Image sourced from https://glaad.org/tdov/
As well as being Easter Sunday, today is International Trans Day of Visibility. To celebrate this, I wanted to honour a number of trans people whose lives have impacted me in a personal way (whether they’re aware of it or not).
I sat on the fence about whether I post something for Trans Day of Visibility, because on a day that’s about trans people, I didn’t want to centre myself, a cis man, and detract from the many trans voices we should be hearing from instead. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be another person who stays silent and leaves marginalised people to do all the emotional labour of creating space for themselves in the world.
So I thought using my platform to centre stories of trans people and amplify their voices seemed like the right thing to do. I’ve spent the weekend reflecting on how the many trans people in my life have impacted me personally, and I was struck by the sheer variety of stories. There’s a reason for the saying, ‘if you know one trans person, you know one trans person.’
Before I get the religious conservatives coming at me with their concerns about a Christian leader celebrating Trans Day of Visibility, I want to suggest that if a demographic of people merely becoming visible is upsetting to you or offensive to your worldview, please reflect on why that is. Is this really a battle you need to be fighting?
Each of these people have impacted me in meaningful ways and have contributed to making me the person I am today, and I’m deeply grateful these people exist and contribute so much to the world.
Thea (she/her)
Thea was the first person I ever came out to. Strictly speaking, I don’t think I technically ‘came out’ to her (at least not that I remember)—to me it just felt like there was an unspoken understanding that I was queer and I didn’t need to declare that to her. It felt like that was a given, and we could move on to speaking about what our experiences of queerness was like for us. She was the first person I got to speak to out loud about my sexuality and my faith and the way they intersected, and I still remember exactly where I was standing in the back streets of Canberra that night as I had a really vulnerable phone call saying things aloud that I’d never shared with another human before.
At the time, Thea presented as an effeminate gay man (her choice of words when I ran this draft past her yesterday), and I felt a certain solidarity together, especially as we were both able to talk about how our queerness and faith related to each other. Now she is a Muslim woman and while many years have passed since we had regular contact, I still feel a solidarity with her. I’ve known her for 12 years and our families are related by marriage, and I know there’s history from previous chapters of my life, or certain family dynamics that she gets that not a lot of other people would understand.
Thea is also a creative artist and a skilled musician—it’s one of several things we quickly bonded over. You can support her music here: https://ffm.to/trwithstand
Earth (they/them)
Earth is my younger sibling and the most creative one in the family. They are one of the most unique people I know, and I massively admire their ability to effortlessly exist outside of conventional societal expectations, on almost every level. A lot of my early understanding of neurodivergent experiences I learned from Earth. I love their ability to observe an arbitrary social rule and then decide that has no value for them and then proceed to live authentically in a way aligned with their own values and personality.
This shows in their outside-the-box art creations, whether they’re quirky woodland aesthetics or destigmatising taboos and normalising all bodies and all body parts as beautiful. You can support their art Insta page here: https://www.instagram.com/off.with_the.fairies/
Earth has an irrepressible sense of justice and compassion, and like a lot of autistic people, they have the ability to resist becoming desensitised to the constant systemic injustice we’re exposed to every day. They’re one of those people who still posts about the Palestinian genocide every single day: because violence should never bore us. They might not know it, but their perspective is one of the things that grounds me in a chaotic world and keeps orienting me towards justice.
Sam (they/he)
Sam was one of the friends I made in my first Bible study group when I moved out of home for university and started going to a new church. I got to spend every Wednesday night in Sam’s home building community together, praying for each other, and reading the Bible. I appreciated Sam’s ability to think critically with the logical approach of an engineer’s brain, and I benefited from this level of critical thinking applied to studying the Bible.
While Sam’s relationship with the church has been complicated and painful (and is their story to share, not mine), I’ve admired the way they’ve held onto their faith over all these years. I don’t know if straight Christians understand how much tenacity it takes to still fight for your faith week after week after week, even when you know the people who self-describe as “Christians” would be more comfortable if you stopped coming to church. I don’t know if they understand that it doesn’t really feel like a choice, much less a heroic act of resilience… for many of us, our longing to know our creator feels more like an inescapable spirituality that has often been deeply inconvenient for us long before it started to become life-giving again.
