughly enchanting album—one that makes you feel tantalizingly debaucherous and, from a third-person perspective, voyeuristic. You are not supposed to be seeing any of this, but you can’t look away.
I took the opportunity to revisit Dark Eyes recently because I received an email. Long, long ago, when I had bought the CD through bandcamp, I got signed up for the band’s newsletter. Occasionally I glanced at it, but I wasn’t a religious reader. In fact, I didn’t listen to their music much either past their first album. Their sophomore release, Sun Leads Me On, is a great album in its own right, and when I first heard it, I was surprised I had put off listening to it. But it still didn’t stick with me the same way over the years, for whatever reason. Maybe it was the novelty of Dark Eyes or my ever-developing music tastes not leaving room for it, but I didn’t really feel compelled to keep up with their new material. So when I received an email alerting me that Dark Eyes released thirteen years ago, and that the band was answering some questions about the album to mark the anniversary, I went ahead and read through it, and of course I had to listen to it again, too.
I hadn’t listened to the album in its entirety in quite some time, but was happy to let it play again. It reminds me of days long gone. Some days good, but some very, very sad. There was a day when I was seventeen and let “Drug You” play on repeat while I drew a sad drawing I have never shown to anyone—quite a cathartic song to play when you are emotionally distraught and have never abused a drug in your life but wish that you could, just to numb the pain. I remember sharing “She Wants to Know” on a warm summer night with a friend who I’ve since grown distant from, but at the time I really appreciated our little music exchange—she had a really positive impression of this song, I recall. Another night, the following summer, I had fallen asleep with the album playing, and I woke up at 3am with “Nerve” playing under my pillow, its soft lament singing out into the quiet cabin I was sleeping in alone; were anyone to have heard it from outside, they would have believed the cabin haunted. Right now as I write this, I’m listening to “21 Gun Salute” finish as my coworkers timidly try to kill a cockroach. The song ended before I was done typing that sentence.
The album resounds in my memories of late high school and early college. I listened to my favorite tracks countless times, which now fill in as background music in the nebulous reaches of my mind, increasingly blurring with age. Perhaps there’s no better place for such an album to transfix itself within one’s psyche than one of such mystique and impermanence. I have already forgotten so much from those days, and the somber harmonica of “Fire Escape” cries over the hazy visions of my life back then. Perhaps the reason it stuck so deeply with the Jamie of twelve to thirteen years ago is that it fits so comfortably in the liminal space of transition and change, the witching hours of life which bring one to a realm of uncertainty and reckoning. Those days are gone—were they ever in the first place? My only proof is the faulty gray matter clinging to any foothold it can find that the world outside itself is truly there. My memory of the music certainly makes it feel as though it all happened, yet draws it all into question simultaneously. I don’t think I personally would be saying such things if instead of Half Moon Run I’d been listening to, say, Ed Sheeran at the time.
I don’t think I have any business rating albums. I won’t be giving it a numerical score or a star rating. All I can really say is that Dark Eyes is a long-time favorite of mine, and that if you have been at all interested in my descriptions or anecdotes, then I recommend taking 45 minutes to listen to it. In my mind it’s kind of a sleeper hit, and a “cult” classic in both senses of the term. Half Moon Run seems to have maintained a devoted fanbase over the years, which makes me happy. They left a lasting impression on me, so it just felt right to share my appreciation for them. I’ll be listening to Dark Eyes again at the next séance.
Cheers,
Jamie Barne
Still as rain
falling down
These choices aren’t based on number of plays, but simply comprise an unordered list of songs that struck me the most this year, or stayed with me the longest. I’ll give a quick blurb about why I like each one.
I decided to pair these two songs together since they really are companion pieces. They’re the perfect sad album opener, inviting the listener to admit to their own distress. I’m also a big fan of “find your friends and hold them close” from this album, but “go on / hourglass” hit me more recently and have me smitten at the moment.
Found this one because a twitter mutual posted about it. It hit harder the more I listened to it. “So call the doctor, call the cops / I was all right but now I’m not” is a perfectly exasperated plea for some regained sense of control. It’s so simply-put and that’s what makes it genius.
Great pair of songs for feeling really exceptionally bad about yourself, which I did a fair amount of in September. When everything spirals out of control and you feel worthless and ugly, what better phrase to feed that self-loathing than “You were made to throw away”?
A long-time friend sent this one to me and I’ve felt sentimental about it ever since. We’ve been through a lot together and so much has changed. But we still have each other. It’s really us.
I know I’m twenty-seven years late to The Shape of Punk to Come but god this shit fucks. I could have gone with “New Noise” for this pick too but I love the drums and double bass too much in this one. It’s a cathartic listen after a long day at work.
A happy song! It’s rare that I can feel so uplifted by a piece of music without eventually getting fatigued by it, but this one still feels right even when things are going wrong. It’s reminiscent of, and readily alludes to, Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me,” which is also an important happy song in my life.
From their fresh EP, a thematic follow-up to Now, Now’s “P0WDER” off of their sophomore album, but much more overtly melancholy in tone. It’s very sad and I like that.
Despite not being able or willing to fully rank my top songs, this is definitely my number one of 2025. [And now that Spotify Wrapped is out, I know for sure that this was my most played song!] Fresh track from Bon Iver with the classic Vernonesque quality of using instruments in ways I didn’t know were possible. “Can I live inside this state? / Where the summers are charades now” is the lyric that maybe hits hardest for me out of a song full of lyrics that resonate deeply in my heart.
I first had a phase with this song in 2019, but came back to it this year. The guitar feels earthy and nostalgic. It hits just the right chords, literally and figuratively, for my ears and my heart.
