Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1042: Sexual and Gender Identities: Andrew Bunt

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Andrew is part of King’s Church Hastings and Bexhill. He is Emerging Generations Director at Living Out and a training and resources consultant for New Ground Churches. He studied theology at Durham University and King’s College London. Andrew is the author of Who in Heaven’s Name Do You Think You Are? (Charis Books, 2015), People Not Pronouns: Reflections on Transgender Experience (Grove Books, 2021) and Finding Your Best Identity: A Short Christian Introduction to Identity, Sexuality and Gender (IVP, 2022), which is the focus of our conversation. Most of our conversation is focused on understanding the pros and cons of what seems to be an over growing list of sexual and (especially) gender identities, and how we can walk with teens who are wrestling with their sexuality and gender identity. https://thinktheology.co.uk/authors/4708 If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, please visit patreon.com/theologyintheraw for more information!

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there's other perks for that tier. Gold level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of Theology in the Raw. And for me, just personally, interacting with my Patreon supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Andrew Bunt. Andrew is Emerging Generations Director at Living Out Ministries in the UK. And so Living

Out Ministries is kind of, it's almost like a, not formally, but it's almost like a sister organization to the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, which I'm a part of here in the U.S. Andrew has become a friend over the years. We got to hang out a couple months ago in Cambridge, England, and just really just love, love, love the way Andrew thinks. He's got a great story and is such a sharp thinker. He has studied theology at Durham University and King's College in London. He's the author of several books, including his most recent book, Finding Your Best Identity, subtitle, A Short Christian Introduction to Identity,

Sexuality, and Gender, which just came out. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Andrew Butler. Andrew and I actually hung out in his, well, sort of your stomping grounds. I mean, you had to drive three hours north of your city, but it was in the UK. So yeah, we hung out over a nice meal in Cambridge. And first time we saw each other in person. But you were on the podcast, I think a couple of years ago. So welcome back to Theology in Raw. Thank you. Nice to be here again.

So give us a snapshot of who you are and what led you to want to write this book. So I'm Andrew. I am a Christian who loves Jesus, who's also same-sex attracted, who's also had questions around my gender. So I wrestled with all of those kind of things. That very much shapes what I do now with life life I kind of have various roles in Christian ministry but most of them around equipping people to think through what does the Bible say on questions of identity sexuality and gender so I work for a UTA charity called Living Out and we exist to help people churches and society talk about faith and sexuality just started a newish role there moved into a different role focusing on emerging generations so i'm particularly thinking how do we help under 25s

and those serving them working with them think through questions of sexuality gender and identity in relation to christian faith and i guess yeah the book flew out grew out of my own experience of wrestling with my sexuality and gender, a series of identity crises I have had throughout my life, which made me really think actually, there's something to be explored here about not just the question, who am I, but the question, how do I find who I am? How do we actually form identity, which is kind of the core of the book. So this book really, I mean, it's really very much integrated with your own story. And then, well, so I just, my audience knows, I read the book, I endorsed it. So I,

so if I ask questions, like, I don't know anything about the book, it's more so my audience can get to know you and your book. But so, so the book itself kind of grew, grew out of your own personal experience. And, and, and it does, I mean, I'll just say it, it has a really beautiful personal flair to it. And yet it's incredibly thoughtful too. It's not a memoir, but it has a lot of memoir in it. It's not just an introduction because it has memoir pieces woven throughout.

Can you unpack? Most people understand when you say you're same-sex attracted. In this day and age, people understand that, whether somebody else might have that experience or know somebody who does. But when you said you're wrestling with your gender as well, what did that look like? Did you see those as interconnected or kind of two separate parts of your narrative? Yeah, well, I mean, the way it's kind of manifested for me, there was a time in my childhood, I remember very vividly reaching the conclusion that I was a girl trapped in a boy's body. I remember it so vividly because I remember that at the time, the way it kind of hit me was suddenly this fear that

I would get pregnant. Obviously, I didn't know how these things work, but my kind of thought process was, oh no, I'm a girl trapped in a boy's body. What if I get pregnant and people find that out? And so I remember concluding that I have to not get married, have to live with my parents all of my life and just kind of hide this big big kind of secret and that feeling did naturally go away as I kind of went through my teenage years and and that's not an unusual experience and actually it's particularly not unusual for that to happen for that to naturally go away but then an individual in this situation to find that they are same-sex attracted so lots of studies show there's a kind of a high occurrence of that experience then flowing into a later teenage years into

adulthood experience of same-sex attraction i think what happened then i think as a child i was so conscious of being kind of gender non-conforming of not fitting the normal patterns of what boys are deemed to be like my church context probably had fairly narrow views of what men and women are like and i think i just was so conscious even the moment I articulated this way that I didn't fit into the kind of box I had understood if not being presented as what a boy is like that I thought well the key that's not me therefore I must be a girl and that's what happened that feeling as I say kind of naturally went away as I went through my teenage years particularly but what I was still left with wasn't a sense of being a girl attracting a boy's body but a sense of kind of not making the cut as being a man and I look

back now and realize I used to say things I'll be talking to a female friend and I say things like well he would say that because he's a man which is kind of the men are over there and I don't think I'm a woman but I'm not kind of in that group and I kind of even saying things that without realizing it was kind of distancing myself from being kind of a real man or kind of making the cut and so that means even more recent years you know it's an identity question I've had to wrestle what does it mean for me to be a man how do I live out and how do I wrestle with this fact yeah that in lots of ways I don't conform to the kind of stereotypical expectations at least of what men are like did you would you say you were or would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or was it more just you used the phrase you know gender non-conforming behavior because those are two

different you know there's some overlap i'm sure but like those are kind of different categories so yeah no they are they are and i'm careful not to talk about having had gender dysphoria okay because i would not have met the kind of clinical um parameters for clinical diagnosis so that uh dsm-5 gives kind of i think it's like eight criteria you have to meet six out of eight so it's pretty high terms i kind of can't help wondering given where we are so in the uk where we've been for the last few years in terms of gender questioning and gender dysphoria among young people how seemingly quickly easily people have been given diagnosis of gender dysphoria i kind of wonder if if it had been now and i had gone to a gender clinic and described what i was feeling if they may have died with gender dysphoria even though i think looking at the dsm criteria

i wouldn't quite quite make it but no i think you're right i think there are and these things often occur on a spectrum and i think i want to be careful not to say my experience was the same as someone who experiences much more considerable kind of extreme and much more consistent and persistent gender dysphoria. I think mine was for a period in my childhood. It wasn't a long standing thing, but it's a very vivid memory kind of in my mind it suddenly um sticks out to me as a childhood memory would you say i mean now how old are you now again andrew uh 31 would you say now you've resolved your i don't know what phrase to use manhood or whatever like do you feel like you're like you now have a much more theological theologically expansive view of sex and gender to

