I would like to recommend the book Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey. You could read some good book reviews here and here. Although there is only one chapter on transgender issues, the whole book is very important. Pearcey gives a very clear and strong critique of the worldview and culture of our time. She focuses on how our American culture devalues the human body unlike the Christian faith which has a very high view of the body. Christians see people as made in the image of God and consisting of both body and soul. She examines how the culture views the body versus Christianity by looking at several specific issues such as homosexuality, transgenderism, abortion, and euthanasia.
I really appreciated the whole book, but I think for those of us who struggle with unwanted sexual desires, the chapters on homosexuality and transgenderism are both especially helpful. She emphasizes that our body is part of who we are, and we cannot just live in our minds. You need to accept who your body tells you to be, and not just live based on feelings which change from day to day.
Here is a quote from the chapter on homosexuality:
Over time, Doherty began to notice a subtle shift. “Without denying or ignoring my sexual feelings, I stopped regarding them as being who I was, sexually, and started regarding my physical body as who I was.” To his surprise, he found that his sexual desires began to change. “Rather than trying to change my feelings so that I could change my label, I changed my label and my feelings started to follow suit.” His feelings changed enough that eventually he fell in love with a woman and got married.
A really interesting point in the chapter on transgenderism, was that she pointed out that on the one hand, some people want to say that gender dysphoria has a biological cause, but on the other hand, trans activists say that they body is completely irrelevant. So they do not want to argue that transsexualism is biologically caused. They say your biology doesn’t determine anything about who you are. Only our feelings matter. For them it’s about choice and identity, not about your body nor biological causes of dysphoria.
Throughout the transgenderism chapter she did a great job dismantling the ideology of trans activists. She explains why sex is a reality, not a social construct, and it has to be a reality in order for there to be such a thing as human rights, especially rights for a subset of people, like rights for women. She argues that stereotypes should not confine us, and that it is actually gender stereotypes that are causing people to think they need to transition. This is what I’ve always argued as well. She refutes the idea that the existence of intersex people shows that there is no sex binary. This is what I’ve argued as well. She looks at the political problems revolving around transgender issues today. It is always scary to read about what is happening.
Here are some good quotes from the transgenderism chapter about accepting yourself:
Why are we not encouraging people to have a higher view of the body? Nuriddeen Knight, a black woman writing for the Witherspoon Institute, says the transgender movement reminds her of a time, not so long ago, when light-skinned black people sometimes “passed” as white. She asks, Isn’t there a parallel when a man “passes” as a woman, or the reverse? In both cases, the underlying motive seems to be a form of self-hate: “A black person who wants to be white is practicing self-hate, and so is a man who wants to be a woman or a woman who wants to be a man.”
Knight asks: Why won’t we “encourage people to love the body they’re in? We tell women to love their curves and love their age and love the skin they’re in, but we won’t tell them (and men) to love the sex of their bodies?”
Last, Pearcey also calls the Church to be patient, to love transsexuals and those with gender dysphoria, and to walk with them over the long road.
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