Book Review: Queer Religiosities

By Al Preston

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            Many times, when a person comes out as queer in the U.S., they also lose acceptance in their faith or lose their faith entirely.

            This is so common that queerness and religion are often viewed as oil and water. Completely incompatible. This is, of course, not completely true, the world contains multitudes and so does religion and queerness. However, this vision of coming out is very normalized and it creates roadblocks to not only individuals coming out but also for scholars to engage with those multitudes.

            Which was Melissa Wilcox’s purpose in writing Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion. She introduces the idea that religious, queer, and transgender studies have more in common than they don’t. All three fields need to engage with each other more.

            Within an introductory book, Wilcox manages to cover so much and still have many topics entirely untouched but with sources and further readings in the back of the book. Allowing the reader to pick a topic and learn more. She set out to show that there is space in religion and queerness for each other but also leave more than enough open-ended questions for the reader to pursue on their own, and boy…did she cover a lot.

            I’ve always had an interesting struggle with religion (you can read more here) but I love learning about different cultures and religions, and this book gave me a lot to look into later.

            There’s so much in this book that I can’t cover it all in a concise matter, plus, I think that anyone interested should read this one for themselves so that they can pick their own favorite part. Therefore, I will just cover one of the parts of the book I found the most interesting.

            Wilcox spends chapter 4 on identities and the mixture of sex, gender, and religion. This covers how some queer folks reconcile with their faith fundamentally rejecting them but also the danger of how people wish to argue for and against transitioning medically for transgender folks. Wilcox deconstructs the idea of ‘born this way’ rhetoric that is prevalent in the queer community today. Not to suggest that it is wrong or a bad argument, but to show how the typical arguments used in reference to ‘born this way’ theories can be used to support and discredit LGBT+ folks and medical transition of transgender people.

            Wilcox first discusses the U.S. arguments LGBT+ folks have made for being ‘normal’ or acquiring medical help. When the argument was (literally only a few decades ago), that being gay was a disability, both those in support of queerness and those who were transphobic called for some kind of ‘cure’.

For those who were transgender or supported them, they sought medical intervention that allowed them to mold themselves to society without giving up their queerness. Which can be seen in going to a doctor to request hormone therapy or top and bottom surgery. These interventions from the world of medicine allow transgender people to grow a beard or have breasts which can ‘cure’ their dysphoria (the feeling of hatred or distress surrounding one’s physical body). However, they also allow them to play with gender and sexuality without hindrance.

            On the other hand, transphobes wanted medicine to completely ‘cure’ queerness. Seen in conversion therapy which is designed to make the queer person ‘normal’. That version of normal is heterosexual and cisgender as that is the ‘standard’ that most homophobes and transphobes hold to.

            In the past, as mentioned above, being gay was seen as an invisible disability. A hidden ‘failure’ or ‘hindrance’ to queer folks living their everyday life. Psychology answered the call to deal with the mental distress being queer put on people. Some advocated for allowing queer people to explore their sex and gender. Others wanted to suppress that queerness in their clients as living a life as a sexual deviant was the cause of the distress, not how society treated queer folks.

Eventually, the rhetoric changed to queer folks deserving to be themselves however they pleased and had every right to exist however they wanted. They were ‘born’ that way and therefore could not help their love or gender presentation. Medicine’s role, then, was to help people feel more natural as themselves through hormone therapy or surgery (in the minds of many queer folks).

            However, this narrative can also be taken to another extreme. Medicine can still be used to ‘cure’ people or cause them harm. For example, some folks who transitioned from one gender to another regretted the choice and have championed preventing anyone from getting such ‘harmful’ procedures. Medicine could make and unmake a transition or sexual exploration.

            Here in the U.S., medicine is a huge part of our lives regardless of how you see it (good or evil). Medicine allows trans people to get the hormone therapy and surgeries they need to be comfortable in their bodies, but it has still been used by the opposition to justify their bigotry.

            Among LGBT+ communities, to be trans means to transition. There has to be a need for hormones or surgery and it had to be necessary for someone to be considered transgender because of the way our medical system works. Popular and Medical necessity is the reason procedures get paid for by insurances and progress through research. If not enough people have a need for a particular surgery, few people research it to make it more effective, and insurances won’t cover as much of the cost.