where you don't struggle anymore with your identity or do you still feel like there's such cultural pressure that it is a constant kind of battle in your mind or yeah i think i've grown a lot more comfortable i mean the wonderful journey i went on what good will help me to see which is part of what's in the book is the realization that being a man is a given identity, identity given to me by God, that actually being a man doesn't mean having to act in a certain way. It's not something I make a reality by acting a certain way. And so I talk about knowing who I am as a man, because God says I'm a man through my body, allows me to be how I am. And so it has grown my confidence in lots of ways. I'm much more relaxed now about being

gender nonconconforming you know i i often talk and joke about i'm very comfortable with admitting my love for dancing abbey and musical theater and the fact i'm quite flamboyant you know i'm unashamed in saying i don't like rugby beer aggression all those kind of things but it is interesting and so so on many levels i'm really comfortable but it was really interesting just this week noticing it's the world cup obviously and in the uk at least even people who aren't big into football kind of get into the world cup i confess i don't but i was at someone's house while the football was being watched with a group of ghost guys and girls but there is something that happens to guys when they watch

football so my mates who aren't normally particularly kind of stereotypically masculine become kind of much more stereotypically masculine and I found myself feeling really uncomfortable and it just was an interesting thing to me you know I got some wonderful things but for all of us these things always an active choice to keep living in the good of the truth of who we are what God has done and stuff and kind of was in that environment to remind myself no it's okay I'm a man because God says I'm a man it's okay that I'm not like that I don't have to try and fit in that and also don't have to feel kind of intimidated by that. That's not a threat to my masculinity when other men are being more stereotypically masculine. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't say, cause I think so many people have, if you take gender non-conforming interests, behavior,

personalities as a spectrum, I would say probably most humans would be on that spectrum somewhere yeah um i would say the majority of my likes dislikes whatever are not gender non-conforming but there are a few that are for instance and i think i've talked about this on the podcast like i i have always hated to see a death of any kind an animal die even now i will reload well sometimes i kill a bug sometimes i do but my preference would be to relocate the bug put it outside i just i don't like to see anything die especially you know a bird or an animal or whatever and and even though i do well i have hunted and i do enjoy hunting as long as I eat the food because I feel like, well, if I'm going to eat meat, I better be willing to kill it. But I do that maybe like once every five years or something.

So it's not like a big part of my life. especially growing up super insecure like oh my this fear of like being found out or the the the pressure of like acting the part so i come off as being a real man like oh yeah you know beat up this they would kill that animal whatever and and there's other parts of my life that you know would be more gender non-conforming but that it's it's i can only imagine somebody who may be a big part of their life has uhypical gender kind of interest, whatever. That's got to be incredibly hard, especially, well, especially in the church. I mean, have you experienced like the church to be as a culture better, worse, or the same as the broader culture? Yeah, I don't know.

I do think more so when I was younger. So I grew up in church context. I think there were much more in a complementarian kind of context, and there was much clearer or many stronger stereotypes about what men and women are like. I think less so now. And part of it, I think, is just I've grown comfortable in who God says I am, therefore I'm able just to kind of live that out and not be too bothered what people are thinking. I sometimes talk about one of the most meaningful things anyone said to me was um a fellow leader in the local church here who has two teenage sons and he thanked me for showing his sons a different way of being a man

in the sense of actually showing them you don't have to live by all the stereotypes to be a man and to be a faithful follower of jesus as a man now i always i know on that one he said that to me the morning after i'd been at an 18th birthday party with those two uh his two sons the night before which kind of made me think what did i do at that party they went home and said to their dad such that he said that the next day but still i think there is something uh powerfully i was leading by example that way and i do think so in my own context we have got better at realizing just the good God-given diversity among people in our kind of personality preference and stuff.

But I do agree with you that it's incredibly widespread. And as I've kind of shared that story of not gender dysphoria, but as an adult, a lower level discomfort with my identity as a man, so often when I share that, people really resonate with it. And I think it's a much broader experience and struggle that people have than we might think or be aware. Oh yeah, I see it all the time.

Whenever I give a talk and I talk about kind of gender stereotypes and how the Bible affirms a sex binary, and yet it gives us a lot of freedom of what that, when we say like, live out your woman-ness, live out your male-ness, just that idea is very, very broad and flexible in the Bible. It's concerned about holiness, not being stereotypically masculine or feminine.

Whenever I go there, I get loads of straight people, especially I would say a lot of women. I get so many amens and thank you for saying. women, I get so many amens and thank you for saying so many, like, you know, whatever straight, I don't, I don't like the phrase cisgender, but like straight non-trans women who never really had gender dysphoria, but they're still like, yeah, I've always felt this pressure of being super feminine and I never really fit in that box, you know? So this is where I was going to say is I just feel like the church really needs leaders like you to be able to give people that sense of relief. Like, oh my gosh, here's somebody who is a leader. They're up there. I can look to as a model of like, and I don't have to fit this box that I feel like I'm always being crammed into. Let's talk about your book. Can you give

us an overview of what it's all about? I love that it's short, concise, thoughtful. It's something you can give to somebody who might not even be a reader that, you know, if you give them a 300 page book, they're probably not going to read it. Yeah, walk us through the book. So at the heart of the book really is saying we need to ask a question about identity. We often forget to ask or overlook. We understandably ask the question, who am I? Good, important question to ask. We don'tably ask the question who am i good important question to ask we don't ask very often the prior question of how do i find who i am and i think a lot of our problems around identity come from that it's me we're saying i define identity in the book and

the kind of concept i'm working with is identity as our controlling self-understanding so how we view ourselves what we see is most core to ourselves most fundamental about ourselves and that's controlling in the sense of what you deep down really believe about yourself will inevitably have impacts on how you think, how you feel, how you act. So it's controlling in the sense of it inevitably overflows into an impact on your life and your experience of life. And so I say we need to look at that question. And so I say we need to look at that question. And that's flown from my own experience, that both in wrestling with sexuality and gender and wrestling with what the Bible says, wrestling with what culture is saying to me about that, that thing of where do I find identity has been really key. But also some of the things I wrestled with just of the kind of disconnect that we can experience between knowing what God says about us, but not experiencing that.

