Theology in the Raw - 823: Trans* and Christian: Lesli Hudson-Reynolds

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Lesli has been a great friend and mentor over the years. We talk about all things trans*, gender, church, Jesus, pronouns, and all that fun stuff. Lesli is the Gender Identity Ministry Director for Posture Shift and a contributor to the highly acclaimed resource "Guiding Families." Learn more about Lesli here Check out Guiding Families Lesli currently serves as Gender Identity Ministry Director for Posture Shift. They mentor youth and adults seeking God’s will in their gender identity. They are also de­vel­op­ing a re­source de­signed to thought­ful­ly en­gage church lead­er­ship in the gender conversation. Prior to joining the Posture Shift team, Lesli spent 15 years on the road and in regional theater as Pro­duc­tion Stage Mana­ger for numerous Broad­way musi­cals, ballets, and plays. They still escape to NY to see shows whenever possible. Social: Twitter: @superduke1 FB: @postureshift Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have a special announcement to make. This is something that many of you maybe already know, but I have not yet made mention of it on the podcast. I have a book coming out on February 1st. It's called Embodied. Subtitle is Transgender Identities, the Church and What the Bible Has to Say. This has been the most difficult book I've ever written, including my PhD dissertation. It's been difficult for so many different reasons. Number one, I had to read and study so many different disciplines. This wasn't just a book about the Bible.

It definitely talks about what the Bible says about male and female sex identities, the difference between sex and gender, gender stereotypes, and several other things. Talks about eunuchs, talks about intersex people, and on and on it goes. And on and on it goes. But I also had to dig into a lot of psychology, biology, gender studies, history. And then add to that. Well, and then I had to watch tons of YouTube videos, listen to a ton of podcasts, because there's a lot going on in on on on on, on the line online, in the internet world, in this conversation, there's a lot of stuff going on in popular among popular YouTubers and some really helpful conversations actually. And some less than helpful, but things I need to be informed on anyway.

The book is available for pre-order again. It's called embodied transgender identity is the church and what the Bible has to say. So you is available for pre-order. Again, it's called Embodied Transgender Identity as a Church and What the Bible Has to Say. So you can check it out at Amazon. Please do pre-order it if it's something that is of interest to you. And I think that this conversation, the greater transgender conversation is something every Christian needs to become somewhat informed on. I don't say that about a lot of things. I mean, you know, it's like, there's a lot to keep up on a lot going on in our world today. I think this one is actually an incredibly important conversation.

So go check it out, um, at Amazon. All right. And it really, well, the reason why I chose this podcast to, uh, talk about my book is because my guest today, Leslie Hudson Reynolds, is the one to whom I dedicated this book to. Leslie has been a great friend over the years, a mentor. Leslie has experienced lifelong gender dysphoria. Leslie identifies as non-binary. Leslie used to identify as trans. I mean, trans with the asterisk is kind of the broader umbrella category that Leslie would belong under. But Leslie has a pretty amazing story. And Leslie, well, I'm going to let Leslie tell their story. I have told Leslie's story many, many times. If you've heard me speak on any occasion, you have probably heard me talk about Leslie. So I am so excited about this conversation.

Leslie and I, we don't agree on everything. You'll see us kind of get into a little bit. And I just, when Leslie talks, I tend to listen and process and reflect. And I do that in this episode. There's never a thoughtful word. Oh, wait. Leslie, I'm so sorry. Never a thoughtless word that comes out of Leslie's mouth. You may not agree with everything they say, but everything that Leslie says is worthy of reflection and consideration. Leslie has an amazing heart and amazing mind.

Please welcome back to the show my good friend, Leslie Hudson Reynolds. All right, hey friends, I'm here with my very good friend and partner in crime, the one and only Leslie Hudson Reynolds. Leslie, thanks so much for being back on Theology Narrow. My pleasure. So, why don't we start? I think a lot of people listening or watching, this is both YouTube and podcast. So for my podcasters, yeah, you can go check out my YouTube channel and watch this conversation if you want. I found a lot of people kind of either YouTubers or podcasters, like there's not a lot of crossovers. So that's why I've been doing kind of a bit of both. But's not a lot of crossovers so that's why i've been doing kind of bit of both but um leslie a lot of people listening are gonna know your story because i've told your

story probably more times than you have i can guarantee that for my audience that does not know who leslie is why don't you just give us a shortened maybe a short version of your really i mean i i hate that i hate i hate to even think of a short version because it's such a powerful story which is why i tell it so often um but yeah i want to jump into some other topics but who who is uh who is leslie well that's a very different story that's a very different version of my story so i'll go back and just answer give a shortened version of my story okay there we go um so i grew up in the church um

from my earliest memories i felt like i was a boy um was born uh had i'm having to change from biosex to a sex to sex assigned at birth that's a, that's a big shift in language right now. And that's something I'm having to, even as a trans person, I'm having to learn to deal with. So my sex assigned at birth was female, but I always felt like a boy. But as I said, my earliest memories are of being in the church. When I was around four years old, I had a crush on somebody that was on TV, knew that I was going to be their husband. I was going to be father to their children.

