Absolutely - and Dr. Sprinkle will hide behind the fact that he has spoken with trans people who agree with him on certain things, but that’s not exactly really getting solid representation. It’s infuriating, because even if he wants to speak against transition, wouldn’t it make his argument stronger if he could engage on the actual facts?
In your article, you cited studies backing up your claim that for the most part, transgender people are happy with their transition, surgical and otherwise. Thanks for doing this work.
I just happened across this; I intend to run down and read the rest of the series.
I wanted to comment on one point: Sprinkle says"I don’t think gender should override sex where there is incongruence.”
That is precisely backwards. Your sex is about one thing: reproduction. It's about your role in maintaining the survival of the species, period. Your gender is about your sense of self. It's your psychology, your personality, it's how you relate to, sense, perceive, and interact with the world, it's an expression of Who. You. Are. It's how you present yourself day to day, moment to moment. So when there is incongruence between sex and gender, gender should absolutely take precedence, because your sex doesn't give a damn about all that - and your gender does.
For context, my one-sentence self-identification is a 76 year-old, straight cis male.
Thank you for saying that, Larry! And I'll add that even reprorductive sex is just one of several definitions of sex, and not all of them are the same in any given person (for example, you can have XX "males" and XY "females").
But I agree with you - when I think about what makes me *me*, what is most important? the genitalia I was born with? Or everything about my personality and character? To try to make my gender conform with my assigned sex at birth would require a far greater change to who I am than my transition, which is about bringing my sex characteristics in line with who I know I am as a person.
I would also accept, from a Ph.D. in New Testament, a solid theology of the body based on the New Testament. I haven't read the book, but I feel like that is not what we get here.
Yeah that’s the thing, right? He *tries* to do some of that in the earlier chapters that Billie has written about, but (my opinion) he fails pretty badly. But if he were sticking only to theology, I’d at least only have objections on the grounds of opinion, not just being wrong on facts (which will come up a lot in the next part).
“I don’t think gender should override sex where there is incongruence” is quite the interesting stance for someone whose religion continually emphasizes the importance of the immaterial soul/spirit over the physical body. If the body is a temple for the soul/spirit which animates it, without which the body is not alive while the soul continues after death, and given the emphasis on specifically a person’s *soul* being saved through belief in Christ, why is the body (sex) given primacy over the soul (gender) in this matter and this one alone? Seems odd.
Absolutely! Not to mention both the first person of the trinity and the Holy Spirit are understood as being gendered, but neither has a physical body at all. Pretty clearly settles that gender exists apart from sexed bodies, and then the only question is whether the externally visible sex characteristics are a perfect indicator of gender (and there is no reason to believe this to be true).
A writer who truly cares about trans people would follow the first rule of writing about any community: "If about them, not without them."
Absolutely - and Dr. Sprinkle will hide behind the fact that he has spoken with trans people who agree with him on certain things, but that’s not exactly really getting solid representation. It’s infuriating, because even if he wants to speak against transition, wouldn’t it make his argument stronger if he could engage on the actual facts?
In your article, you cited studies backing up your claim that for the most part, transgender people are happy with their transition, surgical and otherwise. Thanks for doing this work.
Thanks! I try very hard to rigorously cite my research - there will be a lot more of that in the next sections!
I just happened across this; I intend to run down and read the rest of the series.
I wanted to comment on one point: Sprinkle says"I don’t think gender should override sex where there is incongruence.”
That is precisely backwards. Your sex is about one thing: reproduction. It's about your role in maintaining the survival of the species, period. Your gender is about your sense of self. It's your psychology, your personality, it's how you relate to, sense, perceive, and interact with the world, it's an expression of Who. You. Are. It's how you present yourself day to day, moment to moment. So when there is incongruence between sex and gender, gender should absolutely take precedence, because your sex doesn't give a damn about all that - and your gender does.
For context, my one-sentence self-identification is a 76 year-old, straight cis male.
Thank you for saying that, Larry! And I'll add that even reprorductive sex is just one of several definitions of sex, and not all of them are the same in any given person (for example, you can have XX "males" and XY "females").
But I agree with you - when I think about what makes me *me*, what is most important? the genitalia I was born with? Or everything about my personality and character? To try to make my gender conform with my assigned sex at birth would require a far greater change to who I am than my transition, which is about bringing my sex characteristics in line with who I know I am as a person.
I would also accept, from a Ph.D. in New Testament, a solid theology of the body based on the New Testament. I haven't read the book, but I feel like that is not what we get here.
Yeah that’s the thing, right? He *tries* to do some of that in the earlier chapters that Billie has written about, but (my opinion) he fails pretty badly. But if he were sticking only to theology, I’d at least only have objections on the grounds of opinion, not just being wrong on facts (which will come up a lot in the next part).
omg, when I saw the meme I already knew what book you were talking about. absolutely loved this, and always love how meticulous your work is Celeste!
Thank you, Krispin! Glad you liked the meme 😂
Next chapter’s review is going to get long, because it’s about ROGD and nearly every sentence requires some kind of comment!
“I don’t think gender should override sex where there is incongruence” is quite the interesting stance for someone whose religion continually emphasizes the importance of the immaterial soul/spirit over the physical body. If the body is a temple for the soul/spirit which animates it, without which the body is not alive while the soul continues after death, and given the emphasis on specifically a person’s *soul* being saved through belief in Christ, why is the body (sex) given primacy over the soul (gender) in this matter and this one alone? Seems odd.
Absolutely! Not to mention both the first person of the trinity and the Holy Spirit are understood as being gendered, but neither has a physical body at all. Pretty clearly settles that gender exists apart from sexed bodies, and then the only question is whether the externally visible sex characteristics are a perfect indicator of gender (and there is no reason to believe this to be true).