I also found that the kind of bridge for me for solving some of that was the question, how do I find who I am? And so what I do in the book is to look at two ways that our culture was in a modern kind of Western secular culture very often answers the question, how do I find who I am? One of which is that other people decide who we are. So our sense of self is kind of absorbed from what we, what people think of us or what we assume they think of us, because often we don't kind of know with the idea they kind of evaluate us against some sort of criteria, make a judgment and we absorb that. One of the things I realised was going on was I actually had a really poor and destructive sense of self. I'd come to believe I was a freak and a weirdo, that no one really liked me or loved me. God didn't really like me or love me. And that was because I genuinely assumed that's what people thought of me. They thought it, or it turns out they don't, but I kind of absorbed that from them. So others decide is one really common answer.

But another common answer is I decide. It's kind of the opposite. We reject what other people think of us. We don't care what either side. It's kind of the opposite. We reject what other people think of us. We don't care what they think. We look inside of ourselves. We look at our feelings and our desires and we embrace those as who we really are. And therefore, the narrative goes we need to kind of express those regardless of what people think or what our body says or a community or a tradition or religion. We need to express that and live that out in order to find our best life. Both of those, I think, have fairly major problems. But the Bible offers us a better,

more life-giving answer to the question, how do I find who I am, which is that God decides. It's not based on what other people think of us in their evaluation. It's not based on we finding side. It's what he says over us. And I think when you look in Scripture with that kind of perspective, you find almost like two levels of identity. There's a human identity given to us by virtue of God creating us and what he says over us in creation, our being in the image of God, being the kind of central thing there, giving us inherent worth and dignity. But then actually that we, if we respond to Christ, receive the the best possible identity a transformation of identity where what god thinks of us and says of us isn't based on what we do thank goodness because we all

muck up all the time but it's based on what christ has done and so it's the one truly solid and stable identity because god's not going to change his mind about what christ has done he's not going to change his mind of what he thinks of you if you're in christ and it's always a wonderfully positive life-giving identity because it's what god the father thinks of god's the son is that thing of being brought in to experience the relationship of love that for all eternity past has existed between god the father and god the son and then i kind of take that as a foundational way of thinking about identity to see well how does that map on to sexuality and gender both how do the kind of cultures approaches map on our culture but how does the biblical approach to identity give us a better foundation from which

to handle our experience of sexuality and gender, whatever they kind of may be. So you've done a lot of thinking on just the concept of identity. So let's just dive into the deep end and talk about, you know, identity terms in the sexuality and gender conversation. Let's begin with what might even be the easier one now is, you know, you describe yourself as being same-sex attracted. You know, the debates about whether a theologically traditionally minded Christian should ever use the term gay or the phrase gay Christian. What are your thoughts about these different identity terms? Are they these primary issues? Are are they secondary or does it depend on the context or i mean there's many layers i can give here but yeah yeah what are your thoughts i mean to be honest my thought is the debate around actual identity labels has

just become so unhelpful and so distracting from the important thing so so i interchange between describing myself as same-sex attracted or gay partly as a way of choosing to not take part in the debate in a sense okay and partly just just i think the debate is kind of unhelpful there are some some wide points on both sides i can see both positive and negatives for both of those terms for example but i think the debate around language the what often becomes kind of policing of people's language of you should and shouldn't talk about yourself like that, which sometimes leads people like me thinking, how on earth am I meant to articulate the reality of my experience? I need some language. Give me some language. Let me have some language in a

sense. But actually, my big worry really is those things which I think are just words and can just be descriptions of experiences not statements of core self i think actually that that debate gets in the way of us thinking how do we there are some real people here who jesus loves and we should love who might well be having some real things they're wrestling with real difficulties our priority will to be loving the people not getting caught up in the language they're using so on the actual thing of language i just kind of think the debate has become so unhelpful because it's become for some people the the presenting issue and kind of the stopping point of the conversation not actually just the language we need to have in order to have a proper conversation about real people and so for me i'm not so concerned what language we do or don't use i'm concerned about i think it's important we think about how we conceptualize ourselves because that does have

an impact on our life that controlling self-understanding i talk about i think it does influence how we're able to live out biblical teaching well but i don't want to get hung up on language as the kind of be all and end all in that reality so kind of it depends on what you mean what's the meaning behind the language not the language itself right like i i could say exactly yeah i could say i'm an american somebody else can say i i'm an american and the the value invested in that same phrase could be wildly different i'm just making a an objective statement of fact about my nationality where somebody else could mean that as my all

controlling primary identity is that i'm american everything else is subservient to that that's how yeah and i i've again just anecdotally i've seen that with the word gay or gay christian or whatever do you find that it's is this as much of a debate in the in the churches in in the uk or is it do you find that it's primarily an american kind of thing yeah it's it's a bit of a debate over here sometimes just because people are aware it's a debate over the state okay they're reading books but you get kind of on the extreme ends on both sides you would get a minority of people who feel very strongly either way who either think no i absolutely mustn't refer to myself as gay that's no conceding too much ground to my

experience making it my core sense of self the other way and you get people who very much object to the language of same-sex attraction because either because they feel it's too much trying to distance um ourselves from the reality of being gay as they would put it or because it's kind of tied up with a history in the ex-gay movement and stuff uh that would be kind of though you would get those perspectives but they are quite kind of in a sense the extreme ends of a spectrum where most people i think are somewhat more okay more relaxed yeah um and my observation is that when i get asked about it whether in personal conversation or kind of a q a context about a church or an event or something very often actually the question isn't being asked because the person feels really strongly

in one end it's just they know some people feel really strongly, so they're interested. And so interestingly, I think in a sense, it's an intellectual debate people know exists, so they're interested in the UK more than actually something they really have a strong view on their one side or the other, which I do consider is a blessing we have over here. It doesn't tend to get so fraught and so difficult. I really prefer British evangelicalism to american even i i felt so at home when i was living there just like i don't know it was just it's hard to describe it was just people are able to have good healthy disagreeable discussions and then go to the pub after and hang out and

like there is this they love to kind of wrestle with the intellectual side of things without taking it personally. And you just don't have the politicalization of the evangelical church. Yeah. Oh, it's huge. Yeah. Huge.

I remember coming back after living in Scotland for three and a half years, like coming back and like, like I was like back in the wild, wild west again. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I forgot how stressful this is. You know,

like maybe it's, there's a lot fewer churches and christians right in in in the uk so you have this really strong kind of more secular environment so that and that often fosters you know more camaraderie across denominational lines like in aberdeen when i was in aberdeen there was you know a hand a small handful of solid Bible-believing churches. Some were Presbyterian, some were Baptist, some were non-denominational. But it's almost like you didn't even care or know. If you're a gospel-centered believer, you're like, oh, man, we're brothers and sisters in Christ. So I miss that.