Obviously, at four, I didn't understand exactly what that entailed, but I just knew I was going to grow up and be a daddy. At one point, I was probably six or seven, I realized, okay, this is not what everyone else is experiencing. I'm not going to grow up to be a man. I'm going to grow up to be a woman, and that just didn't sit with me. So I was depressed very, very young. Accepted Christ when I was eight. As I said, church has always been a part of my life. Always had a heart for God. Always loved God. In high school, there was a sermon series that was going on about LGBT stuff. Of course, you know, we weren't using that kind of language back in the 80s and 90s. It was the homosexuals, you know, and, you know, I put that little Southern 22 because I grew up in Houston, Southern Baptist. You know, it wasn't really the

best place to grow up as a gay person. So I tried to mask it as best I could. I don't think I was very successful, but I tried. And so I went to my pastor after that. I just said, hey, this is something I'm struggling with. What do I do? And was basically asked to not come back at that point. I got involved in college ministry when I was in college because, as I said, I always loved God. I just at that point was very angry with Christians and to a certain extent afraid of some Christians. Ended up going into a chaplain ministry in a prison for one of

my summer missions and started dating one of the guards while I was there. And so I was preaching on Sunday morning and then going home to my girlfriend Sunday afternoon. And I just couldn't deal with that anymore and just completely left the church. I told my friends that I was bi, which is what I was saying I was at that time. I wasn't fully ready to go all the way to gay at that point. Was that real quick? I don't know if I've heard you say that.

Yeah. Do you feel like you did go through a stage where you were on the bisexual spectrum or was that just your way of dipping your toe in the water and you weren't really by? It was just kind of like, I don't want to fully say I'm lesbian or. Yeah. Yeah. I just didn't fully want to say that I was gay at that point. And that is please hear me say that is not to take away from an authentic. Sure. By that's what it looks like for me. So it's, yeah, it's very easy to say, no, a bi person is kind of passing through it. And

that was what I did in the 80s and 90s because I was afraid, well, it was in the 90s at that point, but just out of fear and to kind of see what people would do if, okay, there was still a possibility if I would go into a heterosexual marriage kind of thing, how they would react, because I could kind of figure out how they were going to react to me as a gay person based on that. And without fail, every single one of my friends just kind of vanished, every single one of my Christian friends. I ended up, for numerous reasons, moving back to Houston from the small East Texas town where I was going to college. Got really involved in the theater scene there and then ended up going into that as a career as a production stage manager. One of my assistants was throwing a party and said – a Halloween party, which I hate. I hate Halloween parties.

I just – I'm not a costume kind of person. Me too. So she asked me if I would come. I was like, well, only if there's going to be a cute girl there for me. And she was like, you know what? One of the people that's coming just broke up with somebody. I was like, excellent. I'll go.

And I met my wife at that party. And we were married for – we were together for six years, married married for four she had a, we found out right after we got married that she had a degenerative neurological disease and one of the one of the things, well she had numerous seizures, it was part of that and she ended up having a seizure

which caused a rather tragic accident and she passed away from, from the results of that accident. And so after that, I was just completely broken. I didn't know where to go, what to do. I was 35 and was having to find, you know, somebody to do a funeral. Sue had been volunteering at this, at this one church in town. And so I called the pastor. I was like, hey, can you guys, will you do the funeral? I know you don't know me, but you know my wife.

And without hesitation, he said, we'd be honored to. Absolutely, yes. And they ended up paying for it. They had food. People from the church did food for it and stuff. And it was the first time that i'd actually been treated kindly by a christian um and or for like a sold-out christian um you know let me put it that way um yeah and throughout the next two years he just really treated me as and pursued me honestly just as a

as a broken widow you know forget about being gay we hadn't even talked about the trans thing at that point um and and so just to be clear i identify as non-binary so under the trans umbrella um and about two years in i was like okay ready to finally i was i wasn't ready to move on but i was kind of in a point with my grief of okay do i want to think about moving on and and i just said you know god if there's anything else in me that you need to fix, I'm so broken right now. I don't ever want to have to go back to this. And I just really felt this super clear calling that I wasn't supposed to get into another relationship with a woman. And so I was able to start kind of delving into that with, uh, with this pastor who had, who had become

an incredible friend at that point. Um, and I guess the rest they say is, is history. Now I'm, now I'm in full-time ministries, the gender identity ministry director for posture shift. And, uh, it's kind of what I do for a living now is mentor trans and LGBT, uh, young people, mentor trans and LGBT young people, adults. I think the oldest person I'm mentoring right now is 72 and the youngest is 19. Wow. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So, so Leslie, the, the ministry they work for is lead them home ministry. Is it lead them home.org? Well, it's postureshift.com.