Sam is a legend at nuanced communication and I’m indebted to their regular advocacy as they share their personal experiences in Facebook posts. During the marriage equality plebiscite in 2017, I was bombarded with well-meaning conservative Christians asking for advice on how to approach the postal vote wisely, and I had the opportunity to run an informal focus group dialoguing on these questions together. The part I remember most vividly was that when I reached out to Sam and invited them and their wife to come and contribute their perspectives, they were so generous and gracious in vulnerably stepping into a space full of conservative Christians and gently sharing their insights for the benefit of many Christians who I’m sure they would have felt unsafe around.
Sam was probably the first person that modelled to me that a solidarity between Affirming Christians and Side B Christians was not only possible but lifegiving. While many Affirming folk would understandably feel uncomfortable about my more conservative Side B beliefs, Sam showed it was possible to have a mutually respectful and edifying friendship while holding different beliefs. My evangelical environment taught me it was impossible to have meaningful fellowship with Affirming people, even questioning how they could be Christians, but Sam showed me our union with Christ is so much stronger and more unifying than this evangelical fragility. Looking back at how my younger religious zealot self, I realise today how gracious and respectful Sam has been at holding space for me, and I’m so grateful for their formative influence in my life.
Ed (he/him)
Ed is one of those people who wouldn’t even know who I am, but whose existence reminds me that representation really matters. Ed is a public figure who I first knew as my favourite presenter on ABC Classic FM and who became the first public figure I saw transition.
Ed is also a great example of someone whose story and identity is so much than their gender. Ed’s early impact on my life as a young teenager was his passion for classical music and communicating about it in ways that brought it to life for listeners all over the world.
In my final year studying at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), Ed gave a keynote speech to my cohort that affected the trajectory of my life and still impacts me to this day. In that talk, he redefined for me what it meant to be an artist and what it meant to be a human who took the personal qualities cultivated by our artistic practice and channeled them into the whole of our lives. That talk liberated me to pursue other expressions of my values in alternative career pathways and personal opportunities. He talked about qualities like empathy, attunement, and courage that our musical training cultivated in us, and gave us permission to consider radically different career trajectories that transferred these strengths in unexpected ways beyond the music we made.
I decided soon afterwards to pursue pastoral ministry (and later, school chaplaincy) instead of music, after years of rigorous training. I still think about how much that keynote address altered the trajectory of my life and empowered me to pursue other pathways not as a ‘failed’ musician but as someone who’d been transformed by my art and took that value into all of my life. That mindset has stayed with me ever since.
Ed writes powerfully about his experiences and is most famous for his award-winning book Danger Music documenting his year teaching music to kids in Afghanistan. You can view his published books here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/17003426.Eddie_Ayres
On Friday while watching a friend’s Good Friday concert, I was surprised to see Ed again, this time as the reader of poetry in between sacred choral works. I couldn’t find him to introduce myself after the concert, but I hope one day I’ll be able to share the impact of his representation.
Vic (they/them)
CW: Suicide (skip to the next heading if you need)
This one’s hard to talk about because I don’t want to appropriate someone else’s story when they don’t have a voice, and because in some ways Vic is the friend I never got to meet.
One year ago this week, Vic died by suicide. They were dearly loved by many in the Side B community, and I had the privilege of sharing community in several online spaces together with Vic. During the early days of covid, my Saturday mornings were marked by a regular group video call with members of the Side B community including Vic.
Vic loved nothing more than singing worship music with friends, and because they lived in the US, we looked forward to the day we’d finally be in the same room and be able to jam together. They were also pivotal in bringing together the ‘Bsian’ community of Side B Asians.
In June last year, I finally made it to the US when I attended the Revoice conference. That was the week Vic and I were supposed to finally meet in real life, and we’d talked about how we’d do a worship singalong together. I never got to meet Vic in person, but on the first night of the conference, some members of the Bsian community introduced themselves to me and welcomed me into their group, giving me their matching T-shirt: Brown Jesus holding a bubble tea.
I got to experience inclusion and friendship in the community Vic had created, even after Vic had gone.
I wish I’d had the chance to give Vic a real hug, though.
Whenever I hear of yet another study showing that the suicide rates of trans people (especially non-binary people) is many times higher than that of cisgender people, those numbers now have a name and a face in my mind.