I miss that environment. Okay, so let's talk about the different gender identities. Where do I even start? You have trans, transgender. It can be almost like an umbrella label in some ways. But then you have, especially if you work with younger people, gender fluid, non-binary, and many others. non-binary and many others do you find those labels to be neutral helpful or not helpful um and i don't know if i'm framing that the best way but just to kind of get our conversation going yeah it's yeah i think it's such a difficult i mean with the caveat of again not wanting to

police people's language i think it's unhelpful but i think the question you're asking is good actually are these terms yeah helpful both for communication and for individuals and their self-conceptualization i think it varied i think so even i think my own experience i think well i know that experience of feeling internally like one sense of being a man or woman doesn't match with the external body i I know that can be very real. And so therefore, I want to say, well, yeah, absolutely, there should be language to describe that and kind of conceptualize of that. But again, I think it'd be unhelpful for us to build our core sense of self on that. And my theological position would be that to allow our internal sense to trump the objective reality of the biology God has given us is not the right way to conceive a thing. So it partly depends on how is someone using those terms would be reality of the biology god has given us is not the right way to conceive of things so it partly depends how is someone using those terms would be one of the the things and

the kind of cautions i have in mind or questions in mind with young people i think it is very significant we're in the situation over here where for years now young people have been told through kind of influences and social media and such, but also through school, that they might be one of this plethora of gender identity labels. And they need to work that out. And the expectation was that there'll be a label to describe their not quite unique experience, but their personal individual experience. And I think that has been a helpful, I think it's a helpful pressure for young people. This is pressure to label yourself.

And there's just this weird contrast. on the one hand there's a lot of people saying it's not about labels it's about being yourself and yet the kind of pressure to find your label and to come out to announce that is kind of huge so i think i'm worried for young people about that the pressure it puts on them especially around the gender question is so we see over here but also i'm worried about the impact it has on a young person's self-conception, but also the ongoing experience. So as you'll be aware over here at the moment, there are healthy questions being asked about the way we offer particularly kind of medical treatment and clinical support to under 18s who are questioning their gender. their gender and one of the things that's come out from the review of the nhs that's our national health service is kind of um treatment of and services for under 18s is that even kind of changing names and pronouns and stuff is now being seen as a significant psychosocial intervention

which does make it less likely that a young person will find their discomfort with agenda naturally abates of its own accord i wonder if the same is therefore true of these labels. If someone labels themselves as, for example, non-binary and kind of consistently refers themselves as that, has other people recognised that and announced that, I wonder if in the same way that we now know that changing name or pronouns could have an ongoing impact on the continuation of that experience,

if the same could be true of those labels. And so it comes to sexuality or gender i kind of encourage young people particularly just to feel no pressure to find a label and kind of self-describe or self-identify and no need to kind of tie things down to well this is the label that describes me because it is true in a sense labels don't matter your experience might change over time but you must find it does you don't need to pocket yourself into a little corner of here's the label so i kind of want to balance it of yeah we need language to describe experiences that's really important and we don't want to suggest experiences aren't genuine which sometimes they really are we want to validate the pain the difficulty the struggle that but also not have language which is unhelpfully forming people's sense of self or yeah potentially doing them harm in the long term very difficult

nuance to get i think that is so that's the incredibly insightful two minute summary of complex topic and i i totally if i i don't want to just repeat everything you said because i agree pretty much everything i think everything you said like just not leading with the idea of not policing language, not making that kind of the end all. And yet, yeah, I see it. the, the list of possibilities keeps expanding, um, rather than just being a male or a female with, you know, um, who might be attracted to men or women or both or neither. Um, beyond that, you know, you're a human and you have a range of interests and likes and dislikes. And so sometimes I don't, I don't want, I don't want to let, let me affirm one more thing. So I have friends that, you know, finding that, for instance, a friend that, you i have friends that you know finding that for instance a friend

that you know had you know moderate to sometimes severe gender dysphoria when she you know the word and same-sex attracted but the word lesbian didn't fit because it had too much femininity kind of infused in it and so when she discovered the word, it was just the way she describes like the life-giving power of knowing that I'm not some freak of nature, that there's actually a word that describes my experience. And for her to describe how liberating that was, like that's – it's so good for someone like me to hear that and to see. So, okay, I can totally see that because I just – most people that don't wrestle with their sexuality or gender, they just mock and dismiss and roll their eyes at all the identity labels. And I can – let's be honest. I mean when there's like hundreds of different – after a while, you kind of – how do you not kind of roll your eyes? But like being genuinely curious about how some of these labels can be genuinely life-giving.

And maybe it's a temporary thing too. Maybe it's just as they're trying to figure themselves out, a label can be helpful for maybe a season in life. Having said that, I've just seen, especially with younger people, yeah, just that anxiety surrounding discovering who they are and a quest for uniqueness and meaning in life. And like you said, every study I've read says that, you know, identities and pronouns and other things are a form of like social transitioning, which every study I've seen, somebody who socially transitions, that's a very strong push towards other more medical interventions and that's when i'm like oh my gosh that's um that's something that just a sexuality conversation doesn't have to deal with you know okay you're gay you call yourself gay you're

same-sex attracted whatever but there's no like next step medicalization that you know you're playing you're playing with here which can be well, not good for teenagers to engage in. But is it too, I mean, some of the identity labels, they seem almost like just describing personalities. And again, I'm not saying this across the board for everybody, but like something like, you know, gender fluid, I know people can use it in different ways. It's like, you know, some days i feel more masculine some days more feminine you kind of have somebody unpack that and it's kind of like that's just that's just kind of a con like do you need a label to describe just what is some days i'm kind of

like to wear black and go emo other times i might resonate with a stereotype that matches my biological sex and like cool great you're human like you're there's probably a lot of people probably a lot of people feel gender fluid you know i mean yeah yeah as i as i try to wrap my mind around what people mean by that term am i missing no i think absolutely right i think again this is one of the differences between the sexuality conversation the gender conversation what are the reasons that people haven't had experience around gender find it hard to understand a sexuality is a part of human experience that has quite concrete impacts on us even biological impacts on us that we can kind of see and recognize and almost every adult human can kind of relate to those gender we can't so much

and it is you know to be sexually attracted to someone most of us can conceive what that means to be for example a male-bodied person who feels like a woman it's very hard to articulate what that means of course then we get into some of the more philosophical problems as well you know after the definition is a woman is someone who feels like a woman well that's a circular definition what's it mean to feel like a woman and so often once we do um kind of uproot things or take the body out of the equation once we do go to what I call an either-sided entity, rooted in what we're feeling inside, as to whether we're a man or a woman,

there's pretty much nothing other than stereotypes of what men and women are like on which to build that definition. What does it mean to feel like a man or a woman? There's not much other than stereotypes to kind of attach that onto. And stereotypes are primarily about personality and about preferences so I I think you're right very often when you hear people describe what does it mean for them to feel non-binary or gender fluid say it is actually about personality and preferences