Oh, is that a separate entity now or well it's so lead them home it came from uh the wayland song saying that uh he will lead them home meaning god will lead all of us home um but it we're trying to kind of get away from us them language which is what it was intended to be so we're sticking with our posture shift branding and guiding families so it's posture shift.com or guidingfamilies.com which is uh the book that we have posture shift is our training for uh for pastors yeah i'm glad you told me so i i'll i'll be using that language more now um yeah i can see that's i and you know uh bill henson the the founder and leader of posture shift um is very very uh he he's not gonna say something that's gonna have

us versus them you know in a in a sloppy way the guy's so in tune with nuances of language more than anybody i've ever met um and that's, yeah, I remember him explaining the name. Because the name, yeah, when I heard it, I was like, that does kind of sound us versus them. Then he explained the background of it. And I'm like, oh, that makes sense, you know. But, yeah, that's a good move. Okay.

The church, so like the pastor, you know, his response was amazing. I guess I never really ask about the church, though, because sometimes you can have amazing pastors. I mean, it's a conservative evangelical church, right? I mean, for lack of better. Yeah. The only conservative church in that area, actually. In one of the highest lesbian per capita populations, right? The highest.

The highest. Northampton, Massachusetts has the highest per capita rate of lesbians. So when you were hanging out with that church for the first time, was that were they all pretty much like the pastor? I mean, or were you getting some weird looks? Was there any kind of tension there or were they all pretty awesome? They were all really awesome. Not to say they didn't make mistakes. There was one person who was like, Leslie, you're our prototype so we can figure out how to do this with the rest of the community, which made me feel not so great. But it was meant in love. Because at that point, like being around straight couples was like super weird for me. You know, it was just everyone that I met, I assumed was gay. And it was like, straight people were the oddity. And so to kind of completely have flip flopped that world, you know, I made some, some pretty catastrophic mistakes in relationships. So their grace towards me has, has absolutely shaped the way I'm able to be gracious towards other people with LGBT conversation now. Okay.

You mentioned that you identify as non-binary. You used to identify as trans, right? Can you explain maybe – I know there's a lot of overlap and whatever and people use it different ways. But how would you make a distinction between a trans identity versus a non-binary identity? Well, so trans is the umbrella term. So one does not preclude the other. Transgender versus non-binary. I would say that transgender typically, and once again, language is constantly evolving and is different from person to person. Transgender typically is someone who does identify within the binary of male and or female.

For me, why I say I'm non-binary, and I hate to keep beating a dead horse on this, but I specifically say this for me. I'm not trying to prescribe it on anybody else. If I were to say it came completely naturally to me, and when I say natural, I mean as natural as picking up a pencil with my right hand kind of natural. I would have transitioned to male by this point in my life. I feel like God is telling me not to transition, that that's just not part of my story right now. But when I hear she and her pronouns, or if I'm like dressing super effeminately, that causes me to want to self-harm.

And so for me, being non-binary is my way of following God to the best of my ability, albeit imperfectly, which all of us are following Christ imperfectly if we're really honest with ourselves. It's me doing – following Christ to the best of my ability with my gender identity. Okay. Yeah. So your pronouns, they, them, it's taken me a while. pronouns they them um it's taken me a while uh i i feel like i i'm for the most part i i i'm getting them and i'm um i don't know if you've noticed yeah okay um i've got it yeah several stories there but um can you yeah can you explain maybe again for somebody who's just like, I have no category for this. What do you mean you don't like she, her? You know, why do I say they, them?

You know, can you just maybe help us understand why pronouns are a bigger deal than maybe some people don't realize? Let's just start out with some basic statistics within the trans community. statistics within the trans community, 73% of trans people have had suicidal ideation, which means that they've actually thought and had a plan about how they were going to kill themselves. 42% have tried. So 42% of trans people have tried to kill themselves. A study by the Trevor Project that came out last year in 2019 said you can reduce that suicidality rate by 40%. So if you're looking at 43% have – I'm sorry, 42% have attempted suicide. If you're reducing that by 40% according to Trevor Project, that's a massive number. University of Texas released a study this year that says up to 60%.

So you're going from 42% of people who identify as that says up to 60%. So you're going 42% of, of people who identify as trans attempting suicide to 18%. So you say reducing it by using their pronouns or by having one adult use their pronouns or chosen name. Wow. So you literally could be that one person that allows somebody to take their next breath. Um, and so it's, you know, I think that a lot of times we play the, you know, the you're killing kids card too often or, you know, or this is a life and death matter too often. But this literally without hyperbole is life and death for people. So pronouns trigger, improper use of pronouns can trigger dysphoria. Um, dysphoria is, is the pain that comes from the incongruence between your perceived gender and your biological sex.