A while back I saw an image on social media that simply said, “The trans agenda is an average life expectancy.” It floored me. I don’t care what your theology of gender is, if you’re a Christian and you believe in the doctrine of all humanity being made in the image of God, you have to care about this shit.
Rest in peace, Vic. I pray you’ve found a soft place to land in Jesus’ arms and that you have an absolute blast singing worship songs with some angelic backup singers until we’re united in the new creation.
To support a charity dedicated to suicide prevention for queer youth, visit https://give.thetrevorproject.org/give/63307
Blake (they/them)
Blake is one of my newer friends but has quickly become a fixture in my life in the months that I’ve known them. I love that about queer ND friendships: once you find your people, you don’t need to waste any time before fully trusting them and sharing life together with all its vulnerabilities.
Blake has been a cornerstone in helping me establish a community around regular Queer Worship Nights. Blake’s faith and their heart for prayer is such an encouragement to me. While we have different experiences of our own faiths, we share a deep spiritual fellowship. In Blake’s own words:
I grew up agnostic, hearing my parents deconstruct religion from a young age and discussing many religious beliefs. By adulthood, I had little interest in looking deeply at the Bible. I believed it was a collection of old books, curated by the Roman empire to serve a political purpose. Yet, in my heart, I retained a sense of knowing a loving creator.
Over coffee with an evangelical pastor, I was encouraged to learn about Jesus. I pushed back on anti-LGBT+ beliefs; transphobia was against my heartfelt spiritual senses, and I knew theologies of homophobia and transphobia were crimes against humanity and God. So, I went looking in the Bible, to try to understand where this had come from.
I read about how Jesus and his early followers treated marginalised and intersectional people. It’s clear to me that they loved them, and included them as their own, regardless of race, ability, sex or gender. This attitude was clearly expressed in the act of baptising “the Ethiopian eunuch.”
Almost immediately, I came across a revelation: Matthew 19:12. To me, this passage is a clear and loving acknowledgement of gender-queer people, by Jesus. This is the passage Matt and I first bonded over, and we have been good friends ever since.
[This is the same passage that I’m currently doing my Masters research project on, and I love hearing queer people’s perspectives on Scripture.]
Kris (he/they)
Kris’s friendship has taught me a lot about the nuances of
intersectionality, and in particular unexpected intersections of queerness and
religious beliefs. While most Christians would make certain assumptions of a
trans man’s theological beliefs, and most queer people would make assumptions
about evangelical Christians, Kris embodies the reality that someone can be
both an evangelical Christian and a trans man.
That intersection is a lonely one to navigate, and I admire Kris’s
determination and integrity as he walks the path of a pioneer. He’s a man who
knows who he is.
He occupies an even more niche intersection of being both trans-affirming
and Side B. So many conservative Christians foolishly assume a trans person’s
theology is ‘wishy-washy’ and that they lazily interpret the Bible however it’s
convenient for them, but how do you square that with simultaneously holding to
traditional biblical sexual ethics that comes at a great personal sacrifice to
yourself? That’s far from the easy way out. At the same time, unlike a lot of
Side B folk who treat Affirming queer Christians as the enemy, Kris embodies a
beautiful posture of generosity and solidarity with Affirming/Side A Christians
and attends an affirming church. I can’t think of many people who are able to
share regular fellowship with both affirming communities and evangelical Christians,
but Kris finds a way to do both regularly. He embodies a complex
intersectionality that overturns naïve assumptions merely by existing. I love
it.
I also appreciate Kris’s devotion to studying the Bible thoughtfully. He
applies all the rigour of an evangelical hermeneutic and is always
energetically expanding his biblical knowledge. He’s approached several Bible
colleges to explore the possibility of theological study, but unfortunately
most of the evangelical colleges in this country aren’t sure what to do with a
trans person (or worse, they are sure and it’s not great).
When I see people like Kris still earnestly pursing their faith, I know
there’s nothing nominal about their Christianity.
I wish I had the time (and word count) to honour more of the trans people that have impacted my life. There are so many I haven’t even mentioned. I love you all, and I hope you feel seen by me. Visibility isn’t much to ask for, so I pray that the world would not only see you but value you everything you are. Happy Trans Day of Visibility!
Singled Out 