which when I think it through I think isn't all that surprising now I also want to bring in the kind of pastoral side of I remember how vividly i did feel like i was a girl trapped in a boy's body i i really even though i look back now and realize that was me being shaped and influenced i think by stereotypes that experience was very real so what i don't want to say is oh this is so absurd that people are questioning their gender when it all is they have different personality i don't want to be insensitive or kind of naive like that but i do want to say i think a better way of helping people isn't to say yes your personality preferences do reveal who you

are as a man or woman and neither in a way which we just can't articulate what that even means therefore to be a man and woman and i think does raise some fairly serious issues about particularly protection women's rights and stuff rather than affir that, I think actually it's to affirm, no, actually, it's okay that you are a male body person who likes really different things to other male body people or who has a really different kind of personality, that sense of freedom of, I can just be myself. And actually, isn't it amazing that God's created such a diverse humanity and our real diversity, even on the level of personality preferences. Doesn't that make him look even better? Doesn't that show something, the beauty and the creativity of God? And then when actually these diverse personality preference people kind

of unite as the people of God and worship, isn't that amazing? That's actually a really beautiful thing to be claimed here about how different we all are in the way God has made us, which is actually flowing from a solid identity, but things that are different about us that kind of describe us don't define us. And I think actually it's much more freeing and life-giving for us to approach it that way. And I do think brings glory to God as well. Yeah. So when you say, if you can go back in time and when you truly felt like you were a woman trapped in a man's, a boy's body, like, why did you think that? And can you describe why you thought that without falling into stereotypes?

I don't think I can without falling into stereotypes. No, I think I was just so aware of not, yeah, fitting into or not being like other boys. I never connected to boys. I had pretty much no close friends who were boys as a kid you know at school i was the one lone boy trying and failing to do handstands with the girls while all the boys are playing football all my close friends were girls i never felt comfortable guys all felt like a girl lots of these things just kind of made me you know look around and think well all these things kind of tick the boxes for what girls are like not for what boys are like so i don't think there's anything outside of stereotypes that i could personally have um identified as different and i and i don't even i because this is my with things like you know gender identity your internal sense of self

as male female both or neither gender expression how you express yourself gender role you know do you fit into the masculine or feminine expectations of being a man? So even these real textbook definitions of gender and gender identity expression role, it's like they all seem to be connected to gender stereotypes just intrinsically. Like you can't even explain any of them, really unpack them on a definitional level without latching onto or depending upon stereotypes to give your explanation meaning. And I don't say that. Here's the thing. Sometimes when people roll their eyes and gender stereotype, I'm not denying the social psychological power of stereotypes. I mean, I think it can create, if not influence or cultivate gender dysphoria.

Not that it's all that but i mean i think that can play a role so i to to say there's a social uh social factor here with stereotypes is not to diminish the profound experience at all it's just to kind of maybe maybe to unravel some of the philosophical underpinnings of some of these identities maybe you know i don't know yeah and i think yeah i agree i don't want to undermine or um invalidate the experience at all and i don't i don't even want to say that gender dysphoria is always a lot of stereotypes i don't i don't think that chimes a lot of people's experience i don't know just because that was my experience so i said i

wouldn't have classified as gender dysphoric for diagnosis i don't think that's the universal thing and although i don't think there's yet evidence of it, I'm very open to the fact there could be biological factors, physiological factors, which lead someone to have that experience. It still leaves open the question of how do you best respond to that experience? And also the question of how do we define what a man and woman is? They are related but separate questions. Even if

we found, say, a physiological, biological influence which was clearly influencing someone's experience of gender incongruence, that wouldn't suddenly solve all the questions about how do you live in light of that, what does it mean to be man or woman? That's why I think we've done badly often in these Christian conversations around this, of we aren't good at separating out the reality reality of experience which in a world marred by sin for all of us will be messy in every area of life we should expect messiness complexity things not to be straightforward we need to separate out that from kind of actually what reality is and god's good word and good plan and good guidance and then also from what does does Christian faithfulness look like for those of us who do want to follow

Jesus? It's when we won't do the hard work of kind of parsing those out that I think we get bad answers and often particularly insensitive answers and approaches. Yeah. So yeah, you work with, I mean, younger people. So in the work that you do, do you find this kind of quest? Do you find it pretty popular to kind of figure out who you are and people exploring different labels? Is that fairly common in the work that you do? And if so, or even if it's not common, just in the people that are on that quest to kind of who am I, you know, do you find that that's not helping them and just finding meaning and flourishing in life?

Is it typically a hindrance? Yeah. As I talk to youth leaders, you know, I never talked to a youth leader in the UK who doesn't have one or more young people in their youth group who are in some way questioning their gender. You know, you wouldn't find a teenager in the UK who doesn't know multiple peers, friends at school or college, whatever, who are questioning their gender, identifying as trans or whatever. I don't know if there's the firm evidence, but I do strongly suspect that where, so over here, we're seeing a huge mental health crisis among young people. There will be multiple factors in that, absolutely no doubt. I am pretty much convinced one of those will be this kind of pressure to work out who you are pressure to reach that conclusion pressure to

announce that live that out and it links the identity stuff we're told we need to find our best identity and we're told young people are told that's who they are inside because it's by embracing that and living out that you live your best life and so the young people living with the sense of if i don't actually work out who i am i'm going to miss out on my best life and you know the the you kind of get the influencers online who realize they're trans start taking testosterone had a mastectomy life is suddenly wonderful they're living their best life and it's the wonderful glossy instagram tick rock tiktok youtube world which looks so appealing and makes the thing that is the pinnacle of best life and fulfillment in life

and young people it just reaffirms this message i've got to work out who i am so i can live out because look how happy they are that's the way you find true happiness it is ultimately a salvation narrative um and so we need to search and there's a better salvation narrative in response to that and one of the reasons it's so good is there's no pressure to work out who you are as you get to receive who you are as a gift. You can know who you are. You can know that you're loved. You can know you're accepted, know you're delighted over, not basing anything you do or you finally saw. It's based as a gift, based on what God has done in sending Christ. That's wonderfully good news for us to offer to people under this pressure to try and find the best identity and the best life.

And maybe it'd be helpful, I mean, identity, especially as there's so many different identity labels now, especially when teenagers are trying to figure out which identity they fit into, do you find that they know that in almost every case, these identity labels, except for maybe gay, straight, maybe bisexual, almost every other one is temporary, right? I mean, that's just an observation. Like how many 15 year old girls who identify as non-binary will have that same exact label until they're 48, you know, like, just factually, it's just a very small percent. I mean, Lisa Diamond did, you know, a 10 year longitudinal study on a hundred non-straight women.

