Key terms
Okay, children! Let’s tackle the first word: TRANSGENDER! (Sidebar: I feel like Mister Robinson from Saturday Night Live in all his skits; only Eddie Murphy can successfully pull a spin-off of the OG Mister Rogers).
Transgender
“an umbrella term for the many ways in which people might experience and/or present and express (or live out) their gender identities differently from people whose sense of gender identity is congruent with their biological sex.”
Mark Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 20.
Sometimes, I may use “trans” or “trans*” to signify an umbrella term that includes transgender identities and identities that aren’t strictly transgender (eg, nonbinary). Speaking of, that’s the next word!
Nonbinary
“a wide range of gender identities that are not exclusively male or female, or masculine or feminine”
Sprinkle, Preston M.. Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (p. 30). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.
According to the author, nonbinary can be interchanged with genderqueer, pangender, or genderfluid. Can someone please clarify?
Gender dysphoria (changed from “Gender Identity Disorder” in DSM-V)
“a psychological term for the distress some people feel when their internal sense of self doesn’t match their biological sex”
Sprinkle, Preston M.. Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (p. 31). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.
Here’s the big idea with gender dysphoria: LISTEN to and love the person in their dysphoria instead of attempting to rationalize their experience. I’m not saying that we should discard biblical truth, but we are to “rightly handle to word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). If this is a point I’ve repeated, then thanks for listening to me repeat something that’s crucial. We must handle the truth with caution. The Christian faith isn’t meant to use as a weapon on other people, but to point them to the Creator of the Universe who made the person with dysphoria in his image and likeness, sensitively pointing out that we are innately sinful (everyone is, save for Jesus), and that in love Jesus came to die on the cross and rise from the dead!
Christians, we must affirm their real struggles, validate their humanity, and help them in any way possible. God forbid that their struggles tarnish and don’t fit your mold of what kind of neighbor you suppose them to be!
Transition
Transition pertains to the actual process of a woman transitioning to a man, or vice versa. This consists of social transition (eg, what they wear, and the name and pronouns they use), hormonal transition (hormone-replacement therapy, such as testosterone for females transitioning to males, or estrogen for males transitioning to females), and surgical transition (eg, double mastectomy, hysterectomy, ovariectomy, penis construction; or breast implants, cosmetic changes, vulvar and vaginal construction).
Most trans*-people have not surgically transitioned, and likely never will.
I always assumed that whenever someone identified as trans, the person went through all the changes – new name, pronouns, wardrobe, and parts! But GUESS WUT (chikin butt)??
Intersex
“A term used to describe the sixteen or so medical conditions where a person is born with one or more atypical features in their sexual anatomy or sex chromosomes”
Sprinkle, Preston M.. Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (p. 34). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.
Intersex doesn’t stand for either transgender or “neither male nor female sex”. Which now brings up the next topic: (in Abe Simpson’s voice): SEX.
Philly Dad on the Run 