So when I hear she and her, it triggers my dysphoria and my dysphoria manifests itself in so many different ways. It can be anxiety, um, crippling anxiety to where like, I literally cannot leave my room. It's so bad. Um, for example, there are, there are no mirrors in my bedroom. Like even looking at myself on these kinds of things, like I have myself minimized in a corner up in the, you know, like super small so that I can't see it. It's just incredibly, um, uncomfortable for me to see my image. Um, but so, so crippling anxiety, it can, it can trigger. So I'm a, I'm an addict. That's part of how my anxiety manifests itself. So it can trigger me to want to use. Now I've been clean for, for, you know, a good number of years, but it could very

easily trigger that self-harm. So cutting suicidality. So one person, and typically it's not somebody who doesn't know my pronouns. It's when someone does know my pronouns and then is actively going against it. That's, that's when it, it, it triggers that whole, okay, they're not seeing who I am. They're not hearing what I'm saying. You know, they're thinking that this is all part of my imagination and it just builds into this whole self-degradation that goes on in my mind. And it's very detrimental to my mental health. And so I put this all on me because I can only speak from my own experience,

but I can tell you that this is a common experience across the trans umbrella community. And it's simply just you. So when we look at between she and he, there's one letter difference in S, right? So forget, I understand they is complex, and we can talk about that again in a minute. But if you're just looking about between she and he, that's the difference of one letter. And you're telling somebody that their life is not worth dropping one letter. I don't know how we can missiologically look at how Christ stood and say your life is not worth dropping one letter. I don't know how we can missiologically look at how Christ stood and say your life is not worth that one letter. Wow.

Yeah. And most, I think most people have heard me or if you haven't heard me on the podcast, I do, you know, I always get the pronoun question. Do you think you should use someone, you know,

and they say preferred pronouns. I want to come back to why you don't like preferred pronouns that the term um but yeah so we we have as an organization the center for face sexuality and gender we have taken the position that we um do think it's good and helpful um and hospitable to use somebody's uh pronouns um and i you know i i've i've truly tried to wrestle with both sides of that. And look, I have... And I really mean really good people. There's some jerks out there that just

will go out of their way to use... not use somebody's pronouns, just to be a jerk. But I know some well-intentioned people that I think still can't get there. And they've raised some good good points um how would you and i've wrestled with this and um you know what if somebody says well why would you you're you're lying you're you're feeding delusion or you're uh yeah you're you're not yes we need to love people but we also need to be

truth tellers. So using pronouns that don't match their biological sex is basically lying to them. How would you respond to something like that? I think the best explanation I've heard is the pastor that you showed the video of. It kind of – was it Pastor Steve? Steve Froelich. Yeah, Steve. Yeah, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. I just think the way he,

he puts that is, is brilliant that, uh, you know, yes, we should not break the, you know, the eighth commandment, but when you're, when you're not honoring those pronouns, you literally could be breaking the fifth commandment and killing someone. And it's, um, so I, I, that's just the best way that way that I've ever heard it explained. And, you know, I look at Jesus and how Jesus met people over and over again. And it postures if one of the one of the first questions we ask people to do is to look at times when Jesus or anywhere in the Bible where people had to shift their posture of being the law to being love. where people had to shift their posture of being the law to being love. And we get amazing, amazing responses, both from Old and New Testament.

But he went up to the woman in the well. He shouldn't have done that, A, because she was a woman, B, because she was Samaritan. There are just so many reasons he shouldn't have done it, but he put being in a relationship over the law. And I think that that is what meant. That's how Christ should manifest himself in our walk now. That's great. And I think we have a whole trajectory throughout the scriptures of God, uh, meeting us where we're at. Um, even if where we're at isn't where we need to ultimately be. Um, so for me, it's like, I, I, and I, um,

I don't tell people they need to like agree with a use of a pronoun that they think is wrong. Like I don't think they need to have like agree with everything the person believes is invested in that pronoun. You don't need to. You meet people where they're at. And for you, like I've heard you explain your use of they, them is in a sense, it's a concession. It's like, you're not saying he, him, you know? So for you, it's like, it's a way, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I've

heard you say, you know, it's a way for me to, you know, not want to self harm when I hear a pronoun that just is grading and exacerbates my dysphoria, but I'm also not saying, no, you need to call me he, him, um, they, them is a neutral phrase. So for me, that one's kind of, I mean, it is a little bit harder because grammatically and everything, and you've seen me mess up so many times unintentionally. and everything and you've seen me mess up so many times unintentionally um it's it's not easy you know um but it's like in a sense the idea of being able to say they them for you i think is is not to me that's not even a tough one the cross-sex pronouns are a little harder i mean um but yeah anyway we're on the same page here yeah well and it's it's funny you say it's harder my guess is it's harder for you uh with people a that you knew as as one uh as presenting as one uh gender

versus another and then they they change that so that would make it more difficult and this is just a societal thing that i think we need to get past and it's time that we frankly just put on our big boy and girl pants and and deal with it is that it's more difficult to use those pronouns with people who don't pass as easily. So a trans woman, I have found it most difficult, especially for cis heterosexual men to use she and her for trans women. They're willing to concede for trans men more often than they are for trans women um they're willing to concede for trans men uh more often than they are for trans women um and i don't this is this is experientially anecdotally like i don't have you know tons of stats to back that up um but i have seen that um you know in the 10 plus years i've been doing this um i have seen that it'd be much more difficult for straight Christians. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. The pat. Yeah. Cause I mean,