And I think it – don't quote me on this, but it's – you might be able to quote me on this. I have it written down somewhere. I think it was something like 3% of those 100 non-straight women identified the same way because every two years she would check in and kind of do a review. And even their – I mean, let alone their sexual exploration was kind of all over the map to where at the end people were like i don't know who you know i was a lesbian 10 years ago and then i said i was bisexual and i fell in love with a man who you know wasn't actually wasn't a jerk you know and then now i've got two kids and i don't know what's going on i'm just a human you know but i this is where i feel like if the identity label is as thin, it's not like a strong ontological, this is the kind of human I am and will always be. If it's understood that this is just a way I'm trying to name my experience right now as I'm going through just the chaos of teenagehood, you know.

But I don't see it. It does seem to be like, no, there's all these different subcategories of being human. You need to figure out which one you are and that i just yeah i think right if it was just describing experience that's potentially helpful because it is helpful sometimes to describe experience yeah and that's what i'm trying to say in the book is these things can be real realities they can be descriptions of our human experience and we want to recognize and acknowledge them and wrestle with how do best respond to those but they don't have to define who we are and the unhelpful thing is when we say this is this is my controlling self-understanding and therefore i must kind of fully embrace this and

live this out to find my best life i think it's also interesting there's this kind of confusing inconsistency of there's well two things one there's the narrative of you must look inside yourself find who you are live out find your best life which kind of implies you'll find one static thing but at the same time of course we're seeing a proliferation of fluid identities and young people being quite open to that and you're right often a kind of you know often there's even as you know kind of a specific um progression of often it's kind of bisexual to non-binary to trans identifying and i think that's interesting there is an openness to young people about labels changing but i think it's usually in one direction

not in the other you know barely ever do you hear a young person very open to the idea of oh yeah actually yeah last year you were hearing you identify as non-binary but actually now you're saying you're pretty comfortable being um a girl which is how you've lived all your life and biologically you're female you know it kind of doesn't work that direction it works other direction which part i think is the social pressure so we've got over here of in our youth culture in our culture at the moment to be to be queer and to be trans is to be cool and to be to be straight and cis is the most boring thing and the worst thing possible because you're boring and you might well be homophobic or transphobic and that's the kind of assumption there actually to be gay or same-sex attracted doesn't make you particularly popular or cool in the UK

youth culture context my understanding is what really marks you out is being trans or non-binary in some way and so I think there's a real openness to change of labels if it's in that direction if it's in the other direction that doesn't seem to be which is why we see you know the sad reality of the transitioners who again legitimate experiences it seems who are often just trying to talk about their own experience and even talk about their own experience let alone any comments on how that might impact the experience of others or suggestions of wisdom for how others handle their experiences even sharing their own stories get some kind of shut down if people aren't open to hearing that traitorsitors and all those kind of accusations made against them.

So there's an openness to fluidity, but only if you're going in the right direction, not if you're going in the wrong direction. So are you at a place now, not in the church, but in the broader culture where they are being gay or same-sex attracted or lesbian or whatever, like these are just more, kind of like how straight was 10 years ago, it was kind of like, eh, that's not a big deal anymore.

I think so. I think especially among, well, yes, eh, that's not a big deal anymore. Like, I think so. I think especially among, well, yes, I think that's true in wider culture. I mean, these things are not monolithic,

obviously, but I think in some contexts I've heard that being gay or as a teenager at school is not a easy experience, but being trans, you do become popular if you're a trans kid, the non-binary kid. And, you know, and there are some, you get some stories there's no so many things are feeding into

trans identification when teenagers i'm sure you get some stories where there's a kid who's kind of pretty unpopular kind of on the edge and stuff doesn't have many friends and stuff they come out of trans suddenly they're one of the most popular kids in school where they're the whole you know the the cool gang and stuff and that could raise the question for us is for some young people only some is trans identification actually a way of rescuing themselves from the unpleasant situation they're finding themselves of maybe feeling rather left out rather overlooked not being one of the cool kids and actually it's a way to find some faith with people yeah and one of many many possible situations and their various situations and what are going on but it maps on to the

experience and some of the stories you hear well and there's been several studies on it and that's i know they're politically incorrect to talk about and you certainly don't want to certainly don't want to say like this is true of all people or whatever and And this is where I think older LGBT people who, you know, it wasn't, it was the opposite, right? Like they were mocked and abused and sometimes beat up. And, you know, so they had a really hyper different experience. It's hard for them. I think sometimes to wrap their mind around being trans,

being like elevating social status rather than being, you know, demonized. But yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, I, it's, you know, things have become so politicized. I'm always careful. Like, ah, is this really true? It's just like a, in America, you know, is this a right wing talking narrative or is it, is this actually the case? But I just over and over and over again, it's just, it's, it is interesting that when I'm in more progressive cities, Portland, Seattle, New York, Chicago, whatever. And you actually talk to kids and describe what's the social environment in school like, and it's exactly that. Yeah, yeah.

So can you give us a firsthand, I guess, I mean, you're in the UK, because I keep hearing that things have really shifted in the UK, where the UK I always like to think is like, you know, five to 10 years ahead of the U S uh, they're always more progressive than the U S is. It's funny. I was, I was, uh, when I was in Cambridge, I was, I was at a, I was at a pub talking to a couple of guys and one guy described himself as, you know, I I'm, I'm a left, I'm a left winger. I'm like, Oh, so you, you probably like, you know, we got Bernie Sanders, you know? He's like, oh no, he's way too right wing for me. I was like, there's not a person in America who would

ever use the word right wing to describe Bernie Sanders. But it just shows how, I think he even says, yeah, I'm a Marxist socialist, you know, and Bernie's just, you know, might as well be Donald Trump, you know, from his perspective. So here's where I'm going with this. It's interesting that as in this conversation, the UK was kind of more progressive than the US leading the way, you know, but then now they're pulling back with some of the gender stuff because they're seeing that they, I don't know, for lack of better terms, went too far, kind of like, oh my gosh, like now we have all these detransitioners and, you know, you have the case of Kyra Bell, you know, they went all the way to the high court where she detransitioned

and felt like she was rushed through early transition as a confused teenage girl is in her own words, you know. Are you seeing that firsthand? That like there is some, even from secular, liberal, whatever, some rethinking their policies definitely definitely and i think i think there's almost like there's been this um as i guess these things happen this ground level beginnings and movements things like yeah kira bell's personal experience and other people like that have similar experiences and then the court case but then also kind of whistleblowers at Tavistock, which is the under-18s gender identity clinic here in the UK, who were raising concerns about safeguarding