“Fuck.”
It feels good to yell about the sadness and beauty of living sometimes. It feels defiant. A bit of banjo can help, perhaps contrary to popular belief.
I’ve known this song for a while, but I cried to it the most this year.
I liked this song a lot when it came out, but it made me dance more this year on repeated listens. Stevie Nicks is on this one, so I’m a bit biased.
I told myself I would limit choosing songs from Cyberpunk for this list, but I will grant myself this one because it took me till my third playthrough to notice it. I think it can play on the radio at random, but there is another time. I won’t say when it plays, but it’s always at a specific, foreboding moment. I attach a lot of feelings to it because of that.
Why do you think????
I can’t believe I almost forgot about this one, but Wrapped reminded me because it was tied for my fourth most-played song, and I still listen to it regularly. I couldn’t possibly leave it off this list. It would be a great synthwave song on its own, but when that part comes on, you really transcend. I don’t even want to spoil it—it’s best to go in blind. And if while listening you don’t realize what I’m talking about, maybe this song simply is not for you. (Music is for everyone and everyone has a different experience listening, please don’t think I’m being serious here. I’d love to know whatever part sticks out to you!)
Bon Iver’s fifth album. To be honest I struggled with this one in a way I didn’t with their previous work, but not because of the quality of the music—as far as I’m concerned Bon Iver sets the standard there. But the mood of the album is pretty disparate from the other albums I’ve selected here, and as I wrestle with dissociation and frustration in my life it’s been hard to relate to Justin’s optimism in this album as much as I’d like to. But in terms of the overall Bon Iver project it’s a perfect album and a natural evolution out of what came before.
This album was a good companion to me in the darker months of my year. I am especially fond of the first half, which sets the emotional pace and contains my favorite songs from the album.
This one is a long-awaited and completely unexpected follow-up LP to one of my favorite albums from 2016, Settlers. As with Settlers, Trails is completely instrumental, and honors the somber western-folk sound of its predecessor while incorporating some synth. Trails feels isolated and completely forlorn, as though you are stranded in the desert. Of course, we are—that’s life. There’s nothing for us out here.
My number one album of the year by far. I came to it late, but it’s as good and as relevant as ever. It’s shocking to know that this album was so poorly received at first that it led to the band breaking up, because it’s electrifying from beginning to end. It makes me want to go on strike just because. It was so prescient for its time that it still sounds new.
One sign of a good album is when you can listen to it on repeat for a while, then do the exact same thing again years later. That means it’s not just nostalgia influencing one’s appreciation. It defined a good portion of my summer of ‘25, so I can’t leave it off the list.
Another album I revisited this year. Louis Cole walks a fine line between deeply serious and deeply unserious, which is important for any absurdist art. Life is a joke, and at times it is gravely important to laugh at it.
A final, late addition to the list. Watching YouTuber Any Austin’s videos led me to look into his music, and I loved what I found. His lyrics are deadpan yet tender and revealing, and some of the songs on this album (there are twice as many as advertised, by the way) really get the blood pumping. Between him and Louis Cole, late November was a great moment for funky white boys in my rotation.
Okay, here is my real, actual final addition to the list as I edit the piece for posting. I got into it the first week of December. This album is incredible. It’s just Cole flexing his musical prowess with a full orchestral accompaniment. “Things Will Fall Apart” is catchy as fuck, and you could put it among my top songs just for how long it was stuck in my head the week I heard it. And putting a ten-minute dirge called “Doesn’t Matter” after an orchestra version of the life-affirming “Let It Happen” is a stroke of genius for Cole’s absurdist evangelizing. This album fucks.
Refused
Bon Iver
Ben Quad
A Place For Owls
The Excellent Man from Minneapolis
Louis Cole
I think that about covers it for this year. As a final reflection, I think it’s worth talking about my experience on a different music streaming service and my thoughts about music streaming going forward.
When I unsubscribed from Spotify, I switched to TIDAL on the firm recommendation of a friend, and while audio quality-wise I can’t complain, it still leaves a lot to be desired, especially in terms of responsiveness in my opinion—it’s weirdly sluggish and doesn’t have long playlists stored in the cache, so they have to load in every time you scroll down them again. It’s also fairly expensive compared to other services, and while I appreciate that more of my money will go to artists than if I pay for a different platform, it’s not the best service for the music lover on a budget. This reflection is by no means comprehensive of my critiques of TIDAL, because I’d rather focus on the more important point: I’ve gotten pretty tired of streaming in general. They are billion-dollar corporations that think so little about the user-end experience so as to be less functional and responsive in some ways than decades-old programs. And no one is asking for the fucking AI shit! So, my final goal is to get to a point where I go back to downloading music (through whatever means necessary) or buying it directly from the artist, whether as physical media or digital downloads (maybe I will use Bandcamp more often?), and distributing it to those in want. I’ve been a big proponent of accessible music ever since I was in middle school and downloading music from YouTube; and where streaming services simplified that accessibility for a while, they’ve become increasingly cumbersome and antagonistic towards their users—or at least enough so for me, personally, to be bothered by it. And, more importantly, I’m unwilling to continue making moral compromises for these companies. If they are going to spend my money in ways I believe to be unethical (looking at you, Spotify CEO), personally I reach a point where I can’t continue to concede to them. To be clear, I’m not here to pontificate about why you should do the same—that’s for you to weigh and decide. I do what I can in a way that works for me. I only want to posit here a future where music is accessible to all, and artists are properly compensated; and to that end, hopefully someday I can ditch the streaming services altogether.
Cheers,
Jamie Barne