pronouns are a matter of social identification, right? So, I mean, if take somebody, you know, there's well-known people who just clear they pass, you would never know like a Blair white or something, you know, like you would never call Blair. If you didn't know Blair, why you can Google her. If you want you know like you would never call blair uh if you didn't know blair why you can google her if you want an image um you would never if he's on a restaurant you would never say oh that's a like 100 passes but then somebody else who might not um or some people don't even try i mean there are some people i mean and there's those you know these viral videos

that capture there's a lot of you saw this this this one um trans it's almost they made no attempt to pass and they were like in a game store i don't know if you saw this probably a lot of conservatives were sharing it and you know these are minority stories but i mean this dude had you know he had like he was raising a ruckus in the game store, knocking over stuff. I mean, acting as masculine as it could be. And the guy said, sir, you're going to have to calm down. And he blew up saying, stop calling me, sir. It's ma'am. But it was in his deep voice. I mean, and it's like, well, I'm sorry. I didn't know that. But you're you're acting as masculine as they can be. So but that's that's a very extreme case. And in there. But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about somebody who.

Yeah, is making an attempt to pass. They probably have severe gender dysphoria. But then but then we go back to, OK, what is gender is gender expression expression? Is gender what society says it is? Is gender how we perceive ourselves? I recently did a webinar with Love Boldly, and there was a person named John. And John has she, her pronouns. John has a mustache. John has a very deep voice. But John identifies as transgender. very deep voice. Um, but John identifies as transgender. Um, and so it's that initial mistake of saying, sir, I get, but beyond that, you know, and I obviously don't know this person. I haven't seen it. So I'm just like, you know, what, what this does inside my stomach when I hear you say that is okay. Well, that first sir is fine, but how can we say that like being aggressive is masculine and

and not feminine like have you ever seen like somebody go after go after you know a woman's kids how can you not say that that that one is not aggressive um yeah yeah fighting against stereotypes and um and it's something that we I think that this is something societally we're looking at right now is how do we understand things outside of our own experience? And how do we look at ourselves and how are we constantly correcting ourselves? And it's – you said this over and over again. It's just by being in a relationship with people that are going to call us on stuff. Yeah. It's just by being in relationship with people that are going to call us on stuff. Yeah.

You know, and it's there's you know, we have I have a dear friend, you know, his name's Tim and he's, you know, kind of against most side B people. And I have to say I'm better at what I do. I am a more effective follower of Christ because of the way Tim calls me on stuff. And I love it. because of the way Tim calls me on stuff, and I love it. So we have to be including those people in our lives that don't think like we think and don't agree with what we think, especially – well, I won't say especially in this conversation. That was a horrible thing to say. But especially in conversations that we're uncomfortable in,

we need to reach out and find those people and say, hey, I'm trying to get better about this. Do you have the bandwidth to help me be better? Because I think it's important to ask that question because there are times that people are going to say, no, I'm sorry. I'm already doing this for 15 other people. I can't do it for you right now. But to continue trying to reach out and find that person. Yeah.

No, that's, that's a gosh, that's a good word. I got nothing. That's awesome. Gosh, that's a good word. I got nothing. That's awesome. And I've, yeah, I've told you this, that that this is how everybody should view the world, you know, and it's tough. It's being in constant. So I would I would just add, yeah, not just being in a relationship, but being an ongoing, constant relationship and being willing to to, yeah, be critiqued, to be shown where you're thinking or posture is off. Can you you know, we've talked about gender dysphoria. Could you and if is it okay to i mean and if it's like you know i'd rather just not even it's not not healthy for me to do this but i would love for some yeah what is what is

it like to experience dysphoria um i think sometimes that's helpful um especially to gain a little more maybe empathy when when people just don't really have a category and it's easy for them to kind of not, you know, think deeply about it. It's really hard to explain it to somebody who hasn't experienced it. And I understand it manifests itself different in different people. For me, my skin starts crawling. If I'm wearing a shirt where my chest is too predominant, like it literally makes me want to find a knife and just chop my chest off. You know, it just takes me into some really unhealthy thinking about, A, who I am as an image bearer of God. And I think that's for me where the most disconcerting thing comes. of God. And I think that's, that's for me where the most disconcerting thing comes. But so yeah, so there, anxiety is a big part of it. Depression, because, you know, I know that even if I have surgery, that there's a really good chance my dysphoria is not going to go away.