young people in this context, raising concerns about whether young people were too quickly being given access to pubic debauchers, say, or mastectomies and different things. That has happened. Parents began to talk out. There's quite a good kind of ground level parent movement here. Parents who are concerned about what the young people are being told at school, what's happening at gender clinics, different kind of things. It's kind of gradually worked its way up. So now we are at the stage where there's a government commissioned independent review into the under 18s NHS gender entity services something called the cast review so lady hillary cast who's a very experienced pediatrician is leading this independent review into it which then released an interim report uh i forget exactly when some a number of months ago now which basically was

raising huge concerns about how the nhs services have been um acting the the kind of specification of the um whatever it's called overview they're doing isn't to decide on um kind of the philosophical questions of is there such a thing as a trans kid but actually how do we help these young people who are experiencing gender dysphoria questioning their their gender on the basis of the interim report and i think this is interesting even on the base of the interim report even before they've got the full report they now basically they're going to close the tabas dot clinic at start of next year and they just recently released the interim specification which is kind of the proposals for the replacement and basically it is a significant shift from what

was predominantly an affirming approach as in you assume that what the young person is saying about themselves and how they feel themselves to be is who they are so you do use names and pronouns as they request you do fairly quickly move to various forms of social and medical intervention the flip now basically is the default as a non-affirmative approach so only extreme cases of demonstrable clinical distress will names and pronouns, for example, be used in line with what the young person wants rather than with their given name, pronouns, along with their biological sex and stuff. And so it's a complete swing because the cast review showed there really is evidence that even social transition is quite a significant

psychosocial intervention. It it has big impacts we know there's the evidence that many young people will find that if those interventions don't take place their feelings of discomfort will naturally resolve we know that these social interventions make it less likely that will happen therefore that seems to be not the best way of treating young people and also there's the cast review has highlighted what was already known which is the way the cohort of young people being referred to gender identity services are not reflecting the general population much higher levels of mental health diagnoses of asd autistic traits of traumatic experiences a much higher number of children who are in care who are looked after children has been noticed and people are now rightly asking the questions why is it that actually this cohort of young people isn't

representative of the rest of the population and realizing those things tend to get overlooked because gender just takes over we need to help young people think about traumatic experiences and how they work through those think about um whether they might have autism how they begin to understand themselves so that is the case think about how they handle have autism and how they begin to understand themselves. That is the case. Think about how they handle mental health. So we're moving towards a much more holistic kind of approach to this. And the other thing that's happened

is one particular very prominent kind of trans teen charity that supports young people towards an affirmative approach has been through a load of scandals about various trustees and people they were linked to and advice to be given to young people. The Charity Commission is now doing an independent

review into them. So they're kind of crumbling too. So it's kind of worked from the ground up that suddenly now on a policy level, positive things are happening towards the safeguarding of young people. I mean, that's pretty remarkable in a society that, again, is fairly progressive, speaking as from an American perspective, where Bernie Sanders is seen as a right winger, that there would be such, I don't want to say drastic, but I think maybe just some pullback on the trend. Because we still don't have that in the U.S. yet. And I keep telling people that everything, we kind of follow along the european countries typically and so give it i keep saying two to five years and i think there's going to be some rethinking the only difference though is that our health care system somebody explained to me and i'm not an expert in this at all but it's because i i i used to say well give it a few years there's

gonna be so many lawsuits now of like kira bell's case i mean money talks and so when you get enough doctors being sued they're gonna start to rethink you know are we really treating these kids well but the the health care system here is so protected legally that as long as there's some kind of consent form signed or they're no there's not going to be a lot of pressure from lawsuits or whatever. But even ideologically, but then I don't know, like WPATH just released the World Professional, what is it, of Transgender Care. Cessation for Transgender Health, yeah.

World, yeah. They released the recent kind of like Standard of Cares Act or whatever, the Standard of Cares. And it's the same, if not even more yeah yeah gender affirming and there always was you know and i still when i talk to doctors here there's still this like oh yeah you don't question the gender affirming approach at all because you'll be accused of killing trans kids because if you don't if you're not fully gender affirming then you're you know increasing suicidality which is you know so i don't see i don't see it yet changing in the states but

no i think there are good groups in the states people like jen specter and stuff who are trying to get you know evidence-based medicine and it's evidence-based responses to this kind of work and that but i yeah i have lessons i guess in the states but i think that's the case i think in terms of the you know isn't it surprising that we who yeah kind of in in to use these terms of very progressive liberal society and stuff we are the ones who are i think pioneering in some ways actually a change in this i think though it is because what's being shown is harm and the one thing in our secular liberal society that matters is harm yeah so so the reason i've always said the tide will turn on the trans situation trans

teens especially in a way it won't sexuality is because there is demonstrable evidence of harm and so what's happening basically is we are looking at how we've treated teenagers in the last 10 years when they've reported genders for and we referred to our national health service and realized actually the way we've been treating them has not been based on studied evidence may well have done harm and so actually that's you know the harm argument is always powerful yeah um and particularly in secular cultures like ours harm becomes the only basis the only common basis for ethics so i whether that will work out in the states i don't know but i'm not overly surprised it's happening here it has happened quicker than i thought it would

yeah but because i think there, and there will increasingly be, both evidence of harm and also evidence that we just don't know if some of this stuff is safe, that does fit the kind of thing that would cause us to change. And just to be clear for people listening that may be like, oh, this is all kind of new to me, you have different standards of care for, let's just focus on teens who are wrestling with their gender identity. You know, the gender affirming approach is kind of like if someone says they're trans, then they are trans. And you don't really explore kind of the holistic psychological well-being of the person because you don't at all. It's like there's such an allergic reaction

against like even hinting that their gender dysphoria could be linked to some kind of psychological condition they're wrestling with. And yet, I mean, you said it, and there's been studies done that I think over or just about 50% of trans identified teens are wrestling with at least one, if not several other mental health issues that, again, according to one study, a small percentage of caretakers chose to even explore that this know, that this person had past trauma. They went through two divorces. They were sexually abused as a kid. They have been diagnosed as bipolar.

But if they say they're trans, sometimes everything else just takes a backseat. Let's just focus on affirming your trans identity, not exploring maybe the maybe more complicated psychological web that could be surrounding this identity so it's not it's not even like it's not it's not even like a liberal versus conservative thing it's just there's several different historically there's been several different approaches to treating or working with somebody with gender dysphoria and I think the UK and other, or even like the Nordic countries or Sweden, you know, where there's more of a watchful waiting, let's just not intervene. Let's just see the biological process just play out or, or, um, Oh, who was it? I'm blinking on his name.

