Frying Pans From Heaven: When A Transgender Person Sends You An Email…

K is angry, and I don’t blame her. She’s felt silenced and othered, marginalized and blamed for her own experience. In her continued letter to Christians, she says:

Please don’t shut us up about using the word “transgender” and using the vocabulary developed thereof. The Christianity I received has literally zero language to talk about what we’re going through and identify and take care of the hurts. This is basic level self-care/health care stuff we’re talking about here. It would be like forbidding the use of band-aids or witch hazel because you don’t know where to find them mentioned in the bible.

Please, for the love of God, do not try to stop us from identifying as LGBTA+ and from caring what happens to non-Christian people who do. When I first came out to myself, only myself, I figured I didn’t identify with that greater community, I was already too healed and privileged, what right do I have? As I lived more into my true identity, I started physically feeling the pain that happened to other queer people around the world, like Orlando.

I’m not saying that I felt a spiritualized moral sympathy for the suffering of other human beings around the world. I’m saying I felt an involuntary, *crippling* physical chest pain at reading Orlando news that I thought I was going to read disinterested and objectively. I’m saying my heart caught me up in tears at the words, “The Prayers of Queer Folk”…

I’m not talking about moral and spiritual practices that I’m consciously choosing to be superior to you — this is my body doing this to me, same reaction as when you eat cheese and your lactose intolerance acts up.

This is us, okay? This is our lactose intolerance. Please don’t force milk down our throats just because you don’t have lactose intolerance and don’t understand why it’s a big deal. We’re not doing this to be righteous or to construct a secular identity, we’re doing this because our body hurts and we care about our siblings and this is *how* we take care of ourselves and stop being sick about it.

K, email dated 7/23/16

On the next page, read about K’s experience with Christianity as a form of capitalism.