It does help a lot of people who have surgery. But there's also quite a few that it doesn't help. And so it's not a guarantee. So it's not something that there's, you know, like if you, if you're a diabetic, they, you know, they say, okay, take insulin and this will help X number of symptoms, but it may not help these other symptoms. And so I feel like as, as a trans person with, with, with dysphoria, that there's, there's just no clear cut answer. And so it's hopelessness can, can fall into that. If I'm not anchored in Christ, if I don't have people around me speaking the truth into my life. It's – this is taking it on a super simple level. So for trans people that are out there, please don't think I'm trying to equate what we go through to this. But everybody has gone to get a haircut and have come out with a horrible haircut and you can't even

stand to look at yourself like you have to put a hat on or a scarf on or something or a really bad dye job that you just can't wait until you get the next day that you can or the 48 hours whatever that you can run back to the salon and get that corrected that on a very simple level is what it feels like it doesn't look like how you feel it you hate what it looks like um and you know that especially like if it's a short haircut that's been cut way too short there's nothing you can do to change it you just have to wait golly is there anything that does minimize it relieves it that you found and again just your personal story i mean i've heard other people describe certain things or yeah so for me it's short hair um short purple hair right now um you know i typically i'm wearing you know guys clothes

um and that that helps me um you know it's i wouldn't say you're wearing guys clothes because there's a lot of clothing's gender neutral largely right i mean i don't from men's stores oh okay say that yeah i mean yeah like literally the only female thing on me on my body right now is my bra i mean like everything else is male um and it's tmi probably but i just the raw. There's no such thing as TMI on the show. But here's another thing where I just want to call how we are societally biased. If I were to walk down the street right now, just because this is kind of a teal shirt, people aren't going to look at which way the buttons are to figure out that this is a guy's shirt.

For the most part, people aren't going to figure that out. But if I were a trans woman and I were walking down the shirt in a blouse, you better believe people are going to call me on it. And there are even pastors who would call, call a trans woman on that, who wouldn't call me on what I'm, I'm wearing. And so there isn't consistency. There isn't equity. You know, there's you know, I've heard people say that, you know, if you're if you go to the beach, like when I when I go swimming, I'm wearing like a tank top and and like guys board shorts. male at birth at the beach in a bikini, say, that could be problematic just because societally we're not okay with the same things being, with men expressing a feminine gender, which, and please understand me, I'm not saying that a trans woman is a man. I'm not saying that at all.

But with someone who was born an assigned male expressing themselves in a more effeminate way or as a female, we have a much larger problem societally with that. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah. And why is that? Is it patriarchy? Is it male dominance? Is it or is it just there's no like underlying motive? Or is it just there's no underlying motive? But that's definitely true. I mean, yeah, you can get away with wearing male typical clothing, whereas the opposite typically isn't true. There might be some rare examples, skinny jeans or I don't know. I could wear maybe a silky shirt or something. And some people might think I would look fabulous others so what's that

i said skinny jeans are just a worship pastor so i i want to so you you mentioned a couple times i just because my audience is probably like saying how can we not asking about this the whole assigned um at birth i think you and i might be in uh just disagreement on that what what what's wrong i just a phrase like for me biological sex is recognized not assigned except in cases where there's an intersex condition where literally the doctors will look at the genitalia of a newborn and say uh could go either way i'm going to say this is a female like that's where the phrase i think originally comes from but for somebody whose biological sex is unambiguous the word assigned to me feels not like it's recognized

not like the doctor's not doing anything well to make that person male or female uh saying the doctor's only doing the assigning um but i think that it's a way that language is progressing to understand that gender is more than just biology, and gender is more than just how we perceive ourselves. And so by saying that this is what I was assigned at birth, and if I perceive myself, if I identify as, so say, you know, I would say female assigned at birth, I identify as male. For me, it's taking away the aspect of, okay, there, I am partly this and, and how that can be, how that language can be triggering for dysphoria. And is, is a way I think of finding a more holistic view of who we are both biologically and gender-wise.

And it's a way, in my mind anyway, of trying to bring the two together. It's something that literally has come in some – and it's – as a 40-something-year-old, I'm on the back end of language conversations even though this is how I identify. And so I haven't had the ability to do a ton of research. Next time we talk, we'll have a huge talk about this, I promise. But for me right now, it is missiological for me. That is what the community is using, and so it's something that I'm adapting to. Okay. That's a good – so missiological – even if you don't necessarily –

I mean, maybe you do. Maybe you don't necessarily need to agree with everything that's invested into that phrase assigned at birth for you to use it. I'm just saying like, theoretically, you don't need to agree with it all to kind of like pronouns, right? You could say, no, I actually think your pronoun should be this, but you don't prefer that. So, or you don't use it that way. So I'm going to meet you where you're at.

Right. What about just the whole concept of biological sex? And there's so many variations even within the trans community. Some, like Blair White, would say, no, I'm biologically male. Like I can't. That's just a scientific fact. Other people would maybe be very triggered if you even refer – or just even the very phrase biological sex can be – is that correct? It could be triggering for some?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I can acknowledge what I am biologically. And I like, I'm not even comfortable saying it, but if I go, um, like, you know, one of the things that, you know, we, you know, we've kind of been joking around about and talking about for like the last year that I'm actually doing right now is applying to seminaries. There's zero seminaries that don't have male and female for gender. And so even though I can say gender, gender this is this what drives me crazy my passport says gender which gender across the

board people define it as either gender identity one's internal sense of who they are as male female both or neither or gender role you know what role are you so i don't understand how these i mean passports or every single document you use the term sex not gender when i don't know anyway it drives me crazy yeah it drives me crazy too and so it's um you know the fact that that's not even an option there when i have to pick that yeah that's my dysphoria in ways I can't even mention to you. Okay. Man. What about – I'm trying to think out loud here without – sometimes I got to be careful having the privilege to be able to think out loud in ways that I'm not affected but may affect somebody else.

