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RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION<\/span>: And now just Eve\u2019s opinion, in case y\u2019all are wondering: The more I think and read about transgender experiences and issues, the more I\u2019m convinced that the Catholic Church can and (I pray) will accommodate some, though as I said above not all, forms of transgendered identity. Specifically, I think Catholic theology affirms many transsexuals\u2019 accounts (and even, as I\u2019ve tried to suggest in this review, offers added strength to their position).<\/p>\n

The Church has not, as far as I know, spoken with any authority on this subject yet. A search at the Vatican website for \u201ctranssexual\u201d and \u201ctransgender\u201d (and variants thereof) produced one result, right here<\/a>, which as you\u2019ll see does not address \u201cwhat should I as a transgendered person do?\u201d at all. \u201cIntersexed\u201d and \u201cintersex\u201d produced zero results. Possibly I am not running this search right, but as I said, so far I haven\u2019t run across anyone, on any side of these issues, citing saints\u2019 theological writing or Church teaching which specifically addresses transgendered issues rather than simply sex difference in general. I\u2019ll be looking for more books and articles from or addressing specifically Catholic, ex-Catholic, or dissenting (by which I mean, heretical!) Catholic positions. (Recommendations are always welcome!)<\/p>\n

As for my own stance, you can build this argument yourself if I give you the premises, I think: <\/p>\n

1. Surgery to give intersexed people bodies as much as possible aligned with their experienced sex is reconstructive, not mutilating (see above), thus a-okay by the Church.<\/p>\n

2. Our physical bodies are composed not solely of big obvious parts like arms and penises, but also brain structures and hormones. Those, too, are our flesh. Those, too, we can\u2019t gnostically reject.<\/p>\n

3. We now know that there are differences in those areas for many transsexuals. I expect that we\u2019ll learn much more about these differences with The Inevitable Forward March of Progress.<\/p>\n

4.There\u2019s nothing wrong<\/span> with being a woman, or being a man\u2013those are good things according to God. Thus transforming one\u2019s body to be more obviously a woman or a man is radically unlike e.g. anorexia or apotemnophilia, two disorders to which anti-trans writers often compare transsexuality.<\/p>\n

There, now you can run the argument yourself.<\/p>\n

As I said, I don\u2019t think the Church can accept all possible transgendered identities. The \u201calways already a woman\u201d\/\u201calways already a man\u201d autobiographies Prosser discusses in chapter two are much more in line with Catholic thought, I think, than Feinberg\u2019s stance. Also, it\u2019s pretty obvious that we\u2019re just at the very beginning of trying to work through the theology here, and so even the rudimentary argument-premises above only scratch the surface. (I\u2019m not sure I need such a scientistic understanding of \u201cthe flesh\u201d to get to an acceptance of transsexuality, for example, but putting the case this way was the easiest way for me to understand and express it.) But I do want to note that the theological issues here only barely overlap with the issues in Gay Catholic Whatnot; \u201cLGBT\u201d is an uneasy cultural alliance, not a Catholic theological category! <\/p>\n

So yeah\u2026 that\u2019s where I\u2019m at.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"