            If there aren’t enough transgender people being prescribed gender affirming care, then insurances won’t cover it and more and more methods of providing that care won’t be available. Therefore, a narrative began that to be transgender meant to have hormone therapy and surgery, otherwise you aren’t transgender ‘enough’ or transgender at all.

            That’s not to say that gender affirming care isn’t bad. In fact, I benefit from it. However, I distinctly remember many LGBT+ folks harassing each other for not wanting bottom surgery or hormones. For transgender men, like myself, bottom surgery is most certainly for some people, but for others, it’s lack of functionality and the possibility of future complications makes it a less than appealing option.

            However, I remember saying that to a lesbian friend once and she attempted to pressure me into getting it anyway. I would never be a complete trans man without it, apparently. Of course, that rhetoric has loosened a little bit in recent years, but it is still prevalent.

            Meanwhile, this reliance on medicine to cure every disease known to time has led others in the opposite direction, away from gender affirming care. Conversion therapy is a form of medical treatment. Detransition narratives that are transphobic are another way to dissuade doctors and families alike from allowing gender affirming care.

            It’s a bit of a Catch 22. While medicine has saved countless lives, we are also at the whims of medical professionals and insurance brokers.

            Wilcox takes on this issues and presents a way for religion to actually offer a way out of the cycle. Wilcox presents the arguments of Justin Tanis in a part of his larger body of work. He talks about how many religious, including Christianity, feature a spirit overtaking the body, regardless of gender.

            For some, this possession gives them an excuse to express their more feminine or masculine presentations in an accepted way. Tanis, and other transgender folks, take this to a new level. As the spirits found people to speak through others find this ability a ‘calling’ from God.

            Wilcox and Tanis put it best:

            “For Tanis, the argument that gender is a calling is a theological one. Sidestepping the essentialist-constructivist debate that chases its tail trying to determine whether trans identities come from ‘nature’ or ‘nurture,’ Tanis argues instead that they come from God. ‘Rather than seeing transgenderism as a medical problem to be corrected, a psychological incongruence between body and spirit, or even a quirk of societal organization,’ he writes, ‘I look at my experiences of gender as the following of an invitation from God to participate in a new, whole, and healthy way of living in the world—a holy invitation to set out on a journey of body, mind, and spirit.’ How long he’s been transgender, how he became transgender, even whether being transgender is permanent—these no longer matter when gender identity is reframed as a calling. Such an understanding also avoids the dangers of essentialist and constructivist approaches, which can both be turned into arguments for the eradication of transgender identities and transgender people. It seems that it’s not the explanation for an identity that drives oppressive or liberatory approaches to it; it’s the value placed on the identity in the first place. Considering gender identity to be a divine calling makes being transgender intrinsically good and holy; if gender identity come from God, then it no longer matters whether it’s innate or chosen, permanent of transitory. ‘The concept of gender as a calling,’ Tanis explains, ‘allows me to be called to live one way yesterday, another way today, and even yet another tomorrow…Gender, like any other calling, is also an ongoing revelation.’”

            I know that was a lot, and maybe a bit hard to read, but for me, this part of the book was very powerful and something I’m still thinking about. Others might find other parts of the book more interesting, such as the section about how being gay or lesbian in Iran is outlawed but the government pays for gender transitions.

            Or maybe the section on the Radical Faries, a religion made by and for gay men who somewhat (actually a lot historically, but less so recently) appropriate Indigenous American religions and culture. Or even the countless examples of transness in other countries.

            There’s so much in this book and yet also not enough. I had many unanswered questions, but that was all Wilcox’s goal. I will warn that while this book was intended for a general audience, many parts are a bit harder to understand, even for me with an academic background. Theology, queer studies, and transgender studies deal heavily in theory, and many times require a bit of background knowledge in order to fully understand. Short handing some of the more complicated theories keeps the book shorter but also makes understanding a bit harder.

            Additionally, I wandered at times about the editing process. There are a few weird grammatical and phrasing issues throughout, which is coming from me. They’re noticeable but not distracting (most of the time). There was a sentence or two that really tripped me up.

            Don’t let its size fool you, either it’s a bit of a dense read.

            All that aside, it’s a great read and I do recommend it if you’ve been at a loss about your own relationship with religion or are looking for a new perspective.