Greg Coles has really helped me with that because I am a free thinker. I love to blog. I'm 80% sure of this. I'm just going to blog it, get it out there. Let's just have a free flowing discussion. He's like, well, that's convenient for you. Um, and I appreciate your heart, but, um, not everybody has the freedom to do that without it affecting them in ways that doesn't affect you. So, um, so let me just, and if you tell me – you know what? I just don't want to go there. What about when some – what if somebody says like, but these are just basic facts of reality. sex, then we need to help that person peel back the layers and figure out why are you triggered by just a basic reality? Like we can't pretend like reality doesn't exist to alleviate everybody's offense. Is that valid?

A lot of people are going to be wondering that at least. Yeah. So I think my initial question with that is exactly who is it that's asking that question? Is it that person's clinician? Absolutely. You have the right to ask that question and to delve into that with that person. Are you somebody that is just their friend? Are you somebody that's going to church with them? Are you somebody on the street passing them by? In all those cases, absolutely not. It's none of your business um you know it's yeah let's go back to the woman at the well you know jesus you know jesus met her where she was jesus didn't ask her to you know to not to you know say she wasn't going to be a

samaritan anymore you know she's gonna you know like he didn't he didn't ask any of that. You know, I just think that we need to we need to completely shift how we think about these things. It's so easy to want to intellectualize and to want to study. And it's so easy to forget. What would Jesus do in this situation? OK, here's a person. And, you know, in my case, a person who professes Christ, who loves Christ, who has – my livelihood is serving Christ. Why would I need to – this is obviously something I've wrestled out loud with God for many, many years.

Why is it that I need to then make everyone around me feel okay about what God – the conclusion God and I have come to? Yeah, go ahead. No, i was just gonna say that that so you would say like if somebody is willing to be in relationship ongoing unconditional relationship then they might have then their maybe intellectual question is matched with relational commitment but if all it is is you're just some faceless person over there and i'm gonna throw out these intellectual push, then that just seems like you're not – yeah. Well, and I think that the intellectual pushback should be more – once again, this is something we're learning as a society as a whole is that these questions should be coming from wanting to understand. Right. Not from wanting to prove your point right. So, okay, why is that triggering for you?

Help me understand that. And once again, you have to have permission to ask that question, not simply say, hey, can I ask you this question, but relational permission to ask those questions. There's one particular elder and my pastor and like my executive minister. Like there are people in my church that I'm super close to. And they pretty much have permission to ask me carte blanche anything. Even because I'm a person in my church and I want them to do it well for some young trans people that we have in our church.

And I know that they're going to be able to better minister to me and better love me by them understanding me better. going to be able to better minister to me and better love me by them understanding me better. But those are very specific people that have that kind of permission to ask those types of questions in my life. It's not something that I feel like every congregant in my church has the right to ask. That's so good. That's so good. All the more reason to be in committed relationships, especially with people whose experience maybe is different than yours maybe they have certain worldview things that are different than yours i mean unless you feel like you have arrived then maybe you have some blind spots typically your blind spots aren't point are you don't see your blind spots until you get out of your echo chamber whether it's the conservative or liberal whatever like get just get in relationship with people who see the world different than yours with a genuine inquisitive,

um, posture where you're truly trying to learn from somebody else's lived experience. Um, which is, I, again, I, I, I'm preaching, I'm, I fail every day at this. I truly do. And, um, it's, it's because it's so easy. It's so comfortable to just be around people who see the world just like you do and that's just but that's just it's just um it's not really that christian you know i mean it's not not that christian it's not christian that's you know if we're if we're saying that christ that being a christian is emulating christ that's not

christ-like at all i mean look at look at. I mean look at the diversity of people he gathered around himself, just the 12 apostles. You had like people who were like working for Rome like Matthew the tax collector all the way to like Simon the Zealot who was like a suicide bomber. I mean these are like – this is like Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi on the same team all of a sudden. I don't know if that's an overstatement actually. Well, I don't think it is. The power of Christ to convert and to change people, it absolutely isn't. And it's – this is a – we could do a whole podcast just on this, but like, I love how the chosen, um, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but just how it depicts the differences between the disciples and their,

their callings and kind of, uh, Peter's disbelief when Matthew is, is chosen is like, what him really? Um, you know, and it's just, it's so brilliant. I have not seen it yet. I have not seen that yet. You failed. I totally forgot about it. I remember seeing it when it was coming out. It's brilliant. Really? Okay, I got to check it out.