He was an expert in gender dysphoria who the bio psycho social approach where you explore the biology, explore the psychology, explore this, the social side of, and so you explore the holistic person, you know, and just rather than just rushing them through medicalization. And I do think the ascendancy that we had seen, even though it's now going back down of the affirmative approach you described, is rooted in what I'm talking about in this book of an either side identity is rooted in the idea that who we really are is found inside that we really do have this thing called a gender identity and that

really does dictate who we are as a man or a woman which of course the interesting thing there is that's not actually a biological or medical fact there's no way you can prove the reality of a gender identity there's no scan you can do tests you can do to isolate someone's gender identity and so what's very interesting i think is the affirmative approach to trans medicine is kind of based on this philosophical idea of this internal gender identity and that internal our internal self reveals who we really are rather than being based as now i think this kind of push back over here is or actually let's do some hard studies and look at the research and work out what actually does and doesn't prove life-giving to people what is actually going on and so i i would

actually submit that i think one of these cultural narratives of identity that i talk about in the book has kind of infiltrated our understanding of an experience and even infiltrated medical responses to it and the positive step that's been taken now is actually maybe this isn't about identity maybe it's a very real experience and so let's explore what that experience is and how we best help people in that circumstance rather than just jumping to it's who they are we gotta affirm it so i think it although it's you know the medical world it's actually very rooted in philosophy and thinking yeah even if it's not explicitly said that it is it just is right i mean or it's also like and i'm not sure i think you guys have the same thing there as we do here just this

conflation of, you know, SOGI, you know, sexual orientation, gender identity. Yeah, yeah. And we know that sexual orientation is often, has biological factors at least, is often unchangeable. Sometimes there's fluidity, you know, sexual fluidity within an orientation, but typically people don't swing from genuinely like attracted to the same sex, opposite sex. So sexual orientation has this kind of more,

maybe, I'll say innate, whereas if you just assume gender identity is kind of like the stepchild of that or whatever, but it's not. Gender identity, it's so different than sexual orientation just on a philosophical level which is why i mean i honestly think and i would say this if i wasn't a christian this isn't like a theological observation but the whole soji i think is just disastrous really i mean yeah no i agree

like the conflation of the two i do agree and then the you know i think you're right i think as a non-christian withist outlook, you can say that. But I always want to put it up as Christians. Actually, we get to bring in also the Christian or Judeo-Christian perspective of and because there's real people. We'll have very different experiences and we care about the real people. So let's actually treat people as people, find out about their own experience rather than having this lumped together thing of actually very diverse experiences, which doesn't actually help us to love and care for individuals well and actually i think the kind of more people-centered approach actually something we as christians should be championing for because we are people-centered people because we have a people-centered god who cares about our

well-being us and our own experiences and so i always want to encourage christians these aren't just kind of you know medical clinical debates. They're also places that we want to bring in the heart of God and the care for a person, not just an issue or a topic. Talk to a parent right now who has a 13 to 17 year old kid who just came out as trans or non-binary, gender gender fluid how should the parent love their child well how should they respond first thing i'd want to say to put in that context is don't panic i think often that is just our response just don't panic uh don't for the world's about to fall apart don't feel rushed to do anything much one key thing would be just to

talk to the young person and just find out more from them again it's validating them as an individual don't assume you know what they mean when they say that and just spend lots of time listening before you say anything actually yeah you're saying you know identify as non-binary help me understand what you mean by that or you say actually you feel that you're um that you're actually a boy just help me understand what do you mean by that actually how long have you felt this and what's it been like for you to feel that you're um that you're actually a boy just help me understand what do you mean by that actually how long have you felt this and what's it been like for you to feel that because what you're doing is you're you're more deeply understanding their experience which is going to be helpful for loving the world responding well but you're also just loving them in that and

what you're showing them is even if actually you might not agree with some of how they're viewing themselves or some of the decisions they want to make about how they're now going to live you do care about them as an individual it's a completely different message that sends a young person then immediately going well oh no you're not trans don't be silly no you're not changing your name no it's not happening we don't do that in this household that's just crushing a young person but actually that sounds like it's been really hard for you please tell me some of what that's been like tell me some of just what do you mean help me understand what you mean when you say you feel this way that might then have actually some

openings when someone says well i feel like a girl because this isn't this that might be a place to well but actually can't boys be like that you know might be a place to just throw some seeds of doubt because it might well come down to as we've kind of said um stereotypes and stuff um pray we're being obvious one but i think just let's not overlook that let's get some wisdom from god and that be prepared for the fact it will be a a long journey i don't think these things resolve quickly but actually especially with teenagers no actually it's that they're on that journey to independence anyway so it's much more than walking alongside as parents as well and walking with them on the journey and being aware of what else might be a play. We've talked about the fact that all the stats show that co-occurring mental

health conditions, ASD characteristics, trauma, telomere phobia, all these kind of things are very often present. You as a parent might already be aware that actually your young person was diagnosed with depression, say, or exhibiting a potential experience of depression, or actually there are some ASD characteristics of depression or actually there are some asd characteristics there or actually they'd already be identifying as bisexuals they're already questioning their gender and just keeping those things being aware of them having them in conversation continuing to explore those get support for those as necessary to kind of keep it broad and just a final one yeah i think it's a key thing for parents this situation is not to let gender become the be-all and end-all of the relationship and the family in the conversation

because so often what happens to these young people is they conclude that they are transgender and that becomes their world and get into testosterone when it comes to their world and they falling into an online world where all that matters is that and very often the story is they give up on other hobbies they give up on in-person friendships they descend into this online world where it's gender gender gender gender a bit like we said earlier about how terms can unhelpfully reinforce things for us so can the narrowing of our world down to that and so actually encouraging and helping your young person keep involved in your active hobbies they enjoy seeing other friends just talking to them about plenty of other things that aren't gender just helps keep their world broader than

the gender and also shows that you are not obsessed about their gender but you really love them you love them beyond the gender questions as well so there's just some really practical helpful things about keeping life a lot broader than gender to stop a young person getting fixated on kind of falling down the rabbit hole of that's all that matters. Andrew, that's a great, great word. And I'm sure there's a lot of parents listening that will be really blessed by that. Really excited about your book, Finding Your Best Identity. What's the subtitle again of the book? A Short Christian Introduction to Identity, Sexuality, and Gender. Right. It's a great book.

I'm excited to have people get a hold of it. So people always ask me, where can I find it? There's this thing called Amazon. Or just Google it. I'm sure you'll figure it out. But Andrew, thank you so much for your work at Living Out and for your writing. I hope you write 20 more books in the near future. Love all the stuff you put out.

It's a challenge. Thank you. All right. God bless. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.