A Letter to Trans Non-Binary People about to enter Christian Seminary
Its Trans Awareness Week 2022 and I have feelings
This is an edited and expanded version of performance poetry piece I wrote the year after I graduated seminary (2018).
Dear you,
When I was where you are, I did not realize I felt so alone. I did not know there were a few who roamed these halls before me and learned what I would soon learn, here. I came to hear their stories in song-like whispers because lives like ours and words like these take time to be found. They take time to find, time to sing, time to hear, and time to learn.
I have learned how to walk into the room and know that people will either not see me at all or lack the education to know what to do with me. I have flicked my eyes around the room looking for the eyes of someone who knows that I am there. I have been, and continue to be, assumed to be just another cis gay trying to understand why this bible tells me that I am a sin.
I have gone into the chapel. I have stood up for the opening prayer. The pastor's lips open with an exuberant "Brothers and Sisters in Christ!” To those around me I am still standing, internally I fall back into my seat with the crossing of the last T. I’ve learned to see that Progressive Christians are always good at marking the L's the G's the B's and the T's on their banners, their flags, their doorways, but are never really good at opening their spaces to the people for whom those letters are worn in their irises.
I am the deep breath trying to tell myself, “It’s okay.” Just like the rest of this cis-sexist world, this space was designed to be sacred but not designed to hold me. It was not formed like divine clay. Its life was not breathed into it like Adam's lungs in the garden. It treats me like a stolen rib. I have learned it is hard to breathe here.
When someone calls me "sir,” or claims me as a "man of God,” or meets me with silent stares at my expression.
I have tried to find that silent hoping. Hoping invisibility will protect me.
I have tried to reach for my voice to respond but the sounds were crucified on my vocal chords. My body learned to anticipate, and sometimes feel, their hammer.
My left arm nailed down with his ignorance.
My right arm nailed down by her guilt.
My ankles nailed one on top of the other by the "He uses they/them pronouns", "I have a trans friend", "They/them pronouns are just grammatically incorrect I don't mean to be disrespectful."
He knows that if I correct her grammar, his respect, her assumptions on my body. Then he or she can drive the nails deeper into the beams of my “make-shift” identity.
I know the suffocation that comes when your voice hangs from your throat.
I remember the ways they circle and circle around me, making the circle ever wider, without weeping, repeating phrases like psalms, "unlearning is hard," "I'll get it next time I promise," and "I've never met one of you before."
Who knew an “open space” could be so claustrophobic?
And I know that unlearning is hard. But being constantly erased and forgotten is harder.
I know that just maybe they'll get it next time but what if there isn't a next time? Because the depressions on my forearms turn to bruises on the worst days from just trying to hold myself steady. Fighting the fall into embodying that statistical prophecy. Because every time they talk about about trans people, they sing this refrain: “transgender people, especially transgender people of color, have higher rates of suicide, depression, and homicide than cisgender people.” Again and again, never wondering about the conditions that bring us to that edge.
I know that they think they have never met one of us before because this world we live in isn't built to hold identities that haven’t been ingrained into our culture by dominance and evil.
Once again, I’ve tried to open my mouth. I’ve cried and begged someone to take me off this cross… only to realize the easiest way to get down is by death.
Our world is too good at putting trans and non-binary people back into cis-centric shaped coffins…
I continued to weep… cry… call out the people in your life. “Why have you forsaken me to chip off my nail polish during class, cut my hair, silence my voice for the comfort of your classroom!”
Still. And still. There are days when I want to be seen.
Those days, I have learned to perform to their standard of "transness" to do so. And they praise me for my bravery. Celebrate how “I am finally living my truth.” Tell me that I look so fierce in my “avant-garde expression.” Not knowing that they cut out my tongue and I am trying my damn hardest to sew it back on with whatever shoes are on my feet.
They paraded my body, my narrative, my existence as a mark that they have been forgiven of their homophobic sins… not realizing that damage they have done to my entire being…not realizing they are not the firsts to participate in this parade…not realizing they only treat my like this because I am white so when they bring me out it’s that perfect balance of the socially acceptable whiteness and that edgy queerness that makes their church “look better.”
It doesn't make their church look better.
None of this makes their church look better.
This “open, affirming, reconciling, welcoming” church that pledges to shed more light on the sacred worth of evangelizing to the children of the people who died in the wake of their legacy of rejection.
These faith movements that claim to affirm and welcome don’t know how to imagine a church where we are not objects for their fragile saving. They read our names each November, passing our lives through their tongues like prayer beads. Progressive and pious in words that fail to integrate our wisdom into the fabric of their being.
Affirmation ≠ Liberation.
Silence = Death.
Who, then get confused when we don’t want to show up. They get mad at us when we leave. They did all this work for us. They designed pronoun name tags for us. They put in gender neutral bathrooms for us. They bought the right books for us. How can we be so ungrateful?
Not realizing, more often than not, we are coming to these halls to save our traditions for future trans and queer people. Not realizing we learn rather quickly many of our traditions are not worth saving. Our trans ancestors have taught us how to dance in the fall of Empire. Not realizing we come here to join ourselves in partnership with the Sacred. Not realizing our “make-shift” identities make pathways to salvation without the need for the “Salvation.”
Not realizing we see them fail at the social project of gender everyday while policing us to perform our genders perfectly for them. For if we fail, we prove ourselves to their cis-centric gaze as trends, as myths, and deceptors.
Never pausing to walk through their own journeys of gender.
Never pausing to cultivate the empathy required to meet us.
Never asking us how we would like to be loved.
Cishets make a lot of assumptions.
I did not have anyone to warn me what this journey would become. I survived this process, in part because that is what I have done my entire life, because I have the privilege to do it, and because I learned to gather the song of whispers.
A song I am just now learning to sing. It sounds like Pauli, Virginia, Roberto, and Leelah. It sounds like Cameron, Joy, Kori, and Johnny. It sounds like Katie, Ezra, Adam, and Andrew. It sounds like James, David, Carla, and Indy. It sounds like named, unnamed, renamed, and naming. It is a song of whispers that carry our wisdom to pulpits and street corners. It is a song of whispers, you learn to hear as you wander through the path of your survival.
I pray, as this letter moves to an end, that your journey is softer than ours. I pray that the sharp looks come blunted. I pray people stop before they speak, and connect with intention. I pray you are not alone and that there are people in the classrooms, who share the look in your iris. I pray if you are alone there is space outside your institution that can hold you and love you, and invite you to do the same. I pray that the crucifixion of our voices, our siblings, and our spirits will cease.
We need no more martyrs to carry this day.
I pray with my questions: are you finding your thing? You know, that thing in this place that makes your heart ring? Are you nerding out while you write? Are you laughing while you cry? Is there a faculty person who shares and delights in your light? Through what seems like endless and meaningless essays and reading, are you tending to your voice and the voices you believe in? Are you surviving? Are you thriving? Or are you just getting by? Are you asking the question; is this going to help me and my community flourish? Or is this just a stepping stone onto your next path? Are you eating? Are you drinking一if not, I can send you some food or some money. Are you finding the whispers of the songs of those of us that came before?
If you don’t make it all the way through, know that I love you.
If you are taking your time to prevent the system from crushing your spirit, know that I love you.
If you are powering through, dedicated to the graduation date and survival, know that I love you.
No matter your path. If you name it survival or not. There is a chorus of those who walked before, small but mighty we are, singing a celebration song.
Congratulating you on your survival.
With love,
Nathan Bakken MDiv
Boston University School of Theology, Class of 2017
I'm thinking of how nourishing this must have been to be a part of.