We're running out of time here, but one more. Yeah, we've kind of danced around this a little bit, I guess, and maybe you're just going to repeat something we've already talked about. But what's maybe the number one blind spot that you see among people that don't have some sort of trans experience, dysphoria, that people like me – what kind of assumptions do people like me have about trans people that you would love to maybe correct or shift? Yeah, I don't know that it's necessarily an assumption, but it certainly is a blind spot. You know, we were talking about this, you know, before we actually started this, just the the incredible increase, increased rate of murders of trans people in our country. You know, it's last year we had 27 reported in the U.S. And I say reported because so many go unreported.

We're already up to 29, and it's just August. We had a period between – in 18 days, we had eight trans women killed. And we're not – this isn't just in a small town in the south. We're talking – it happened in Dallas. It happened in Pompano Beach, Florida. You know, it happened in Seattle. You know, it's, yes, there are smaller towns in Alabama, you know, where, where it happened, but that's not where, where the majority of these things are happening. And so these, these predominantly, uh, black, uh, trans women are being murdered. We only have, out of the 29 that have happened this year,

there have only been four arrests. So the rest are either people aren't talking or, you know, or this happened, you know, in a back alley or, you know, whatever that looked like. But we have, and out of those 29, there was one binary person and two trans men. So vast majority are trans women. The vast majority of the trans women that have been killed are black women. And so this is something that I think shows up on page six most of the time. It's not something that's in the general view. And I think it's something that we as Christians have got to start standing up for.

If you can't get behind pronouns, if you can't get behind a name, I don't understand why, but surely you can get behind people being brutally murdered. There were – one example that Bill uses a lot, Bill Henson, is this – I believe it was June. It might have been May. Two trans women in Puerto Rico were burned alive. Um, back in April, there was a trans man that was stabbed to death, you know, and these are just horrific, horrific stories of how people were treated. Um, there was, uh, one in, in California, they don't even know they can't, they can't put a specific date on it

because, uh, because of it being in the water and the decomposition of the body. It's just surely we can get behind protecting people from being brutally murdered. What's the solution? What's not happening that's allowing this, would you say? How would a Christian get behind reducing that so so here's the thing it's going to take a huge societal shift and that starts with using pronouns using chosen names um so when we when we start to normalize these experiences so by leading with hi my name is blah blah and my pronouns are if you as a cis person say that, then you're normalizing it in society so that it's not making the trans person seem quite so over there and quite so different and so othered.

You know, and as trans people, we are, you know, a marginalized people group, a marginalization of a marginalization of a marginalization. You know, it's just like, we're such a small group. Um, but yet when I say small group, we're talking millions of people just in the U S. Um, but so by, by understanding culture, by actively being in relationship with the trans person, um, you know, it's just by humanizing the people that, you know, you can start, you can start that shift. That's good. Yeah. I got to think about that pronoun because I haven't been. Yeah, maybe we could talk more about that. or pronouns, it just feels like virtue signaling, especially if they're like, have an audience

that, you know, is going to see that as like, I don't know. Well, so you know how Greg said that there are some things that you're seeing from a from a cis person's point of view. That's, that's it. Like, I can't tell you how much it means to me when a straight person, a cis straight person will lead with their pronouns. which it means to me when a straight person, a cis straight person will lead with their pronouns. Really? You know, it's, I had, so my small group leader, I'm in, you know, Sunday school at church,

and we've kind of established my pronouns, but people are slowly starting to add in, you know, as the fall, summer's ending. And she asked me specifically, she's like, how can I, you know, how can I recognize your pronouns with people without having to every time somebody comes in? And I just said, look, if you can just – when you're saying, hi, I'm Katie. I'm the group leader. My pronouns are – by the time he gets to me, it's not me being different. It's just me being part of the group.

My response may be a little bit different, but the fact that I'm sharing my pronouns aren't different. And so it's just making me feel like I really am part of the group and not like I'm somebody that, oh yeah, by the way, here's my pronouns. Um, it's like, oh yeah, my pronouns are, you know, and so I'm, I'm, it's, it's just increasing inclusivity is, is a big part of what we do. Impostor shift, you know, finding ways that we can say yes. Um, and this is something that's so easy to say yes to. Leslie, thanks so much for being back on Theology in the Raw.

I think you're a third time. I think this is your third time. There's only like a couple people that have been on three times, BJ Thompson, you, and actually I'm recording another episode here in a second. I think he's another third timer. So, yeah, welcome to the elite club. Well, I so appreciate, I mean, gosh, I just, I don't know if I've learned so much from a single human being as I've learned from you. We don't always agree. And I love that. I love that we

could disagree on stuff. And our relationship is so much thicker than ideologically you know being you know uh agreeing across the board i mean so and you're all even in the midst of some disagreement i'm constantly challenged by literally everything you say and do so thanks for being amazing you've been listening or watching theology in the Raw, and we will see you next time on the show. I'm going to close it out with a really boring lame, just slam that plane down as fast as I can go. Take care, Leslie. Bye. Thank you.